Expat Life In Vietnam: Living Through the Pandemic in Saigon

New Beginnings in Vietnam

​[00:00:00]

Niall: We started on new jobs. We had a new dog, a new apartment. Adri was moving into more of a teaching management position, I was doing my dream job, which was helping give education to underprivileged children through organizing volunteers. And the biggest project was raising money from all the staff and other people in Vietnam to build a school in the Mekong Delta.

And we managed to do that in our first year. I think it was 70, 000 we managed to raise. I got to go down and see the school from the beginning, the middle and the end. Adri was a big part of that. We did lots of events. That was just one of the proudest days of my life, was going down and seeing that school being completed.

And so moving into the beginning of 2020,

we had already planned a massive trip away, we’d planned it

for over a year really, we’d been saving up.

 And then what happened? [00:01:00]  Welcome to Alright, don’t do that either, I guess. It was bothering me. Can you move over a little bit? No,

Adrie: I can’t. Oh, you

Niall: literally cannot. I

Adrie: mean, unless we’re sitting face forward, but that’s not very natural.

Niall: No, okay.

Let’s see if you can move a little bit. Alright. I don’t know, because these arms are in the way. Yeah. Can I sneeze now? Okay. Ready? Ready.

Special Guest Introduction

Niall: Welcome to an extra special episode of A Vietnam Podcast with me your host and a very special guest today. She is the number one fan of A Vietnam Podcast and has been since the very beginning and is the one that pestered me the most when we took a hiatus to start again.

She has been my wife for 11 years, with me for 13. Somehow she puts up with me and somehow she loves listening to this podcast. And my guest today, who’s going to help me tell this story is my beautiful, amazing wife, who you’ve all probably heard me talk about a lot, is Adria Lopez Mackay.

Hello. Now, Adria hasn’t been, why am I calling you Adria?

Your name’s Adria. Adria hasn’t been on the podcast since season three, which we did. from government mandated quarantine. So that was all the way back in 2020, as everyone will know. So in the last episode, I shared our story of how we ended up in [00:02:00] Vietnam. So we went through how we came here as backpackers, did the teaching course.

then ended up signing a contract, becoming an English language teacher and then staying in Vietnam. And we got up to the first two years, up to where we had a dinner with all of our friends and family and told them, surprisingly, that we weren’t actually leaving for Oman, that we were going to stay. So in this episode, we’re going to pick up from where we left off.

And if you If you haven’t listened to that episode, then please go back, but you don’t have to, but jump back to the last one and check that one out. But in this episode, we’re going to cover the next two years. So what happened next? And again, if you are, if you are a regular listener of this podcast, you will know that one, my memory is shocking.

And two, I normally just default to saying, Oh, Adrian probably knows the answer to this. So I just thought, well, for this episode, I’ll just get you on. And then you can correct me in real time. Um, Or I’m going to let you actually talk for once and let you tell the story. So we did the dinner. We [00:03:00] decided we were going to stay in Vietnam.

We weren’t going to leave for Roman. Then what happened next?

Adrie: Um, what happened next? Well, once we decided to stay

Niall: Stop one second.

Adrie: It’s too far away. Yeah,

Niall: you need to move closer. Well,

Adrie: I can’t because you want me to be closer to you. I don’t want to be closer because then my head’s bigger than yours.

Niall: Okay, stay where you are.

You just need to make it closer. Alright, go. Oh, now it’s, now it’s in the way of your face. It

Adrie: was always in the way of my face.

Niall: Oh.

Adrie: I’m too short.

Niall: There we go.

Adrie: Okay.

Niall: Let me just check the levels ’cause yeah, it was really quiet. Oh, Charlie,

Adrie: I haven’t said anything yet.

Niall: I know you just hear it was quiet. We speak normally.

Adrie: Hello? I’m talking now.

Niall: That’s the headphones I’ve turned up. So go talk now. Just say something. Hello?

Adrie: I’m talking now.

Niall: You talk so quietly. What do you want me to say? Just talk

Adrie: a bit louder. I am talk. I feel like I’m talking normally. Do I need to speak louder for the podcast? I mean, you shout ’cause you can’t hear yourself.

Well, yeah, I don’t.

Niall: So tell us what happened next.

Adrie: Um, w

Settling Down with Biscuit

Adrie: ell in 2018, when we decided that we weren’t going to leave, I think there was a bit more permanency to our life. Well, we decided we were going to be a bit more permanent, I guess I should say. And with that came, obviously, new jobs. We both got new jobs and the decision to, the most important decision, to get a dog.

Is that what you were waiting for? Well, yeah, I was waiting for that. Yeah. I mean, that was a crazy decision. We’ll just share with people. Cause a lot of people I think want to know this, this series is titled the Expat Life. And why did we make a decision to get a dog and why shouldn’t you make a decision to get a dog?

Well, it was a pretty big decision because one, our previous life was in New Zealand. So to get any animal, anything bigger than a backpack to take back to New Zealand is going to be a massive decision. And a costly decision as well, because it’s, um, expensive and quite difficult to get animals into New Zealand.

So we really had to talk that through. If we’re going to commit to getting a dog, getting a cat, I don’t think we ever wanted a cat, but getting a goldfish, whatever, how would we get it back? We wouldn’t just abandon it here. So that was something we had to think about. And then. And then should I start?

Niall: We may start again.

The whole thing? No, no, just from where you are. Cause one of the things that, so what we try and look at is, we’re going to chop it for like reels and stuff and so if you’re way far over it makes it like really difficult. And it makes it, you know, with Fidenum, it was pretty cool when I showed that company yesterday with Fidenum.

that we shot, we cut to the other person to like one speaker and then she was like, Oh, you did this with one camera? And I was like, Oh yeah. And she’s like, wow. So like they were really impressed with that. So you didn’t have to tell me. I know. Sorry. All right. So let me just ask that question again. The whole question.

No, can I just pick

Adrie: up from where I was? You can edit it. Yeah. Cool. Um,

Niall: expensive to go back to. I know. I know.

Adrie: So yeah, it was a big decision because if we were ever going to leave, we needed to make the right decision. We needed to be sure that we were capable of taking an animal out of the country. And then two, I think, um, at the time, maybe it seemed more pronounced, maybe it’s less so because pets are becoming more commonplace here or, [00:04:00] or more part of the family.

But six years ago, I mean, dog, uh, snatching was a big thing. It still is a big thing. And you really have to be careful. Dog poisoning’s on the street. Um, and yeah, dogs get snatched for, you know, Dog meat, um, cause that still is consumed and, um, also to be resold at the market for pets for money. So I think we were quite serious about it and we just put the feelers out to, um, the family that my sister got her dog from.

And we weren’t really serious about getting one in January, but that’s when we kind of asked January, 2019. And yeah, the family came back and said, Oh, we actually have a litter of puppies that will be ready. That is ready now. And this is around Tet, uh, 2019. So we asked to see and meet the remaining two or three puppies.

I think there was one girl and two boys. [00:05:00] And we expressed that we are mostly probably interested in a girl. And rather than them, Bring all three puppies for us to see. They only brought the one and the one was Biscuit. So we saw her and of course we were like, Oh, we’ll just go look. And then we’ll decide.

We probably won’t decide to get her. I’ve said, I mean, if you’ve ever met a puppy that could potentially be yours, like, what are you going to do? So we met her and then we decided we would get her and she was such a little weirdo. She still is. Um, and then. I think after meeting her, like two weeks later, she came home with us, or maybe a week and a half later.

Niall: Well, at this point we were living in Phu Nhien and as I’ve mentioned before, so we’ve lived all over Saigon. So we started in D7, as I mentioned in the last episode, then we moved to District 4, we lived there for a couple of years, and then now we got these new jobs. Again, our life changed quite dramatically.

