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Snakes & Ladders Profiles of Women in Science and Stories of the Snakes and Ladders They Have Faced in Their Careers
Vietnam – A Different Way of Seeing the World
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Exchanging information with international colleagues, tasting new foods, considering history from a different perspective, using local transportation, giving impromptu English lessons – all of these activities in Vietnam helped me appreciate that the Australian way is not necessarily the only way. I travelled to Vietnam for two weeks in June 2006 as Manager of the International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics (ICE-EM). My purpose was to promote and showcase Australia’s expertise in the mathematical sciences, and to look at opportunities for international cooperation.
My
trip was arranged by Australian Education International, which is part of the
Department of Education, Science and Training. AEI works on a fee-for-service
basis to assist Australian universities and schools in arranging visits with
their international counterparts for collaboration, exchanges and student
recruitment.
Having visited Mexico City, Jakarta and Rome, I thought I knew about traffic
chaos, but Vietnam overwhelmed me. Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (which many still
call Saigon) were awash with motor scooters, and not a helmet in sight. There
were occasional stoplights, but no one took any notice. Pressure just kept
building whenever drivers wanted to turn across a steady stream of oncoming
traffic; the scooters inched out as a group, and somehow the traffic flowed
around them.
I was most frightened by the three scooters carrying a family of five, a
full-size refrigerator, and three large live pigs, respectively – that is, until
I saw a scooter driver who was texting on his mobile with one hand, smoking with
the other and steering with his elbows! Although I saw numerous near misses and
gentle taps, I witnessed only one serious accident. Thankfully AEI arranged a
car and driver for me; I was probably the only one in Vietnam ever to have worn
a seat belt!
During my visit, I met with mathematics department staff in several
universities. Although Vietnam is often categorised as a developing country, I
was very impressed with the quality of the mathematics teaching.
For example, Vietnam often places in the top 5 in the International Mathematics
Olympiads, higher than Australia, which usually places in the top 25. Vietnam
will be hosting the Mathematics Olympiads in 2007 and the Physics Olympiads in
2008. They run a number of selective schools for the gifted and talented in
mathematics (as well as in physics, chemistry and history) and to get into
university, even to study the social sciences or languages, students must pass a
difficult examination in mathematics.
In Hanoi I stayed at the Lucky Hotel in the centre of the old town. I got lost
several times in the narrow, crowded streets, each with its own specialty. For
example, one had shops that sold home altars; another had numerous karaoke bars.
My hotel was well located for shopping on the artists’ street, which crossed the
silk street and the lacquerware street. I laughed when a woman I met on a tour
told me her hotel was on the corner of electrical goods and maternity wear!
My hotel was three blocks from Hoan Kiem Lake, which is located in a park and
contains a temple on a small island. Even at 6 am, people were everywhere –
doing exercises, lifting weights, dancing with swords and fans, doing aerobics,
meditating, jogging and playing badminton. My morning routine was to walk twice
around the lake, it being too hot for a run. I didn’t get hassled as a
Westerner, for which I was grateful.
My first visit was to the Institute of Mathematics in the Academy of Science and
Technology in Hanoi. The Institute has 85 researchers, of whom approximately 20
are professors. Many have published with major English language publishers such
as Kluwer, Oxford and Springer Verlag.
The Institute’s mission is to undertake
research and to train postgraduate students (approximately 20 at the PhD and 50
at the Master’s level). I was impressed by their international connections,
particularly with universities in France, Germany and Italy, but also South
Korea. Each year they run 3 to 5 international and 4 or 5 national conferences
and summer schools.
The Institute has the strongest library collection in mathematics in Vietnam, an
online catalogue, and journal exchanges with countries from around the world.
They also publish their own journal, Acta Mathematica Vietnamica.
