Well what a start to my new adventure!!!

Got to Hobart airport last Saturday at 0530 to check my baggage in to be told that my "excess baggage" charge was $1300.....yep you read that right thirteen hundred dollars.....you can imagine my response to that. After much negotiation I got it down to $460 which is still an appalling amount of money leaving me wondering if I can continue this lifestyle for much longer (might be achievable if I was on an expat package not local wages)....thanks Qantas!!! I left Hobart in a ***** little plane with propellers and thought I was going to die.....we had "technical difficulties" according to the pilot and had to circle Hobart several times before we were cleared to fly off....all who know me know I loath flying at the best of times and I held my breath the whole way to Melbourne arrived shaking like a leaf and fearful I was never going to make it to Vietnam. Luckily Qantas Club had the bar open so here I was at 0900 drinking sauv blanc to fortify myself for the trip to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Ended up it was a codeshare on Vietnam Airlines (Qantas - do you actually fly anywhere in Asia??) which I have to say was fine. Good food, decent amount of alcohol, decent entertainment and they even gave me one of the soft toys they usually preserve for kids!!!!

Arrived in Saigon about 1700 local time (2000 AEST) and was met by my pre-arranged taxi driver. It was total chaos getting out of the airport at that time let alone getting out of Saigon!!! We headed towards Thu Dau Mot (pronounced two yow mo) about 50 minute northeast of Saigon which I thought was going to be my new home and I checked into the hotel arranged by the University. Did not get any sense of where I was. Totally exhausted I literally had a cup of tea and fell asleep.

Got up on Sunday morning with no idea of what to do or where to go. Wandered down and had breakfast before I walked around the local streets to find there in very little around - a few corner stores, a few bars and a multitude of coffee shops - not an auspicious start. Returned to the hotel to finally meet a couple of the other new teachers so we then went out again and ventured further afield. Found the city had a few good supermarkets so stocked up on some eats for lunch each day and in my hotel room. Quickly learned that very little English is spoken in this city so learning some basic Vietnamese is going to be a priority. Of course that comes with its own headache as like Mandarin it is a tonal language.......unfortunately it has SIX tones and as I had difficulty with 4 tones in China I am thinking the challenge will be daunting!!!!

Sunday night went for dinner with Charlotte where we ordered beef and French fries as we could point to that on the menu and neither of us had a phrasebook to try and order anything else!! We also managed to order what we thought was a glass of wine each - ended up being some rather potent local "banana" wine which came out in a bottle with shot glasses (kind of tells you what type of wine it was!) Our beef came out as one rather larger piece of steak with chopsticks. We gestured that we wanted a knife to cut the steak and didn't seem to be getting very far until one enterprising young waitress went and got a pair of scissors and cut our steak for us!!! We could not decide if the wine was being charged for by the bottle or the shot so we ended up finishing off the bottle......definite bad hangover material!!!

Monday morning at 0730 we were picked up by the Eastern International University (EIU) bus and taken out to see our first glimpse of our new place of employment. Realisation hit that we will actually be living about 20 minutes out of Thu Dau Mot in a completely new area which really contains NOTHING except the university and the huge apartment blocks we will be moved into once out work permits are sorted. The road infrastructure is 4 lane roads with nothing on the surrounding land at the moment. I can see that there will be a whole new city eventually but at the moment there is just a lot of vacant ground. Still getting my head around this......

Had a fairly chilled out week of orientation which included seeing the University facilities, meeting the current staff, visiting the apartments, signing our contracts etc etc. It is still a very small university - only about 2000 students across three faculties - Business, Engineering and Nursing. This week and next we will be doing a lot of placement testing of new students. In my pre-employment discussions I was led to believe that I would be preparing and teaching the English nursing curriculum and involved in IELTS preparation ......problem being is that these discussions occurred with the manager who has now left so I really have no idea where I stand. Feeling quite anxious about this at the moment but trying to remain positive and see what next week brings.

The ladies had to go into Saigon for their health checks which gave me a glimpse of one of the international hospitals. First impressions are that they look nice but the medical and nursing care is very basic so god knows what a local Vietnamese hospital will be like!!! Seven of us went together so it was a good opportunity to get to know some of my new fellow teachers a bit better.

There appear to be about 40 foreign teachers at the Uni including the 20 new ones. An interesting mix of nationalities, experiences and ages. A lot of activities and social events are organised by different teachers and this week I attended a quiz night at a local bar, there were football (soccer) and basketball games organised and this weekend there is a trip to an amusement park, a wine-tasting at a local resort. a birthday party at a local restaurant for one of the teachers and welcome to the new teachers.....all in all a fairly social group of people!!!! Most nights this week we have gone out for dinner and consumed quite a bit of alcohol including the rather potent local banana wine mentioned above which we kindy introduced to the rest of our group (!!!)....clearly this is not sustainable in the long term but at least we are getting to know each other.

I am having dreadful internet issues at the hotel and possibly my room is just in a black spot. I have only had internet access twice this week and that is simply not good enough. It is a priority this weekend that this be sorted out as I cannot live without being able to talk to family and friends around the world. No Facebook access in the hotel but I have been able to access it at the Uni which is not really the appropriate place to do this but I've had no other options. Otherwise the hotel is quite comfortable, the staff are nice and it will be no problem staying here for 2 months if I can get better internet access. It is not fancy but clean with all the amenities one needs to survive. I even have English speaking TV channels whch is a novelty after living in China!!

Was hoping to explore more of the city today but we are in the rainy season and it decided to rain ALL day. Going out tonight for dinner and a welcome party for the new teachers and then tomrrow am heading to a spa for a day of pampering - massage, facial, mani/pedi etc

All in all an interesting first week. Still unsure about many things. Am trying to remain positive and hopeful that I will have more to write about next time.

Bye for now. xxx