Bangkok + English Tutor + Three Months = Vietnam

This might be filed under Only Interesting To Me, but it’s short so it can’t hurt to share.

On Wednesday Spectra and I are going to Vietnam for a week. We probably would have visited Vietnam on this trip regardless, but we’re going this week in particular because our three month VISAs are about to expire, so we need to leave Thailand to get them renewed. In travel parlance this is called a “VISA run.” I’m not sure when I first encountered this expression but it’s safe to say I was closer to 30-years-old than 10.


This trip means I’ll miss a week of tutoring. I’ve been telling my students and giving them extra homework, should they choose to accept it, to do while I’m away. Over the course of Saturday and Sunday I worked with four kids whose ages are 12, 13, 14, and 14. The conversations went exactly the same way with all of them.


I said, “Hey, I’m going to be in Vietnam next weekend…”


Before I could finish he or she would reflexively interject some variation of the combination of “VISA” and “three months.” Something like, “Your three month VISA run.”


Pin is 12, speaks English like I do French, and barely tolerates my existence (the power behind her silent resistance of my presence in her life is equal parts admirable, frustrating, and adorable). When I told her, I’m pretty sure all Pin heard was, “sdk feaon fo VIETNAM oinwe aqena,” and she LIT UP. You would have thought she’d just been granted a wish. Come to think of it, she may have: “Please, Buddha, make the farang go away, even if only for a little while.”


The first time a kid made this Vietnam/VISA connection I thought it was funny. The fifth time it was spooky.


So many English speaking foreigners turn up in Bangkok on three month VISAs, and wander through these kids’ lives, that all it takes is the mention of Vietnam for them to connect the dots. What notions does this hodgepodge procession of ragamuffins and bohemians conjure up for these kids? Is there a general consensus? Is it positive or negative? I’ll ask my most precocious kid about it next time I see her and report her utterances as though from on high.


In the meantime I’m doubling my efforts to find ways of conveying to these kids that I care about each one of them, for the nascent, evolving human individual each one is. That I’ve had the honor of getting to know each one, if only a little bit. I will do this the only way I know how: t-shirts! I’m going to look for t-shirts in Vietnam that say My Tutor Claims To Care About Me And All He Got Me In Vietnam Was This Stupid Shirt. I’ll let you know if it moves any of them to tears.

As do I, my friend. As do I.