Arrival at Hanoi

When we have reached Hanoi, our Vietnamese tour guide, Kanh, brought us to a Vietnamese restaurant to have Vietnamese cuisine dinner with local cultural show.

On our way to the restaurant for dinner, Kahn taught us some simple conversational Vietnamese. For example, “cam on” means thank you, “bao nhieu” means how much, etc.

When I entered into the restaurant, I was quite surprised by the environment. The furnishing of the restaurant and the decorations (i.e. every table is beautifully decorated with flowers and red cloth) has created a very nice ambience.


The reason why I was surprised is because before I went to Vietnam, I have a perception that Vietnam is not a very developed country, therefore the places there will not appear very ‘nice’ to me; dirty, dark, not well furnished. However, my perception turned out to be negative.

I have also noticed that there was a small group of Vietnamese ladies dressed up in traditional Vietnamese costumes sitting near the exit of the restaurant playing some musical instruments. These instruments appeared to me like some of the Chinese musical instruments. Later, I realized that the pieces they played sound very familiar; the songs they played were actually the Chinese oldies. The combination of the ambience and the songs has made me feel like I am at home; it is very comfortable.


When we started having our dinner, a few of the Vietnamese ladies except those who were playing the instruments, came to each of our table wanting to sell us souvenirs.



Initially, I was quite puzzled as I did not know why the Vietnamese ladies could play Chinese musical instruments. Later, then I realized that the reason maybe because of the long period of Chinese Occupation in the early days where the Vietnamese were influenced by the Chinese culture to a certain extent.

Temple of Literature (Van Mieu or 文廟)

Temple of Literature is also called Van Mieu in Vietnamese and 文廟 in Chinese. It is founded in 1070 as a Confucius temple. In 1076, the first university of Vietnam was established within the temple for the royal family members and was later opened to talented students.

Talented students were then offered a chance to study in the school. In order to get a title given by the emperor to work for the government, they have to pass the imperial exams. The emperor will then crave the names of the graduates on the stone steles, which were placed above the stone turtles. However, those who do not have any contribution, their names will be scraped off from the stele.


There are ponds in the temple and many trees in the temple. The reason for their existence in the temple is because of ‘feng shui’ (風水). From the viewpoint of ‘feng shui’, ‘yin’ represents tree while ‘yang’ represents pond. ‘Yin” and ‘yang’ should always exist together to have a balance. That is the reason why trees and ponds can be found in the temple.


Initially, I thought that the purpose of having ponds and trees there was to beautify the temple. Thus, I was quite surprised when I found out that it was meant for the ‘feng shui’. I was even more surprised that the Vietnamese believed in ‘feng shui’ as all the while I thought that only the Chinese would believe in such things. Therefore, in this trip to the Temple of Literature, I have learnt additional thing that is the impact of Chinese cultural on the Vietnamese; it has affected the Vietnamese to a certain extent in terms of their belief.

The temple consists of 5 courtyards. There were 3 gates to the second courtyard of the temple which is the main hall. The gate in the center is much bigger than the other 2 gates at the side. In the past, the 3 gates were meant for different people. The gate in the centre was meant for the King while the one to its left was for administrative Mandarins and the one to its right was for military Mandarins.


I was told by Kah about an old man & 3 animal’s story.

An old man tried his best to bring up 3 animals which are the crane, snake and turtle. When they grew up, the old man became even older and could no longer do anything for them. Therefore, the snake and turtle decided to kill the old man for food. When the crane heard of this, it killed them for the old man. The morale of the story is to let us know one of the Chinese idioms which is ‘yin shui si yuan’. This means that one should be grateful to the people that have taught, helped and /or brought him/her up.

Hanoi Open University (HOU)

HOU was established in 1993 under the decision of the Prime Minister of Vietnam. It was set up for higher education and training with different forms of training to meet the various learning needs of the society. There are 2 modes of training available in HOU; face-to-face training (10,000 students) and distance training (20,000 students throughout the country).

The university offers 8 academic faculties; Economics and Business Administration, Foreign Languages, Information Technology, Tourism, Design, Law, Bio and Electronics. There are a total of 8 campuses for the 8 faculties. The campus which we visited was for the faculty of economics and business administration.

Economic and accounting students are compulsory to learn English. There are 30 credits for English and 10 credits for English for special purpose (ESP). ESP certificate is very useful in helping the students to apply a job.


The university does not offer its students any overseas attachment however there are students from neighbouring countries like Laos who come to the school and study. And HOU has established cooperation with universities/institutes from Thailand, China, Malaysia, etc. They have cooperation activities which are in the form of exchanges of academic information and materials, staff and students, joint research projects, conferences, seminars and training programs.



The university has facilities like computer labs and library for the students to use. However, I feel that those are quite insufficient as I think that university students should have more facilities. The faculties that HOU offers are very specialized, so I think that the school should provide more “in-dept facilities” in each of the faculty. For example, in the faculty of law, the school can probably built an “in-house court” for the students to practice and have a rough idea of what the actual court session is like. And in the faculty of bio, the school should have a lab for them to do their practical stuffs.



I have also noticed that the students there are very enthusiastic and are very interested about the things in Singapore & the education system. Most of them aren’t shy about asking us questions and I think that it is good as they are able to learn and know more by asking questions. And I think that most of them are very talented and intelligent. Given a good education system in Vietnam, a lot of them will outperform many of us.



Currently, education is very important in Vietnam. I have learnt that the rich Vietnamese are willing to spend on their children’s education more than anything else. And the companies in Vietnam are also looking towards a more ‘educated workforce’ whereby they mostly hire a university graduate who is able to speak English. That is the reason why schools in Vietnam like HOU are enforcing rules for the students to speak English. I think that the education industry is a very prospective industry to go into now.