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Before leaping into the unknown bubble of Sai Gon, I remember thinking that my expectations were just that: to leap into the unknown. To leap into an unknown city with unknown people. Into an unknown environment propped with unknown sights, sounds, tastes, and smells. My year living in Sai Gon definitely opened my senses to an array of new stimuli.  Sights: a new lens Living in a new place is like stepping behind a new lens. This new lens opens your eyes to the colors and shapes of a new place. I don’t know exactly what I had expected, but for some reason I was surprised to find that Sai Gon is a city. The central business district, District 1, is a commercial hub with business buildings, shopping centers, and nouveau cafes that could be transplanted from any western city around the world. Stepping into the “comfort-bubble” of one of these places, you can escape to a feeling that you could be anywhere in the world. In wider explorations of this city, however, your eyes dance across the contrasts of new and old, rich and poor.  Neighboring a modern, clinical, western-style shopping centre you might step into an old market housing delights from fresh flowers to embroidered shoes, from “fresh” frogs and eels to beaded bags, from incense to locally woven silk materials, from gold and sterling silver jewellery to $1 CD’s, from the latest hi-tech gadgets to locally crafted lacquerware, and more. And more. These markets, in themselves, titillate your senses with their spectrum of colors, textures, sounds, aromas, and tastes.  Traveling down a street your eyes might dance from a modern high-rise apartment block to colonial French-style terrace houses, from temples and pagodas adorned with colorful mosaics to store after store selling bags, from a lady wearing a conicle hat sitting at the side of the street selling sticky rice to a lady in a miniskirt flying past you on her motorbike, from amodern store pumping out dance music to drivers napping in their cyclos or balancing sleep on their stationary motorbikes. The colors that jump out at you include the aquas and yellows of

At the age of 23, Emma Trenorden applied for a year-long assignment in Vietnam as part of the Australian government’s overseas aid program: the Australian Youth Ambassador for Development Program. During her year, she worked with an NGO called Education for Development (EFD) which provides support to local services for disadvantaged children. She says, "I feel fortunate to have had this experience living in the exciting city of Sai Gon, and I have been inspired through my work with EFD. You can find out about the great work of EFD through their website, below. My experience with EFD also encouraged me to pursue work in the area of international and community development. I now face the challenge of reacclimatizing myself to life back in Brisbane, Australia (where the streets are incredibly quiet after the constant buzz of Sai Gon). You can email me questions at emspiral@yahoo.com.au. . Additional Resources EscapeArtist.com search engine  Travel Links  Living Overseas  Unique Lifestyles  Maps Of The World  Hospitals Worldwide  World Reference Desk Articles on Living Overseas  International Jobs Marketplace  Offshore Real Estate Quarterly  Education for Development website  Contact Emma Trenorden  .

Exploring the city, you might lean back in a cyclo to enjoy the tourist route of streets lined with hundred-year-old tall trees. You might choose to hail a motorbike driver to zip you around the neon-lit streets at night. Cruising around on a motorbike you can weave in and out of the busy streets, down backstreet alleys, and through laneways with colored walls and overgrown with vines that hint at a Mediterranean town.

Sounds: magnified and layered

If the move to Sai Gon was like stepping behind a new lens to the eyes, then sounds were magnified and more layered to the ears. A CD of my bike ride to work each day would be composed of a constant yet erratic beat of a hundred motorbike engines. Mixed into this would be the rude squabble of horns and the floating Vietnamese chatter of people on the streets. Layers of sound upon this might include the programmed Lambada tune of a reversing vehicle, a passing sample of a Vietnamese pop song as I ride by a street café, the distinctive clip-clop rhythm of a percussive instrument played by a boy selling noodles, another percussive sound – this time a rattle of a boy riding by who offers massages, or the tunes of Kenny Gee emanating from a traveling scale that will tell you your weight for $1. At first, these foreign sounds produce a mix that is both comical and chaotic. With familiarity these sounds mean more to you: the Lambada warns you of a reversing vehicle, Kenny Gee asks you if you want to be weighed just as a boy’s percussive clip-clop asks you if you want noodles and a rattle tells you where you can get a massage. The street sounds of Sai Gon are indeed alive to the ear.
 

Tastes and smells to entice and to repulse Like sound, tastes and smells also seem magnified. In Vietnam, you have plenty of opportunity to try new tastes. For meat lovers there’s frog, eel, snake, snake wine, kangaroo, deer, dog, scorpion, liver, duck embryos, field mice,  intestines, and more – pretty much name it. For vegetarians there’s lots of stir fried veggies and rice or noodles. Some of the Buddhist cafes have big plates of healthy and delicious servings of veggies plus innumerable variations of soya products -including great imitations of meats and seafood. You can definitely eat well in Sai Gon. Part of eating well is the social element of being able to eat meals out on the streets with friends - and so cheaply.

Whenever we had visitors, we’d take them to a lane nearby that specialized in Vietnamese pancakes - savory thin pancakes usually with prawns, onions, and pork fried in them that you then roll in lettuce leaves and dip in a sweet chilli sauce or a stinky shrimp paste that we endearingly referred to as “green bum sauce”. For work lunches, we established a favorite café with delicious vegetarian dishes of not only Vietnamese style rice or noodles with veggies but also Mexican, Indian, and Italian dishes. Not to mention their shakes of seasonal fruits including mango, banana, sapodilla, and the exotic dragon and star fruits with ice, milk, or yoghurt. While I considered these meals cheap (a plate being less than $1), I think most Vietnamese people would consider eating regularly at such places quite extravagant. These meals are expensive if you compare them to buying a bowl of noodle soup from the boy with the clip-clop instrument for half the price, or a baguette with meat and salad from a lady at the market for a tenth of the price, or a serving of sticky rice (choose from orange, purple, green, and other colored ones) from a lady with a basket on the side of the street for a fifteenth of the price.
 

