Views from the Phu My Bridge

I drive over the bloody thing twice a day on my commute, and it's one of those things you take for granted; a sweeping vista stretching in one direction away to the south east where the Saigon River twists and empties into the Nha Be River. Cargo ships sail gently under the 150 meter high bridge leaving their lazy wakes in the dazzling early morning sunshine, occasionally the Vung Tau hydrofoil speeds by. From the other side, a view of Saigon's skyline from Phu My Hung to District Two. It's the best free view in the city. So as the sun was hanging low in the sky and the light dimming, I decided to pedal over the 2km bridge with my camera, as I had been meaning to for a long time.

The evidence of the industrial nature of the riverside is evident. There is warehousing, a large timber yard, a port and the Saigon Shipbuilding Industry Company.


Ship building in progress


Ship building in progress


Warehouse, timber yard and port


Timber yard, D7

The sky is huge and the landscape is flat, ships dot the horizon. There's not many places in Saigon that capture a sense of space and nature, a feeling of distance from the chaos.


View down the river


Sunset on the bridge

Heading back over the bridge from the other side, the view is of the river heading upstream, winding its way back through the city.



And the district one skyline.


District One skyline

So, grab your bike, take some snacks and head up to the bridge to enjoy the view with the locals at sunset. It's worth it.

My baby turns three

Don't they grow up quick! It seems crazy but my little baby girl is a three year old now. She grows more fabulous and loving every day I see her, with her mad curly hair, inquisitive eyes and her insatiable sense of adventure and fun. Growing maturity is something so thrilling to see before your own eyes - all that hard work is paying off. Louisa had a party at her nursery and some friends over in the evening, with mums and dads too.













The dads at the party



I realised what a select group of dads there were here at the party - on the far left a German Vietnam Airlines pilot, on the far right a Brazilian professional football player in the V league, right of me a friend who is finishing his Phd in Vietnamese History, left of me a guy who works in Kazakhstan in the oil industry a month on and a month off, and second right of me an old friend from Catalonia who works in Hotel/Property management. And then there's me, an I.T teacher. You don't need to tell me, I already know.

Schooling in French

My little girl Louisa is going to a French preschool and many people are confused when they find out. No, I don't speak French and neither does Chi. We both have small backgrounds in French but the days of study are long behind us. So, English from me, Vietnamese from mum and French at preschool. Why? Well...my question would be why not? I've heard all kinds of bizarre reactions like 'oh she'll be confused'. No, she won't. And she isn't. No need to go into linguistics and the language acquisition of children before the age of 6, or 8, or whichever cut off point you wish to choose. What is certain is that the brain is still developing in the first few years of life, neural pathways are firing and making new connections, and the area of the brain that deals with language will harden and stop creating new synapses at some point in childhood, around 6, 8 or 10 depending on who you read. The 'sponge' analogy is one used quite often and utterly true. It's intuitive that children will learn a language naturally and easily, without blinking an eyelid, at such a young age. Our challenge is not Louisa being 'overloaded' with languages, but how to maintain her proficiency at French once she gets to school age in a couple of years time.

Many couples have a forced third language problem. A school friend of Louisa's has a German father and a French mother who, despite their children already speaking 2 languages, are anxious about their English. Another friend of mine, a Frenchman, recently married a Vietnamese lady. Their language of communication is English, and then there is their respective native languages. How do you manage and balance three languages. Simply, exposure. Those first 5 years of life before you decide the language of your child's education provides ample time to expose them to language. But this does require extra effort. More so than a couple raising a monolingual child in a monolingual household. The effort is this - talking to your child. As soon as they are born. Obviously, this promotes the beginnings of language. Why is Dad constantly moving his mouth at me, making odd noises. Leaving babies to their own devices as if they will learn everything themselves is a mistake. They will learn by themselves, but with a parent actively taking the initiative to promote language and communication they'll be flying. And of course its the same with interaction and play.

When a child of multiple language families gets to school age, then you need to think about real literacy. What language would you like your child to be able to discuss, think and write in. More than one? Then school won't help you with both, you'll need to take on the role of home tutor as well. Which we all should be doing anyway. I do find it amazing, working in education here in Vietnam, the number of kids who enter Kindergarten or Grade 1 without knowing any letters, with no self awareness, without being able to hold a pen or a pencil properly. This is a sign of one thing - neglect at home. Too many years being raised by the nanny? Quite possibly.

The lovely teacher for the 'petit maternelle' section of which Louisa is one has started a blog, and here's Louisa getting her balance in order!

