[Tim]
I don't know if someone named Paul will actually move to Da Nang in the summer of 2016 or not, but I'm going to write a couple of letters as if there is someone coming here and I can give future-advice to ...
Dear Paul,
Glad you're coming to our fair city! Some things I wish I had known when I arrived in August of 2016 ...
Vision English Cafe
Vision may be in the wrong part of town for where you need to live, but it's in a great part of town if you're getting to choose where to live. It's just inland from Holiday Beach hotel, and I'll be including more opinions about where to live later on. Just know that we would choose the location of our apartment so it would be close to Vision.
We love the cafe staff and all the regulars who come and practice their English on us. They take us on their adventures and enjoy movie nights and games with us. Great people. If they are the only Vietnamese connections you make during your time here, it's not a bad thing.
Lunch/Breakfast
I wish I had known that lunch is hard to find here. People get up awfully early and eat out. Everyone eats out, every morning. The sticky rice, the thin noodle soup is "Bun," and the plate of mushroom and noodle called banh cuon --those are my favorites. But then lunch is pretty limited, and especially if you wait until after noon. If you're going to eat at a ubiquitous "Com" rice place, you'll eat the same food at 11:45 that you would have eaten at 10:45, only it will be an hour less-fresh and there will be fewer choices. Plan on lunch in the early 11s if you can.
Driving
I don't know why you're coming here, but I'll bet you're not coming to reform the driving practices of the Viet population. Remind yourself of that when the driving gets you nutty. I say it out loud sometimes: "My purpose in being here does not include teaching the locals how to drive."
Speaking of Driving,
Depending on how much it would ruin your plans to break a leg or collarbone, you can consider leasing a car when you come, or default to learning to ride a motorbike. Probably if you get into a group of students, one of them will be willing to let you learn on his/her bike. Then you can rent for $5 a day until you find a used moto to buy. If you buy anything at less than 7 million, you can't really lose that much value before it's time to sell and upgrade or sell and go home.
Facebook Connections
At the beginning, I accepted new FB friendships from anyone who requested. The names these local friends use for FB are often unrelated to their real Vietnamese names, so it was easier just to assume that I knew all the people who were friending me. But then I began to realize that friending a foreigner is a status mark, and if it shows on a student's feed that a friend had become my friend, that friend-of-a-friend might go ahead and friend-request me just to see if I'll say yes. So long story short, I now hand my phone to the person I want to friend and say "look yourself up on FB and I'll friend-request you right now." And I reject all other friend requests--several each day I've been here.
Cell Phone
I don't know how to be successful without a smartphone here. I use it all the time for Google Translate and Maps, and I sometimes turn on the hotspot and use the cellular data for my laptop. I didn't find much difference between Viettel and Mobifon, though I did appreciate how easy it was to grab a mobifon sim card from a cheap kiosk and just go. At first I went to the fancy cell phone stores and it took them a small mountain of paperwork and my passports to get me a sim card, but later I learned that I could walk in any neighborhood and get a sim card sans passport and sans trouble. Data and talking won't cost you more than $7 per month here.
Lotte Mart & Metro
There are some other big-store options, but when you first arrive you should just plan to do all your shopping at these two stores. They are on the Central side of the river just south of Asia Park, at the southmost of the 5 bridges. Both stores accept credit cards, and you don't go very wrong deciding not to shop around when you're setting up house--just go ahead and bite the bullet and buy what you need. This is from a dedicatedly frugal guy, too. You might save a bit shopping elsewhere, but it isn't worth your trouble in the first two weeks of living here and getting everything you need.
Xeom & Taxi
You can inexpensively get to Lotte Mart on a moto-taxi. There are lots of guys sleeping on their motorcycles on street corners who will bargain with you and give you a ride for a price. They are called Xe Om drivers, and I only rode with three of them (and talked to several others) before I decided they are a rip-off. Usually the price they would agree to was equivalent to the cost of a taxi, so why bother?
But this company uses a meter and has a good reputation:
http://xeomdanang.com. If you take a xe om down to Lotte Mart or Metro, then when you emerge with a huge shopping cart (or two, if you are the Chases and a family of 5) you can grab a big taxi and pile your goods into it for the ride home. Lotte Mart always has taxis of all sizes waiting out front, but at Metro you have to get someone to call one for you.
