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Last weekend was one with several farewells. First my friend Robyn went back to Australia. Robyn had been the manager of the Learning Skills Unit at RMIT and was one of the first people to befriend me when I got here. We often got together at the Indus Restaurant, near my apartment for veggie samosas and Tiger beer, with ice! Bia da. We discovered many shared interests and things in common. She and her husband, Tony, had lived in British Columbia for a while. They lived and worked in Papua-New Guinea for a few years. They also bought a large acreage in Australia and lived on the land for several years, before she started working for the University of Canberra. I met Tony when he stopped in from Canberra on his way to Nepal and he ended up getting in touch with Thaman in Katmandu. Robyn has decided to take some time off work for a while in order to travel and visit people in Eastern Europe and then possibly volunteer in Mongolia. We had a get-together on Saturday for Indian food and Tiger beer with ice. She was in the midst of packing after a hectic week of training her replacement, but still seemed rather calm and serene, as is her wont .^_^.I was sad to see Robyn go, as she has contributed much to RMIT and has been a good friend to me. I will miss her and wish her all the best.
On Sunday it was time to say goodbye to Miss Bé, who has been working at Bobby Brewer’s since before I started working at RMIT. She was not able to make enough money in Ho Chi Minh City and so her mother wanted her to go back to her hometown. We had been talking about going out to dinner for a while and so it was a now or never situation. We went to a well-known restaurant called Bánh Xèo Ăn Là Ghiền, which turned out to be a pretty nice place.Bánh xèo is like a very thin crepe or pancake made from rice flour and coloured with a bit of turmeric to make it quite yellow. The pancake is cooked in a large wok. (Bánh Xèo Ăn Là Ghiền must have 20 woks on the go at any given time.)Just before the crepe is folded, some fillings like shrimp, sprouts, mushrooms and the like are tossed in and then the crepe is cooked for a few more seconds before it is served. Accompanying the dish is a huge plate of leaves ... lettuce, mint, basil, mustard, and cumin that you wrap pieces of broken off bánh xèo in before dipping into nước mắm, or fish sauce.It was all very good and we had some little muffin-y things as well as some gỏi cuốn ... the delicious Vietnamese fresh spring rolls. Yum. At any rate, I was particularly sad to see Bé go home because she had always been so sweet ... not only to me, but to all the RMIT staff. She said a lot of teachers said a special good-bye to her.She said she was very happy to have so many nice people saying good-bye. I think she liked her farewell celebration which concluded with a trip to a coffee shop after dinner. That was really nice too. Ngoc Anh knew of a place called Một Thuở which was really great ... lots of old memorabilia and a piano/violin duo later on. Ho Chi Minh City has a lot of these wonderful coffee oases, where people come and chat and work on their computers or have dessert and coffee. Some people stay a short time and others stay for hours ... I don't know how the coffee shops make any money, but they are really neat places. I wish Phu My Hung had one.I made Bé a photo album of some pictures I had taken and promised to send her prints of the ones I took at our party, as she doesn’t have a camera. She was really happy with that ... she is such a lovely, lovely person and I will really miss her (and the hearts she used to put on the top of my lattes). More people leaving ... quite a diaspora in some ways ... but I think teaching abroad is like that. People really do come and go. Best wishes to them all. Tạm biệt còn hẹn gặp lại.