Teachers' Day in Vietnam: Puttin' on the Ritz

In many countries around the globe, October 5th is celebrated as World Teachers' Day. In Vietnam, a country where pleas for punctuality are made with a wink and a nod, teachers are recognized on November 20th. As I found out last Sunday, it is worth the wait.

~

Last year, I 'celebrated' Teachers' Day in Korea, where I worked at a private language academy for the pampered scions of Samsung middle managers and LG junior account executives. The owner of that academy, who could be charitably described as a twitchy runt (or something similar), decided that teachers would not be allowed to keep presents given on Teachers' Day. Ostensibly, this was to prevent any sort of favoritism toward students who lavished expensive gifts on their teachers in hopes of receiving preferential treatment. 

In practice, this meant I had to look a bunch of Korean kindergarteners square in the eye and politely tell them, 'Sorry Ji-Su, teacher doesn't want your monogrammed hankerchief. And this glittery card has to go back, too.' Meanwhile, the Korean staff hovered outside the classrooms waiting to swoop in and confiscate all tokens of gratitude, which would later be returned to confused and angry parents. The whole day was such a fiasco that the owner eventually announced that the school would be closed on Teachers' Day in the future, just to avoid the whole thorny issue of employee recognition.

Gimme yer gifts.

~

Teachers' Day 2013 in Vietnam was quite a different scene. The celebration was held at the Sheraton Towers in downtown Saigon, one of the city's swankiest hotels and a place that few of us had any business being at under normal circumstances. People accustomed to squatting at roadside stands while slurping suspiciously aromatic noodles were suddenly confronted with modern man's greatest fear: multiple forks.

How many salads can one person have?

The polished marble floors and elegant wood paneling of the Sheraton are an interesting juxtaposition to the madly boiling chaos of 'real' Saigon. Bellhops wait at the front doors, alternately helping people out of shiny new Lexuses and dinged-up Vinasun taxis. Once inside, a smartly-dressed person* can wander at will past banks of elevators that only go to one floor and extravagant seafood buffets featuring an endless array of expensive, French-sounding dishes.

*I  returned the next day on my motorbike to pick up some belongings at the concierge. Wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, I didn't make it halfway to the door before two very polite bouncers** asked me where I was going, and if they could help me, and if I wouldn't mind leaving as quickly as possible.

**Is there a classier word for a dude whose job essentially boils down to keeping out the lower classes?

The clothes make the man.

Places like the Sheraton always make my skin crawl until I've had a few drinks. Like many Millennials I am reverse-adaptable, a pretentious self-defense mechanism in which I critique post-modern literature at dive bars and make fart jokes at the opera. I felt like an impostor in my three-piece suit, as out of place as Kenny Powers at a Venetian fashion show. As I wandered around enormous chandelier-lit ballroom, it became obvious that many of my coworkers felt the same way. My roommate Kieran*, sharply dressed in all black like an Irish Johnny Cash, quickly found a bottle of tequila somebody smuggled in and was soon drunk as a lord. As it turns out he was one of the lucky ones.

*Kieran later went on to win the award for Best-Dressed Teacher. It was a remarkable accomplishment for a man who spends most of an average day wandering around the house hungover in his boxers.

Much to general dismay, the 'free booze' portion of the evening was not due to start for several hours. Apparently this was due to some unfortunate events the previous year, in which one foreign teacher became so uproariously drunk that he attempted to dance on the VIP table where all of VUS's grandest poobahs sat. When he was politely instructed to sit elsewhere, he threw a glass of wine at the president and lit a tablecloth on fire. Some, probably most, of the story is apocryphal, but in any case the promise of 'open bar at the Sheraton!' turned out to be misleading.

By the time the ceremony started, half the crowd was drunk anyway. Expats are nothing if not adaptable.

~

Bringing the ruckus.

