(upbeat music)
- Good morning.
My name is Abby, and I am hosting
the ITA Instagram takeover for today.
I am coming to you from Da Nang, Vietnam,
and it's a little rainy today, but I'm still looking
forward to showing you around.
So today is actually my day off, and I had all these plans
to show you around a beautiful city
when the weather is usually shining, and sunny,
and beautiful, and hot.
I live really close to the beach,
but, unfortunately, a typhoon rolled in.
So I will still do my best to try to, you know,
show you around during breaks in the rain.
But today might be a day meant for eating.
So I'm originally from Iowa.
After I went to university at Iowa,
I moved out to Arizona for a few years,
and I met my boyfriend there.
And he and I left the states about three years ago
to teach abroad.
So the first place we went to was Thailand.
We taught a six month contract at a high school
in a small city called Ratchaburi.
Wonderful people, it was a great place to live,
but we really missed being near the beach
so we only stayed six months.
But we met some wonderful people,
and we made some wonderful friends,
and really enjoyed that experience.
After that, we had some visitors to Thailand,
and we ended up signing a one year contract
on the island of Phuket.
So we stayed there, and taught younger kids.
In Phuket, we taught for an international school.
I taught Pre-K and boyfriend, Todd, primary.
So we do have experience in that market as well.
If you've got questions about that,
I would be more than happy to answer those.
Now that we are in Da Nang, I am teaching primarily online,
and I work with DaDa ABC.
And teaching online is pretty awesome
so I really enjoyed that.
Both boyfriend and I do have experience in Da Nang,
in the brick and mortar classrooms.
So if you have questions about getting into the
brick and mortar job market here in Da Ang,
or Thailand for that matter, please send me a message
because I have experience doing both online and classroom.
So I'm excited to hear from you guys,
and I'll show you more about what I do.
- [Abby] So this is my little work station
or my online classroom, if you will.
I have a few little props, and toys, and things to use,
and I just kind of prop my computer up on an old box,
and it's right in my living room.
So, like I said, I teach online for DaDa ABC,
and it's an online platform for Chinese students.
It's one-on-one lessons,
and they're about thirty minutes each.
And I usually teach on evenings and weekends.
One of things I love most about living in Southeast Asia
is that I work a part-time schedule for DaDa ABC,
and I make more than enough to have tons of free time,
and pay my bills, and save a little each month.
So it's pretty great.
So, like I said, this time of year it's usually really hot,
and sunny in Da Nang, and that's great
because we are a beach town, and we need the beach
because when I say hot, it's like 150 degrees here.
But today, we actually have kind of bad weather.
This is the view from my apartment.
Da Nang is a place that is experiencing
a huge boom right now.
The tourism is just taking off,
they're building things constantly.
Like, all of these apartments are being built,
waiting for more people.
That said, even with all the building
and construction going on,
the cost of living is still really, really reasonable.
You can get a one bedroom apartment for somewhere between
300 to 500 US dollars a month.
The beer's cheap, food's cheap, transportation's cheap.
It's great.
It's kind of hard to tell today,
but that is the ocean right there,
so it's about a five minute walk from my house,
and it's a beautiful beach so lots of fun.
So a lot of people ask how we get around in Vietnam,
and motorbike is far and away the most popular
and cheapest mode of transportation.
Second to that, you can take grab taxis
for like a couple dollars,
and they'll take you anywhere that you want to go.
So boyfriend volunteered to be my chauffeur for the day
so that I can show you around town a little easier
'cause I can't do that when I drive.
So we're on my motorbike, and we are going to coffee.
So Da Nang is a city with lots of waters
so they have a bunch of beautiful bridges.
And right now, we are crossing the Dragon Bridge
with a family of four on one motorbike right behind us.
Totally normal.
So while motorbikes are definitely the most convenient
and popular way to get around, please do not mistake me,
they are very dangerous,
and driving here can be pretty crazy.
It's nothing like it is in the US so ...
Drive carefully.
It's the easiest and cheapest way to get around,
but it can be very dangerous for an inexperienced driver.
So if you're coming here, and you can practice
driving a motorbike first, that's probably a good thing.
So we came to one of our favorite coffee shops in Da Nang.
There are a billion here, and I have a few minutes,
so I was going to ask Adam his opinion on life in Da Nang,
and have him share it with you guys.
- Hey guys.
My name's Adam Parker.
I've been teaching in Da Nang for six or seven months.
I teach at a local English Center,
and I teach teenagers and adults.
Da Nang's a really cool city.
It's really easy to teach English here, and get a job.
And it's the best of both worlds.
You have the mountains, and you have nice beaches, too.