Not only did we have a regular lunch date at work between 12 and 1pm, but we also had daily rituals of morning and afternoon drinks. We would take in turns of going out to the “drink lady” in the alley who would cool our mouths in the hot, sticky afternoon or morning air. We could choose from a black coffee with ice, coffee with ice and condensed milk (I too cringed at first but by the end of my year somehow became addicted to this daily treat), tamarind nectar with ice, a hot or cold lemon drink, and the world-wide temptations of coke and other softdrinks. When talking of drinking, I must mention the places that specialized in draft beer where waiters/waitresses provide a replacement drink when you’re still half-way through your current glass. Luckily (or perhaps not, if you’re thinking of your liver) a glass of beer will only cost you less than 50c (sometimes as little as 15c). While there were many tastes and aromas to please the senses, there were also those that repulsed. I found it difficult to walk through the section of the markets that sold frogs which were still squirming but which had been skinned. The suggestion of intestines or fried balls on the menu also pushed the wrong button in me (although, rationally, I know that

eating one part of the body should not be any better or worse than another). Sometimes when walking the streets, the smell of urine-blanketed walls also led me to either block my nose for as long as I could or to cross the street as quickly as I could. It was often my nose that reminded me of the poverty that still exists in this city. Because of the wealth that has crept in through modern buildings, shops, cafes, and bars you can sometimes forget that there are still lots of people living in poverty on the streets.  Similarly, while traveling across bridges, you would sometimes catch the pungent odor of waste-polluted rivers. 

Everyday moments

Reflecting on my past year of living in Sai Gon, it’s not only the surprises and discoveries, but simply the everyday moments and rituals that made the experience so special. Everyday moments like the afternoon golden light that danced sideways down the alley outside the school where I worked – bringing out the blues and reds of the building at the end of the alley and putting a soft touch on the children playing (and fighting) in the alley. Rituals such as my crazy ride to work (or hailing of a motorbike when I just couldn’t face the traffic), the morning and afternoon drinks from the “drink lady” in the lane at work, or a stop at the “sticky rice lady” for breakfast on the way to work. Then there were also the daily surprises like the first sighting of Buddhist nuns dressed in their grey robes as they zipped by on their motorbikes, of two people on a motorbike balancing a fridge, or one person balancing a tray of food as he maneuvered his way through the already crazy traffic. My days were full of discoveries of things like the “clip-clop percussive boy” selling noodles, funny Vietnamese expressions like “Troi oi!” (sounds like choy oy) which means “oh my god”, and of course discoveries of lanes, markets, and places to eat, drink, or play. 
 

Travel opportunities Living a year in Sai Gon provided me with opportunities to explore other parts of the country. I was lucky to see some amazing sights including the Mekong River, Ha Long Bay, and the mountains of Sa Pa. Here are fragments of emails that I wrote about my travels to these places: … Colours of Mekong I had held off on doing the "expected" tourist trip to the Mekong. And was pleasantly surprised when I finally did it. Again, the Mekong was a place of contrasts. In some parts there were well developed towns. In other parts people living in basic huts. What surprised me most was the lack

of river banks - people built, whether brick buildings or grass huts, right up to the river's edge. And of course there's so much life on the river itself. I could have taken 10 rolls of film on just the boats and canoes (and the colorful people with them). Colors upon the river's brown skin. Browns and greens casually floating along. Reds and yellows speeding by in a blur. Purples, blues, and pinks gracefully drifting by......upon the river's brown skin …

… the Sea Labyrinth of Ha Long Bay
Our first day out on the water was a wet, drizzly, foggy day. This only added to the mysticism of the place as we navigated our way through the fog in short-sight and through silhouettes of mountains rising up through the sea in far-sight. Ha Long Bay would make a great setting for a fairy tale – with a labyrinth of mountain islands that emerge through the clear, turquoise waters. On our last day, as we headed back to the mainland, the sun enabled us to see the depth of the water’s turquoise color …

… the mountains of Sa Pa
Paint a backdrop of green mountains kissing white clouds. Across this backdrop, splash reds, blues, oranges, purples, pinks, and yellows of the people. The ethnic tribes of these mountains can be differentiated by the eye by the clothes (and colors of the clothes) and jewels they adorn themselves in. Striking are the bright headscarves, woven jackets, bags, and other textiles of the tribes …
 

Encapsulating a year It’s difficult to write about your experiences of living in a place for one year because it means, to some degree, that you need to encapsulate your overall experience into smaller fragments and stories to share with other people. My days in Sai Gon were filled with opportunities to discover and experience new things. My days were also filled with everyday rituals and habits that formed over time. Living in a place – even if just for 365 days – leads you to doorways of day-to-day discoveries that travelers only catch glimpses of. One of the most significant elements of my time in Sai Gon were the friendships that I formed – with the people I worked with, lived with, and with other travelers I met along the way. Because you are in a new place, seeing the surrounding world with fresh eyes, you are also

able to meet people with fresh eyes. I treasure the different friendships I made – whether they were in short with people traveling by, or my friendships with the people I lived and worked with, or with those I made with people I’d always see out in the clubs and other fun places to play.

Sai Gon was a leap into an unknown bubble. You never know just what that unknown bubble will hold for you, but at least you can be sure that it will present doors to new discoveries for you.
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