Back to blogging

Last posted at the end of July! A near 2 month hiatus is not what you'll read in any blogging manual as a good idea. I've been too busy recovering from my 40km round trip to school everyday to post I think, considering that road has literally disintegrated. The Phu My bridge company, I discovered, were the first private company to have their loan guaranteed by the government. They are now nearly bankrupt and have no money to repair the road and are requesting 250 billion dong to do so. It's symbolic in some ways of the problems of the entire country. You have the sparkling Phu My Bridge, a foreign managed project, in still perfect condition - what should be a symbol of Vietnam propelling itself into the 'future' in terms of improving its infrastructure. Then you reach the other side and my, are you back in the dark ages. Private companies have now twice come along and dumped gravel in the potholes, the road is literally impassable for heavy trucks, although they are still trying.

Talking of infrastructure, the Thu-Thiem highway is yet to open because the tunnel is still not ready, although it seems to be close. Last I heard was a June opening. Although there are some obvious problems here - the same stretch of road that leads to the TT highway and onwards through the tunnel to District 1 is also the road to Cat Lai port which in the afternoons can be jammed solid with HGVs. Add to this traffic coming off the highway to enter the city center you have tailbacks into District 9 and complete gridlock. Work is on going on the Thanh My Loi road leading from Thu Thiem to Cat Lai (road being widened into 4 lanes) but at the moment this road too is falling apart from all the wet weather and construction.

Over on the Hanoi Highway land clearance has started for line 1 of the HCMC Metro system. The line will run over the Saigon River beside the Saigon Bridge and follow the highway from there down. For those who know the area, this is the old Petrol Station on the corner of Thao Dien...




And looking up the highway towards District 9, this is where the Metro line will run next to the highway.




Planning to bring more pictures soon of construction and infrastructure developments and of course regular happenings from the 'gon.

Notes from abroad

We are coming towards the end of our summer trip now having been out of Vietnam since the 10th of June. We've around England and Italy a little bit and also visited Chi's brother and family once again (story relayed here and here).

How is it doing all this travelling with a toddler you might ask. Well - the answer is - hard. BUT, as with all life's situations, you get on with it. Lou had already travelled from England to Vietnam, Malaysia, Greece and Thailand  experiencing aeroplanes and boats and buses and cars many times, so adding another cross continental trip to England, Italy, Switzerland and France shouldn't be a problem. We thought. Those baby memories of earlier trips were probably of blurred lights and weird faces as she was moved from one crib to another. Now, with a fully functioning pair of legs and a non stop mind, the excitement of the whole trip was like aphrodisiac to a rutting rhino. She did remarkably well to last until nearly 1.00am in Bangkok airport before falling asleep for 7 hours on the overnight flight to Bangkok.

Lou looking dishevelled trying to keep her eyes open about 10 mins before boarding the 1.10am to London.

Comfortably asleep in cattle class torture chair:




And once awake again, reading a magazine, one of many activities attempted to keep her still for 5 minutes. Others included the ipad, a puzzle book, eating, singing songs, playing with the seatbelt, jumping up and down, looking out of the window, walking up and down the aisles, and on her part - constant wriggling and an epic tantrum ending with lying on the floor under the seats and refusing to move.

 Once we landed the new country bought its first new experience, car seats. We do have one in Vietnam but only for long journeys and have not used it in a long time. A very tired, worn out toddler being asked to sit in a car seat when she is used to being cradled in mummy's lap in the back of a taxi = hard. She screamed for about an hour on the way home before passing out. It turned out to be a great lesson though, since that experience she has been as good as gold in that car seat.

So a few days in the UK having enormous fun with grandparents and uncle and auntie. Then it was off to Italy, more travelling but thankfully from our local airport 15 mins drive away. The outbound journey was relatively smooth.



Louisa attended to everything she had always wanted to do on her first visit to Italy, from visiting Florence, Pisa and Siena, sampling the local cuisine and puking all over herself and her seat in the hire car. Here she is at Ponte Vecchio: 

Surveying the beach at Marina di Pisa.




Having fun in Siena's Piazza Del Campo.