- Oh, we just finished having coffee,
and now we're going to meet, you're too tall,
meet our friend, Mr. Thao, for Bun Cha, for lunch.
So we will show you that.
This is our dear friend, Mr. Thao,
and he's going to tell us about lunch today.
- Hello, guys. (speaks in foreign language)
Really good.
- [Abby] You look great.
- Alright
(Abby laughs)
I'mm gonna talk about this dish right here.
- A lot of people ask about what to about a cell phone
when they come over here.
We brought our old phones from the states,
and we have SIM cards for the countries that we visit.
They're really cheap to buy,
like five dollars for a SIM card, and the data's cheap, too.
You can get five gigs of data for 90,000 dong a month,
which is less than five dollars.
You can have eight gigs of data for 125,000,
or unlimited for 300, 000, which is just a little more
than 10 dollars a month.
So the data here is super cheap and super reliable,
and super fast.
Same goes for the internet.
It's usually included with the apartments that you rent.
And it is always high speed Wi-Fi,
and it's really, really good service.
Vietnam has loads of markets, and Da Nang is no exception.
There's a whole bunch here as well.
So I thought I would take you guys into a place
called the Han Market, and let y'all have a look around.
As y'all can see, there are loads of goods here.
It is a two-story market.
Probably hundreds of shops.
There's food, clothing, shoes, handbags, jewelry.
Everything that you can think of, they have.
Things here tend to be really inexpensive as far as shoes
and clothing is concerned.
Sometimes it's difficult to find things
that are big enough for our Western bodies.
So bear that in mind if this is a place
you think you might want to live.
(upbeat music)
Can't stop here without a new dress.
Nine dollars well spent.
I'll take it.
(upbeat music)
Like I said, it's kind of a rainy, dreary day today,
but I thought I would still try to show y'all the beach.
It's usually really nice and sunny during the summer,
and we can walk to the beach in about five minutes
from our apartment.
So I'll let you look around.
Next to the beach, they have all these workout bars,
that are actually really popular.
People use those all the time.
And this is a pretty busy beach,
but it's really, really huge
so it doesn't feel too crowded during the day.
Especially today.
This is another one of my favorite coffee shops in Da Nang.
It's called H Coffee, and they make the best coconut coffee.
It's coconut ice-cream with coffee, and it 20,000 Dong,
which is less than a dollar.
Smoothies, fresh juice, beer, tea, cappuccino, espresso.
All sorts of good stuff.
It's really, really cheap,
and it's really close to our apartment,
and it's great for a hot day.
So I'm gonna have coconut coffee.
While I'm waiting for my coffee, I'll tell y'all
a little more about a typical day.
Even though it's my day off, it's a pretty standard day.
When you live in Da Nang, you work in the evenings
and the weekends for the most part.
For the most part, your days are yours
to kinda do whatever you want.
You can sleep in, you can have coffee,
go to lunch, go exercise, go to the beach,
take a mountain drive, take a nap.
A lot of people do that when the heat is on
in the summertime.
My typical workday starts at about
four-thirty in the afternoon
until about eight-thirty in the evening.
So during the day, I'll go to a yoga class,
I'll go to the gym, I'll go swimming, I'll watch Netflix
if the weather's not good.
Whatever I want.
But let's get real.
I definitely eat more than I exercise.
We live in an area that has lots of options for expats.
If you want Western food, you can get it.
Obviously, Vietnamese food is everywhere.
So there's lots to choose from.
It's nice.
We came down to the beach.
It got dark really early this evening
because of all the thick cloud cover.
But we came down to the beach for a beer and a beach walk,
and there's some, like, meditating
or something going on behind me, which is pretty cool.
Haven't seen that before so always ...
(woman speaks in foreign language)
Okay, so my friends here in Da Nang are taking us to dinner.
What are we going to eat?
- Oh, we will go to ...
- Like, (women speaks in foreign language)
- Yeah. Like, and some pork.
- Creamed corn, greened pork.
- Pork and rice cakes.
- Yeah, something like that.
- We just arrived at dinner.
Looks like we'll be having Nem Lui,
which is like grilled pork skewers in rice paper.
It's pretty good.
Alright, so we just finished our dinner,
and we are out having some coffee.
Well, we're having beer.
Our friends are having coffee and smoothies.
But I just wanted to thank everybody for watching.
I have really enjoyed hearing from you guys,
and hearing your questions.
Again, if y'all have any questions,
you're more than welcome to message me
on my Instagram account.
I'll keep an eye on this one for the next little bit.
I'll have access to the ITA account
for another couple hours, so if y'all have more questions,
please feel free to send them here
or send them to me on Instagram @slabinsky.
But it's been lots of fun,
and I hope to hear from y'all soon.
Bye!
(upbeat music)