We moved to Phu Nhan, which is just kind of north of District 3, just over the canal. [00:06:00] Really nice neighborhood, but quite busy. But the nicest apartment we’ve lived in, in Vietnam, in Saigon. So we kind of moved up a step and it was dog friendly as well. So we were in a completely different, living environment to where we’d been two years earlier.

We had new jobs that were better paying, better benefits, things like that. And the funniest thing you skipped over though, is we messaged your sister asking, where did you get your French Bulldog from? Cause she has a French Bulldog and Adri has been obsessed with food, with French Bulldogs for years. If you look at her on her Instagram feed, it’s just all French Bulldogs.

And we mentioned to Arika, where did you get barley from? And she immediately was like, Oh, Hey, the family have a new leader. Blah, blah. And she was like so excited for us. And I don’t think we probably would have gotten Biscuit if it wasn’t for Arika’s enthusiasm, but also exactly like you said, we met Biscuit, fell in love.

Obviously we went to Fukuoka for Tet and then we came back and picked up Biscuit and she’s been part of our life now for how long?

Adrie: Well, she’ll [00:07:00] turn five in November. So she was three months old when we got her in January, 2019.

Niall: So it is a big decision to get a dog as an expat. We weighed up the, at the time, again, so everything right now is pre pandemic. There was a way to get her back to New Zealand. We would have to live in a rabies free country for six months. So we were looking at South Korea or Taiwan.

Um, then we would take her back to New Zealand after six months. Cause Vietnam is literally like the least rated country on the ratings list of So even though she has a rabies vaccine, doesn’t matter, she is in Vietnam. So we looked at all of that and we thought, yep, that’s fine, we don’t know how long we’re going to be in Vietnam, no idea at that point.

But we got Urqa because we wanted Urqa, partly because of Urqa’s enthusiasm, because I don’t think we were really 100 percent ready, but Urqa was just so enthusiastic that we were like

Adrie: I think we were ready. We’d already decided, okay, we’ll look into getting a dog. I just don’t think we thought it would happen that quickly.

And part of the [00:08:00] rush maybe to get a puppy that was part of that litter was because when Eric was getting Barley, they had wanted a dog for a few months or more than a few months, but had been looking seriously for a few months. And they had to wait quite a bit for the, the pup, uh, the dogs to breed. Take the mom for the mom to get pregnant, for the puppies to be ready to leave.

So like they had to wait quite a long time. And I do remember thinking like, well, at least we don’t have to wait. We’re expecting to wait a little bit, but I guess we’re getting her now .

Niall: That’s right. I forgot about that. So. We started on new jobs. We had a new dog, a new apartment. Adri was a teaching coordinator, so moving into more of a teaching management position, which suited her perfectly.

I was doing my dream job, which was the community network manager of ILA, which was their social corporate responsibility department, essentially. So we’re helping give education to underprivileged children through organizing volunteers. And the biggest project was raising money [00:09:00] from all the staff and other people in Vietnam to build a school in the Mekong Delta.

And we managed to do that in our first year. I think it was 70, 000 we managed to raise. I got to go down and see the school from the beginning, the middle and the end. Adri was a big part of that. We did lots of events. Ariko was a big part of that as well. And That was just one of the proudest days of my life, was going down and seeing that school being completed.

And so moving into the beginning of 2020, uh, we had already planned a massive trip away, we’d planned it for over a year really, we’d been saving up. It was meant to be three weddings, three Saturdays, on three continents. So we were going to fly to New Zealand for my cousin’s wedding, see all our friends and catch up, then we were going to fly to America for Adri’s cousin’s wedding, catch up with all her family, then fly back to Saigon for our best friend’s wedding, Lewis and Kim, who’ve been on the podcast.

As you probably know, Lewis created the music that everybody loves more than the podcast, but I’m not bitter about that, um, and would come back. So three weddings, [00:10:00] three weeks. Three continents. And we built the school and we were already starting to do fundraising. We were going to try and build two schools that year.

Then year after three, everything was going great. Adri’s job was going really well. She was being lined up for a promotion for what they call an academic manager at the time. And then what happened?

Adrie: um, where should I start from?

Niall: With the lead ups to lead up to the pandemic.

What did I miss? We can, I’m talking off the mic right now.

Adrie: Although you just skipped like a whole year, I guess.

Niall: No, I know, but I’m, this was going to be mostly around like,

Adrie: I don’t

Niall: remember much happening in that year. A lot

Adrie: happened, but anyway, I claimed to have found Fancy Pen, you went to Scotland. I mean, we don’t need to say that.

Yeah, yeah, there’s so much,

Niall: obviously, right, so.

Adrie: So the last

Niall: thing I said is what happened. The answer is the pandemic. I know

Adrie: that. Um. Okay. Yeah. S

The Onset of the Pandemic

Adrie: o then I guess it was the end of 2019 where there started to be kind of little hints in the news that something was happening. And I think we started to get them maybe a little bit earlier than other parts of the world.

Cause we’re in Vietnam, which shares a border with China. Um, not much of anything, but you, you see these things from time to time, like bird flu, swine flu, and you’re kind of like, Oh yeah. That’s there. You don’t really think too much of it. I remember I wasn’t teaching a whole lot, and in January, um, 2020, again, approaching Tet, Lunar New Year, um, and I wasn’t teaching a whole lot, and I remember sitting in the, in the teacher’s room with my other teaching [00:11:00] coordinators, and I just kept reading the news, and just kept reading the news, CNN, various other sources, obviously.

Asia related sources. And I was like, I think this is like becoming a thing. Like this is like a thing. And at that time we hadn’t booked any travel for Tet holiday for the Lunar New Year holiday because we were going away in March for this big trip around the world. And, um, I think maybe that’s kind of why I was maybe paying attention to it a little bit.

And then we decided to kind of last minute to book a trip to Japan. Um, like two weeks before, something like that. And we didn’t have a lot of time. We had like five days. And I remember asking people like, do we have enough time to go to Japan in five days for our first time? The response was like, uh, maybe not, but we booked it.

Thank God. Best decision ever, because it was our last international travel for like two and a half years after that. Oh, well, besides our ill fated trip to

Niall: So depressing, [00:12:00] but go on. Our

Adrie: ill fated trip to New Zealand, um, which we will get to soon. So yeah, it just quickly ramped up. And then because Vietnam was very, um, what’s the right word?

Just very on top of, of. the pandemic before, well, the, the virus, I should say COVID before it was really even named. They made the decision at the end of January to cancel, not cancel schools, but, uh, move schools online. Some of the younger schools, I believe at that time, end of January, early, early February were, um, like the kindergartens, they were closed.

And then, Language centers like the school I was teaching at and schools were, and universities went online. Um, and so yeah, that started pretty early for us in 2020. I remember weeks, months later talking to people around the world and they’d be like, oh yeah, when schools close, I’m like, yeah, we’ve been living this since January.

It’s been a thing. [00:13:00] Um, Yeah,

Niall: well, I remember my most cringe moment ever and I’ve had a lot of cringe moments in my life, but one of them was obviously I was doing stand up comedy at the time and I remember it was probably late January, packed comedy room and I’m like, this is like an overreaction, right?

Like they’d already gone online with some of the schools and I was like, does everyone else think it’s a big overreaction? And everyone was like, yeah, everyone’s clapping and cheering. And yeah, it clearly was not an overreaction at all and the best decision ever. So. The pandemic started raging or the virus started raging, but in Vietnam it was quite, it was slow to, slow to take off, so to speak.

What happened with our decision? And how did we end up in New Zealand as we’ve alluded to? How did we make that decision? And then what happened when we come back, we came back?