Sofas
If I were doing it again, I would go unconventional with the sofas. We had a sofa made and we like it, but the whole setup was $600 (sofa, ottoman, and floor cushions). The next time I'd do more floor cushions and ottomans and skip the expense of the sofa itself. My students love the unconventional sitting options. Actually what I would do is go to the fabric and foam shops at the west end of Le Duan where it dips down to join Hung Vuong, and I'd have them build me 10 foam cushions. Each would be 1.5m x .5 meters, so rectangular, and about 15 cm thick. I'd choose an upholstery fabric and have them make me the cushions or recommend someone who can do the tailoring. But I think most of those shops will do it. Later, I'd find a shop that makes bamboo tables and chairs (there is one on Pham Van Dong just east of Vincom near the White House Hotel) and have him fabricate for me two very short bamboo platforms to put some cushions on, and that would be my erzatz sofa.
What to Bring
The students are nuts about the game UNO. And you won't regret going to a thrift store and snagging a set of UN-GAME cards--it's an old game that has a bunch of conversation-starting cards. Leave the game board at home but bring the convo-cards.
Bring shoes--you can't easily replace shoes here, though you can have some made down in Hoi An. Gifts for other expats--you might check with folks on the Facebook group (search Da Nang Hoi An Expats and you'll find them) and see if anyone needs anything brought in from out-of-country. Shaving cream is available but oddly expensive--it's something I'd bring from home. Sunblock, too. Available but very expensive.
When we come back to live in 5-6 years we may well be bringing in a couple of tabletop puzzles ... you can buy cardboard puzzles in the bookstores here, but they tend to be a style where all the pieces can fit just about anywhere, which makes them a bit of a chore to put together.
Also when we come back we'll bring large chocolate chips, some bags of marshmallows, and basically all the measuring cups and spoons a person could wish for. And a lime squeezer maybe. But other than that, nothing for our kitchen. We seldom cook here, so the spices that we brought are still in the cupboard. We can buy here all shapes and sizes of knives and dish-sponges and water filtration and everything else.
I'll bring my
luggage scale. I love my luggage scale. Got mine on Amazon for less than $10 and I love it.
We'll bring our camping mattresses. And earplugs. And melatonin and some sleep meds to help with jetlag. Bandaids are not high-quality here. All other medications you can buy here, over the counter. We'll bring Vitamin C and EmergenC packs, though.
I'll bring clothing that I want copied. I had great success this time in bringing an old pair of much beloved slacks, and they created two copies of them AND repaired them so they are still in the game. Happy camper!
Umm... I will bring a couple of
glow-in-the-dark frisbees. Dusk happens at 6pm and evening play is indoors or on the beach. It's a bunch of fun to have the glow-frisbees for nighttime.
Books to lend to students? I'm trying to think of what else I'm glad I brought from home...
Honestly, I think that's about it. You can get everything here, and the prices are generally competitive to what you'd pay in the west.
University Schedule & Grades
When I was trying to plan our time abroad, I asked the university when the school year would finish in the spring of 2016. The answer? "Sometime around May."
Here's what actually happened in the school year 2015-16:
We arrived August 10. Classes were starting up--I think it was the first week of classes for most students. Freshmen, though, were still being sorted by test scores, and I was hired to teach freshmen. Incoming freshmen had tested in their hometowns in July and now their scores were determining their university and major. By the middle of August, most freshmen knew which university had been selected for them, and they were set to start classes at the beginning of September. But not my classes--I am the foreign teacher teaching the "high quality" classes, which hadn't formed yet. Students new to the university could choose to pay double tuition to have classes in air conditioning and with the foreign teacher 4-6 hours per week. In all, about 100 students (divvied into four classes) chose to pay for the high-quality program, and they transferred out of their initial classes into the HQ classes and became my students in the last week of September.
Then they all disappeared for a month when it was their turn for military training.
Then they had 3 weeks off for Tet Holiday. Only they all wanted to go to their hometowns early, so it was more like 4 weeks off. And I decided to extend a vacation in Thailand, so I didn't see them until a week after break ended, so it was 5 weeks off. No regrets there.
