Doc’s Den - News, Info, Blog

Announcement of Passing: 

Fellow ESL Teacher and friend Ramsey Montgomery has passed on.   I had met Ramsey over 3 years ago when I was working at SEAMEO and have spent many a time laughing along side one of the best conversationalists anyone could know.  I will know more tonight when his family arrives in Vietnam, but thought I would send out word to anyone who knew him and best wishes to his family during this tragic moment.  An accomplished author and dedicated teacher that will be missed by many who knew him as friend and family.

A wikipedia page has started at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsey_Montgomery if anyone has any additional facts of this colorful personality that they wish to add.

The picture above is Ramsey on the morning of my wedding last year. The pic shows 12/31/06, but it was actually 1/1/07 since it was taken with my mom’s camera which was still set to the time and date in the US.

Ramsey was the one person that really was gung ho about SaigonESL when it started up and people at work figured out that it was me.  I remember the morning that we were between classes and he found out.  Immediately he convinced me to run home after class and snag HanoiESL.com and VietnamESL.com before anyone tried to jump on the coat tails of it’s initial success.  Could never thank him enough for that advice. 

I grew up on the Choose your own Adventure books and was both suprised and in awe that his father put the series together.  Ramsey helped author a few of the books later in the series.  I have most of the original first run copies back home in the states from when I was growing up.  Loved them and still do to this day.  Used to write choose your own adventure programs on the computer when I was learning to program and those books had a direct impact on my life over 20 years before we met.  Small world.

My brother in law is studying in Vermont at the moment.  Ramsey is from Vermont and offered wonderful stories and advice to my family over the last couple of years that has been invaluable to this day.  Beautiful countrysides and pure mountain air for sure.  I feel blessed to have had a chance to talk with him before I had travelled there for the first time a few years back.

God bless and smooth sailing for your new adventure… Aaron

Though this is also posted on the forum, I thought that I would add this to the blog section as well since it has been some time since I have posted in here.  This is for anyone which would consider heading to Nha Trang for vacation.

I would recommend flying there first of all. From Saigon it is around 1 million dong round trip and the flight is about 40 minutes each way. Bus and train are definately cheaper, but your looking at at least an 8 hour journey and I don’t like to waste my day like that. From the airport, buy a taxi ticket inside the terminal into town for a fixed 200,000 VND and the return trip is only 150,000 VND. You step outside the terminal and try to gra a taxi and you are going to get gouged on price. There is also the bus which is much cheaper, but I have never taken it.

Once in town, the area around Hung Vuong and Biet Thu are the more reasonably priced hotels and only a block or two from the beach. Lots of travelers frequent this area and is where most of the travel companies are located also. Tran Phu is the main beach road and your looking at spending a small fortune to stay in any of those hotels.

Scuba and snorkeling is one of Nha Trangs biggest draws. The islands are plentiful and the reefs are fairly shallow. I have seen many posts on eslcafe slamming the diving in Vietnam, but I did take my first dive ever and thought it was amazing for only 30 bucks. More experienced divers may have a different opinion, but for the inexperienced, it is quite a rewarding option and the waters are nice and warm. I made my dive to about 7 meters (21 feet) and did so without a wetsuit. Quite relaxing and plenty to see.

As far as the beaches, Nha Trangs (both the main beach and a few on the islands) turned out to be a little disappointing. Either too rocky or steep drop offs. Heading north about 50km though to Doc Let beach is one of the best beaches I have ever visited. White sands and fewer people, in addition to walking out nearly a mile from the beach and it was still only white sands. Have to get there by car, bus, or motorbike. That beach is the one to go to though. There is the public beach and the white sands resort just a small walk down the beach, if the resort doesn’t look too crowded, just take a short stroll and hop in the ocean down there. We did and got towel service without much question since I was a foreigner.

In town, I also visited the Oceanographic Institute near the docks and tickets were 15,000 VND a person. Inside you will find many aquariums with a large assortment of corals, anemone, fish, and sharks that I was really interested in seeing now that I am running my own reef tank at home. My lonely planet pointed me towards heading to Tri Nguyen Islands to seeing their tanks if I was impressed with the institute, but it turned out to be lacking for the extra price of getting on the boat and paying admission. Nice large tanks, not so much to look at.

