Vietnam's Visa on Arrival (VoA) Process

Vietnam's visa process is just a little stranger than most other countries, because of course it is. Of course it is.

My mother visited last year, and prepared my sister some instructions for when she prepared her trip to visit (she's arriving TODAY!!!!!).

Since it's all such good advice, I'll post it here. Easiest blog post ever? Yeah, probably.

Thanks mom!

"Vietnam visa" by Alex Steffler - originally posted to Flickr as Vietnam visa. 

Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Click through for the gory details (ha ha, just kidding! It's actually pretty easy. The waiting is the most obnoxious part)!

5 Kinda Great Vietnamese Holiday Songs

yeeeeaaaaahhhhhhhh they're oooooookayyyy

Last week I threw down the gauntlet of holiday songs, shazaaming the hell out of a few cafes and coming up with my least favorite Vietnamese holiday tunes. Here's the other half: the ones I kinda like!

I've been pretty consistent that there's one thing that I just can't seem to get into here, and that's Vietnamese music. I just... don't care for it much. Yes. Let's just leave it at that.

It's a bit late in the season, but here are 4 songs I've heard over the holidays that... well, they don't make me want to self-lobotomize with a chopstick, they're that good.

But don't take my word for it!

And lately... well, I can't put my finger on it, but it probably has something to do with feelings. Stockholm Syndrom feelings. Because, these songs... they are making me bounce a little. Just a little! (It might have something to do with my slow acceptance of standard cafe music, check it out.)

The 5th is another Evil Bonus, direct from me to you! Watch at your own risk! You WILL NOT stop singing it.

I could only find four. I may not hate ALL the songs I hear, but I'm not a miracle worker.

Bah Humbug - Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

6 Cringey Vietnamese Christmas Songs

Me in my first grade classrooms last year, playing the Jolly Old Elf himself.

Vietnamese loooooove Christmas. And, while I didn't get/have to dress up this year for my job, I still got my fill of the regional holiday music.

Endless techno Jingle Bell remixes. Cloying, sugary, soaring ballads. Mariah Carey covers every hour, on the hour (...actually not so bad. What is it about that song?? Will we be collectively singing it forever? Is it - gasp - traditional now?? OMG please say it is). Feliz Navidad, inexplicably, and quite a bit of it.

Last year I kept meaning to document this visit to another aural dimension, where a driving synth beat is practically mandatory on the uptempo hits, but things got hectic.

This year, however, I'm on my game. Armed with cafe time, Shazaam, and fair-to-middling doses of ibuprofen to pair with my coffee, I took the plunge.

Lucky you. Oh, lucky, lucky you!

Click on, brave souls with a few minutes to spare... I dug out the youtube recordz for you, and I've got a few tracks to spin! Listen and marvel as Vietnam attempts to give you diabetes over the internet...

Da Lat 2014: Scarf & Fireplace Weather

Erin, I adore this picture.

One of the best and most relaxing adventures of my summer was my return trip to Da Lat, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam - Land of 1000 Pines and Former French Colonial Playground.

Not only is the weather here just ridiculously comfortable (a mild 70's during our visit in July), but it was an excellent last hurrah with my friend Erin and a great experience for my friend Lisa visiting from NYC.

It's truly a must-see if you're looking to experience a few of the sheer variety of climates and environments in Vietnam.

Some of the great things we did included: staying at one of the world's most unique guesthouses, visiting pagodas and flower parks, discovering secret trails into the hills originating in the cemetery, frolicking among lush jungle waterfalls, doing the central Market on a Sunday, and generally wandering around this picture-perfect painting of a town, far away from the sweltering heat of Ho Chi Minh City to the south.

It was SO COLD... seriously,
like at least down to 70 F.
Scarf and fire weather.

True, I was brutally sick with a stomach bug for the first day and a half (including a really, really precarious sleeping bus trek. Sorry about your bathroom, Da Lat bus station - but seriously, you should be sorry about it too: thank god I carry toilet paper with me).

(BTW: Hello Erin's Family - this post is for you!!)

Not a lot of reading today, it's been a long week and I'm tired of looking at these summer posts stuck in Draft Purgatory. Plus, I pretty much detailed everything I liked about Da Lat in my 2013 post, which you can find here if you haven't memorized everything I've ever posted.

