A day in the life

It's Monday morning. Jo left for work at 7.15, Chloe Mai just left for school at 7.45 and it's my turn to get ready to leave. It's a lovely sunny day which means it will be very very hot. Everyone says I should wear long sleeved tops to keep the sun off my arms and stop the skeeters biting but I just don't feel comfortable so I have taken to sleeveless tops and always carrying an umbrella and a lightweight shawl.

This is my lovely big bedroom. I have put the little desk under the window and. I sit there writing my emails and the blog. It faces north (approximately) and overlooks the open air pool of the a private French school beyond which I can hear the buzz, clang and drone of the high street of this little suburb on the edge of the city. The city centre is only 1.8 miles away; if this were England I would be walking into college every day.

Here is Nigel waving goodbye as I leave for college. "No need to get up Nige babe".








Ollie is there to see me off as walk down the charming little street where we live. "Good boy Ollie"

At the end of this street I turn right down a little rural lane that once must have been rice paddies and perhaps banana groves. The fields have become overgrown now they are not tended but the banana graves still remain. you can tell that this was cultivated land because there is a collection of four graves on the left as I walk by.  the Vietnamese venerate their ancestors and bury them in ornate graves, sometimes amid a beautiful garden that usually forms an island amid the family rice paddies. In this way, the living exists side by side with their ancestors every day.


The bus stop for the 88 into town is just opposite the end of our little lane. It is 9.15 and boiling hot and am standing on the edge of the road with the umbrella up to get some shade.

Taxi drivers toot their horns as they go by to try and attract my attention and get themselves a fare into town. The bus appears round the bend a quart mile down the road and the                     88 comes trundling into view. The buses only stop for a nano second as the conductor reaches out an arm to hoist you aboard. Everyone on the bus always stares at this white woman swaying down the bus. "White people normally get taxis don't they?" the taxi fare into town is about 150,000 duong whereas the bus is only 4,000. ( £1.50 as opposed to 13p) well, I am from Yorkshire after all!



Saigon is changing shape at an alarming rate and the signs of modernisation are everywhere. Most of this once thriving high street is now a demolition site. It's proximity to a brand new bridge into the city has turned it into prime development land.

more and more of these fragile little dwellings and shops are being flattened every day. In their place spring up roadside restaurants, fruit stands, motorbike repair outfits and convenience stores under the shade of tarpaulins and umbrellas. Local neighbourhood people are being replaced by construction workers who need feeding, need their bikes repairing and need a cool drink in the middle of the day. The Viets can set up business anywhere.

At the end of the high street we turn right onto the shiny new dual carriageway to the new Saigon  Bridge from which you can see the city skyline taking shape. 

I get off the bus only two stops after the bridge and I am already right in the heart of the city only two city blocks from the American Consulate.

There always seems to be a bit more breeze in the city and it is certainly more comfortable to be on the move than sitting on the bus. I look forward to turning the next corner because a lovely breeze always blows down the shady avenue that leads up to college. Along the way I pass lots of street kitchens preparing all kinds of delights for lunch for local school and college kids. One old guys sets up his stall to do nothing but barbecue sliced of marinaded pork all morning.I bet he's been doing it for years.

Here I am at college. Like all city colleges it's a pretty plain set of campus buildings.







 I walk up these steps right to the top floor ( level 4) to my classroom every morning. It's 90 odd degrees and there's no lifts. It's a cruel start to any day.

Please notice the main difference between  buildings in the tropics and those in the uk. Here, the corridors are on the outside and the classrooms are in the shaded interior.

Here is my lovely air conditioned classroom - look no windows............

Here is our lovely Vietnamese teacher.










Here are three of my class mates. From L-R, Julie is an Auditor form Paris, she has come to join her boyfriend who is setting up 'Amazon Vietnam' a joint venture with a local company. 
Charlotte and Zed, also from France have just arrived from 3 years in India. Charlotte was a Director of a French Design Institute in India and Zed is a Furniture designer ( same as me) who taught in the same Institute. They married in Bombay earlier this year.

After class, Julie and I head for the cloth market so i can buy  some linen to get some trousers and tops made. We stop at a little roadside kitchen to try the food. I have to say this was the best I have tried yet. I had some sticky rice with shell-on crispy prawns fried with chili and spices served up with some wilted spinach or watercress or something and served with a complimentary bowl of a cleansing cabbage broth. ( In the green bowl).

Here are the chefs on the pavement 

Here is our friendly waiter whose English was a little better than our Vietnamese.

Now to the cloth market.  In the narrow little passages ( sometimes only 2' wide, I found a lady who is selling really good quality linen in lovely plain colours for 70,000 duong per metre ( £2.25 !!!) In England that fabric is about £30 per metre!!! I used to make lots of my own clothes but I simply cannot afford to do it any more in the UK because a jacket would cost me £70 odd in fabric and then there is the pattern, thread, buttons and lining to buy on top. Here I can afford to have someone make it for me.

OK - well it's time to go home. Julie takes a taxi - well she's French and I walk to the bus - here it comes.

Everyone is amused ( again) as I jump on the bus and am thrown towards the back seat. then half the bus wants to now if I am on the right bus and where am I going.  Now that i can actually pronounce my address properly they are all quickly calmed and we are on our way. 

here are my fellow passengers on the back seat.

Back home again - at about 3pm ans Nigel rushes to greet me as usual! I should be thankful that he's not actually still in the same place as I left him this morning.

I bought watermelon from the little fruit stall at the end of our little lane on the way home so it's time for a shower to cool off and slice up some of that delicious red fruit for everyone coming home.