Thinking about leaving

It’s our penultimate week in Soc Trang so, naturally, our thoughts have turned towards leaving this peculiar city where we’ve been living for the past 15-18 months. While we haven’t really started any of the practicalities of leaving Soc Trang (such as packing or tidying up our house – we’ll get to that soon enough!), we have realised that some of the activities we have been doing on a regular basis we are now doing for the last time. For example, we went for a motorbike ride out to Cu Lao Dung Island yesterday, the island is part of Soc Trang Province and we’ve been there a couple of times either for a bike ride, or, in Dan’s case, for work. Yesterday was the last time we will go to the island; I don’t imagine that we’ll ever go back there.


All of these ‘last-time’ scenarios have got me thinking about what I will and will not miss about living here. Doubtless I’ll think of more things as these 2 weeks go by, but the items listed below represent the most obvious and glaring examples of things to love and hate about Soc Trang and Vietnam.

Things I will miss:

• Friends and colleagues. We’ve met some lovely people both in Soc Trang and all over Vietnam. In Soc Trang I’ll miss all our colleagues – as well as working with us they have been such a huge help in our personal lives, helping us find somewhere to live, helping us go shopping, keeping us entertained and always translating for us. I’ll also miss the friends we have made outside of work, friends that we play badminton with, go to restaurants with and go out drinking with. Outside of Soc Trang I’ll miss our fellow project workers in the ‘swamps’ and the other Australian volunteers we’ve met. Visiting these guys has always been a means of respite from life in Soc Trang and it’s always interesting to hear what they’ve been up to.

• Work. It’s not just the people from work I’ll miss; I will also miss the actual work that we do here for the project. I’ve enjoyed working for a project that has real benefits both for the poor local people and for the environment. I’ve also appreciated being able to work on such a variety of different activities, e.g. I never imagines that I would co-edit a co-management proceedings or that I would co-author manuals for teachers on climate change and mangrove forests!

• Year-round hot weather. Soc Trang has two seasons: hot-and-dry and hot-and-wet. Perfect weather conditions for someone like me who, back in Australia, complains bitterly about how chilly it is in the refrigerated aisles of the local supermarket.

• Travelling. Regular readers of this blog will know that Dan and I have used our time in Vietnam as an opportunity to explore not just this country, but also all around Southeast Asia. Being based in Vietnam means that travel is pretty cheap so we’ve been able to visit some pretty amazing places. For me the highlights have been seeing the Angkor temples in Cambodia, Luang Prabang in Laos, Melacca in Malaysia and Hoi An and Sapa in Vietnam.

• The motorbike. Dan tried to teach me how to ride the motorbike but I’m not very good at it (the roads and traffic here make me too nervous). I’m more accustomed to sitting on the back of the bike, watching the world go by as Dan drives us out into the countryside. We’ve explored some pretty amazing places around Soc Trang, including Cu Lao Dung and My Phuc Islands. And while it does get a bit sore after sitting on the back of the bike for too long, I will miss our countryside jaunts past rice fields, orchards and coconut plantations.

• The shopping. Vietnam is a shopper’s paradise. I’ve bought: tailor-made clothes; store-bought clothes (including a lovely ‘silk’ skirt from Hanoi); cheap shoes; silver and costume jewellery; silk hair accessories; ceramic bowls and plates; and a whole heap of clothes for my niece.

Last but not least is the food and drink here. This is such a big category for me that I've decided it needed to be listed separately after the jump.
First, the drinks:

• Fresh coconut juice, drunk straight from the coconut. I drink coconut juice at least 3-4 times a week in Soc Trang and it usually costs about 70c. Tastes good and it’s a bargain. I guess I won’t be able to sip on a coconut everyday when I’m back in Australia!

• Passionfruit juice. I didn’t even know it was possible to drink passionfruit juice before I came to Vietnam. It is so good! Unfortunately I can only seem to find it on the menu in cafes in HCMC or Hanoi, but when I do find it I definitely indulge. Also good are the passionfruit smoothies.

• Cheap cocktails. Cocktails in Soc Trang aren’t that good but they only cost about $1-3. Cocktails in HCMC are a bit more expensive (about $3-6) but they are really good. I’ve developed a fondness for regular and passionfruit mojitos, yum!

Now for the food (bear with me, this list could be huge...):

• Red snapper grilled in aluminium foil served with salad, herbs, pineapple, banana and rice paper. You take a little bit of everything and wrap it up in the rice paper to make a spring roll then dip it into a pineapple-based sauce. Yum! My favourite dish in Vietnam.

• Bbq crab. There is a restaurant down the road from our house that serves a lot of seafood, including crab. The crab is so fresh and so tasty and so very cheap! We usually pay about $5 for about 3 crabs.

• Bbq squid with chilli and lemongrass. A dish that we order every time we go to one of the bigger restaurants.

• Deep-fried or stir-fried pumpkin flowers.

• Banh xeo. A type of savoury pancake with vegetables, prawns and pork (which I have to pull out), also served with salad and a chilli fish sauce.

• The vegetarian restaurant that we go to nearly every lunch time. They always have an assortment of vegetable and tofu dishes, we just point at which ones we want. I particularly like the fried egg-plant and the okra with lemongrass.

• Banh uot. A noodle dish I have sometimes for breakfast. It includes rice noodles, bean sprouts, herbs, cucumber and dried fried onion, topped with chilli fish sauce.

• Xoi ga. Another breakfast dish, sticky rice with fried chicken, chilli and herbs.

• Pho bo. The famous Vietnamese beef noodle soup.

• Fanny ice-cream. Terrible name but great ice-cream. My favourite is the chilli-chocolate ice-cream. Another treat that I indulge in when I’m in HCMC.

While I will miss all of the above people, places, activities, food etc, there are, however, some things about life in Vietnam that I will not miss. It’s not all sunshine and roses and happiness over here you know!

Things I will not miss:

• The traffic. For 2 reasons, first the lack of road rules (or the disregard for road rules, I’m not sure which) means that the roads here are very dangerous. I’ll be happy to go back to driving on relatively safe roads again. Secondly, the traffic noise is horrendous, mostly from blaring horns. Hitting your horn seems to be the way that you signal your presence and your driving intentions. With so many trucks, buses, cars, motorbikes and bicycles on the road it can get incredibly loud.

• Unwanted housemates. There are a lot of creatures in our house I will definitely not miss; this includes the frogs, the geckos, the roaches, the odd monster-lizard, the occasional mouse and the endless hordes of mosquitoes.

• Public spitting and public urinating. No need to say more.

• Cold showers. I cannot wait to get back to being able to have a hot shower every day. Such bliss!

• Helmet and humidity hair. Always needing to wear a helmet and the humidity here means that my hair has been in a constant mess for the past 15 months. (Though to be honest my hair has been in a constant mess for the past 27 years, it’s just been that tiniest bit more difficult to deal with since I’ve been over here.)

• Mobile karaoke. Mobile karaoke singers are guys who go around different restaurants with a very loud speaker system on the back of their motorbike. They stop at a restaurant, crank up their music and start singing, if the restaurant patrons like their singing they will give them money. I wouldn’t have a problem with it except for the fact that the mobile karaoke singers come to the restaurants near our house in an almost constant stream every night of the week. It can be hard to sleep when, at 11pm, someone is belting out a Vietnamese love song at full volume 50m down the road!

So that’s my thoughts on what I will and will not miss about life in Soc Trang, Vietnam. It’s not a definitive list and I’m sure I could keep on adding to it ad nauseam. But I think that it’s enough. Now it’s time to start thinking about returning to Australia and what I have to look forward to...