My first motorbike adventure

Hey everyone,


The past week or so has been relatively uneventful and we have not had much to do other than meet with people and students to help get set up for our research project. We have been going over the framework of our research methodology with the new students who we will be working with. We are now all pretty well ready to start visiting districts and wards and conducting our interviews. We are hopeful that that will take place next week after the holiday weekend here.

I, as well as my friends, have been keeping busy by reading a lot of academic literature on food-related topics in Ho Chi Minh City. I have been learning a lot of how various local state institutions and policies work within Ho Chi Minh and how that affects life within the city. There is plenty of work just on Ho Chi Minh City with various topics all pertaining to development. It is quite interesting to learn about all the issues that are being talked about in these articles I am reading and then to see them being played out in reality. It adds a dimension of authenticity and seriousness to the topics I cover and provides me with further incentive to look into them further.

The other day we read an article on urban zoning in HCMC and how zoning policy has affected some areas of the city. In particular, the article analyzed the rezoning and development that has been taking place in Thủ Thiêm ward, directly across the Saigon river near Bến Nghé (where I lived). This once densely populated ward had been completely levelled to a flattened land of rubble and debris. The residents of the ward had been compensated by the state and forced out to make way for new developments that had been planned for the area. This process has been taking place within the past 5 years and should be completed within the next couple years. Some residents are still living in the area for one reason or another (some due to unsatisfactory land compensations). The article mentioned that residents even gathered in makeshift cafes as well.

After discussing this article, we decided to take a short trip to this ward and see the results for ourselves.  We travelled by motorbike across the river and took a short drive through the now sparsely populated area. It was incredible to see nothing but rubble and ingrown shrubs that had replaced what was once a densely populated ward located across the river from the city's centre. We also noticed how much cooler it was on the other side of the river given how open and less congested the environment is compared to most of the rest of the city. We stopped by one of the cafes for drinks and took in the sights. It was a complete paradox of worlds we were seeing. On our side of the river was a rubbled wasteland being prepared for a grand urban development project and on the other side was the towering skyscrapers of the city over looking this seemingly temporary eyesore according to some. The pictures below I think illustrate this idea better.

The view from where we were drinking coffee. The sky scrapers in the background highlight the modern architecture that city officials are pursuing as part HCMC's new look.

This is the Texaco building. It is the tallest building in the city. 

Travelling by motorbike was awesome by the way. It is a really fun way to get around the city quickly. I am hopeful that I can maybe take a short video going through some of the nicer parts of the city and I will post it here.

Cheers,

Noah

Snapshots from where I'm staying

Here are a few pics of the area I am staying in. The city is divided up into various districts and the districts are comprised of wards. I am living in District 1 and the ward I am staying in is Bến Nghé. The neighbourhood is very nice. It is sort of the commercial/financial centre of the city. It is also home to many of the international consulates in the city so diplomatic immunity is only a hop, skip, and a jump away! 

The pic above is the building across the street from me where the television station (HTV) is housed. It lies next door to the university.

This is a shot of the street around the corner from where we live. The market where we eat is just down the street as well as the bakery and the grocery store.

This is the corner of the block I live on. There are so many people on motorbikes during all hours of the day.

Here is a shot of inside the school complex I am staying in.

Noah

Welcome to Vietnam - Please leave your culture at the gate

Well here's my first post from Vietnam. After a long 30+ hour trip, I have finally made it to Ho Chi Minh City. I have been here for nearly 24 hours now and I am still adjusting and getting myself into the right circadian rhythm. Today was pretty relaxed. I got to explore a bit of the neighbourhood I'm living in and get a feel for the surroundings and learning where all of the important places would be. We then picked up the rest of our crew at the airport and came back to the guest house. I passed out because I had been up for a while and still had not adjusted yet. We went out for dinner tonight to a very nice place and I have just gotten back. 

The weather has been quite hot and humid a stark contrast to back home. The high this afternoon was 40 degrees celsius. 

Overall, however, I am quite happy and excited to start this journey. It has already proven to be quite a culture shock ever since I got off the plane. Ho Chi Minh City cannot compare to any city in Canada. It is incredibly huge and busy. With a population of over 7.5 million (according to wikipedia, a.k.a. the gospel of truth), Ho Chi Minh City is a bustling city full of fast-paced lifestyles it appears. Driving in the city would seem like a nightmare to me as the streets are filled with people on motorbikes and the etiquette on the streets is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around. Walking is just as tricky with specific rules to follow when crossing the street and if you don't follow them, you'll likely get run over by someone. 

The organization of the city is very scattered it seems to me. There is much infrastructure development that has or is taking place, however, it appears like it is all taking place behind schedule and reacting to urban growth and development as opposed to anticipating it. That said, as  a Canadian, I don't think I could ever relate or compare the rate of urbanization that has taken place here to anything that has taken place back home. Urban growth is on a whole other level as compared to urban growth back home. 

Anyways, those are my first impressions so far of my host country. I am looking forward to getting pictures up here soon so I can show you where I'm living. The video below is just a quick one I did this morning of the room I'm temporarily staying in at the guest house. 

Noah

Great (non)-Expectations

Hi all,


The end of third year and the beginning of my Vietnam adventure is drawing nigh. This week I'm in full exam mode and taking care of any last minute errands I need to do before I leave next Monday. Fortunately, there is not much left to do beyond just going.

Last week, I had one last meeting with my liaison for SMU before I left and we firmed up all of the stuff we needed to take care of before I went. During the meeting she asked me a question that I had been hearing throughout this entire 4 month build up to Vietnam. "What are your expectations from this experience?" I have had this question asked many times from friends, family, and colleagues leading up to the trip yet I was still unsure how to answer that question specifically. The truth is I don't believe there are any concrete or specific expectations I have from this trip. The only thing I can suggest is that I expect this internship to be a highly valuable experience for my own personal growth for better or for worse.