Eventually the lights dimmed, a diminutive MC in shimmering ao dai traditional dress beckoned us to our seats, and the ceremony began. A team of fierce-looking drummers in red garb rushed the stage and began to beat the everliving shit out of some impressively large drums. Seated close to the stage, I could feel the percussion rattle my ribcage as my organs bounced about like bingo balls at the old folks home.  Their performance was kinetic, enthusiastic, and about 75% too long. There are only so many ways to hit something with a stick before it all becomes a bit repetitive.

When the drummers finished and their instruments were whisked off the stage by a team of burly roadies, our pretty little MC grabbed the mic and uttered the seven most horrifying words of any corporate event: 'And now, a word from the President.'

Synergies! Pro-active solutions! Market research optimization!

The President of VUS is a very nice, soft-spoken man with a decent tailor and an extensive vocabulary. He is also either impressively deaf or remarkably mellow, because at no point during his lengthy speech did the room ever approach 'silence' or even 'a dull roar'. Apparently the entire back of the room was now NASCAR-fan drunk off pocket-bottle whiskey, and even the President's occasional pauses and exasperated chuckles did nothing to quiet the noise. Those of us in the front breathed huge sighs of relief when his speech came to its merciful conclusion.

Next up were the awards, and there were many to bestow. Like most Asian countries, Vietnam puts great importance on appearance without any of the 'it's what's inside that counts' doublespeak bullshit we favor in the West. So it was fitting that the first people called to the stage were the recipients of the prestigious 'Best-Dressed Teacher'. After sitting through 45 minutes of 'increased market saturation' and 'cutting-edge technologies', we were finally given something to ogle.

Looking good, kids.

And ogle we did. This was my first formal corporate event and thus my introduction to an unsettling reality of adult professional life - a lot of your coworkers clean up real, real nice. People you would normally describe as 'nice' or 'cute' or 'friendly' suddenly appeared as glamorous, radiant sex-deities. And as you'd expect, eyebrows were raised.

Other, less interesting awards for stuff like professional dedication and exemplary performance followed. Luckily, there were many 'repeat' winners so the flow of eye-candy continued uninterrupted. Beauty and success, as always, go hand in hand. At this point however the audience had thinned out considerably as dozens of teachers flocked outside to chug convenience store booze and chain-smoke in the parking lot. There are few occasions as mind-bogglingly boring as an awards event in which you receive no award.

Awards were followed by dinner, a scrumptious buffet of expensive meats stuffed with other expensive meats, diabetes-inducing piles of frosted chocolate desserts, and finally the free wine. Unfortunately I was completely unable to enjoy any of this, as I was immediately whisked away from the table for dance practice.

I probably should have mentioned this before. The most eagerly anticipated/dreaded portion of the evening was set to follow dinner: the teacher dances. Every year, teachers from every VUS campus semi-volunatrily squeeze themselves into ridiculous costumes and shake their asses in front of a sea of camera phones while the crowd works itself into a ravenous, inebriated frenzy.

Along with five other teachers, I was performing a traditional Vietnamese dance about a boy from the South who falls in love with a girl from the North. One member of our group, a part-time dance instructor named Gary, was comfortable performing on stage, but the rest of us were decidedly not. We found a bottle of champagne, passed it around, and started practicing our steps in the kitchen. My partner, a beautiful Vietnamese girl named My (which means 'beautiful' in Vietnamese, coincidentally) looked ready to puke all over her traditional silk dress.

We waited backstage and watched as the other campuses performed their dances, still handing around the champagne and applauding wildly after each performance concluded without any major falls or wardrobe malfunctions. There were Bollywood bellydancers, a hula-salsa number, and a surprisingly good rendition of 'Love Potion #9'. When the MC called out for the 'teachers of An Duong Vuong' I slapped hands with Jenny, a sweet little South African girl on my team, and got ready to rush the stage.

A taste of India.

Shakira is always great.

Our performance went off almost perfectly, and our co-workers flooded the stage to snap photos once the music stopped. Holding flowers and grinning like idiots, we buzzed with relief, friendliness, and mid-rate bubbly. All of us were hugging and shouting and generally feeling like the world's most successful buffoons.

