Orienteering
So, I’m here! The Doha stopover got fairly grim - midnight - 8am is a bad time for a stopover since sleep is so impossible in an airport. The flight on from there was okay though; I couldn’t sleep very well but I got some, and the attendants in their terrifying regulation lipstick (Qatar Airways red to match their uniforms) woke me for lunch. Picking up my visa was somewhat stressful - they call out in Vietnamese so you just have to listen for your name amidst foreign syllables, and everyone’s in army duds because Socialist Republic. But now I have a three-month multiple-entry visa in my passport, huzzah!
A teacher from the centre, Mark, picked me up and gave me his number and useful tidbits on the taxi ride to my hotel: don’t drink the water but the ice is fine; use Mailinh taxis, or motorbike taxis if you’re away from backpacker areas; walk slowly across roads, don’t run, and the motorbikes will go round you. This last is very useful advice: apparently it gets confusing for bikers if you run, and therefore collisions are more likely. In London people sprint across roads just ahead of cars & bikes all the time. Having to hold my nerve and walk slowly instead of run to avoid crashes is very weird.
The hotel is seven stories, and the last is a rooftop restaurant. Very nice, because my room on the third floor doesn’t have a window as such - the window looks onto this weird chimney-like thing that’s open to the sky at the top, so interior rooms get some natural light but you can’t see out. On the roof you can see the building work, the tall skinny buildings, the big shiny skyscrapers and the buildings that are half falling apart.
I doubt I will stay here more than a year, for one simple reason: the climate. This is the dryer, cooler end of the year and I’m still like OMG THE HEAT IS SO HEAVY MAKE IT STOP. I’m being sensible - I’ve not been out of my room/other air-conditioned places for more than two hours and I don’t go out at all in the early afternoon, and still OMG SO HOT. I’ll get more used to it and better at dealing with it, I know, but this is not a climate suited to Lokifans. We are creatures of the cool, the crisp, the misty.
See? They said you learnt things about yourself doing this.
The major personality trait necessary so far is not so much bravery or a spirit of adventure so much as being impervious in the face of social embarrassment. IT IS SUPER AWKWARD AND EMBARRASSING to try and buy off-brand Sprite when you don’t speak the language or expect to have to leave your bag at a desk. Also to explain ‘I don’t need a bike-taxi, I am just looking at this bus map to try and understand the public transport system here.’ So I am just keeping a smile. Luckily there’s always something interesting to look at a few metres away.
Still! I am having fun exploring. I get tired quickly at the moment and my concentration span is pathetically small - things that were not true on the aeroplane and are kind of the expected product of being alone in a new country where you don’t speak the language. It is tiring even when I’m not actually doing much. I’m both looking forward to and dreading meeting the other teachers, especially the new ones; I think it will be a lot of fun, but I also think I’ll end up doing a LOT of exploring-social stuff with them. Which I know will be fun (and I’ll end up saying yes because I want to, not because of pressure) but like, I love the whole social-whirl-new-people-new-life thing, but starting a new job is tiring enough on its own even without having to find housing and learn survival-level Vietnamese at the same time. I confidently predict something like when I started at uni: yay-omg-so-busy-and-pleased-constant-whirl-yay, then having an Introvert Crash like four weeks in and going OKAY I NEED TO BE ALONE IN MY ROOM FOR LIKE THREE DAYS. YES, STILL GOING TO WORK, NO, NOTHING YOU’VE DONE. (SWEET SWEET ALOOOONE.)
I am trying to use some very very basic Vietnamese, but it’s not really working; my hotel is in the tourist area, very close to this big backpacker road. So I end up going up to people and saying “pho xin” (soup, please) and they say “of course, would you like chicken or beef with that?” Still, the backpacking thing is nice. Luckily I was given a room in a hotel-y place, not a hostel-y place - apparently it’s the nicer of the places ILA uses to put up its teachers for three nights. Unfortunately I have to check out tomorrow and find somewhere else - they’re booked up. Tomorrow is also when I have my six-hours approx. of inductions at the centre. :S
The exploring’s been fun. I’ve met some nice backpackers but mostly been wandering on my own for a couple of hours at a time (scared of getting lost) which is hard to get used to in some ways but easier than I expected. For a backpacker area it’s still overwhelmingly Vietnamese outside of one street. I am v visibly new here, and I get given that “oh, a tourist” smile a lot - that combination of friendly and predatory guys give you when your skirt’s rucked up.