So all in all a great bit of travel for her, and us of course. We returned to England for a couple of days again and then set off once more for a weekend in Gex. Chi had a chance to catch up with her brother and his family once more and we all had a great time once again thanks to the wonderful hospitality of brother Dai (Jean-Baptiste's) family. 
Chi and brother, July 2011: 



Since then we've been in the UK exploring the delights of Dorset, as much as the weather might allow...and we have gotten the real value of such a long trip home that I was looking for - experiences for my daughter that can't be had in Vietnam and some real time with my family. Her English has had an amazing boost too. 
Activities have included trips the seaside with friends



Pony cart rides




Feeding all the swans at Abbotsbury 




Exploring the rock pools at Osmington Mills



I get quite a few emails from various people in similar situations to myself - getting married in Vietnam, living in Vietnam or thinking of making the move, and also people thinking of moving back the other way. All I can say is - the UK is great for kids, so much to do especially the outdoors, but it is of course expensive. I'm lucky enough to have a job where I can spend time back in England in the summers if I wish. Personally, as a father,  I'd like my daughter growing up with memories of England, similar memories to what I have, by doing these activities and more. It's important to me that she grows up with an equal knowledge of where I (and her) come from and that we instill a real sense of belonging and cultural identity in her, so that if she desires in the future, she can come to the UK and feel at home. For the time being she is growing up in Vietnam, but with a healthy dose of (my) home thrown in....

Green

Any green oasis in the 'city of dust' is a godsend, the tree lined avenues in parts of the city are a transportation into another place, a fantastic dream of cleaner, more beautified streets.




It's no coincidence that green helps us feel relaxed, it has (apparently) more space in the visible spectrum than any other colour apart from blue. Psychologically, green  has a calming effect and soothes us. As part of our primeval genetic make-up, where once all shades of green were familiar to us in our everyday lives, we now flock to parks, fill our balconies with green plants and enjoy that refreshing visit to the countryside. Perhaps in some way, the dusty, desolate and colourless districts that span for miles contribute to the hardening of the urban dweller personality and the crystallising of societal development.

Having said all that, what a pleasure it is that urban development in Vietnam will begin to recognise the essential part of our quality of life, green. All new projects have a percentage allocated for 'green space', and I'm not referring to the condos going up in HCMC, more the satellite projects that are coming down the road.

It's easily done, living somewhere foreign for a long time, to have a kind of sensory numbness to your environment. But I never grow tired of seeing tropical trees and plants by the highway, a small clump of banana trees in an urban environment gives me some kind of buzz, palm trees swaying in the wind just tell me to chill out a bit, remember where you are.

For now, Phu My Hung is the shining example of a green area, and one of the main reasons I enjoy living there so much. For an evening stroll around deserted back streets, the residents have created wonderful floral displays, plant exotic trees in their gardens and leave huge shrubs on the pavement outside their houses.

My favourite is the Travellers Palm. It is in many gardens and also planted by the Nguyen Van Linh highway in places. I find it dramatic in its size and shape. Here it is central in this green area outside some PMH apartments.





And here's another, right alongside the main road:




If can have my own little countryside abode with a small swimming pool and a couple of Travellers Palms for shade I'll be happy.

Here are some more green snaps from around Phu My Hung





Houses with tress and shrubs outside








A small park with huge houses backing onto it




New apartments going up with a large green area being prepared in front...




Trees lining a Phu My Hung street




A street with a small oasis of a park running down the central embankment




By the river




Suburbia




More new apartments with fantastic views over the river and the future Phu My Hung golf course, currently marshland!

Building a Road

Here are some pics from land clearance going on in District 2 where the road from Thu Thiem highway to Cat Lai port is being widened to four lanes, which will certainly ease container traffic which can be an absolute nightmare. Probably won't ease the lives of the people's whose homes had to be knocked down to make way for it though...




A small cemetery and group of banana trees revealed:




These shacks won't be surviving too long:




House turned to rubble:




Family is still hanging on to condemned building here:




Huge portions of new drainage system scattered over freshly cleared land




I can't imagine the heartache of having to leave your house. Some of these families have probably been there for generations and now have to accept a small apartment in a totally new part of town. I wish I could take a translator and speak to some of these people to find out their stories....but also don't really want to put my nose where it doesn't belong.

Collapsing buildings and more

Many VN blogs have posted these videos already.





This incident has led to a flurry of articles in the VN press. This article has many pictures of subsiding buildings.

Anyone who has lived in HCMC for a while will you tell you there aren't many buildings that don't subside in one way or another, with cracks, paths/steps sinking, mysterious bumps appearing and so on.

Growing Up Bilingual

My daughter will be two and half in June and as with the many mixed couples in Saigon, she is growing up bilingual. In actual fact, she is growing up TRILINGUAL. I find the understanding of this issue to be a total paradox. On the one hand, we are constantly asked 'Can she speak English?' and are met with wide eyes of astonishment when the answer is yes or when she turns to me and starts speaking English. We also send Lousia to a nursery nearby where only French is spoken. She can already count and sing songs in French too, but not at home because she knows mum and dad don't really understand her toddlers version of French. I am already feeling horribly inadequate and have a couple of French courses downloaded ready to brush up! You may be asking why do that? Indeed some parents I have met are too concerned that their child would be 'confused' by a third language. I am utterly convinced that is not the case.

