Bangkok adventures

Happy Sunday to everyone,

Now it is time to talk about my Bangkok adventures.

The flight there went great, Koh Samui airport is very small and has barely any air con so I would recommend very early or late flights. Otherwise, plenty of water and light clothing.

Bangkok was fantastic. It is a very big and vibrant city, plenty of time wasted in public transport, unfortunately. We stayed at my friends house north of central, the apartment had a roof top pool and a gym. We napped most of first day and then spent the evening by the pool, Bangkok looks even better when you look at the lights in the dark from the 25th floor.

Next day we spent walking around central and meeting up with other friends. We planned to climb this very high abandoned building in central but unfortunately, it wasn't possible at the time. In the evening we got caught in a rain storm, but we fought through in a pursuit to find a karaoke bar. With no success in that, we found a fantastic Korean buffet with hot stoves on the tables so that we could cook our own food. Amazing food, great company and all flushed down with Korean dinner wine.

I spent Thursday and Friday organising my visa for Vietnam. It all actually came through on Friday and I managed to get my visa through an express service! It cost me 400 bath more but I imagined that I would spent that coming to the Embassy one more time. Everything started rolling very quickly from receiving my visa, I immediately booked my flight to Hanoi and organised my departure. An advice: be careful of taxi drivers in Bangkok. I took a tuk tuk from the train station towards the apartment. The driver spoke no English and dropped me completely off route in a middle of some market area. From there I found a taxi driver to drive me home, he left me sitting in a car in a petrol station and took all the small alleys to make the journey longer. Half way I had to speak to someone who knew English on his phone to discover that the driver went to the toilet. At the end I had to mime to him that I cannot pay for time spent  sitting in a car at the petrol station. I took me two and a half hours all together to get home ! We spent my final evening at the rooftop again followed by home delivered pizza.

I wish I could say that my flight went smoothly but it was everything but that. At the check in my cabin bag was three kilos too heavy. The worker was having none of it even though I tried my best to explain to him that I'll just put in hand bag and then it won't make a difference. After a hassle I removed my stuff from the cabin bag just to get it weighted and moved it back straight after getting it labelled light enough... This was the least of my problems, at the immigration the officer thought I had overstayed my visa because I had stamps on my passport from the visit to Thailand last year. So I have removed from the scene to some side room to get it all sorted. After all this I managed to find my way to the correct gate. The flight was quite bumpy and very uncomfortable.

Due to obvious reasons, I was very happy once we landed to Hanoi. I had a car service waiting for me to take me to my hotel room. Hanoi is extremely beautiful and the hour ride towards central and my hotel was so calming. I arrived quite late so it was already getting dark, I went to get some sushi for dinner and walked around a little bit. My area is very lively and the traffic is crazy. The Youtube videos on how to cross the street are quite accurate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiwMQPZQvsg I had an opportunity to do this once, it was more like a need, and I am quite surprised how well it went ! I was looking around in desperation at first but once I hopped onto the road there was no way but forward. 

Alive and well I returned to my room to enjoy my sushi. My bed has neither mattress nor a blanket. Luckily, I have a small blanket with me. The air con and the bed were making plenty of sounds all night. Other than that, I slept well and am now going to go for a little adventure out in the streets of Hanoi ! 

Wish me luck, 

Mira 

The rooftop pool

Final day at the beach in Koh Samui

Rooftop gym, I do Kayla Itsines' bikini body guide programme #bbggirls 

The contrast visible from a shopping centre in Bangkok

The abandoned building we wanted to climb 

Stranded in the rain behind 7eleven 

Street food 

Smoothies are the best in Bangkok

My first meal in Hanoi from a sushi bar called Mizu 

Final day at Koh Samui

Happy Monday everyone,


Greetings from Koh Samui. Today is my last day on this island, I am flying out tomorrow morning with one of my new friends. The course finished officially on Friday, though I barely had any work during the final week. We had a little graduation ceremony Friday afternoon where we received our certificates. I was actually quite shocked to find out that I received an A+ as one of best students on the course along with a glowing recommendation. Very happy about this !

