Learning by Volunteering (Chapter Vietnam and Cambodia)

written by : Fatih Atsaris Sujud

Something that I often thought before going to Vietnam, I will be a rich person there. It is caused by the value of currency of Vietnamese Dong (VND) is lower than Indonesian Rupiah (IDR) if compared to US Dollar (USD). And it is true, I changed my money in the Tan Son Nhat International Airport and I got VND 22,670 for USD 1. That is the value if you change on the Authorized Money Changer or Authorised Exchange Bureau, and will be lower if you change on the Bank, Jewellry shop and Travel Agency. There is no service for changing IDR, so you should bring USD or Euro, and if you save your money on ATM, you should withdraw with big value because admission fees for all of withdrawings with Master Card, Cirrus or VISA logo are the same, approximately VND 50,000.

The city where I stay, Ho Chi Minh City, is a city in southern Vietnam and commonly known as Saigon. It is divided into 24 districts and you can go around the city by bus because it is the cheapest and most popular transportation. It is also a busy city, you will face traffic jam everywhere and whenever. To reach my project place on time, I must leave my dormitory  2 hours before even though the distance is about 20 km between both of them.

Vietnam’s economic growth

Vietnamese people are hard worker and also do everything fast that make a good impact to the economic growth. Recently, Vietnam has enjoyed strong economic growth. Since 1990, Vietnam’s GDP per capita growth has been among the fastest in the world, averaging 6.4 percent a year in the 2000s. Despite uncertainties in the global environment, Vietnam’s economy remains resilient. The country’s medium-term outlook remains favorable, with GDP expanding by 6 percent in 2016, while the country’s fundamental drivers of growth–resilient domestic demand and export oriented manufacturing–remain in force (stated by Worldbank’s site).

Beside that, a main factor that helps Vietnam's economy strongly develops is attract foreign direct investment. This factor is not only aims to solve scarcity of capital for investment in social development but also to create more jobs for laborers, supplying the machinery, process technology, produce more goods with high quality and technical for Vietnam. It's also creating synergy for the industrialization - modernization of the country. Thus, Government of Vietnam applied many new methods and policies that created a new momentum for domestic and foreign enterprises (stated by UKessays’ site). It is real, there are so many new infrastructure projects are still on processing, especially in District 1.

Education in Vietnam

Most of the time, primary schools are public since public primary education is free, but there has been an increase in pupils attending non public schools or universities the further they get in their education. Unlike other Asian countries, students coming from poor families would rather go to private universities, since they have to offer a fixed number of scholarships.
In general, there are four types of schools, which are divided into “public” and “non-public.”

·         Public schools are run by the state, the state invests in the schools and is in charge of office decisions.

·         Semi-public schools are set up by the state, but private people and organisations are motivated to invest in the infrastructure.

·         People-funded schools are not supported by a state budget. They need permission, and are set up by social or economic organisations.

·         Private schools are set up by individuals or groups. They also need to get permission, and the funders invest in the schools themselves.

I teach in THPT Tran Nhan Tong, District Binh Tan, Ho Chi Minh City. It is a private high school, so the students must pay to get knowledge there. Normally, students in High school study all day, started from Monday until Friday. It is common thing if they go to school before 7 a.m and go home after 5 p.m. Amount of study hour each day is about 7 hours, because every school has rest time between 11 a.m and 2 p.m. It is usually used for sleeping and taking a rest. It is normal for teachers and students to sleep in the school at the time before learning at noon.

Travelling section

International teaching program is a good program to enhance the student’s confidence to become a professional worker. To communicate with foreigner, students and people from another country, survive in a new environment, try to understand English with different accent and many others are very valuable experience. It also completed by enjoying trip around of Vietnam. So many interesting places in Ho Chi Minh City to be visited, such as Notre-Dame Cathedral, the oldest Post Office in Saigon, Independence Palace, Reunification Palace of Vietnam so on.

Fortunately, because it is near enough to go to Cambodia (about 6 hours by bus from Ho Chi Minh), travelling there is a good choice and it happened. We had a few days to live in Cambodia, a unique country with spider, frog, and worm as its common food. It also applies semi-dollarization in all of its monetary transactions. So, it is called by "Negeri 2 Mata Uang". 
Semi-dollarization occurs when foreign currency can be used as legal tender alongside of domestic currency. In case of semi-dollarization, domestic currency still has main role in monetary transactions that occur in the country, it is different from countries that apply full officially dolarization, such as Timor and Ecuador. (source : “Basic of Dollarization”, Joint Economic Committee Staff Report, U.S. Congress, Jan 2000). So, you can use either US Dollar or Cambodian Riel to buy something there. It is weird but real!

            Those are experiences that might make you want to do the same in the future. To be continued.