Scientists believe that language is acquired most easily during the first ten years of life. During these years, the circuits in children’s brains become wired for how their own language sounds. An infant’s repeated exposure to words clearly helps her brain build the neural connections that will enable her to learn more words later on. Language can be learned a multitude of ways, like casual conversation, songs, rhymes, reading, music, story telling and much more.[from here]

I have known kids as young as five who can speak four or even five languages. Example: a French friend married a Thai lady and had three kids who went to a British school and learned Mandarin. We don't intend to push our daughter into learning French as if it was a classroom subject. Rather just give her the exposure and see how she picks it up. Some of you may remember too that Chi's little brother has lived in France since he was one and is now eighteen. He doesn't speak Vietnamese, only French and school taught English. We see France as a distinct possibility in our future, so that's our added motivation, not that you need one either way..

The other half of the paradox is that for a huge portion of the worlds population, growing up BI or TRILINGUAL is normal. Think of all the people in the subcontinent, Singapore, Malaysia, The Phillippines, Africa and so on who grow up speaking more than one language. Think of it like that and we are just catching up with the rest of the world...and I know for sure that Louisa's peers, in this 'international' environment, will also be multi-language speakers.

The Family

Chi's family is enormous and it never fails to amaze and entertain (if that's the right word) as stories come out of the woodwork and I get more familiar with the countless aunties and uncles, most of whom reside in Cu Chi district.

I want to relate one particular recent drama that is unfolding.

Chi's mother is the eldest of twelve children, but the eldest two (Chi's mum and her sister) were fathered by a different man to the other ten. So, there exists some land in Cu Chi which Chi has explained to me is exclusively family land and can't be sold, and is ancestral land handed down from Chi's great-grandparents, the parents of Chi's grandmothers first husband. Originally the land was very big so Chi tells me, but her great-grandmother, as is the custom, sold large portions of it to divvy up the cash between relatives. Now all that remains is a small 6 meter wide plot, big enough for a cosy house and a garden.

We decided that this lunar year we would try and acquire that land to build a house for Chi's mum to use and eventually live, possibly with her sister who is from the same father too and retires this year (she currently lives in a small apartment on Dien Bien Phu and has two sons, one of whom put their housing certificate in the bank to take out a 500 million dong loan to open a coffee shop which subsequently failed leaving his mother with a massive debt and no way to sell the house...)

Still with me?

So, there were only two people we needed to chase up to get the all clear for the land and start some paperwork. One of those is Chi's great uncle, in other words, the brother of her grandfather, Chi's mum's uncle. He is still alive and well and amazingly living in District 7, although Chi and her mother haven't seem him for years. He was once a wealthy man with more than five houses across Saigon, but had to sell all of them after losing his money in an investment in Cambodia that went wrong. He purposely distanced himself from the family as he got fed up with the useless ways - one of the most useless being Chi's father, a man who year after year gambled away the family motorbike - prompting Chi to ask her mother as she picked her up from school on a bicycle 'Where's our motorbike'. 'Oh your father lost it (again)'. Chi's great uncle gave him a job in his restaurant as a waiter where he worked for some time and encouraged him to get on the straight and narrow and live up to his responsibilities - ultimately it didn't work, and you can read that story here.

The great uncle, whom we called this weekend, was very happy with the idea of us using the land. He seems a kind man who tried to do the right thing. Chi's mum was nervous (much to Chi's annoyance) because back in the day he gave her 2 tael of gold to fix up her house in Binh Thanh (almost the same as the value of the house at the time) because he was sending his mother to live there for a while. Chi's great-grandmother lived in the house until she died, Chi was in Grade 8. Safe to say, he didn't ask for his gold back.

So one down. The next person is the one who holds the paperwork, the great uncle's daughter-in-law. The great uncle's son is already dead, and wasn't a particularly nice piece of work. He bullied half his family, including Chi's mum (whose name is Ho coincidently) to sell land to him on the cheap (including portions of the land in question today) and succeeded, eventually building some kind of factory there. He died suddenly, and the ancestral land remains in his name. His wife now lives in another part of Cu Chi. Her number is not in the little black book and so Chi called other relatives who know of her, and a rumour reached us that she intended to sell it. Sell the ancestral land! That is not cool! Great uncle was distinctly not impressed.