Adrie: Yeah. So like I said, really monitoring the situation, paying like very close attention to it. Um, it wasn’t because Vietnam was so stringent about the very early on closing the borders.

Not really [00:14:00] closing the borders, but monitoring them very carefully. They might’ve closed the Chinese border pretty early on. I can’t really remember. I think they did.

yeah. So monitoring the situation a lot.

And then Erica, obviously working at RMIT, being on the leadership team there, she was getting some kind of inside information and, and kind of letting me know, you know, this might happen and then it would, or this might happen and then it would. Um, but. At the end of February, we were leaving on March 10th.

That was when our flight was. And we looked at kind of where at that point COVID was a thing. And obviously by that point, it had been pretty rampant in Europe. Um, it had kind of made it started to make its way to the U S and because of Vietnam’s reaction early on, we knew, I think, going into our trip that possibly we weren’t going to get to the U S.

Um, we thought we can go to New Zealand. Let’s see how it goes. At the time there was no virus in New Zealand, there was no virus in Australia. Um, a few cases in Japan, there was that big cruise ship that was off the coast of [00:15:00] Japan. Um, and so we thought we’ll take our chances. If worst case scenario, we’ll come back from New Zealand and we might get put in quarantine.

Because I think, kind of, they were starting to put people in from Europe. that had traveled or been in Europe in quarantine, government quarantine.

Niall: And if I can just jump in there as well.

Niall: The thing was it hadn’t been declared anything official. There was no official pandemic or anything like that. So I remember afterwards people asked us like, why didn’t you cancel your trip?

And it wasn’t that simple because it hadn’t been announced, right? So if we’d have lost like thousands of dollars, which we did end up losing in the end, we got some of it back, but we ended up losing a lot of money anyway. But at the time it wasn’t so simple to just cancel your trip. As Adri said, Australia and New Zealand were pretty much COVID free.

I think it was. 5 cases or something like that. So it was

Adrie: like almost covid

Niall: free, not even right. So we had this like really difficult decision to make. Are we going to go? We said, right, let’s go to [00:16:00] New Zealand. We’ll make that first wedding. We’re probably not going to go to the US and then we’ll get back for the third wedding.

So we got on the flight.

Adrie: Yeah, well I’ll just add to that is we, as we’ve mentioned have biscuit and at the time we were using trusted house sitters. So we actually had a house sitter. My pleasure. apartment. She was American and she is American. And, um, you know, so she was relying on our place to stay during the three weeks that we were planning to be away.

So yeah, there were a lot of different factors that played into our decision to, to go. I know before we left, we kind of had a lot of like three strikes that probably should have made us stay, but. Ultimately, I, despite the stress and anxiety, I’m glad we went because we got to see family and friends. But so we got on the plane to New Zealand.

Wow. We got on two separate planes to New Zealand. I forgot

Niall: about that. I just quickly tell them about that.

Adrie: So, we had a, [00:17:00] I think a, quite a long layover in Australia. Is that right? Yeah, that’s what it was, yeah. And we knew, we didn’t realize until quite late that we needed, because it was like over the eight hour threshold, we didn’t realize until quite late that we needed a visa for Australia because we were over the transit amount of time.

So we both applied for visas online, I got mine immediately, and Niall applied for the wrong one. And yeah. His took like days and days and days and then it got rejected because it was the wrong visa So we went to the airport. So it was too late to apply for visa. So we went to the airport and We tried to rebook him on another flight that would have a shorter layover so that he wouldn’t need that transit visa or that whatever visa

Adrie: So that was one of the flags we were like, well, maybe we shouldn’t go and so that happened so He got on the flight.

So we did, we did take the same flight to Australia, but when we got to Australia, we had to part [00:18:00] ways. Um, and Neil booked the later flight and got to New Zealand like three hours before me, I was sitting in the airport in Sydney and Neil’s like, ah, car rides just picked me up. We’re going to have a beer.

I’m like, I was so annoyed. I was like, I’ll just get on my flight now. Um, yeah. I forgot where we were going.

Niall: Well, so we got to New Zealand eventually. We hung out with friends and family. Not family, sorry. So we got to New Zealand and We hung out with friends because obviously we’d lived there before they put us up.

We had an unbelievable time. We got to our storage unit, which was so exciting. We got to like, go through and find some things. It’s exciting for me, if anyone who knows me or follows this podcast, I’ve put on a bit of weight, a bit of muscle in the last few years. So half my clothes that I pulled out of storage didn’t fit.

So that was exciting. Um, but yeah, so we had a great time in New Zealand. And I remember, I think it was the Tuesday night. It was Liverpool played Atletico Madrid, I think if I remember rightly, and it was like 50, 000 fans there. And that was the [00:19:00] 19th of March. That was the last big event before they declared it a pandemic on March 20th.

And that event should never have happened, like thousands of fans from Spain. No, I think so.

Adrie: This is where my memory that supersedes Niall’s comes in. Because actually, when we left New Zealand on March 10th, it wasn’t declared a pandemic.

Adrie: I believe it was declared a pandemic on March 11th or 12th. It was literally not 20th.

No, it was lit. No, you’ve gone ahead. It literally was when we got to New Zealand and then again, we got there and we’re like, Oh crap, this is going to make our return to, to Vietnam quite difficult. Um, because if things were already here, they were going to escalate even further. And you say it was such a great time.

So Neil and I had slightly different experiences in New Zealand because I was keeping track of like the world news and what was happening in New Zealand and Vietnam and the U S and Neil was a bit oblivious, just kind of living in Lala land and, and because Vietnam [00:20:00] was behind, behind us in time. Um, I would usually wake up to a slew of messages from my sister.

Like, this is what’s happening now. This is what’s happening today. This is the news, blah, blah. And then, because again, we were ahead. I would, um, at night. I can’t remember what, but I’d have a different source of information. So it was just constant amount of information coming in. And I’d usually wake up in the morning and update Niall and be like, Oh, this is what’s happening today.

So I was pretty anxious a lot of the time. And those early days in New Zealand, unfortunately coincided with the first few cases in Wellington. And it even so happened, like one of the cases went to a cafe that we had been to and like, cause Wellington’s not a big place. And that was in that week leading, you said March 19th was that game.

Well, maybe that game was

Niall: March 10th or 11th then because I know it was the day before it was declared because it was like the last big sporting event. Yeah. We can [00:21:00] double check it, but we’re not gonna. But I remember it was a Liverpool game at Anfield and all the Spanish fans had to travel and it was just like, that should never have happened.

Adrie: Yeah. Cause we had like, I remember we had, we landed on like a, I think a Tuesday or Wednesday and we had a couple of days. Before Lindsay, your sister, arrived and the Hens and Stag Doos were on the Saturday and it was like that. Yeah, I think it was that Saturday was when, or the Friday, was when the first couple of cases started to like creep up.

Like literally it was like one, two, three, five, six. But it was really scary at the time, especially being in a small town or a small city. Um, and then, yeah. The other night I remember just being like, this is so dumb, was St. Patrick’s Day, the

17th.

Because we were, we’d been out, but every day it was just getting more significant.

I remember everyone

Niall: was nervous. Yeah. It was like a nervous [00:22:00] vibe in the, in the air.

Adrie: Well, we are also staying with our friends, Nora Cartwright and our friend Nora, like her work was like, you cannot get sick basically. You can, yeah. So she was really nervous already.

Niall: Well then my sister arrived, so it was our cousin’s wedding, my sister arrived from Australia and she has quite a high up government job in the healthcare sector and she had been in New Zealand for less than 24 hours, I mean less than 16 hours I think when she got a phone call from her husband.

Manager back in Australia in Melbourne and was like, ah, you need to come on the next flight back tomorrow morning. And then she’s head to Adrie as they’re obviously all out drinking and having fun, enjoying the bachelor bachelorette, we just call it hence party. It’s way easier than a bachelorette party.

