Off to Vietnam!
I had the pleasure of visiting Vietnam a few years ago (the photos used in this post are from that trip), so today I reread my blog post and am even more pleased with my decision to move us to Saigon. Sienna and I are going to have many great adventures in the years ahead! It's hard to imagine that we only have four months left in Guatemala, but we are ready to move on.
Some people tend to worry about the unknown, so I thought I should lay out a few facts to try to put everybody's mind at ease.
1. Safety - Vietnam is very safe. There is very little violent crime. Saigon is a large city and has the usual big city problems, but it doesn't hold a candle to the security issues in Guatemala.
2. Communism (copied from this link) - Technically, Vietnam is a single party state with the communist party being the single party. Vietnam currently has a central controlled (communist) government and a market controlled (capitalist) economy. This is the same as China's government and economic control. China and Vietnam are the fastest growing economies in the world right now. Before 1986, Vietnam’s government and economy were both strictly central controlled, which some may label as Soviet style communism. North Korea and Cuba are the only two countries in the world still under such control.3. Saigon, as the locals still call it, is a huge city with loads to do. To get around, I'll buy or rent a scooter and practice driving it in a mellow area of the city (see #5 below) until I'm comfortable enough to haul Sienna around - wearing a pink helmut, of course! The food is delicious and the prices are very low (Anthony Bourdain has done several shows from Vietnam).
4. American International School - a K-12 school that runs on the US calendar (13 weeks off a year, plus holidays here and there). Sienna and I will come home at Christmas and summer, as usual. I'll be teaching MS Math or Spanish (it'll depend upon who they hire during the rest of their recruiting). They currently have a separate location for elementary, middle school and high school, but are due to combine all three sections (about 900 students) into one new campus for the upcoming school year (capacity 3000 students).5. Phu My Hung - we'll, most likely, be living in this new expat neighborhood which is a 15 minute scooter ride to my school. It was built for expats and is clean with a shopping mall, grocery stores, restaurants, parks, swimming pools, etc. I've looked into apartments in this area and it looks like, for the $700 housing allowance provided by the school, we can rent a 2 bedroom, fully furnished apartment in a building with a gym, pool and a place to park several thousand scooters.
6. Sienna's Preschool - there are a variety of preschools in the Phu My Hung area where I'll drop Sienna off for preschool on my way to work, The Alpha Schools, Creative Kids, Kids Club Saigon, to name a few.
8. Travel - Vietnam itself is full of amazing travel opportunities (beaches, highlands, historical sights, even sand dunes!), not to mention the awesome travel to countries near Vietnam (former co-workers will be in China, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand). From Minneapolis, you fly 12 hours (only 11 hours when going in the opposite direction) on Vietnam Airways to Narita, Japan and spend the night, boarding a 5 hour flight to Saigon in the morning. It won't be fun with Sienna, but we can handle it!