Author: Rosencrantz O'Dowd

Having pulled the plug, I’m champing at the bit to be back in NZ, and only hope I haven’t left it too late.

Meantime, I’m already totting up what I’m going to miss, and not, about Vietnam. Below are

Six of the best

1. The Food

   Ridiculously cheap veges, delicious duck eggs, steamed kumara, and the endless fruit. And that’s just barely scratching the surface.

2. The Coffee

   Potent, bracing, guaranteed to get even the most lethargic white person bristling for the day ahead.

3. The People

   Almost all of the people I’ve run into have been helpful, charming, tolerant, and ready with a smile.

4. The Weather

   It’s hot, OK. But it’s not humid, save for early afternoon, which even early in spring is becoming hard to handle.

5. The Beach

   As good as New Zealand beaches, right on the doorstep. Warm water, as much sun as you can cope with.

6. Bike Riding

   No need for a licence. Just don’t run into anybody, and everything will be dandy. There’s nothing like cruising about on a fine sunny day on your own cheap transport.

Six of the worst

Yes, there are things about Vietnam, Nha Trang at least, which give me the sh*ts. They are these;

1. The Dogs

   Like listening for a mosquito, prick your ears at any time of day, and ( almost ) any time of night, and you’ll hear a nearby, or distant, dog going off its head. These things are hideous little creatures cooped up inside, in many cases, with aught to do except yap their twisted heads off.I wish.

2. The Horns

   I live on a main road nearby an army base. Literally every five minutes a bike-rider, or car driver, will feel the need to blast their horns. Three times while I wrote that sentence. It’s like they never thought of looking in the rear view mirror. Or both ways. Or anywhere. It’s unbelievable.

3. The Food Wrapping

   Food bought at the store will come wrapped in so much plastic that you’ll need a Swiss Army knife, a microscope, and surgical equipment to get to it. I can only guess this is producers’ over-the-top way of convincing us that yes, it is indeed new. As opposed to used.

4. Security paranoia

   This is typical of the older generation. Examples – 1) an apartment owner knocking on my door for 10 minutes while I tried to conduct an online class. The problem? My bike was outside the apartment, and so not secured by multiple locks and keys. She apparently wanted to tell me. 2) the same apartment owner insisting on locking an outside door only accessible via a 4th-floor rooftop. After all, someone might hire a helicopter to break in. 3) Another apartment owner securing outside doors with five locks. No kidding.

5. The Water

   There’s no such thing as safe tap water. It has to be bought, in yet more plastic.

6. The Banks

   Not as bad as Thailand, but everything has to be signed in triplicate. On the same damned page! Three times. Plus full name, please.

After at least two weeks of silence, and dithering, and daily, if not hourly, flip-flops, I’ve pulled the trigger.

I’m coming home.

I’ve been chewing off the ear of several good friends of late ( you know who you are ), and had lots of good advice. The most telling piece of which was ‘follow your heart’.

Hence the clip below from the late, great, widely-despised * stars of the early 80s. Directed at three young women in particular.

I’m due to get on a plane in Da Nang, Vietnam, on Saturday April 4, arriving in Sydney Sunday April 5.

Now to book the other three or so plane tickets.

*

I’ve put some thought into why this might be. One of the reasons is principal Mark Knopfler’s “I’m a rock-star” shtick. You can hear it raise its head in the above clip with his between-verse asides of ‘alright’…

With news coming in just now [ rough translation ] that schools in my Khanh Hoa province will be closed until further notice, that sinking feeling is probably my job going under.

On March 12, Mr. Nguyen Tan Tuan, Chairman of Khanh Hoa Provincial People’s Committee, agreed to allow students at all levels in Khanh Hoa province to leave school from March 13 until a new notice is given. Previously, high school students in the province were sent back to school on March 2. Meanwhile, students from preschool to junior high school are suspended from school until the end of March 15.

The school return date was originally Feb 2. Then Feb 16. Then March 3 … and so it goes on. Having gambled money on a Visa ( and lost ), I’ll be doing some hard thinking in the coming day or so on the ‘sunk cost fallacy’. AKA ‘pouring good money after bad’.

I’m missing NZ, and would love to be back for a while before winter really bites, and I’m ready for a new adventure.

IF I can get the timing right , the school here in Nha Trang may offer me a new contract, but that seems unlikely.

Also, the longer I stay here without a solid income stream ( online teaching aside ) , the greater risk that I get stranded either because of finances or ( more likely ) travel bans for passengers from, say, Vietnam!

No promises, mind, but watch this space.

Sitting on one’s chuff is sometimes necessary, but never desirable for long stretches, for fear of growing carbuncles on the underside.

With that in mind, after a morning’s slog over a hot microphone, I took myself off for a jaunt to the south, following the beach along the coastline. Below is roughly the route.

And even further below is what I found. As you see, Nha Trang is achingly beautiful. The beaches are clean, the air is fresh, and even the over-zealous and under-worked security guards didn’t upset my buoyant mood.

This morning, after expensive and mysterious wranglings, I took delivery of my passport, with renewed visa.

That says that this reprobate is allowed to stay here in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam until June 1 this year.

Visa renewal is achieved here in one of three ways;

• Pay somebody who knows somebody a wad of cash to get the job done. Expensive, and a little risky, since it means sending your passport via the mail. But hassle-free, and it works. USD $225 for three months in my case. Score one for corruption.
• Do the time-honoured ‘Visa run’, which involves leaving the target country, and returning forthwith. Slightly cheaper, but a tonne of hassle. Borders, hotels, passports, papers, planes, buses, trucks, taxis.Not for me.
• Going to the local Immigration Office and wading through enough bureaucracy to make a half-grown man cry. You should go armed with a tame Vietnamese who can translate for you, and a tonne of patience, and time. Cheap, but probably the path to madness.

So the choice is a lighter wallet, or a helluva headache. I chose the former.

Which gives me some wriggle room to finesse the cheapest flight(s) home anytime from now until then. That’s my likely reaction should my Y8 ( 8th Grade ) and Y9 students be ordered to remain home on or before our March 16 school return date.