Check out a photo album of my Last Vietnam Hurrah with Friend Erin, and the beginning of my Vietnam Adventure with Lisa, below!

Vũng Tàu: 30 Hours on the Southern Coast

The entrance to our nearby beach.

Note: I'm currently in Chicago and it's -12 C. These pictures are making me really happy.

Vũng Tàu is about 2 hours south of Ho Chi Minh City, and there's an awful lot there to make an excellent weekend of it. Whether you go by bus or motorbike (and, of course, I highly recommend traveling by motorbike), there's enough to see, tons to eat, beaches to loiter on, and of course, enough Banh Khot to kill a horse (an ok death, I assume).

The city itself is situated on a southern outcropping of the nation, with a few atypical hill-mountains near the shore, and features a relatively compact city center as well as several important historical sites. And Banh Khot.

While we were unable to get a hotel room in the city center, instead ending up in a new guesthouse about 7 km away in an unfinished division, we did have a whole beach essentially to ourselves at night and BANH KHOT GUYS, THIS IS WHERE BANH KHOT IS FROM! And... Jesus?

Click through to check out what 46 hours in Vũng Tàu looks like, as well as some of the most fun you can have for a stoopid cheap weekend not far from the crazy hustle-bustle of Saigon...

Da Lat's Hằng Nga Guesthouse

Lisa's Butt in her New Pants approaching the second spire of Crazy House by cement ivy walkway.
It makes sense... trust me.

Note: This summer took me to many new places... so many, in fact, that I'm only just now realizing that I have a zillion more posts to write about those three short months! Oof.

In July I went to Da Lat (again) with my friends Erin and Lisa. We had a BLAST.

Part of the experience was that we were staying in what I can easily call the most unique guesthouse I've ever seen. It's so absurd, I have a hard time even describing it with words. Even my gift for analogy seems like too fine a point on it when trying to talk about this astounding creative vision.

On second thought, that won't stop me from trying. Click through for a tour of one architect's vision made concrete (literally and figuratively, I assure you) - a kaleidoscope of nature, wire, stone, and wood brought together in an unforgettably eccentric manner.

Côn Đảo: Unspoiled Vietnamese Island Life

Hey, you. You in the office. You seem stressed.

What do you want?

You want peace and quiet? You want dogs? You want the best diving in Vietnam and fresh seafood for every meal?

Done.

Beaches? I know a nice one. Endangered animals? Scads (well, maybe not scads... they are endangered, after all) Ghosts? If you believe some Vietnamese, this place is crazier than NYC at the end of Ghostbusters 2.

And history? Here's a place that summarizes in one 200 year period all the struggles and trials that Vietnamese mainlanders have gone through over thousands of years - shorter, sure, but arguably bloodier, and events just as traumatic to the national psyche in their sheer brutality and lingering impact.

You want all these things, plus boat rides, hiking, bike rides, and island-wide radio hour twice a day?

Have I got the place for you!

On the Road Again...

Me in Da Lat... so cold!

...And off the road, and sleeping in my own bed. Magical!

Over the past four weeks (!!) I've had the pleasure of having two longer-term guests visit me in HCMC. Let's just start with the obvious:

1) Guests? Here?? It's not exactly a weekend camping road trip! No, these flights are bad boys that take an entire day each way and cost a lot of money. It's truly humbling for me to know that there are people that want to see me and experience Vietnam with me, in all it's contradictory, tropical, SE Asian glory!

2) New (and old) restaurants! New cuisines! Pictures of all the foods!

3) New travel destinations in Vietnam!! Pictures of ALL THE PLACES!

4) Now they're gone, and I have two weeks of relatively normal life again before my next trip (to the Philippines!), which will conclude my travels this summer. It's been a pretty good jaunt.

Vietnam's UNESCO World Heritage Sites: a Preview

Ha Long Bay (1994)

It's not long after spending some time researching or living abroad that the subject of UNESCO's World Heritage sites comes up. 

First of all, what are they, really? And what is 'UNESCO'? It sounds like a food supplier for prisons.