Bassy (Netherlands) and Jenny (South Africa) performing a traditional Vietnamese dance.

 Eventually the stage cleared and we retreated to our backstage post, still basking in the post-dance euphoria. Then came the highlight of the night: the sexy dance.

Aptly named.

Three female Vietnamese teachers slipped onto the stage and proceeded to blow the place out. Even the normally reserved VIPs were hooting like freshmen at a toga party. I turned to Gary, one of my fellow An Duong Vuong dancers, and whispered, 'Thank god we didn't follow THESE chicks.' The girls were dynamite dancers with absolutely no reservations about delivering an all-out performance. Quite a few monocles were dropped during that dance. When they finished, they had to remain in costume for over an hour as hordes of partygoers clamored to take their pictures. I'd been told of the famous risqué Teachers' Day dance before. After witnessing it with my own eyes, I can vouch that its reputation is well-deserved.

~

After the sexy dance there were a few more performances, some closing remarks, and a polite variation of 'you don't have to go home now, but get the hell out'. A tidal wave of giddily hammered teachers streamed out the doors on their way to the bars, eager to continue their buzz and maybe make a pass at the cute co-worker they'd been eye-banging for the past five hours.

I left the Sheraton long after the main crowd, weaving through the extravagant lobby with my buddies John, Rob, Kieran, and Scott. We were on our way to a casino at another swanky hotel, where we'd heckle waitresses for free drinks and moan about the lack of $5 blackjack tables. We were sheep in wolves' clothing, and determined to capitalize on all the misguided respect our suit jackets would get us.

We didn't last too long at the casino, even though most of us were winning. Our friends were waiting at a nearby bar, and we soon wandered over for another round of hugs, toasts, and slurred pickup lines. The hours passed, the morning came, and I stumbled out into the street to catch a taxi home.

As I left the bar I saw a guy I recognized. Hunched over by the curb, decked out in glorious pinstripes, he was holding his tie behind his head as he puked all over his brightly polished shoes on the trash-strewn Saigon street. He rose unsteadily, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and shouted, 'Happy Teachers' Day!' He was grinning from ear to ear as he stumbled back into the bar.

'Yes', I thought as I waved down a cab.

'Happy Teachers' Day indeed.'

Class(room) Warfare: Korea vs. Vietnam

When I first moved to Vietnam, people asked me a lot of questions. Most of these could be answered without much thought - 'Where are you from?' (America), 'What's your job?' (teacher), 'Does this look infected to you?' (dear god, yes). After these pleasantries were concluded, my new friend and I would smile politely and sincerely regret ever making eye contact with each other. Eventually we'd both feel uncomfortable and attempt to start a new line of conversation, since we were obviously going to be stuck together until the bar/coffee shop/teacher's lounge finally closed/burned down/threw us out for loitering. And at some point before that happened, we'd touch upon the subject of Korea.

Not the one with nukes and belligerent Kims. At least not the ones on CNN.

If my fellow conversationalist was a teacher, he or she would usually ask something along the lines of, 'Do you prefer teaching in Korea or here in Vietnam?' Then I would chuckle, gaze thoughtfully out the window, and silently curse myself for ever leaving the house. 

It's not as if this question is hard to answer. Teaching in Vietnam is much, much better than teaching in Korea. And it's not even close. But I found it hard to answer truthfully without sounding like a callous, cynical turd. And since most of our daily lives (and by 'our' I mean 'mine') are spent in the vain effort to conceal what callous, cynical turds we really are, a question like this is the Edward Snowden to our PRISM database of douchedom.

But screw it. Let's go all Anonymous on this bitch.

~

When I first arrived in Korea, I had absolutely zero teaching experience. I arrived in Seoul at 8pm, caught a bus to Cheonan (the first city I lived in), and hitched a ride from my school's owner to my new apartment. By this time it was almost midnight, and after putzing around my closet-sized digs for a few minutes I passed out from a combination of jet-lag, nervous excitement, and three donuts (a welcome gift from the owner, who apparently believed jelly Bismarcks are every white person's favorite bedtime snack).