Now it's mid-May and most students are finished with finals. But not my freshmen. They're still going until mid-June.
We're leaving in the week of June 6, so I'll turn in my grades before the semester officially closes. My grades count for the 40% of "midterm exam" and then the university testing offices administer the final exam, which counts for 60% of the student's overall grade. If they get 85% in the overall grade, that is the A they all want.
Where to Live
Live near the beach. It's cooler on the Son Tra side of the river than in central (sometimes you can literally feel the difference as you ride over the river bridges from west to east), and you'll see more surf and palm trees if it's a 4-minute ride to the beach than if it's a 12-minute ride. Mathematically it's only the difference of 8 minutes, but it results in way more forays to the ocean. We greatly benefit from being able to take friends out to the beach and throw frisbees and kick balls around after dark.
When we come back, we'll try to get a place that is wider and shorter as opposed to narrow and tall. Narrow buildings are hard to keep air conditioned, as the cool air all wants to go down to the first level where the motorbikes park. Apartments provide the right kind flat space for air conditioning, but if we go for an apartment we'll look for a place that has student-friendly parking. Sometimes people live in buildings with uptight security guys, and we intend to have lots of students and friends in and out. Parking enough for 10+ motorbikes is important to us. We would love to rent a standalone house with plenty of parking, but for that we may have to pay more money. Also, it may not be in great shape, but I'll bring some extra hundreds of dollars to have things fixed up and cleaned when we move in. It's worth it to work with the landlord and get things fixed and painted and improved before we move in, and not just settle for everything "as-is." This time, my landlord agreed to go in 50-50 with me on the improvements I wanted to make here: hot water heaters in the bathrooms, a rooftop gazebo, hammock-rings into the walls, etc.
Keep in mind that the landlord will expect the full contract in cash, up front. We worked it out so that I paid 6 months up front in USD, then later I paid the rest in VND. He'll give back the deposit in USD so it's more usable for us on our way out. You might bring a bug-bomb or two to toss into the house before you move in...
Eating Out
We found that delicious food can be had for breakfast. Mediocre food can be had for lunch (go early). And the dinner food is a mix of good and bad.
Everyone eats breakfast out. Sometimes people go out for dinner, but usually the food is an excuse to drink more beer. Nobody but the unfortunates (people who work too far from home to be able to go home for lunch) eats lunch out, because lunches should be eaten at home prior to nap-time.
I have no fear for your breakfasts--you'll find good food close by. Lunch, well good luck. When you're new in town you might plan your Lotte Mart shopping trips to coincide with lunch... the little cafeteria in the grocery store is not a bad way to try local foods, though the soundtrack they play loops every 40 minutes and sometimes we were in the store long enough to hear the songs repeat for a third or fourth time. Errrr.
For eating in Vietnam you can know that you've eaten the five major food groups when you've got a good
1. banh my sandwich
2. seafood hotpot
3. noodle soup and noodle stir-fried
4. rice with sides, and
5. things to wrap in rice paper
It's that last one, the wraps, that are the most interesting for us.
For the first one, we've enjoyed meat-and-egg sandwiches out and buy wheat bread at Metro and banh my khongs 6-for-$.50 from the local bakery to make PBJ sandwiches at home.
For hotpots, we don't love seafood as much, but have had some vegetarian hotpots we really enjoyed.
We like most of the soups (stay away from bun mam), and every stir-fried noodle set we've had has been really good. Definitely look for a good Bun Cha Hanoi when you get the chance.
We're suckers for rice, and our local Com (rice) guys sell a pack of rice "mang ve" (carry-out) for a dollar with rice, veggies, and a grilled pork chop.
But for things that wrap into rice paper ... that's where we think Vietnam really shines. A crispy eggy banh xeo. Leaf-wrapped beef bo lo lot. Stick-meat nem lui. Fried rolls and lettuce ram cuon cai. They're all good!
Befriending Teachers
This final piece is more a note-to-self. This time around we spent much of our time with college students. It's a great way to stay young, but next time we want to more intentionally develop friendships with English-speaking faculty.