Adrie: Bachelorette ,

Niall: right? Hence party. They were all at hen’s party having a good night. And then Lindsay takes Arie aside and she’s like, Arie. I gotta go tomorrow. Yeah. She

Adrie: went from like tipsy fun to like game face on [00:23:00] like, I’m outta here. I was like, whoa.

Niall: And so it got serious like really, really quickly. And yeah, we were having fun with friends.

We were going out, catching up, obviously having drinks. I remember waking up every morning, pretty hung over, but Arie would be on her phone and she’d be like, Ugh. And every morning I’d be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then eventually it got to the point where we had to go. So the wedding was on the Saturday and won’t go through all the details, but we ended up having to leave on the Friday.

Adrie: Yeah, if you want all the details, go listen to the podcast. Let’s go

Niall: listen to season three. Yeah, we go through it all. We do it. So we end up getting a flight back. It’s one of the craziest experiences ever. The airport staff don’t know what’s going on. Nobody knows what’s going on. But anyway, we get back to Vietnam.

then what happens?

Adrie: Long story short. Yeah

Niall: long, give them a long story short. We had

Adrie: to jump through a lot of hoops and hurdles and over a lot of hurdles to get back. Because, well the, the, what you didn’t really mention was just that the threat of Vietnam closing [00:24:00] the borders, which a lot of countries eventually did, but at that point, I’m not sure how many countries had really like actually closed their borders, but we had been getting the, you know, information that Vietnam is going to close its borders.

And that was just like every day it was kind of like brought forward 12 hours or another day. And so that just kept creeping closer to our departure date. So we were like, yeah, we need to get the F out of Dodge.

Niall: I did forget that very crucial part of the story is that the information that Adri was getting was that the borders were closing.

And then even I got a text from the HR guy was like, the borders are closing tonight. And so if that had happened, obviously Biscuit would have been looked after, but we would have been without Biscuit. We’re residents of New Zealand, so it wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but I mean, our life would have just weeped and weeped.

probably would still be in New Zealand to this day if we’d have got trapped there. So we got to Vietnam. Somehow the, when we arrived, they wanted to send us straight back to Australia, even though we didn’t live there just because we’d come through there, but we managed through some [00:25:00] miracle. Don’t believe in God, but this is like the biggest miracle that ever happened in my life.

We got sent to government quarantine, which is what we wanted. And we ended up spending 17 days at Tuduk National University. Which didn’t end up being terrible, wasn’t great. No mattress, no air con, no deliveries after one day and no alcohol for 17 days. So you can understand our pain. But we met Nasta, who again has been on this podcast a couple of times.

She ended up having to flee Ukraine as a refugee. So you can go back and listen to that episode. She’s become one of our best friends in Vietnam as well. So it had a really good silver lining. After 17 days, we got out and.

Navigating COVID-19 in Vietnam

Niall: It’s taken us this long to get here, but the, this, the crux of this episode I wanted to talk about was what was expat life like in Saigon during those COVID times?

Because the big thing I want to make clear is more and more I talked to people over the years and even now to this day, [00:26:00] everybody’s story is completely different. No two people experienced the pandemic anywhere in the world the same. Some people loved it, some people got time off to spend with their kids, other people were completely separated from their partners.

other people obviously died as well. Obviously the other people got sick. Really, really terrible. But so the, the point of this episode though, is to share what was our life like during the pandemic. So we got out of quarantine and what was life like?

Adrie: Well, we first got reunited with Biscuit, which was the most amazing feeling.

That was the longest time we’d ever been apart. Um, and then when we first came out, Saigon was under a little bit of a, well, a lockdown that was in. April, or shortly thereafter, went into a bit of a lockdown, um. But that wasn’t very long lived. The worst part about that and my memory of that was it was way worse than government quarantine because we were back in our apartment.

We had our dog. Okay, not way worse, but it was, um, we’re so [00:27:00] excited to finally have aircon and our stupid aircon was broken. But because there was a bit of a lockdown, we couldn’t get anyone to come fix it. So I remember trying to work from home and just struggling. sweating, even though the air con was on, it was miserable.

Niall: My first memory is getting a delivery of beer from Misha Smith on Pastoral Street and just chugging a can of passion fruit wheat. Cause I was like, Oh my God, I haven’t had a beer in 17 days.

Adrie: But, um, yeah, but that was quite short lived. That was a few weeks long. And then because Vietnam had shut the borders, they had like every, and I don’t know if other countries did this, but definitely not America, but every person that had COVID, was given a number.

It was like patient one, patient blah. And you knew, I mean, that was, by that point there was like only, God, I don’t know, tens of cases and they had the numbers. And at that point we kind of were like, this is propaganda. There must be more than that, but

Niall: I mean, you might want to delete that actually. Yeah.

The UK spent billions [00:28:00] on a track and trace system, I believe. that didn’t even work in the end. Whereas Vietnam just published their address in the newspaper and their initials and was like, this person went to this cafe here, here, and here. Don’t go there. If you were there, let us know. And you’re probably going to get quarantined.

And people here for the most part were really like all in it together, willing to help out. And there really was only tens of cases. So. We had that initial kind of lockdown and then 2020 was

Adrie: good. Pretty cool actually.

Niall: Yeah. So it got to the point we were doing, you couldn’t leave the country, right? So this was the biggest thing.

Nobody could really get in. You had to have like special visas, really difficult. And if you wanted to leave, you weren’t going to get back. So a lot of people did leave. We obviously weren’t going to leave. We had a dog and we had jobs. So we decided to stay and 2020 was pretty awesome. The pollution cleared up was one of the big things right away.

The sky got blue again. You did not see elephant pants anywhere in Saigon. Like it was amazing. There was no, but [00:29:00] I mean, yeah, you missed the tourists. There was no tourists. It obviously had a massive hit on business, especially tourism. That meant that a lot of the hotels and resorts were putting their prices down.

And for people like us that love a deal, we were able to do, um, basically go to loads of really nice hotels, like the Caravelle, the Intercon, Amiana Resort up in Where else did we go with the mist? Was that part of that? We did like, this is

Adrie: your favorite thing to talk about. Yeah.

Niall: We basically did all these really nice resorts and hotels that normally would be unaffordable, but we were able to do it because they had them on a discount.

But the point I want to make with that is though, we barely posted any pictures on social media. I remember going to Amiana and it was like heaven. It was quite quiet as well as not many people there. We had an amazing weekend. I did not post one picture on social media because For 2020, the rest of the world was on fire, basically.

We

Adrie: definitely had a bit of guilt having like a pretty comfortable life. But I do remember, despite the guilt, like of, of being [00:30:00] able to travel and stuff, that was the silver lining of being locked in a country that you’re not, or, I mean, we’re residents, but if you think back to when we re entered the country, they wanted to send us out.

Like, so it was, yeah, we took advantage of it for sure. You, why would you not? But. It was, it was really challenging being unsure of when you’d ever be able to leave this country that we live in and we love, but we’re not, I mean, we’re foreigners. And I remember the feeling of walking down the street, like you said, we didn’t see elephant pants and blah, blah.

But like, after the months passed, like you’d walk down or drive down the street, whatever, and Every foreigner you’d be like, okay, that person is not a tourist. You could just be like those people that I guess could have got stuck here. But, um, those people have been here for X amount of time or those people live here.

And eventually you just start, stop, started seeing less and less and less and less foreigners. And then eventually when the borders did reopen, it was like, Whoa,

tourists. They’re like, uh, [00:31:00] I don’t know, a wild animal, exotic species.

Niall: I’m well, like an elephant because I vividly remember seeing the first person walking down Tau Dien street with elephant pants on and I was like, whoa, the borders are open.