The hot mud baths are worth a visit and on the edge of down heading out 2 thang 4 street. But before you consider going, make sure you book a single or double tub or you will be swimming in a large group pool of mud with a lot of Viets. The hot mineral spring pools are also included and quite relaxing too. The only thing I found to avoid was the regular swimming pool which was hotter than both the mud bath and the mineral springs combined. I was looking to cool off, not to cook myself.

If your into hiking, I definatly would check out Ba Ho (three lakes) which has a 10km hike up a river and waterfalls until you reach the 3 lakes on the perch. It is a bit outside of town, but all of the companies take groups out there all the time. I actually went there to have my wedding pictures taken back in early December.

Due to the rediculous prices, I would pass on VinPearl Island. Easy to spot and now easy to get to by cable car (50,000 VND each way), you are looking at 20 USD/person just to walk around and 50USD per person to swim on their beaches for the day. Never even looked into staying overnight and decided that it wasn’t worth the trip with so many other places to visit. If you want to head to the main island, I would recommend booking a boat to one of the beaches on the west side of the island which has the same water, better private atmosphere, and much better on the pocket book.

Just this morning, 15 school locations in HCMC and 20 school listings in Hanoi have been updated or added.  I would like to thank those who continue to help keep the listings up to date for everyone who is actively searching for work in HCMC and Hanoi.  Saigon ESL and Hanoi ESL continues to grow and be the largest ESL repository on the internet for Vietnam’s foreign teachers.

Any additional teachers or expats who are in Hanoi that would like to contribute to the listings for the smaller schools up there, please drop me a line at lizarddoctor@saigonesl.com and I would appreciate any help that you could offer.  I have been combing HCMC in an endless search to keep up to date, but I don’t have the luxury to head north to Hanoi any time soon.

Nearly 30 schools have either been added, moved, or expanded into new locations in the last few days.  The changes can be found by looking around in D.1, D.3, D. 10, D. 11, D. Tan Binh, and D. Phu Nhuan in HCMC and Ba Dinh and Tay Ho districts in Hanoi.

Also the base District Pages have been given a temporary fix just to allow the pages to be searchable with the new IE 7.0 and Firefox browsers without breaking too much.  It seems that the yellow background didn’t want to follow the new parameters I had set before and the red links present were drown out.

To name all of the individual schools and point out the various changes individually is way too time consuming and to be honest, after working on them for the last 3 hours, I doubt I could list them all right now anyway.  If our interested, just have a browse and see if there is anything your interested and you may find something new.  Time to head out for some lunch and let the mind reset a bit. 

I was going through some of the school information updates and driving around HCMC to see a few locations for myself and saw one BIG change to the scenery.  The infamous Mr. Lee who owns London School, LEE(S)CAM, Outerspace, Premier, Elementary School of North America, High School of North America, and Super Youth has done it again.  Instead of just upgrading his terrible businesses, he just moves one name out of a building and puts another one of his scams in there as a replacement looking to appear to the Vietnamese as a new school.  I just cross referenced some of the addresses and phone numbers of various schools already identified as crap and (yes there they were) the buildings just changed faces.  I had already approached the HCMC PD about this before and looks as if I need to do so again.  It’s one thing to be screwing teachers, but since SITC bailed out, the local authorities are frowing on scamming the local population of parents and students.  Any self respecting teachers would do best to avoid these store fronts.

As you may have noticed, the new home page has been uploaded.  If you thought that I couldn’t cram more onto one single page without having to scroll down, think again.   For a Vietnam snapshot, welcome Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to HCMC for a little motorbike tour of town.  I would like to thank them and their visit for giving my students some extra English inspiration to talk about all kinds of entertainment and movie topics that they otherwise wouldn’t have been thinking about.  Guess that George Bush just didn’t have the kids attention during his visit only a week before.

On other site news…

I have downloaded the new internet explorer 7 and have been testing new site pages in firefox as both seem to break the site when using pages that have yet to be updated.  Most troubling is District 1 and District 3 which seem to lose a lot of school links getting drown out in the red sea.  The links are still there, but you need to scroll over them to see them.  Once my new district template is finished and adaptable to all browsers and districts, those pages will be the first to be uploaded.  Other pages that have only simple cosmetic damage in the other browsers will have to wait until more major problems and links are fixed.

VUS and VAS have multiplied by snagging most of the old buildings from SITC.  Locations of those schools have been updated.

The School Districts and School Listings pages within Saigon ESL and Hanoi ESL will now be slimmed down to help present more direct school searching without having to scroll down the page as many were before.  Below are listings information and disclaimers that apply to pages within the School Listings.

