Christmas is here..or is it?

19/12/2011 by Russell.

“Ding Dong Merrily on high, the Christmas bells are ringing….”

I just can’t find that Christmas spirit we get at home, I feel something is missing, the shops are all decked out to sell gifts, with trees and everything, costumes for kids, but its not like home with Big outdoor lights, shops all looking pretty, pantomines, Pubs and special gifts for christmas.  It just is lacking that christmas feel.  There aren’t the malls to stroll and look, its ‘park yer moto and buy’.  Big C is doing its best with christmas songs being piped out of the PA - jingle bells in Vietnamee is not the same. But the country is embracing change and the children we teach know of Christmas, but the religious aspect is lost, who is Jesus? It is a commercial exercise here. No pictures of Jesus anywhere, there are christmas cards but not religious.

The Shelton staff had a trip around HA Long BAy, if you don’t know this place it is now one of the top 7 modern wonders of the world.  Great on a sunny day, but not on a cool winter’s day.  Well 17-18 degrees, to us Brits it’s still Summer.

It was a grand day out as Wallace would say.  It is a place everyone should strive to visit for its calming atmosphere, over 1969 limestone hulks of rock everywhere in the bay, 7 floating villages, and calm waters, very tranquil.  i guess you have to be of maturing years to fully appreciate.

What else? well the schools have been having their end of year exams, and so we had some down time, and we paid a visit to Ha Noi, principally to help Tom get a box through the postal system. He was experiencing the same difficulties as I with Saigon - DHL - and my tv in Ha Noi.  He had to play the same games as i did…hand over bribes, declare his goods were new, despite being years old….the system wreaks here of over officialdom.  Whilst in the post compound, I can easily vouch every item is opened and re-sealed when it enters the VN postal system.  Everything, I saw a ‘JD Sports’ parcel opened, inspected, catalogue was read by the staff and never returned to the package.  Tom’s package contained an old leather biker jacket, helmet, gloves, of no real value, put he was going to be initially charged 1m VND ($50) for him to get the parcel. 

Also our 16 and 17 yr olds participated in an English speaking contest, to be concluded this week.  Some of them are excellent, especially at Tran Phu School for gifted children.  They would give British students a run for their money.  However, others were disappointing, reading their notes verbatim, but you can have two points, its understandable, after all English is not their first language, or another view is that they were not prepared sufficiently after 3 weeks of work.  Some students were really excellent, global warming explained fully to me in English, to Shakesperian acting to telling me about Wayne Rooney’s life story.

The children are generally great with me and lessons fly by as have all the weeks since my arrival here in September.  I have been back to Tam’s hometown a couple of times for admin purposes, but all in all I have been in Hai phong.

Here we are outside one of our favourite restaurants in Ha Noi

Iwantoneofthose.com??? Free to take

Decorations galore, Ha Noi

Am going on little trip by bus early Saturday to Ninh Binh about 100 km away from Ha phong.  One night, back to teach on Boxing Day.  It is supposed to be very nice here with an old church and some caves and rice fields, and cool weather…but they really don’t get excited here about Christmas.  Its Tet for these people - but this is their lunar new year - like China.

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