Like I vividly remember that. But you know, that, um, you know, if you live in Saigon, you know, Even if you’re Saigonese, if you’re Vietnamese, and especially if you’re an expat and this isn’t where you were born and brought up, you do need to leave regularly for your own sanity and your own peace of mind.

And we found that out a long time ago. That’s why we travel so much, not just within the region, but within Vietnam. Saigon is an unbelievable city, but it is crazy. And it starts getting crazy at 6am and it doesn’t stop till about 2am. There’s literally only a few hours in the middle of the night. If you go out where the roads are quiet, the rest of the time, the roads are busy, people are out eating.

And so sometimes you need a break from that. And so when you are locked in the country, We could go and travel as we mentioned, but there’s only a [00:32:00] couple of so many places we could go to and that is where it started to impact on your mental health because you could not. I mean, you’re trapped. So at the end of the day, okay, at that point 2020 you weren’t locked in your house, which is obviously a massive invasion of civil rights or whatever you want to call it, but to be able to not leave the country and especially being from different countries as well.

So we can’t visit our families. COVID’s ravaging the place. Everyone’s going through different difficulties. So it was really, really difficult, even though we got to travel and do all these cool things. We were watching our families in the U. S. and the U. K. and our friends in New Zealand struggle greatly.

Well, we were off in Amiena gallivanting, but so it was still tough. But during this time as well, 2020, uh, for my job, which was based on doing events, mostly in bars and clubs, not clubs, but in bars, doing festivals to help raise money to do things like build a school, all of that pretty much went out the window.

So it became, and all the teachers were struggling for money as well, [00:33:00] who we were meant to be raising money from. So as a job, it became really, really difficult to raise money to help Children, right, which is the same around the world. So that happened to me. Then at the same time, the school we worked for couldn’t bring in teachers from anywhere, basically.

They could a little bit, but it was really, really difficult. So that meant that they asked me to teach more, right? So I had been a teacher for a couple of years previously. So they were like, it started off, I think, one day a week. You know, you run the same contract, but can you teach X amount of hours?

Facing Uncertainty: Job Challenges and Contract Woes

Niall: We really need your help.

Yep. No, obviously no problem because the country needed it. The company needed it. Yeah. It was an unprecedented situation. So over the year I was teaching more. And then by the time I think it got to like August, September, I was almost teaching like 60, 70 percent of my hours and not doing my real job much at all.

And because to be honest, there wasn’t really much we could do. So it was fine, but I kept pushing back saying, you know, are you going to renew my contract? Are you going to renew my contract? I was in the second year. And I think there are some [00:34:00] laws in Vietnam that if you get a third year contract, I mean.

be incorrect on this, but I think if you get a third year contract, you’re pretty much guaranteed a contract for life or until you get sacked or something like that. No, it’s like a big deal. Like once you get that third year, it’s kind of like that you get to renewed maybe anyway. So I pushed and pushed and eventually they came back and they were like, no, we’re not, not going to be renewing your contract. Um,

so we had a big decision to make. And then how was that?

Navigating the Pandemic: Shifts in Work and Life

Niall: How was your job during that year as well? Cause you were on the front face of the company doing. Yeah, well,

Adrie: I think the company, rightly so, started to kind of What?

Niall: Don’t do

Adrie: that! Well, I have an itch and I’ve told you my foot’s Okay,

Niall: will you stop talking and do it?

I can see you doing it like that.

Adrie: Well, you can cut it!

Niall: Not if you’re talking at the same time.

Adrie: Well, whatever. Um, the, the company at the time, rightly so, I think was starting to cut. You, unfortunately, were casualty of it, but the higher level jobs [00:35:00] hours, um, before they were cutting teachers hours. Um, they moved all the teachers online as much as they could, but I think enrollment struggled. Um,

and for me as a teacher coordinator, I was the first to lose my teaching hours because the teachers needed those. So I had like admin support hours, but the longer that the teaching online kind of went on for. In 2020, I think it was a bit, uh, back and forth. Like we’d be face to face and then there’d be maybe a, a threat of the virus.

So they’d throw us online and it was kind of back and forth and stuff, but the numbers did kind of slowly reduce in that year. So I made the decision to actually, this was immediately, hold on, I’m thinking out loud now, but this is pretty much immediately after the very first lockdown in April, 2020. That I should apply elsewhere to a job that would be more or at [00:36:00] least another job that would be more consistent.

Um, so that’s when I applied to RMIT. And then it wasn’t until with all the interview and work permit process, it wasn’t until October that I was, uh, that I started. And then I started teaching at RMIT in November, 2020. So I was kind of doing double duty for a while. I had pretty much given up my teacher coordinator role when I started at RMIT, but, um, I was still doing some, some, like placement testing and SAT courses for, for ILA at that time. yeah, it was really exciting to start a new job and thought it would be pretty normal. Classes were face to face. And then again, the end of 2020 rolling into 2021. I don’t remember if it was Lunar New Year, that kind of, I don’t think it was, but I guess it was the big holiday weekend in April. at the beginning, end of April, early May in 2021, we went to DeLatte and everyone was just really used to being free, I think, in the case numbers.

And they predicted it as well. They were like, this is going to be a wave, a new wave is what they called them. That was the second wave or the third wave. I

Niall: think it was the third.

Adrie: Or the fourth wave. It might’ve been actually, cause we had a couple of small waves throughout 2020. Like that influencer came back from Italy and she, or like Paris or something.

And she, like, was super villainized because she came back, had a cough, and then had brought COVID into the country. So there were small little blips, literally, they called them waves, but they’re blips. And it wasn’t until I think the fourth wave, which was in April 2021, is when it started. I’m

Niall: gonna go back a bit ’cause you’ve jumped ahead to April.

From From November.

Adrie: Okay. You’ve been jumping ahead the whole time. I wanna throw something in and you’re just like, no, we can go

Niall: back to it. We’re just gonna do that and then go to that.

Adrie: Okay.

Niall: Okay. Because I like to keep things linear.

Adrie: You do, you do. But you just are only talking about yourself.

Niall: Yeah. Joie, I cut her out and got the last 5, 2, 2 minutes.

So that’s it. Our domestic dispute. Yeah. . U

Building a Business Amidst Chaos

Niall: h, things were pretty good apart from my job and we had a big decision to make. And I’ve talked about this before. It was like a sliding doors moment at the time of Vietnam podcast was still doing pretty well. I’d been contacted by a few people to help them make a podcast.

I was doing that. I was running comedy shows all over Saigon and started off with one. Then I got approached by another [00:37:00] bar, then another bar. So we were doing like one a week. And had we started doing them at the Hard Rock by that point, My memory’s so bad, this is where I need you. I don’t know the timeline of the Hard Rock shows.

No, but so we, at one point during the, during the pandemic time, we started doing shows at Hard Rock. So for me, things were going well on that side of things. And with losing my job, we decided, okay, it’s time to take Seven Million Bikes forward as a business. But it was more still all over the place, trying to focus, focus on what it was, comedy, podcast events.

So starting I did like a music show with uh, Coastal Connection. And it was maybe going to be an entertainment company. I had really no idea what I was doing. I still don’t know what I’m doing, but then I really had no idea. And so that’s kind of how Seven Million Bikes as a company started was 2021. And then I think it was around, but then we started doing shows at the Hard Rock.

140 people I remember was the first one like absolutely packed. Amazing. We went to Dalat and I remember [00:38:00] there was a weird kind of vibe in Dalat, right? When, when was that again?

Adrie: That was the holiday weekend. at the end of April, early May.

Niall: Yeah and we went with a small group of us and you, you felt something was coming because the other big thing to point out I guess at that point is 99 percent of people in Vietnam hadn’t been vaccinated.