One of our favorite restaurants had promised us to make us a farewell dinner, it was absolutely amazing. They had prepared us a massive, beautiful buffet with delicious food. Some of us were leaving early Saturday morning so we had some sad goodbyes after dinner. The rest of us headed to Chaweng for a celebratory night out. Chaweng is great during the weekend: we bar hopped and at the end went to watch a fire show at the beach!

Saturday was full of goodbyes. Most of our group headed to Bangkok in the afternoon. I and my New Yorker found the course newbies so we headed back to Chaweng with them for the day. We spent the day at the beach and had some lovely lunch. It always feels good to be able to provide some advice and help, the newbies were full of questions. Saturday night was quite chilled, we went for dinner and a swim.

Sunday started with a lovely continental breakfast and the beach, followed by some packing and more goodbyes. In the evening my local bar owner friends provided me with a goodbye bottle of wine and a lovely chat. I headed to Chaweng with a friend on a scooter, a good night drive.

The purpose of my trip to Bangkok is to go collect my invitation and visa to enter Vietnam from the Vietnamese Embassy. I believe that I am flying out to Hanoi around Friday, it takes about five working days for the invitation to come through, mine was sent last week. We will be staying at our friend's house in central.

What you need to start working / to go to Vietnam; you should have your original degree papers with you, a police background check from your home country, your TEFL certificate and a copy of your passport data page. I highly recommend having a paper and an online copy of all of these documents. Just to be safe, I would also send copies of these documents to your emergency contact. I also have certified copies of all of these papers, however, it is likely that the Embassies and your boss will wish to certify their own copy. It might save you some money if you leave the certification for them. It will help you enormously in your job hunt if you have all your papers ready and set. You also need an updated CV and a cover letter directed to teaching jobs. In order to get a visa to enter Vietnam you need an invitation letter sent by your boss, this is the same for China for example. Usually companies provide their employees with all the necessary paper work for a work permit and a visa.

That's all for now, I am headed to the beach for my final day !

Best wishes,


Mira

Finised my course and landed a job

Morning,

A quick update  while my course friends are finishing our last test.

I have just finished the last test, I finished my practical part of the course on Monday and have now handed in all my work. So technically I am now done with the training course ! Monday's practical went very well, feedback shows a good improvement throughout the course.

I had a job interview with a Vietnamese firm on Monday afternoon. The interviews here seem quite laid back, one of the reasons behind this is the lack of employees, especially western. I was offered a great contract; eight months with six weeks of paid holiday ! Of course I accepted. The job is based in the beautiful city at Ha Long Bay. It will take approximately a week for them to process my papers and send me the official invitation to enter the country. This invitation works as my starting visa to enter Vietnam.

I personally chose to apply for Vietnam over Thailand for many reasons. Firstly, I have traveled in Thailand before and have now been here for a while; I got greedy and decided that I wish to see more of the Far East Asia. Secondly, especially with the issue of being non native English speaker, I found the application process for Vietnam much easier (I only made a FB post and got a lot of interest). The pay in Vietnam is mostly the same as in Thailand but the cost of living is a lot less. Vietnam is a beautiful, fascinating country that, for me, seems quite undiscovered yet and I cannot wait to explore it.

The last couple of days have been quite rainy and cloudy at Koh Samui, but I am hoping it will brighten up now. I have the rest of the week off so I am hoping to do some hiking and maybe rent a scooter to go around the island. One of my friends from to course is headed to Cambodia tomorrow, he took a job at an orphan village where all the students are infected with HIV, so we are having a good bye party tonight ; food market and some chilling.

Looking forward to officially finishing the course, our graduation ceremony is on Friday. I cannot believe how quickly a month has gone by ! I have found this course very useful, I am much more prepared for my job and have enjoyed my time here. I recommend this course to all of those who wish to come work anywhere in the Far East Asia ! I have not agreed with everything or understood the reasoning behind some things but overall my experience has been very positive.

Loads of love,

Mira