Arrival
on Brom's Blog (Vietnam), 12/Sep/2009 00:54, 34 days ago
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”Freya Stark.Xin Chao! Hello and welcome to the first Bromblog from Hanoi. It has now been nearly a week since I first stepped of the plane at Na Boi airport, passed through the swine flu medical screening and stepped into the heat and humidity of Vietnam. Unlike Freya Stark I am not alone but am instead welcomed by the wonderful staff of the VSO Vietnam office, Son, Trang and Thuong. I'm efficiently transported to the Au Co Hotel where a welcome basket of fruit, biscuits, tea and coffee awaits me.In the evening we gather for a Vietnamese welcome dinner and I get to meet, mostly for the first time, the other volunteers in the team. We are diverse bunch in age, experience and nationality coming from the UK, Kenya, Ireland, Canada, Germany/South Africa and Pirkka from Finland who unfortuneatly is still to arrive due to some visa issues. We look forward to seeing her soon.This shows the range of VSO partnerships both North and South and it is a good mix of experience and backgrounds.Day 2 is really the start of our In Country Orientation (ICO) designed to enable us to gain confidence in our new environment. The first part of which is learning how to cross the road! The rules of which are simple, step out, preferably not under a bus, keep walking and don't stop until you reach the other side. The mopeds really do swerve to avoid you and the cars, mostly, really do slow down, stopping in the middle really just confuses the whole experience. If there is a large group of you, do not cross the road in single file, as in a school crocodile, as the mopeds cannot swerve around all of you at once and it causes havoc. Instead cross the road in a horizontal file with the bravest person in the hit zone at the end of the row. If you do not obey these rules, you will only ever see Hanoi from one side of the street and never be able to get from one section to the next.So with the Great Road Expedition mastered, our next adventure was to the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnography. This is a super start to the training, providing a fascinating insight to the 54 different ethnic groups belonging to 5 ethnolinguistic families, (more about language later), that inhabit Vietnam. The largest of these is, unsurprisingly, the Viet comprising 86% of the population, but there are many more such as the Black Hmong, Yao and the Lolo people. Most of these have colourful dress and unique customs, particularly the hill tribes, however these ethnic minorities have often not benefited from Vietnam's economic progress, and how to ensure that they benefit from Vietnam's successes in poverty reduction whilst preserving their culture is an interesting development debate, as it is in many places, that I hope to learn more about during my time here.Giarai burial tomb and Bahnar communal house at Ethnology Museum of VietnamThe museum is also home to the delightful Hoa Sua restaurant, not only does this provide excellent cuisine, together with wonderful French style desserts, such as flambe apple crepe, (I was tempted by a rich chocolate mousse), but it also serves as a training facility for disadvantaged young people providing them with the skills they need to work in Vietnam's burgeoning tourist sector, a rapidly growing and important part of its economy.So I am afraid this blog only takes me through to the second day of my time here so far, but it is long enough already. Our ICO also includes 2 language lessons a day, background in the socio-political environment and development issues, the work of VSO in disability and HIV/AIDS and something I am really looking forward to the opportunity to spend a weekend with a Vietnamese family. It also includes all the numerous practical issues such as setting up bank accounts, including internet banking, mobile phones, emergency procedures, including evacuation procedures, for example, in the event of an avian flu outbreak, which hospitals to use, registering with the Embassy and police etc.. etc... etc..... as well as finding somewhere to live. Each of these is a seperate topic in itself so next week I think I shall write about our often hilarious experiences with the Vietnamese language.See you next weekIan