Seven hours later, I was in the classroom. And that's when I realized that I wasn't actually going to be teaching for the next twelve months.

English instructors in Korea are half teacher, half babysitter, half amateur psychologist, and half hostage negotiator. Please direct any comments about my shitty math skills to Al Gore. Anyway, I hadn't been in the classroom for more than a minute before a little girl started crying and hysterically babbling in Korean. After frantically conferring with my TA, who spoke as much English as your average pencil case, I discovered the cause of Sara's angst: a boy had accidentally knocked her eraser off the table.

Jesus. Christ. It was going to be a long year.

I soon learned that the emotional fragility of Korean kindergarteners is matched only by their inability to tolerate any type of physical discomfort. This was made crystal clear during a game of 'Duck, Duck, Goose'. To make a long, boring story somewhat shorter and (hopefully) more interesting, a boy we'll call 'Tony' tapped a boy we'll call 'Jimmy' lightly on the back of the head. If you're familiar with the game, at this point Jimmy should have leapt up from his chair, chased Tony around the circle, and then given his teacher a $50 gift certificate to Applebee's. Instead, Jimmy fell on the floor, clutched his head like he was JFK in Dallas, and screamed louder than any boy should reasonably scream if his testicles aren't caught in a bear trap. All I could think was, 'You pussy...'

But this being Korea, I had to pick him up and take him to the front desk, where the hatchet-faced receptionists fretted over him like nervous mothers and pacified him with so much candy that he immediately developed Type II diabetes. Later that afternoon, my Korean co-teacher received a phone call from his actual mother, who (I am guessing here) had roughly fuck-all else to do with her day besides harass underpaid twenty-year-olds over the phone. My co-teacher was practically in tears when she finally hung up. And we never played 'Duck, Duck, Goose' again.

It's not as if such unbelievable sissiness is limited to the young'uns, either. During my second year in Korea I was teaching in a city called Yongin, which is an overgrown suburb of Seoul home to Korea's most obnoxious nouveau riche. I worked at an academy called LCI Kid's Club, renowned for its batshit insane mothers and criminally incompetent management. Here are two almost-verbatim transcripts of conversations I had with the Korean staff during that year:

Exhibit A: The Dance

Korean Manager: Amy's mother is upset because she is at the end of the line for your class dance.
Me:  Amy was absent for a week. Everybody else learned the dance while she was gone.
Korean Manager: Yes, but her mother is angry. Amy wants to be in the middle.
Me: Can you tell me why?
Korean Manager: Amy is very sensitive. Her mother does not want her to feel bad. You must change the dance.
Me: But there are only four days before the performance. What about the other kids?
Korean Manager: Amy's mother is upset. You must change the dance.
Me: Has anyone ever told you that you are a fucking idiot?

Exhibit B: The Test

Co-teacher: Chloe's mother is upset with her test score. It is too low.
Me: What's wrong? She got 84/100 on the test. That's not bad.
Co-teacher: But Chloe is a smart girl. Her mother wants her to get the high marks. 84 is not OK for her.
Me:  Fine, no problem. She'll do better next time.

The following month...

Co-teacher: Chloe's mother is upset with her test score.
Me: *genuinely surprised* But why? She got a 96! That was the best score in the class?
Co-teacher: Her mother thinks the test was too easy. She is angry at you.
Me: Next time just ask Chloe's mother what score she wants, and I'll give it to her.
Co-teacher: Ummmm...ahhhhh...you must only give her the good score to make her mother happy.
Me: Fuck this place.

~

After two years of dealing with this parental nonsense, I was ready to leave. I had absolutely no idea what teaching in Vietnam entailed, but as long as I wasn't coddling spoiled little shits in Burberry pea coats I would be happy. So you can imagine my delight when I learned that teaching in Vietnam involves absolutely zero interaction with mothers. Or fathers, for that matter.