Anyway. Tomorrow the work stuff begins and I will meet my colleagues and probably have to fix my sleep schedule by staying up way too late with them. Excite?!
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/242160.html. Comment wherever you like :)
A teacher from the centre, Mark, picked me up and gave me his number and useful tidbits on the taxi ride to my hotel: don’t drink the water but the ice is fine; use Mailinh taxis, or motorbike taxis if you’re away from backpacker areas; walk slowly across roads, don’t run, and the motorbikes will go round you. This last is very useful advice: apparently it gets confusing for bikers if you run, and therefore collisions are more likely. In London people sprint across roads just ahead of cars & bikes all the time. Having to hold my nerve and walk slowly instead of run to avoid crashes is very weird.
The hotel is seven stories, and the last is a rooftop restaurant. Very nice, because my room on the third floor doesn’t have a window as such - the window looks onto this weird chimney-like thing that’s open to the sky at the top, so interior rooms get some natural light but you can’t see out. On the roof you can see the building work, the tall skinny buildings, the big shiny skyscrapers and the buildings that are half falling apart.
I doubt I will stay here more than a year, for one simple reason: the climate. This is the dryer, cooler end of the year and I’m still like OMG THE HEAT IS SO HEAVY MAKE IT STOP. I’m being sensible - I’ve not been out of my room/other air-conditioned places for more than two hours and I don’t go out at all in the early afternoon, and still OMG SO HOT. I’ll get more used to it and better at dealing with it, I know, but this is not a climate suited to Lokifans. We are creatures of the cool, the crisp, the misty.
See? They said you learnt things about yourself doing this.
The major personality trait necessary so far is not so much bravery or a spirit of adventure so much as being impervious in the face of social embarrassment. IT IS SUPER AWKWARD AND EMBARRASSING to try and buy off-brand Sprite when you don’t speak the language or expect to have to leave your bag at a desk. Also to explain ‘I don’t need a bike-taxi, I am just looking at this bus map to try and understand the public transport system here.’ So I am just keeping a smile. Luckily there’s always something interesting to look at a few metres away.
Still! I am having fun exploring. I get tired quickly at the moment and my concentration span is pathetically small - things that were not true on the aeroplane and are kind of the expected product of being alone in a new country where you don’t speak the language. It is tiring even when I’m not actually doing much. I’m both looking forward to and dreading meeting the other teachers, especially the new ones; I think it will be a lot of fun, but I also think I’ll end up doing a LOT of exploring-social stuff with them. Which I know will be fun (and I’ll end up saying yes because I want to, not because of pressure) but like, I love the whole social-whirl-new-people-new-life thing, but starting a new job is tiring enough on its own even without having to find housing and learn survival-level Vietnamese at the same time. I confidently predict something like when I started at uni: yay-omg-so-busy-and-pleased-constant-whirl-yay, then having an Introvert Crash like four weeks in and going OKAY I NEED TO BE ALONE IN MY ROOM FOR LIKE THREE DAYS. YES, STILL GOING TO WORK, NO, NOTHING YOU’VE DONE. (SWEET SWEET ALOOOONE.)
I am trying to use some very very basic Vietnamese, but it’s not really working; my hotel is in the tourist area, very close to this big backpacker road. So I end up going up to people and saying “pho xin” (soup, please) and they say “of course, would you like chicken or beef with that?” Still, the backpacking thing is nice. Luckily I was given a room in a hotel-y place, not a hostel-y place - apparently it’s the nicer of the places ILA uses to put up its teachers for three nights. Unfortunately I have to check out tomorrow and find somewhere else - they’re booked up. Tomorrow is also when I have my six-hours approx. of inductions at the centre. :S
The exploring’s been fun. I’ve met some nice backpackers but mostly been wandering on my own for a couple of hours at a time (scared of getting lost) which is hard to get used to in some ways but easier than I expected. For a backpacker area it’s still overwhelmingly Vietnamese outside of one street. I am v visibly new here, and I get given that “oh, a tourist” smile a lot - that combination of friendly and predatory guys give you when your skirt’s rucked up.
Anyway. Tomorrow the work stuff begins and I will meet my colleagues and probably have to fix my sleep schedule by staying up way too late with them. Excite?!
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/242160.html. Comment wherever you like :)