In response over the weekend I've watched in awestruck deference as Ho has invoked hitherto undiscovered powers, mobilising long lost relatives in the Cu Chi area who, like an army of sleeping zombies reawakened from their slumber by a call to arms, have risen and joined the cause. Turns out that one relative, one that is so distant that when asked the specifics I just got a wave of the arms and "He's got the same surname" as a reply, is HEAD of the people's committee in the SAME district as our seemingly stricken land. As we speak, relatives in Cu Chi are preparing a form to submit to the PC there in order to block any sale of this land. We are then arranging a diplomatic convey consisting of great-uncle and Ms Ho to visit the lady who holds the papers, where great-uncle will attempt to gently persuade the certificates to be handed over to the rightful owners. This is preferred to the idea of Ho's sister, Chi's aunt, who wanted to find the lady and confront her. I see handbags flying...not a good idea.

Somehow we knew it wasn't going to be easy...

TET 2011 Part 2

In typically British fashion I'll start off by making a quip about the weather - bloody stunning it has been over the past couple of weeks. As I remember TET 2010 being the same, steady sunshine and blue skies throughout the day, a perfect temperature reminiscent of a great July summers day back home, and usually a light breeze to go with it. Really couldn't be any better, and it just adds to the glorious atmosphere of the lunar new year.

For many years we had talked about getting a hotel room on the river to get a decent view of the fireworks. I know what you're thinking - what about the atmosphere. Well, I've had Vietnam atmosphere coming out of my ears for a long time, and I like the atmosphere of a 5 star hotel room, a comfy sofa, a chilled glass of wine and crawling into a massive bed after closing the curtains when the show is over too. That's rather than taking an hour and a half to get home after battling through motorbikes and madness in a vain attempt to find a taxi, walking half way to Binh Thanh and having an argument with the other half and returning home exhausted and miserable - the last time we 'savored the special atmosphere' of the fireworks in District 1. So we were booked into the Renaissance Riverside on Ton Duc Thang for the night, and had a riverview room on the 15th floor. Stunning view of the river winding it's way between Districts 2 and 4 and out to District 7 and under the Phu My Bridge.

Thu Thiem


When I look at Thu Thiem, and knowing the plans underway for it, I can't helping thinking of this comparison between Shanghai today and 20 years ago. I don't expect Thu Thiem to look anything like that, but sure the transformation will be dramatic.

Looking out now at the Saigon Pearl, the Thu Thiem bridge in the foreground.


Looking at the toll gates reading and waiting on the yet to be opened Thu Thiem/East-West highway, a cruise ship loiters out of town in the distance.


We exhibited our usual behaviour in a posh hotel - pretending like we usually frequent such places in the lobby whilst checking in, then as soon as the lift doors closed acting like teenagers slapping each other and encouraging our 2 year old, then get in the room, jump up and down on the bed, get excited about the free tea and coffee and soap, rearrange the furniture so the chairs are facing the window, then calm down and get ready to go out. The Riverside is an odd building I feel - packaged in on a small island of land, with no parking available whatsoever and a swimming pool up on the roof with a few sunbeds crammed around it, I find the interior design an incredible waste of space. I have yet to ascertain how you can be a 5 star hotel without any parking.



Of course from the hotel flower street 'Nguyen Hue' is a two minute walk and was a throng of people, as expected. To be honest I wasn't as impressed as previous years with the display.

Dong Khoi, buzzing with the festive atmosphere.




So, after eating dinner we wasted some time sat on the steps of the opera house. Suddenly a parade came marching down Dong Khoi and stopped directly outside to give us a show. Typically Vietnam - no warning, nobody to redirect traffic - if you were on Dong Khoi behind this then tough, you wait till they finish. Consisting of a dragon dancing group and two brass bands, the three musical ensembles stood with 50 meters separating them and playing as loud as they possibly could, at the same time. Nobody seemed to mind.


11.45pm, Ton Duc Thang




A great view of the fireworks, the cheers and applause audible from the street below. Following morning we skipped the generous offer a $19 per person breakfast from the hotel and headed to a Pho restaurant very much open and doing a roaring trade on Vo Van Tan, D3. Then, a short drive to Tao Dan park. Tao Dan was abuzz with activity as people enjoyed New Years Day. Live music, stunning floral displays and various stalls and other things on offer.

Year of the Cat






Hung King temple in Tao Dan park




A big, long flowery dragon.


The dragon stops its perilous dance atop the stilts to gobble up lucky money from children, awed by the great beast.


Colleagues look on as the dragon traverses the stilts, the drummer pounds away in the background.


And that's all, just one more thing left to say.