School Districts Pages:

Due to the nature of the ESL Industry, some schools may have moved, closed, or contact information may have changed.  These are some of the locations that have been identified to hire foreign teachers.  A map link has been provided to help you find the general location of the school or business in this area of town.  If a school hires teachers by subject, you will find a (Subject) next to the link.  A (BACKPACKER) school is a school which usually will hire anyone regardless of certification, experience, age, or nationality.  These schools have lower pay rates and/or have serious administration problems.  A (BLACKLISTED) school is either in serious financial trouble, commits errors in regards to pay, or is known to mistreat teachers or violates Vietnam National Law in regards to foreign workers.  Work for them at your own risk!  A (CAUTION) school has been identified as a school that you may want to do some further research and inquiry as some teachers have experienced some level of problems with the school not qualifying that school as either backpackered or blacklisted.

School Listings Pages:

School information pages have been compiled from school visits, business cards given, user support, and various Vietnamese newspapers.  Any additional comments available are from teacher experiences and should be considered before choosing to pursue work at those schools.  ALL CELL PHONE NUMBERS have been taken from business cards given or newspaper advertisements.  That means they have been made public for business use only.   Do not use them for personal use!  If contacting a school officer by cell phone, please send a text message first as a courtesy as they may be teaching a class or in a meeting. Some information may have changed, be missing, or is incomplete.  Information will be updated as it becomes available.

Most schools rarely hire in January and February because of the Tet Holiday.  All schools in Vietnam will close for Tet!

Disclaimers:

The School Listings section of the site is meant to be a collection of teaching contacts and there is no guarantee that a school will give you a job.

Contracts from schools in Vietnam tend to strongly favor the school, while the laws of Vietnam strongly favor the employee.  Remember that both wages and work schedules are negotiable at most schools and be wary of signing any contract for long periods of time.  It is your job to negotiate with them as all good businesses will negotiate.  If the school is inflexible with your contract, they probably will be inflexible with you in the future.

Saigon ESL and Hanoi ESL itself is not a job recruiter.  Be wary of sites and people that request your personal information or work history unless they provide some sort of proof that they have obtained a business licence for recruitment in Vietnam or your personal information may be at risk.  VietnamWorks.com and HRVietnam.com are two of the largest headhunter agencies recommended that do occassionally have listings for teacher related job openings.  Please do not forward your resume to Saigon ESL and Hanoi ESL as many have done in looking for employment as it will be deleted.

The old version of the News and Info section of Saigon ESL and Hanoi ESL is currently being pruned out and will be replaced with this News, Info, Blog titled Doc’s Den.  It is not complete by any means, just thought it was time to start establishing the new links.  You may run across the old pages still, these will be slowly phased out during the coming month.

Weather has been removed as the weather in HCMC (Saigon) is nearly always the same temp (90’s F during the day, possibly down to 70’s F at night).  Only thing that changes is wet and dry.  Hanoi can experience cooler temps in the traditional winter months of the Northern Hemisphere.  The time for all of Vietnam is +7 GMT.  As of this posting, that translates into 12 hours ahead of EST.

The Photo Gallery link that was once there is now available from the Home Page and News Feeds will be incorporated here soon when I have some time.

The former Quick News Archive has been posted here to keep the information that would be lost once the old page is pruned from the site.

Saigon ESL/Hanoi ESL Quick News Archive

(Feb. 10, 2006) One backpacker school has opened a new branch and all branches of SITC are officially closed under the same curcumstances as the ones in HCMC. A new image library has been added to the site. (Jan. 24, 2006) 3 Schools have closed and/or moved location. CEC/CLC, AULI, and SITC have all closed in HCMC. In addition, all SITC locations in Vietnam have been Blacklisted as regional branches are also reported to be closing and the owner has fled with student fees and teacher paychecks. Updates in Our Forum.

(Dec. 20, 2005) A new School Listing in District 1, HCMC has been added in addition to 4 new links in the Other and Global ESL sections of Teacher Resources. Continued site development is underway…

(Dec. 8, 2005) 3 new schools added in Saigon ESL. New links in the Teacher Resources from supporting sites and the ESL Junction Vietnam Job Feed has been added to the News Feeds page. Recent spam attacks by an unknown and unhappy school staff member has been cleaned up and the forum board is again fully active. 