Hoi An Ancient Town (1999)

UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. In 1972, they approved and launched the most universally recognized international convention in history - the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. It covers many different types of sites around the globe (currently 981 sites (check out that cool interactive map!) - mountains, lakes, monuments, buildings, cities, complexes, and natural features are all treated with universal recognition).

Time to fire up the travel bucket list generator and see what my future plans will include...

I Do Karaoke So You Don't Have To - But You Should

Have you lived?

Have you taken down Metallica in a room the side of your bedroom, on a microphone stuck on 'echo'?

Have you pillaged the field of 1950's oldies, sacrificing accuracy of notes on the altar of ROCK AND ROLL?

Have you taken on The Rainbow Connection and sang it with every fiber of your being?

Have you ever done more to accelerate your already rapidly fading hearing in a single three hour session in a closed, neon-lit room?

My friends, if the answer to any of these questions is "no," you have not experienced the Vietnamese variety of Karaoke.

Picture it, if you will: a sunny Saturday afternoon, noon. Two friends and co-workers about to leave work/the city for good, and all they want to do is karaoke. You agree. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into...

Teacher Ben's (Very Late) 2013 Year in Review

Exhibit Food-1: This Tuesday picture smells like a savory slow
cooker makes your house smell on cold February evenings. Real good.

*I've sat on this post for far too long... it was much weirder and prone to tangents in it's original version and I was just never happy with it. Here's the heavily-edited version I'm ready to share - finally! Just in time to write about second semester!

2013 Report Card
Subject: Teacher Ben
Semester: Fall
Year: 2013
Transcript taken: 3/2014
Location: Public Schools, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Teacher Ben: Grand Teaching Authority, employers, and parents, welcome. Spanish Inquisition, I wasn't expecting you, but welcome.

Grand Teaching Authority: Welcome. Please state your name for the record.

Teacher Ben: Teacher Ben

GTA: Do you know why you are here?

TB: This hearing is being held to briefly summarize and characterize my first year in the ESL teaching field, document my journey, and generally be a postmortem for setting goals in 2014.

GTA: I see you've brought visual evidence and a cat on a leash. I love leashes on small animals. Would you like a biscuit before we start?

(At this point, the Reader is invited to hit the jump and join our group down the rabbit hole of Vietnamese ESL teaching for a transcript of the entire Report Card...)

First Experience with the HCMC Public Buses

Recently I went to Monkey Island with a friend on Teacher's Day, and we ended up taking public buses to get the full experience.

This is the first time I've been on the bus system here (seriously - this long! It even took me months to try the buses when I first moved to Chicago! I don't even know) and it was a pretty good experience. Long, but very interesting, and I got some fun videos.

I thought I'd write a brief post about it, as some aspects are a bit... different... than bus rides I've had in the past.

Read on for a short primer on "how" to ride the city buses in Saigon! Complete with amusing videos!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

I've been here in Ho Chi Minh City now for 4 months, and, while that's not a very long time, it's long enough for me to develop some favorite things and some not so favorite things. Usually, it takes me a couple times before I decide, definitively, NO THANK YOU. And, ranked, here they are.

Have you been to Saigon? What are some of your favorites/not at all favorites? I'm curious if these are typical culture shock things or if I'm just developing personal tastes. Leave me notes in the comments!

Read on for a listicle (ugh, hate that word... but it's applicable):

Observations on Interpersonal Communications

In Vietnam, every single one of
these emotions can be a smile.

[Note: On June 30th of this year I solicited questions and topics from readers. This is one of those topics. If you have a question or topic you're curious about, use the form at right to email me, or leave it in the comments!]

QUESTION: Interpersonal communication. This might be a difficult topic to tackle before you get a good hold on the language, but what factors beyond the words themselves convey meaning? Are there certain linguistic rituals which are expected which aren't synchronous with behavioral expectations? For example, we ask, "How's it going?" with the expectation that people will say, "good," and not honestly tell us how things are going.

ANSWER: Great question, and since you've asked, let's pick it apart. After four months I've racked up enough interaction points to make some subjective observations about Vietnamese non-verbal communication.

Initially, I didn't recognize much of what I was seeing. In Vietnam, your actions can reflect on not only yourself, but your conversational partner and even the people surrounding you (if you're in public). It's a kind of social norm reinforcement, in many ways. Vietnam is a culturally conservative country and this reinforcement keeps it so on many levels.