So it’s 2021 now, Vietnam had been shut and enclosed, not much Covid, whereas the rest of the world had been getting vaccinated and Vietnam was pretty much completely unvaccinated.

Adrie: Yeah, I think at that time is when we kind of we’re like looking around, I mean like this, this is paradise isn’t going to last because you could see what was happening in the rest of the world.

A lot of places were getting back to normal. They were getting the first dose of the vaccine. There was no indication that we were getting the vaccine anytime soon. And at that, the whole time, it just kind of seemed like Vietnam’s approach to the situation was just like, keep it out and then we’ll be fine when it goes away.

But yeah, so it started to [00:39:00] get a little bit uncomfortable knowing that no one was vaccinated and that if the if there was a big, um, outbreak, I guess, um, or if, yeah, a lot of cases, then how would they be able to maintain? And that was always the scary part here, I think, which is why they closed the borders, because the health system would not be able to cope with the, the amount of, you know, if there was a massive, um, outbreak.

And it did feel that later in, later in the year, but I don’t think it ever was. Collapsed, like some places.

Niall: I’ve mentioned it before. And it’s something that people ask me quite often. How’s the healthcare system in Vietnam for us? It’s awesome, but I’m very, very conscious of the fact that we have private healthcare insurance with our jobs and that that gives us access to a different standard of healthcare.

Just if you had private healthcare in Australia or the UK or wherever, standard government healthcare from what we know is great. But it’s not the nicest [00:40:00] facilities. You’re not going to get like nice bedrooms. It’s going to be no air con. Um, might be, I don’t think dirty, but like just not a pleasant, comfortable environment.

And it’s not, I mean, I don’t think any healthcare systems are ready for that level of, um, need and care for people and Vietnam definitely wasn’t ready for it. So that was partly why they were so strict on locking the country.

The Harsh Reality of Lockdown

Niall: But what happened next was. Omicron came and that was the variant. Yeah,

Adrie: that was in, well, yeah, I think that was the other fourth wave, right?

I think so. Let me just stop you there. It’s 10 to 7. Oh shit.

We need to

Niall: And we are back. Uh, Adri, tell the the secret sauce behind making a podcast. Where have we just been?

Adrie: Secret sauce? Definitely not. Um, we just came back from bachata lessons.

Niall: And, uh, I am the worst dancer in the world, as expected.

Adrie: No comment. [00:41:00]

Niall: That’s so harsh. So I’m going to do a podcast soon about things to do in Saigon if you don’t It is some.

It is a fun town. We’ve talked about this on other podcasts. There’s loads of fun things to do. Most of it revolves around drinking. But I still just actually meant to tell you this. I saw yesterday somebody post literally, what do we do in Saigon apart from drink? Like it is a, we

Adrie: post that every few months.

Niall: Yeah, it’s a common thing, especially if you’re new here. I mean, we are not even new here. And you do have to think out the box a little bit, but you can find stuff. So one of the things is we just went to Bachata class. So if we look different, if we look a bit sweatier than, like, just the last minute, then, then that is why.

So let’s pick up though from where we left off. So, we get to April, May 2021, life had been good in Saigon, life had been good in Vietnam, and then Omicron hit, and what happened next?

Adrie: It started relatively slow, slowly, excuse me. Um, I think it was probably just after the long holiday, maybe [00:42:00] mid May when they first started and, um, put restrictions and shut down gyms.

And then it kind of like week by week, something else, we kind of lost access to something else. Like eventually the parks were shut and then restaurants were limited and, like bars and stuff. I remember we were really cautious and I think we kind of put ourselves on a self imposed bit of a lockdown more than was actually the case in June.

Because I remember we would kind of go out, walk around the block, but we didn’t go to bars and restaurants and things like that, um, just to, to keep ourselves safe because of what I had mentioned earlier was that people weren’t vaccinated and all that stuff. Um, But then towards the end of June is when it really like shit really hit the fan and, um, they, the way they did it here was they would issue like decrees and on like a Monday or something.

And it would be [00:43:00] a numbered decree and that decree would have the restrictions or whatever was in place for the next, usually it was like two weeks, right? So at the end of June, it was like, that’s when it really started to get bad. Like I think the first kind of. Obviously they closed everything. You couldn’t really do anything.

It was essential workers only kind of thing. Everyone’s working from home. Um, but you could still go out for a walk. Like I said, you could still go to like the store, no restrictions, whatever. And then eventually they made, um, what was it? Like I think the biggest, darkest thing was when they started to issue the grocery store vouchers.

So they delivered vouchers to our apartment and they Came under the

Niall: door, didn’t they? And it

Adrie: was like, yeah, what day you could go to the grocery store. And, um, like the mall was obviously shut. That was the store that we used to go to. And then like two weeks later, what was it? I don’t, I can’t remember the like increasing level of restrictions.

I just know by the end of August, we were [00:44:00] absolutely not allowed to leave the confines of our apartment for any reason. We had to get delivery groceries.

Niall: Well, it was gyms and bars and first then restaurants. And so when the gyms closed, including the gym in our building, like you mentioned, we would be going out for walks all the time.

and drinking beer while we did it because the bars were closed as well. So it was quite funny, like if anyone knows Taodian, like the Taodian loop, it was just packed. There was so many people and everyone was out walking. Lots of people had beers and it was kind of fun. A lot of businesses were starting to work offline, online sorry, and And then you just started to get more and more serious, didn’t it?

So you hear more and more reports of this Omicron by this point was just going wild, really had to protect the healthcare service to the healthcare system. The vaccines weren’t coming anytime soon by that point.

Adrie: No, they were actually. So I think In the rest of the world, people had started to get their first vaccine in like early 2021 or late 2020.

I can’t remember the exact [00:45:00] time. And it seemed like it was really late for Vietnam, but once they locked down the country, or at least the big cities, um, in late June, they made the, that’s when they were trying to get access to the vaccines. And I remember there was first, it was really weird because they had like the first round of vaccines that came in, they were given to like a select few government, government workers.

Um, and then it, and then after the government workers, it was like international school teachers. Like it was very weird. The people that like the order of people that got vaccines, healthcare workers as well. Well, obviously those people, but I remember like the first expats that we knew of were like the ones that were.

working for, closely with government or international school teachers. And then, I think we got our first vaccine in July, and that was when a lot of people started to get their first vaccine, um, or their first dose anyway. And then, we got our second one in August. August?

Niall: Couldn’t have been that close, [00:46:00] could it?

No, September. September was September. Yeah,

Adrie: maybe September.

Niall: But you mentioned, so when we got the vouchers for the store, so we would go to a Win Mart, Vin Mart at the time, Win Mart now, uh, big, big branding change there from Vin Mart to Win Mart. Uh, it was in the mall. and the mall was obviously closed. So it was really weird, wasn’t it?

Because we’d go to the grocery store and we weren’t allowed to go together at one point, right? So we had these vouchers. You couldn’t go together. It was one of a, one at a time. Obviously you had to sanitize your hands to go in, but we had to walk through the mall to get to the grocery store. So that was like the start of things being like really apocalyptic because the lights

Adrie: were off.

There was no one there in the

Niall: middle of the day. It’s like Wednesday or something. So that’s when things started to feel weird, which I don’t know. in the US or the UK or Australia? I don’t know because I wasn’t there if it ever got like that. Because you always heard about people going to Shopping

Adrie: malls and stuff were probably shut in some places, but everything was so different, every different place.

I

Niall: feel like there’s not many places as well within. [00:47:00] Supermarket is in the mall, but some places, but anyway, it was just weird. I remember going around the supermarket, taking photos of everything, sending you pictures, being like, do I get this? Do I get this? Do I get that? Adrian makes fun of me because I bought like a five kg bag of rice.