(Nov. 16, 2005) At least 30 new resource links are available in Teacher and Vietnam Resources. Additional Site Links have been established with other websites. 2 schools have closed within the last 2 weeks. Site statistics concerning unique users and country breakdowns have been made public and are access able from the Home Page.

(Nov. 6, 2005) Saigon ESL has merged with the newly created Hanoi ESL to better serve the Teachers of Vietnam. Site modifications have been made in all areas to improve load speeds and much information, including a growing Hanoi School Listings section and a Hanoi City Maps Collection, has been added to the resources for the Vietnam ESL Community.

(Oct. 27, 2005) 5 new English schools have been added within the School Listings. Site graphics have been modified for faster load times.

(Oct. 26, 2005) 5 new schools added which provide classes in French, German, and Japanese for interested parties. Advertising sections again restructured to better fit advertiser interest. Still no word from IPS.

(Oct. 18, 2005) IPS has been officially BLACKLISTED in the School Listings due to illegal taxation of teachers and failing to respond before Monday the 17th.

(Oct. 14, 2005) Finally, I have found a solution to TESall’s Global Live News Feed issue and have also added their Blog News also. New various links have been added and can be viewed on the Link Xchange Page. Continued Site construction is underway

(Oct. 11, 2005) Due to an illegal taxing of teachers at IPS schools, the are now under BLACKLIST review. Nearly 50 new links added to teacher resources in the last week.

(Oct. 4, 2005) Inclusion of Saigon ESLs own Top ESL Resource Sites has been added to the Home Page and more resource links in the resource sections have been added. A conference chat room is available, but it is in a test phase.

(Sept. 26, 2005) Home page re-design and editing. Inclusion of new resource links and forum information

(Sept. 24, 2005) HCMC Resources has been uploaded and available to users. Links in Teacher Resources and some School Contact Info has been updated from info provided by users. Special thanks to Steve Feld - John F. Kennedy High School - New York, for his contributions of links added to the Teacher Resources section. All sections of Saigon ESL are now active.

(Sept. 15, 2005) VATC has paid back the ‘back tax’ and removed from PROBATION status on Saigon ESL.

(Sept. 12, 2005) 5 new school listings, updated Vietnamese Language Page, Current VATC discussion topic reopened. Thank You for visiting 9-11 memorial pages.

(Sept. 11, 2005) Remember…

(Sept. 10, 2005) Saigon ESL has been linked to Top Teachersites, Mark’s ESL World, Top Sites for Teachers, and Sites for Teachers as the staff of these websites has deemed Saigon ESL Free Teacher Resources worthy of the linking. My many thanks. MekongESL is the first member of the Active ESL community which serves Vietnam to be added to the Our Forum Home Page. Please visit these sites for additional Free Teacher Resources.

(Sept. 9, 2005) Due to VATC agreeing to pay back the ‘back taxes’ which it applied to some teachers, they have been downgraded to a PROBATION status and will be given ample time to comply with their statement. Please view the threads on www.eslcafe.com, www.mekongesl.com, and in Our Forum as to the current status concerning the VATC incidents of the last week.

(Sept. 6, 2005) 8 New school listings and 3 updates to school listings. Expanded postings in the Blacklist/Backpacker section of the forum. Post on concerning VATC listing direct contact info. VATC is now aware of the letter concerning their policies! Learning Vietnamese, translation service, and the addition of 3 more language centers in the School Listings.

(Sept. 5, 2005) Due to recent actions against teachers at VATC, Saigon ESL has placed VATC on review until Sept. 7, 2005 at which time with no response or inadequate response from VATC will result in a BLACKLISTED update to the School Listings.

(Sept. 3, 2005) Saigon ESL Links Exchanging has begun exchanging other Webmasters to include their banners. Also sections of Advertising have been modified to better serve site management.

(Sept. 2, 2005) Link X-change is now available for ‘business’. (This is a FREE service to other websites who prominently show one or more Saigon ESL banners on their sites. If you are also a non-profit educational resource site, you can also be added to the Teachers Resources section by text link). Only the Home Page Advertiser will appear near the top of the page and links below will be reviewed for appropriate content before being displayed. Advertising sections have also been restructured for better service and less clutter.

(Aug. 31, 2005) Due to technical difficulties, the Forum has been rebuilt and looks to be running smoothly again. My apologies for any inconvenience.

(Aug. 19, 2005) Currently HCMC Resources and a few sections of Job Resources are incomplete. School Listings is an ongoing process and new schools will be added as I find their contact information.