About One Week Left!

Soon enough I'll be leaving for Vietnam. I've taken care of my vaccines, my hotel accommodations, my first aid kit, and more. However, I'm beginning to feel a bit nervous. Very shortly, I will be thousands of miles away in a strange land with a different culture. It will be an adventure for sure, but it makes me think about many things such as what I'm leaving behind in Seattle!

So what's left for me? Well, I need some more dressy clothes for my teaching duties as well as some good hot weather wear. I've also been doing some brushing up on English grammar skills.

Finally, the weather is amazing in Seattle right now! What a wonderful way to end my time here!

(A picture my dad took in Gasworks Park this morning)

Preparing for the Big Trip!

I thought I would give a little more information on my preparation. I can only give so much information before I'm actually in Vietnam, but here we go...

On July 8th, I'll leave for Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). I'll have about a week to explore the city before I have to work hard for my teaching certification course. That CELTA certificate will pretty much be necessary to get a reputable job in Vietnam from what I hear. One might wonder, "Why not go to a country like South Korea? You just need a bachelor's degree to get any job!" That's true, but I'm not interested in going to South Korea. I want to go somewhere off the beaten path somewhat, and there are many things I find fascinating about Vietnam, such as the culture, the food, the weather, and the architecture.

I ordered my plane tickets weeks ago. It cost about $800 one-way through ANA. I'm supposed to have my tourist visa prepared about a week before I leave. I'll get it processed and finalized when I'm in Ho Chi Minh City. I almost have my hotel accommodations set up. Let's just say the US dollar goes quite a bit further in Vietnam than it does here in Seattle...

At some point I will need a work visa. For that, I need to get a criminal background check and university diploma certified by the Secretary of State in Olympia and then by the Vietnamese Consulate in San Francisco. The college diploma part has been easy so far. I just made a copy of my diploma with my scanner, got that notarized by the UW, then certified by Olympia. The background check is a little trickier. It will need to be less than 2 months old by the time I get a job in Vietnam, so I've been holding off on getting that done as long as I can. I might have to get my parents to send me some important documents by the time I'm already overseas.

Finally, there are minor things that are quite important like strong sunscreen and bug repellant:

Here's the climate for HCMC.

I think you can see why I've got the weather on my mind for the area.

On July 8th, I leave for Vietnam. As some of my friends and family are interested in what I'm doing over there, I've decided to start a blog to keep track of things that I'll see. My plan is to teach English after I earn my CELTA (ESL certificate). It's certainly a bit of a risk to travel to a strange country without a job already lined up, but I feel that it's worth it!

My name's Thomas. My background is in chemistry, but after a good amount of deliberation, I decided that I'm not really interested in pursuing a career in that field at the moment. My long-term goals are unclear right now, but in the mean time, I'd like to see the world. For years I have wanted to travel, but I wasn't quite brave enough to actually take things to the next level. As a result, I haven't left the US in over a decade. That's all about to change.