That was

Adrie: when we went together. That was the panic buying before they restricted our grocery outings and we were together and Niall bought this like giant bag of rice. We’ve never bought rice in the grocery store in Vietnam and the, at that point, what we’d been here for like five years. We We have to get rice.

I think we did use it to be fair. And it was good to have some, yeah, some staples in there.

Niall: That was right. There was, that was the panic bang ’cause So you would hear things on Facebook and not really from the media, maybe a little bit, or from friends of friends, like, oh by the way, the new decree’s coming out the next day.

So it was always like second guessing what the next decree was gonna be like. Tomorrow it’s gonna be, this is banned. That is banned. And sometimes it was came true and sometimes it didn’t. And I can’t remember if it came true on, but on this occasion, I think. It was supermarkets are going to be closed or, [00:48:00] or regulated by tomorrow.

Adrie: It went from like having full access to the supermarket to being restricted to certain days to then delivery only, right?

Niall: Like delivery from the, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adrie: Like you could still go out to the supermarket and then one day they shut that down. I guess that was in August. Yeah. And you could only get deliveries.

from the grocery store. And there were like certain people in our apartment block that were allowed to go and do some of the grocery shopping and deliver some of the groceries. That was even before. And then they stopped that. And then it was literally, you could only get grocery store deliveries from the stores themselves or the shops themselves or whatever.

And they, in our apartment complex, there’s lots of, there were lots of, there was like five towers and you used to be able to get your delivery straight to the tower. And then eventually they stopped that and they made one central, uh, like entrance point where [00:49:00] all of the, uh, deliveries had to come. And I remember when you went to get our, like, box of groceries, like, it, you, like, recorded it and it was like, I’m out for the first time, this is the furthest I’ve walked.

Cause we hadn’t left the confines of our building and, like, just, like, walked in.

Niall: So it’s interesting when we talk to people from back home or whatnot, as I mentioned right at the beginning, everybody’s lockdown story or everyone’s pandemic time story was different. And in Vietnam that, so what I guess the point to make is 2020 was like heaven, right? And we didn’t really want to share it.

We didn’t want to share it with people. But then 2021 couldn’t have been more opposite and we faced one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. Not the strictest because we’ve heard stories in China and things like that, but I think compared to anything that had been like, so in Australia, in the UK, US, we always heard if there was a lockdown, you were allowed to leave your apartment for an hour a day to exercise and things like this.

And people found solace in that and they [00:50:00] would walk the dogs and meet other people. Loopholes in that. And what? Loopholes

Adrie: in that. Well, and

Niall: loopholes in that as well. There’s always a loophole. Whereas When it got to what, July, August or August, we were not allowed to leave the apartment at all. And so it became like, uh, pretty difficult.

Adrie: It was really nerve wracking because as you know, we have a dog and, um, there was always, uh, the fear that our building itself would get locked down. So we were quite fortunate in the building we lived in because Just outside of it, we had a little yard and we could, our, our building guards were really friendly compared to some of the other building guards.

So they would let us come out with our dog. She could use the bathroom. But I remember like I took a paper towel down once and like, let her pee on it and put it in a bag just in, just in case we were going to have to force her to do it. Pee or whatever, do her business on the balcony, which she never would have done anyway.

But we heard horror stories about dogs that just couldn’t [00:51:00] leave their apartment. Maybe their owner got COVID or maybe their building got locked down and they had to basically, their poor animals didn’t use the bathroom for like three or four days. And it’s just awful. There was a mad

Niall: scramble to buy like these garden boxes that you could put.

in the corner of your apartment. Because so many people live in apartments here, like it’s not, there’s not many houses. It’s not like housing estates back home.

Adrie: And when you got COVID, if you did test positive, they would take your key card away. You literally couldn’t leave your apartment. Tape your door shut, like literally.

Caution tape, you’re locked in there until you are clean. Yeah.

Niall: So in terms of like mental health, we already said, it’s quite difficult not being able to leave the country, not being able to go home, see your family. And then it goes from you’re not able to leave Vietnam to you literally cannot leave your apartment.

And saying it again, everyone’s story is different. We knew we were very lucky because we had each other and we had Biscuit and there was many people and we had a nice view to the outside that at least we could see. Whereas we knew we know other people live [00:52:00] in like tiny little apartments down a hem with nobody else to talk to and they’re stuck at home all day.

So again, That experience, I’m sure it was probably worse than others, but ours wasn’t great either. So you went online teaching, which you can explain how horrible it is teaching online to students, to adult, well, young adult students.

Adrie: If anyone has taught online, then they would know. Um, yeah. How soul destroying it is to just teach to a bunch of, like camera off screen, begging and pleading for students to interact with you.

Um, my school didn’t have a camera on policy and we weren’t allowed to like enforce it or make them turn on their cameras. So yeah, four hours a day and you have to plan every second of that online lesson as opposed to being able to kind of. Freestyle some stuff in class or change what you want to do at the last minute.

If you didn’t have [00:53:00] a document prepared for them to use or some sort of plan for them to do in their breakout rooms, like you, you know, Yeah, it was, it was a lot. Yeah. It was pretty intense.

Niall: And then from, from my point of view, so I started to build this business around doing comedy shows, events and podcasts.

And I was also still part time teaching. And as a part time teacher, I just lost all my, I was lost all my business. So my income went down to almost zero. I was able to make a little bit, but not, not very much at all. Your income was, was okay, right? But so financially we were.

Adrie: Well, we weren’t spending any money apart from that.

That was, that was the good thing.

Niall: We were not spending like anything at all. So we were, I mean, we were okay, but we were not doing the best, which also affects like your mental health and your, your relationship, I guess, as well, like just with being on 24 hours a day. Uh, we do enjoy. We did okay. We did okay.

We had a lot of fun. I mean, I’ll probably [00:54:00] post some pictures as we’re talking. Like we had, uh, we couldn’t go anywhere for my birthday. So we, we like turned a spare room into a hotel room and we had like a hotel room night.

Adrie: That wasn’t for your birthday, but.

Niall: See, this is why she’s here, right? What was that for then?

Anniversary.

Adrie: We had a staycation. Yeah, we had a staycation. We

Niall: used the spare bathroom. We did a spa day. That was your birthday. That was my birthday. We, um, cooked a lot of good food, but

Adrie: I cooked a lot of good food. You cooked a lot of good food.

Niall: Let’s get that right. Let the record show. I ate a lot of good food.

Adrie: That Niall sat at his computer while I cooked the food. I made

Niall: the cocktails. That was my job. You were the cocktail whipperista. We, like, rarely have spirits in the apartment, but, like, we had a cabinet full of spirits during Well, an

Adrie: apartment had to be our gym, our clubhouse. cocktail bar, our beer bar, our restaurant, our spa.

Niall: I remember one day in the beginning when you don’t realize it was going to go that long. I remember having like making an espresso martini at like [00:55:00] 11am or something one day because it was just, it was like, it was a Saturday, right? I think it was on Monday, but anyway, you’re stuck at home and you had nothing else to do.

And it was like, and your students can’t see if you got a coffee espresso martini on the camera. So, no, you never did that. It was only me. But I remember that one time, but so it, it progressively got worse and worse to the point where you didn’t know where you were going to get food from, there was like, it was kind of fend for yourself a little bit.

There was a new decree that said the government was going to come and bring like rice. It was literally like that movie Contagion if you’ve seen that. That never happened. The government never came to our apartment buildings anyway.

Adrie: But it did, some of the local buildings, yeah. Yeah, but not ours. But we didn’t think we would get it because we lived in a nice building.

Niall: But so it was, you basically left to fend for yourself. So there was these like Zallo groups that you could join and they would, like Adrian mentioned, some volunteer shoppers basically that would go and do your shopping for you. It was, I mean, there was things like that that were incredible. People were so beautiful, so [00:56:00] amazing.