What is This 'Rainy Season' You Speak Of?

Honestly, it's not as rainy as I expected to find - it's not like we're getting monsoons every day, all day. Lately they seem to come around 4pm, but there are no rules (just like Saigon traffic, weather here does what it wants, when it wants, for however long it feels like it, and damn the consequences!) - when it rains, it rains. Sometimes it sprinkles. Sometimes it's a total downpour, sheets of rain, look-out-or-it'll-bruise-you stuff. And all of it is fun - the wind and rain are making me miss Chicago a little less.

September has been much rainier than June, and it's been lovely - except for all those times I'm caught on my bike two blocks from home in a crazy-ass downpour. And even those are ok - usually it's so hot that to get soaking wet at 40km/hr is actually a little refreshing! Only when I'm going home though - I hate showing up to work looking like a soaking wet cat.

New 'hood: Ward 2, District 3

A roundabout with public art that I pass every morning
on my way to District 6. Chunky, blocky... everything
you would expect from socialist art. It's still nice.

In Chicago, you tell others a little about yourselves by saying what neighborhood you live in. This is due in part to the extreme hyper-localization that happens in Chicago - ethnic groups tend to clump together, and if you're lucky enough to live in a neighborhood with a solid identity, it will tell other Chicagoans what restaurants you prefer, what kind of neighbors you like, where you hang out, what your social concerns are, and more. It's an interesting and unique way of communicating more about yourself, while granting a more or less permanent aspect to your identity. If you want to live with like minded people, you find them, and then you interact with them in those spaces. It's very simple. While it's true the entire city is your playground, you can still count on knowing that where you live is just as important as how and why you live. It is a very easy way of building community in a relatively small town of 2.8 million.

What Is Happening in This Video?

Seriously, if someone could let me know, that would be awesome.

It's not like they were even very well coordinated, and the leaders - were they the leaders? - weren't really that great, either. I just have no idea.

Saturday morning in Asia, y'all:

Teaching: One Month Down, Eight to Go

All Vietnamese class art is this terrible. It must be traditional, because
if it's not it's an international humanitarian crime.

I mentioned in my last post that I get pretty damn sweaty in the classroom - jumping back and forth, working with kids, and patrolling the narrow aisles leaves me damp and exhausted at the end of it. I'm also covered in all different colors of chalk dust pretty much all the time - I look like a refugee from the Indian holiday of Holi on some days, with yellow, green, blue, red, and white powder on my shirt, all over my pants, and smeared on my face when I lift my glasses to wipe off my brow with the sleeve of my shirt.

Goats Only, Fools!*

Little individual firepits, plates of meat, and trays of veggies and rice
paper characterize these types of establishments. As well as my roommate
giving me a peace sign. Also normal.

All goat, all the time: gimmick or not? Let's explore!

Last Friday I went out to eat with a number of people from Association Long (the not-for-profit that provides and manages the houses that we foreigners live in). Our landlords were there, as were several aussies, a number of French (as per usual, since our landlords both speak French fluently), my roommate, and myself. It was a great evening!

The place was traditionally low-cost - squat toilets, dodgy bathrooms, plastic chairs, crates of beer and all. I find these places charming, although definitely not in a "bring your parents!" kind of way. It was bustling and packed when we got there a little after eight, but we were the only people there by the time we left at 10:30pm.

Ho Chi Minh City's Fascinating District 7

Rae recently took me out for my birthday and we had a fantastic time. I visited a section of the city that I've never been to before and was wanting to know more about, because it's substantially different than the rest of the city: District 7. (Pardon the lack of photos for this post - because it was after dark, my camera wasn't taking anything worth posting - mostly just blurry light splotches on a sheet of pitch black.)

We went to Scott & Binh's, the number 2 rated restaurant in HCMC, where I was in an almost all-English environment for the first time since coming to Vietnam. It was weird! To celebrate, I got myself a fish and pasta pesto dish, which was fantastic. We toasted to the Fourth of July with Tiger beer and mango margaritas, and our dinner on the patio, surrounded by bamboo and christmas lights, resulted in a very relaxing meal. Afterward we went walking and she pointed out her international school and her yoga studio. We picked up a final late night coffee on our way back to the beginning.