#spinv

Our stay in Hanoi was commenced after a $30 private car ride, which we managed to split with a back packer from Chille who was staying in a hotel near by. The ride took us into the city again where we are once again confronted by traffic, rubbish, and packed in housing. I even saw the aftermath of a car accident for the first time! There are a lot more cars in Hanoi which makes getting around and crossing the roads scarier than HCMC! Our arrival at the hotel was very confusing as the sign outside said "serenity" but it is the "dragon rising estate" inside... The receptionist further confused us by insisting that we had come from Australia and had missed the car booked for us... she began to tell us about the options for our SaPa tour until we managed to convince her that she had some details confused... Wandering around in the heat again was not a welcome change though we did find some beautiful local food and local people to make up for it. :) The highlight of the Hoan Kiem district is the lake. It is surrounded by a lovely shady park and our lap around ended with a chat to local students who wanted to improve their English. A tasty dinner at one of many Gecko bar and cafés ended our first day. Day 2 started off with a lazy morning packing for SaPa in the air con. We then went for a late lunchtime wander, returning to the hotel for an escape from the heat after our 2.00 meal of freshly cooked spring rolls, fresh salad and stir fried chicken with lemongrass. At 4.30 we decided it was time to brave the heat again to look for a snack to serve as our dinner before the train. We found many eating places, some electronics stores, a church, but didn't get a chance to have a meal due to the sudden storm which caused a blackout in the district and had us soaked! At around 7.45 we were picked up for our trip to SaPa...

Back to the city... motorbikes, markets, themed shop streets, crazy power lines, and a beautiful park around the lake

Final days in Hoi An

So this is the tale of my final week in Hoi An and doing prac as a student in Vietnam. We rose early (5.15 am) for a ride to Cua Dai Beach. Unfortunately one of our little group couldn’t come as she was unable to ride a bike. We had a brief trial the night before but my short legs made balancing another 50Kg human on the bike impossible! At 5.30 we found our bikes sitting out the front of our hotel ready to go. I played the role of the bike know-it-all and fixed everyone’s seat heights and we were off! Riding at this time of the morning in Vietnam is so much less stressful than riding on a road in Australia. Here the motorbikes and cars look out for you and give you a wide berth. In Aus they scrap past you annoyed that you are hogging up a whole metre of their road! The momentary bit of terror when we tried to ride on the left side of the road was quickly overcome by the beauty of the sun staining the clouds pink on the horizon and the nice cool air of the early morning. We arrived at the beach with all the locals, the sun still not fully risen, and took a dip in the green ocean in swimmers and a t-shirt contrary to the local women who were fully dressed… some even wearing jeans! On the ride back I was challenged to a brief race by some local boys… and won! Then almost hit by a turning car who was nice enough to beep and slow down so I had time to stop… then a quick dip in the hotel pool before breakfast. After lunch Claire and I decided to make the most of our day bicycle hire and go exploring. Riding around the island, however, was not the short trip we expected and I arrived back at the hotel red as a tomato! Monday was the start of our busy last week at the school. So busy that all the days were blurring together. On Monday night I was convinced that the next day was Wednesday and so on… By the time Thursday came around I was sad to say goodbye to the staff and children I had worked with… my task was to wrap up therapy goals, provide classroom strategies and train the teachers to continue some speech and language development in the period before the next students come in October. Friday was out wrap-up day. One final communication group in the morning where we gave the children a chance to ask us questions with their communication books such as “when are you coming back?” They also described each of us… and we were lucky because no-one was ugly or fat that day… Friday afternoon was bitter-sweet as we caught our taxi away. On one hand we are glad to be finished our last placement as Student Speech Pathologists… on the other we were sad to be leaving such a lovely city and group of people. A traditional dinner at Morning Glory and some cocktails had us back in our rooms to sleep before departing Hoi An in the morning. Good bye city of lanterns… I hope I get another chance to visit one day!

Exploring the beautiful Hoi An :)