Um, and then just one day.

Emerging from Lockdown: New Beginnings and Reflections

Niall: They just lifted the lockdown like that, didn’t they?

Adrie: Yeah, well I was just going to say to go back, like the only time we could leave our apartment was when we, like, to actually drive anywhere, was to get your vaccine. And I guess this ties into what you’re about to, or what you just said, was, that’s what it was.

I remember I got my second vaccine, I think it was the 27th of September, so it was the very end of the month. And, um, I was driving out of Tow Towdeen to, and I had to go to my university to get the vaccine, so from District 2 all the way to District 7, crossing through 3, 4 districts to get there, and, um, We had seen pictures and heard, heard urban legends of like, uh, barbed wire, like, um, barricades in certain parts of the city.

And, [00:57:00] and I had encountered at one time, I think when I got to, went to get my first vaccine, there was the way I usually go to work. I couldn’t go into District 1 because I have to go into District 1 for just like two seconds before I make a U turn to go out to District 4. And I couldn’t do that. So I had to go a different, slightly different way.

And then this time on September 27th, That was when, excuse me, that was when, um, I saw them removing the barricades on my way back from the vaccine, I think, and October 1st is when they lifted the barricades.

Niall: without much warning. No,

Adrie: well, that was the first rumor. That was a Monday and that was when the rumors started to fly.

People were like, Oh, they’re taking down the barricades. They’re taking down the barbed wire. I think they’re going to lift the lockdown. And I was like, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. There’s no way. And then, yeah, the rumors were true. Like from 30th of September, I always say you couldn’t buy a banana on your own and on The first of October, if you wanted to go buy a sofa in a store, you could.

If you wanted to go shopping [00:58:00] for a ballgown or something that you really didn’t need, the stores were open, you could go buy that, but you couldn’t buy your own basic necessities and food on your own the day before. Have

Niall: you seen that? Because I went and bought a ballgown.

No, it was so weird that it just was so dramatically over. But part of that was because they’d rolled out the vaccines. And so I think people would agree with us. And in our experience, things can happen in Vietnam. It can take a long time to happen. And then when it happens, it happens really quickly. And that was a really good example or bad example, whichever way you look at it.

It took a long time to get the vaccines here. But once they got them, it went from like 1 percent of the population vaccinated, 10 percent for a while in June, by like August, it was 90 percent of the population had been vaccinated.

Adrie: Yeah, I mean, you have to hand that to the people of, you know, I’m like, if they are told, do this, everyone’s like, okay, we are doing this for the benefit and the greater good of everyone else, unlike some other places where they’re like, no, not my [00:59:00] body, not my this, whatever.

Like,

Niall: yeah, there was none of that here. I mean, everyone wears masks anyway, so there was no like anti mask brigade. People have been wearing masks here for pollution and for colds for years. But so things opened up, but things didn’t go back to normal immediately. So bars still couldn’t open fully. They could do delivery.

restaurants.

Adrie: It didn’t take that long for them to, I can’t really remember, to be honest. I know again, we’re pretty cautious when it first lifted,

Niall: but we were excited as hell. But for me as a business, so I then started to carve out like an online niche. So I was doing quiz nights for businesses around Vietnam and in Saigon.

I was doing comedy nights like for people around the world. We had like one comedy night, like 50 people online. We had an amazing lineup, really figuring out how to do things online. And entertain people. And I remember even did like a, a football match. We watched the classic FIFA World Cup match. It was only me and two other people, but it was two other people that I’d never, hadn’t spoken [01:00:00] to in years.

And we watched the game together online and uh, so there was some good things happening and I was starting to make a little bit of money from that. And then suddenly everything opened. So obviously nobody wanted to be online. Like my, I tried one more quiz night after that and I think nobody showed up because of course nobody wanted to sit at home and do a quiz night when they could just go out.

But then we also couldn’t do quiz nights in person or comedy shows. No one wanted to

Adrie: go out really. No.

Niall: And so I

Adrie: would say the flow of things didn’t get back to normal until like, You could tell people were feeling confident about going out. God, it probably took at least six months. I

Niall: was going to say the same, yeah, at least six months.

Adrie: We didn’t get our first round of COVID until March 2022. Yeah. And we went to an arguable super spreader event. A comedy show. But that was when we kind of, that was around the time when we kind of started to let our guard down and went out. And then we got [01:01:00] COVID and locked into our apartment.

Niall: And so by now that’s 2022.

Yeah.

Adrie: So I think it was a, but it wasn’t until probably like April, May 2022 when you’re like, okay, this, this feels like Vietnam again or Saigon again.

Niall: Yeah. And so That really sums up life for those last two years in life in Saigon. We could go on about that all day. If you have a story to share, like, I want to hear it.

Like I said, there’s so many stories. Everyone has a different one, good and bad. Uh, let me know about them. Uh, the one thing I’m not going to tell you on this episode, but I might recall it by myself. I want to share the story of Lewis and me getting the vaccine together.

Adrie: Did you not already? No, you probably haven’t.

One of the coolest

Niall: things I was going to say about getting the vaccine was it was the only time you saw other people.

Adrie: Yeah, you

Niall: would go to the vaccine like, Hey, how are you doing? I haven’t seen you in like six months. Are you okay? Like from across the room because you wouldn’t want to talk to each other.

There’s so many crazy stories, but I’m going to recall that separate as an extra bonus episode because that story on its own is absolutely crazy. [01:02:00] Um, but I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Adrian, thank you so much for being a guest. Um, now, as I mentioned, the music is more popular than me. which is by Lewis. And I’ve also noticed that Adrie is normally always more popular than me.

So if you want to have Adrie back on this podcast, if you want to hear more from her, or maybe even she should host an episode by herself, then, uh, please let me know as well, because I’m going to make her do it. I try and get her to do these things all the time, and she’s so reluctant, but then, you know, it’s what the people want.

So if you people message me and tell me that you want Adri to host an episode or you want to hear and see more of Adri, then you let me know and I will persuade her. So thank you very much for coming on. Thank you very much for listening. Remember the best thing you can do is share this episode. If you liked it, please let somebody else know about it.

It’s the number one way that people find out about podcasts. You can also rate and review, follow, subscribe, all of that good stuff as well. And don’t forget as well, we have a [01:03:00] Patreon now as well. We want to build it. Yeah. So what’s the name if you become a Patreon member?

Adrie: A Bop Saudaire.

Niall: A Bop Saudaire, that’s right.

So thank you very much to our latest members who’ve just joined, which is yourself joined, Lewis Wright, who’s mentioned the composer, Pepper Dakin. Pippa? I’ll just call you Pippa. Pippa, you know who you are, right? Uh, Pippa joined. So make sure you jump on to patreon. com forward slash a VNM podcast or the link will be in the notes and you can join for free if you want the minimum as well.

It’s like one dollar a month, right? So if we can have a thousand people do a dollar a month, how much would that be? It’s not going to be that many people. Hopefully it will be though. So yeah, But it’s more than that. What we want to do is build a community of people who love Vietnam, whether you live here or not.

Um, there’s so many amazing features on Patreon now, where we can have chat groups. And if you’ve watched previous episodes, we’ve done like pub crawls. I had a party here, which was sponsored by Mixtape, where we, they gave us a whole bunch of [01:04:00] party, which is like a green tea seltzer drink. Um, So we’ll do meetups and things like that as well.

So please join the Patreon, become a Bop Saudia. You will be the coolest person in the world. So thank you very much and hope you follow us and like us for future episodes. Cheers.

Adrie: Bye.

Niall: Yay, Bop Saudie. Oh shit, I didn’t press recall.