Korean kids attend English class, on average, between 3-5 days a week. Vietnamese children, on the other hand, only have two days of class each week. This might not seem like a drastic difference, but it is. Sweet infant Jesus, it is...

~

'Wow...that kid can take a punch.'

I uttered those words to my Vietnamese TA during our 8 year-old class's break time. I had just watched a small boy take a running start and deliver a series of vicious blows to the back of his friend's head. It looked like this. Much to my surprise, the victim of this vicious bushwhacking didn't immediately start bawling and begging for attention. Instead he turned around, chortled happily, and aimed a kick at his assailant's face. I was so delighted that I didn't bother trying to break up the fight. I always tell my Vietnamese students that they are free to beat the shit out of each other during break time, as long as they behave during class. And I'm a man of my word.

The physical toughness of Vietnamese kids was the most obvious difference between them and the Koreans, but I soon grew to appreciate the lack of helicopter parenting even more. This might seem odd when you consider that every Sunday the hallways of my school are choked with daddies toting Doraemon bags and wiping their kids' noses (even the older ones), but Vietnamese parents seem content to let the teachers teach without imposing their own agendas on the classroom.

Granted, this is probably due in large part to the fact that most Vietnamese parents don't speak a lick of English, and in many cases didn't finish high school (as explained to me by the helpful TA during our break-time Thunderdome). But whatever the reason I am quite grateful for their lack of interest or ability in critiquing my teaching style.

I am making certain assumptions here, but from what I've seen Vietnamese kids are allowed to fend for themselves far more than Korean children. And I believe they are far better off for it. Not only do they soon learn to defend themselves from sudden roundhouse kicks (a more frequent hazard than you might think), but they develop thicker skins as well. My teenagers in particular can be absolutely ruthless when razzing their classmates, but I've never seen a kid cry in class. Or even mope, which is especially surprising coming from that notoriously angst-y demographic. It's as if Tom Hanks personally delivers a pep talk to all the nation's maternity wards so they learn it young.

~

Having said that, teaching in Korea wasn't all bad, and teaching in Vietnam isn't all lollipops and unicorns.

While having the same kids in a class for five consecutive days can be a repetitive nightmare at times, Korean kids do learn to speak English fairly well. I had a lot of fun with some kindergarten classes; at one point, I had a group of twelve students convinced that being a hobo was the greatest thing a person could achieve in life. I also taught a unit on animals entirely in Steve Irwin's voice, which led to a bunch of Korean six year-olds running around yelling, 'Crikey, lookout mate! It's a toi-gah!'

I'd make that face too if I had to stick my thumb in a snake's butt.

Also, I was stuck with some of these little monsters for eight months at a time. And some of them turned out to be pretty neat. I'll never forget huddling my first LCI kindergarten class together on our last day for a group hug. For once I was glad of their runny noses and constant facial leaking, because all the tears and snot blended together and nobody could tell I was crying too.

I still miss these little hobos.

I only spend one day a week with my Vietnamese students, so we don't get to bond quite as much. For the most part I'm quite OK with this - there's something very, very nice about showing up for two hours a day, dropping some knowledge on the little bastards, and then going about my merry way. I don't have to deal with their neurotic mothers or wipe their butts after they shit themselves (happens more often than you'd think in Korea, though I always delegated to the Korean staff, often with a diabolical grin as I delivered the poop-stained child directly to their desks). Sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when my favorite students would invade the teachers' room to climb on my lap and steal candy from my desk. The feeling usually passes quickly, but I never entirely forget.

It's true that Vietnamese kids don't speak as well as Koreans - in many cases, the kids can't string two words together unless they're parroting the teacher. So the ego-boosts that teachers in Korea get from their students are non-existant. Nobody writes letters saying, 'I love you teacher,' in that endearing childish scrawl. But every once in a while they'll surprise you...

Sir Mix-a-lot must've sown some wild oats over here.

And having dealt with the Tiger Mothers from Hell, that's good enough for me.