Since this is the first development internship I have ever been on, I think it's a good thing that I don't have many expectations towards the experience. I don't want to prematurely define what I want out of this opportunity when I most likely will not be fully aware of all the possibilities it may present me with until I get there (or even after I get back upon reflection). I may come out on the other end of this with an invigorated passion for some area of international development I previously had not considered. I may come back home in 3 months completely disheartened by the internship and completely turned off from my major (not likely though as I'm pretty turned on by all things IDS). Who knows and how can I make that judgment? One thing is for certain, however. Wherever this internship takes me in 3 months, it will help give me more clarity and direction in what I want to do in life and that is something that makes it well worth the 3 months away from home.

I am hopeful that this policy of letting the experience define me instead of vice-versa will allow me to gain more from it and I am basing it on personal experience.

In my last year of high school, I did a cooperative education placement in an elementary school and was assigned to a class as an assistant to the teacher. I was heavily considering teaching as a profession going into the placement but I was still quite unsure about what I wanted to do. By the end of the placement I was pretty turned off by teaching as a professional career path. This is not meant as a slight against any teachers or teaching as a profession. My placement was awesome and I really enjoyed the job and the people I got to work with/for. Some of my most important mentors growing up have been teachers (as they have been for most people I'm sure). I just realized that I wasn't enthused enough about the job to pursue a career in it. The job demanded a set of personal skills and traits of which I felt I neither had nor wanted. I may not have come to this conclusion had it not been for this placement and I am grateful for that now in reflection. I now have more clarity and direction as a result about what I want to do in life as a result of it.

That's what opportunities like this one are most valuable for I think.


Noah

Introductions/about my posting

Hello everybody,


My name is Noah Best and I am a university student about to embark on a 3 month internship to Vietnam for my school. I'd like to take this opportunity in my first post to tell you a bit about myself and to also give you a little bit of information from the small amount I know about what exactly I will be doing for my internship.

First off, about me: I am an undergraduate student here at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and I will be going into my fourth and final year of school this coming September. I grew up in Perth, Ontario throughout my childhood and adolescence but decided to follow almost all of my older siblings out to the Maritimes for university. I am completing an honours degree in International Development Studies and I hope to continue my education beyond undergraduate studies after next year. I am a sometimes quiet but very congenial person (in my own unbiased opinion). I like listening to music and am very eclectic in my preferences (right now I find myself often listening to a bizarre combination of dance electronic and classic rock on my iPod). I also enjoy watching various sports such as hockey and football. I am very passionate and happy to be studying International Development. I always knew from the beginning of university I would choose it as my major and I have had no regrets so far. What I like most about my program is that it is an interdisciplinary study and includes subjects and courses from many fields including economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, geography, history, and the list goes on. It's inclusive to all schools of thought and does not discount their importance in the field of development, acknowledging that problems in the developing world are not so one-dimensional as people often make them out to appear. It is that acknowledgement of the complexity of contemporary development issues that drew me to this internship opportunity of which I will now try to explain.

About my internship: I first read about this opportunity through an email circulated by my IDS undergraduate advisor back in September 2012. I had received many emails from him about other opportunities abroad for the past 2 years, however, not many of them really interested me because I was very skeptical towards packaged trips for students that involve providing some sort of donated service for a week or so. I was, and still am, very skeptical towards those types of opportunities because I have always felt they were designed more to make the students feel good about themselves rather than actually contribute something substantial and allow the students to learn something valuable about themselves and the world of development. This internship opportunity was different I thought. I would be spending 3 months in a culture that was completely foreign to me with only a few colleagues as cultural companions. I would not be going into the field with my own solutions to problems/issues I knew nothing about, I would be attempting to ask questions and gather information by completely immersing myself within the culture in an effort to truly gain an insider's perspective on the issues faced there. I decided to pursue the position and was notified in early December that I had been chosen to go. So for the past 4 months I have been steadily preparing myself for this trip getting all of my required documentation and properly orienting myself for what to expect. So what exactly am I going to be doing in Vietnam? While I am in Ho Chi Minh City for the three months, I will be working with students from the local university to go around various districts of the city and talk to any local people who are willing to sit down for a conversation on their food consumption/production habits. I will have a vague guide of questions to help guide my talks with them, however, their is no strict guideline to the conversation so long as it is constructive and moving in a general direction that I would like it to go. I will also spend a lot of time in the market simply observing the behaviours of various individuals and seeing how food is purchased, handled, etc. I will be reading (through translators) various articles in local newspapers on topics that are relevant to my research so I can gain more of an understanding of the issues. In essence, I will be the prototypical ethnographer and by the end of the trip, I will at least be somewhat saturated within the local culture.

This is just a brief synopsis of what I plan on doing while I am over there. As we move along, I will hopefully have a far greater understanding of my purpose and become more acquainted with the research (and I will pass this knowledge along in this blog). I will be departing in a little over a week and the traveller's anxiety has been conveniently replaced by exam stress so I at least don't have that to worry about. I'm not too worried or nervous about going away for so long. That kind of stuff doesn't really bother me too much as it would for some. I am taking comfort in the fact that I have two great friends that I will be there with the whole time and who worked in Vietnam last summer. I look forward to posting some photos and videos while I am there as well. Until then, I will leave you with the song I have had stuck in my head ever since I learnt that I was shipping out to the 'Nam this summer.

I know, this one's obvious:

Cheers,


Noah