Teachers' Day

Thursday the 20th of November was Teachers' Day here in Vietnam. Since we don't get any holidays this term (20 weeks of teaching, aaaaaah!), the school was kind enough to give us the Thursday and Friday off (most schools celebrate Teachers' Day but everyone still goes to school). Since we did not have school on the Thursday, we celebrated on the Wednesday. All of our lessons were cancelled for the day and our morning comprised of the students singing songs and doing little plays. It was a very, very long morning, since ALL of the students in the junior, middle and high school did performances. Some of them were quite sweet, but most of them were in Vietnamese and a bit boring for us.

The English staff had to sit at tables at the front of the auditorium. Some of the children brought some of the teachers presents and they brought them up to us throughout the morning. The maths teacher was definitely the winner, since she teaches all of the grade one and two classes (about 20 classes and she got a couple of presents from each class). 

A card for Melanie from Helen.

Woo hoo, a rainbow dress!

Some teachers performing a dance.

Mel's loot. Flowers, perfume, a snake bracelet, and a towel.

After the show, we went off for our normal lunch break. When we returned, we were told to get into our swimming costumes for some fun team-building activities. We were given no information about what would be happening, so we were a bit wary as we walked down to the pool. We were greeted by lines of Vietnamese teachers all sitting next to the pool.  Luckily we were told that all of the foreign teachers could be in one team, since we would not be able to talk to our team mates otherwise! It turns out that the lines were completely unnecessary, because we were swimming relay races. First up were the girls. Mel and a girl called Megan volunteered (i.e. were the only ones with costumes) to swim for the foreign teachers' team. But first, we had to do a warm up. This consisted of some gyrating dance moves - all done while standing in our swimming costumes next to the pool!! The competition was fierce (some of the Vietnamese teachers were wearing life-jackets and floats because they can't swim) so, even though Megan had a broken shoulder(!!), the girls still managed to win by a mile. Next up were the boys. Ross, Craig, Michael and Bryan stepped up (had costumes) for the boys team. They also managed to win their race (although there was a bit more competition than in the girls race) even with Ross doing a spectacular bomb drop off the starting block and wetting all of the spectators!

We changed back into our clothes and waited around for the teachers' talent show to start! It started late (Vietnam time) and we sat through two speeches before it was time for us to leave to catch our flight to Malaysia. We missed the second half of the headmaster's speech (he REALLY likes to talk) and all of the teachers performing songs and dances. We also missed a big dinner that was organised for everyone, but we didn't mind since we were on our way to Malaysia for the weekend!

Luckily we managed to find a taxi pretty easily and this was crucial since we had rush hour traffic to contend with. We made it to the airport with ample time, which was the plan since Mel's visa had expired two days before! We knew that it was expiring, but we were advised by our visa agent that we could just pay a fine at the airport and it would be cheaper than renewing her visa for a whole month. So we were directed to the customs office, but Ross had to stay on the other side as we had not checked our bags in yet. So Mel went though to face the music alone. She was led into a room with a very scary man who demanded she paid a 2 million Dong fine ($100!); AND he said that we could only leave the country the next day, thus missing our flight! After pleading with him that this was not possible since we did not even have 2 million on us, and that we needed to get to Malaysia that night, he said he would talk to his boss and see what he could do. After a very stressful few minutes, he came back and said that we could check in and then come back. So we ran to the counter and checked our bags before he could change his mind. We were then lead to the customs line and told to pay a fine. When we asked how much, the two (new) guys looked at each other a bit confused and then demanded 500,000 Dong ($25). We quickly paid and went through.

Our next task was trying to decide what to have for dinner. Very expensive Burger King, or very expensive sandwiches. Since we don't often eat delicious sandwiches, we decided that they would be the winner.

Smoked chicken and avo sarmie.

After a nice quick flight, we landed in Kuala Lumpur. We were very impressed by Air Asia as the staff were all extremely friendly, there was a little bit more leg room than the low-cost Vietnamese airlines we have flown, and the in flight music was waaaaaay better! When we landed, our first call was to buy a sim card. A very helpful lady tried to explain what the best deal was and then we were on our way. Our hotel had advised us to catch the train into the city so we (eventually) found the station and managed to hop on the train. We were very impressed by how clean, efficient and fast the train was. From the central station, we caught a taxi to our hotel and then we slept after a very busy day!

The awesome train.