So I have now been in Hoi An for more than a week. We still get funny looks from the locals when they ask: “how long you here?” and we reply “two weeks”. This city is such a nice change from the bustle of Ho Chi Minh. We have discovered that it is quite quiet and you can easily sleep in past 6.30am! The city even goes to sleep at 9.30! The first few days in Hoi An (the public holiday weekend in Vietnam) led us to believe that it was not much quieter than Ho Chi Minh, just smaller, cleaner and prettier. It was difficult to move about in the old part of town without losing a member of our group… especially when we tried to cross the famous Japanese Bridge. The funniest moment being stuck in a mass of people filling the narrow streets was when I bumped into a Vietnamese man. “Sorry” I said in an automatic reaction. “Hello” was the reply… …I get the feeling that he didn’t speak much English… The reason for our unusually long stay is, of course, our volunteering at the Kianh Centre, a school for children with special needs (such as ASD, CP and Down). So everyday we wake up to our 6.30 alarms and ready ourselves for our 7am breakfast of fresh fruit (pineapple, mango, banana, passionfruit, dragonfruit…), pastries, hot crispy bread, or our choice of eggs, omelette or pancakes cooked to order. We then take the taxi (for 106,000₫ there, 100,000₫ back) and I admire the strange building standards (rooves held down with sandbags, bricks or baskets of dirt) and the flexible road rules (it’s apparently OK to overtake into oncoming traffic as long as they are motorbikes and you beep your horn enough). We then launch into a full day of 20-30 min assessment or therapy sessions on some of the cutest kids around. This type of Speech Therapy is challenging and rewarding and an amazing learning opportunity for me and my fellow 4th year students. The children usually have a severe or profound language or speech disorder and we are only seeing them for 2 weeks. Our task is more to provide some basic training and strategies to the class and special education teachers who will continue to work on the goals after we leave. We have all had the feeling at least once of how amazing it would be to come back and volunteer here for a longer period of time so we can make a real difference for these children. For now it is up to us to help the teachers carry on until the next group of students arrive in October… This weekend we finally got around to doing some tourist activities other than eating good local food and getting clothes and shoes tailor made (you have to watch out for hidden costs when you buy clothes… make sure you shop around and find someone nice and honest!). We managed to drag ourselves out of bed early and head down to the morning markets at 6am where the bustle is entire made up of locals gathering their fresh produce for the day. We then huddled back in for the day to complete more administration… ho hum… the evening was brightened by heading to the river for street food, with the sun setting behind us. The evening markets are a colourful display of lanterns that begged more exploration and successful haggling with shopkeepers (even 10,000 is a victory for us) ends our evening. Tomorrow we plan another early rise to head to Cao Dai beach (at the local time, before the sun rises properly) on bicycles…

Monday and Tuesday were spent at Children's Hospital 1 in District 10 of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. DAY 1 The day started with the usual 7am buffet breakfast on the roof of our hotel, followed by a hectic taxi ride through the peak hour traffic. 10 min later we arrived at the hospital where we waited for our supervising Vietnamese Physio-Speech Therapist to find us. After 15 min we realise that no-one is going to get us and my Vietnamese speaking collegue asks for directions to speech therapy. We make our way past the line of parents queing to get appointments for their sick children, and through the motorbike car park to the physio rooms, where there are four small speech therapy rooms. The head of speech therapy, Mr Qwan, meets us with a smile, and proudly shows us around his department of his hospital (I get the impression that the Vietnamese are very proud of their workplace). The therapist I observe for the morning is very passionate about her work and is saving to do further studies in audiololgy so that she can work more effectively with deaf children and cochlear implants. I observe her running a speech and language session which packs more into the half hour they have for therapy than I have managed in an hour! We also encounter a 2 year old with Rett Syndrome and I play my good English speaking student role and read the text book to help her figure out future therapy directions. At lunch time I help feeding the children at the day care, feeling increasingly foolish as I attempt to say "chewing" in Vietnamese to the little boy I was feeding, who would forget. I thing it ended up as "nging, ngeugn" towards the end, which was probably either gibberish or something completely other than what I intended! The afternoon was spent seeing inpatients from the hospital: a mother of a premature baby being shown how to feed him, a boy with severe dysphagia, and a baby with a soft palate cleft. DAY 2 Due to the supervisor being off on sick leave at the ENT hospital I was back at the childrens hospital the following day. This morning started by observing the special education teacher from the team working with some of the day care children in the sensory room. I then observed some sessions with a different Speech Therapist from Monday. These sessions seemed to lack a functional goal for the child and I was able to assist by suggesting up-contingencies for an AAC activity. Discussion about therapy choices with the Speech Therapist was unfortunately limited due to a language barrier as she spoke little English. Hopefully an interpreter will be available for future interactions... I also had my first experience of doing therapy in a langauge other than English, knowing only the child's name and how to say "thats right!" Needless to say this was challenging but I managed to actually get some success (holding out open hand to request a toy) and it gives me a little confidence for the future when I will have an interpreter to utilise! :) This day was concluded after another lunchtime feeding (four whole mouthfuls from the boy who forgets to chew and swallow), helping to get the children ready for their sleep, our last free lunch, and an afternoon group session based on listening and comprehension. These two fantistic eye opening days concluded my adventures in the hectic world of HCMC. I am definately glad to leave the multitude of motorbikes, salespeople, and smog behind and venture into the world of Hoi An...

Exploring Cu Chi Tunnels like a true Vietnamese!