One of the professors at the Institute, Nguyen Dong Yen, very kindly invited me
to dinner at a local restaurant, where I had the chance to meet his wife, Le
Minh Hang, a hydrologist. Neither ate meat, so I got to sample a huge variety of
unusual but very tasty fish and vegetables: soup with taro, deep fried corn
kernels, stir fried flowers, morning glory vines served with lots of garlic,
crunchy round green eggplant cut in half and pickled with chilli, and fish baked
in a clay pot with thick brown sauce made from a fruit that looked like a very
large olive.
The following day I met with the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training.
Again, I found examples of international cooperation, including a strong
relationship between Vietnam and the United States, which sponsors about 50
Vietnamese scholars a year through the Vietnam Education Foundation. Vietnam is
also one of the 11-member South East Asian Ministries of Education Organization
(SEAMEO), which, among other projects, funds the Regional Centre for Education
in Science and Mathematics (RECSAM) in Penang.
I visited several more universities, which were also characterised by a pattern
of very strong mathematics education (with an emphasis on pure rather than
applied mathematics) and international involvement. In some, this involvement
stemmed from many of the staff having completed higher degrees in former Eastern
block countries (the Soviet Union, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia). In
others, the emphasis was on teaching courses in English and inviting short-term
international lecturers. The International University in Saigon, for example,
has arranged ‘twinning’ programs to exchange lecturers with the University of
Nottingham, the University of Auckland, the University of Hawaii and the
University of New South Wales. Still other Vietnamese universities maintained
strong connections with various French institutions.
Before I left Hanoi, I took a city tour that included some early Buddhist
temples and museums, and from these I gained a greater understanding of why
education is so revered in Vietnam. When Europe was in the Dark Ages, Vietnam
already had an elite intelligentsia and mandarin system of governance. There
have been national exams for awarding doctorates since 1076 AD. Inscribed stelae
mounted on the backs of stone tortoises still list the names and accomplishments
of many of these scholars.
At the Ethnology Museum, I saw a newly opened exhibition on bao cap – the
‘subsidy economy’ from 1975-1986 – and all the hardships that people endured at
that time, including the censorship of writers and filmmakers. Now it is doi
moi (‘renovation’, meaning a market economy within a socialist framework),
and the economy is certainly booming. Vietnam has gone from an importer to one
of the largest exporters of rice. It has also become a major coffee exporter.
I was one of the thousands that day who stood in the long queue to see Ho Chi
Minh, dead since 1969, in the embalmed flesh. The mausoleum is in beautiful
grounds, much of it designed by the French at the turn of the previous century.
The hundreds of guards keeping an eye on the queue ensured that all of us showed
the proper respect – including no cameras, no chattering or laughing, and no
hands in pockets.
Between travelling from Hanoi to Saigon, I spent two days on a junk at Halong
Bay, with its more than 3000 limestone islets rising precipitously. I met two
Chilean students who had been studying English in New Zealand, but as this did
not equip them to understand Vietnamese English, I spent my time translating it
into rudimentary Spanish. We toured a couple of limestone caves, went to a
floating fishing village, and spent the evening in a spectacular mooring where
we could swim from the boat and explore the islets by kayak.
Saigon is a beautiful city; they’ve retained much of the turn-of-the-century
French architecture, which is interspersed with many parks and very new
buildings. Most of the ugly 1950s and 1960s styles have disappeared.
As one whose university years were defined by protests against the War in
Vietnam, I found it poignant to see vestiges of what the Vietnamese call ‘The
American War’. If anyone in the United States had read about the history of
Vietnam, they should have known not to get into the war, as the Vietnamese have
been repelling invaders – Mongols, Thais, Chinese, Japanese, French – for nearly
3000 years. I toured the headquarters for the South Vietnamese under President
Nguyen Van Thieu in the basement of his then mansion (now Reunification Palace),
and was amazed at how unsophisticated the whole war enterprise was. The maps,
radio equipment, phones, typewriters and so on from the period seemed archaic by
today’s standards.
At the University of Natural Sciences, as well as meeting with senior
mathematics academics, I met with three young lecturers who were planning to
attend our Graduate School in Mathematics in July. Although their understanding
of written English was very good, they were not used to hearing it spoken or
speaking it. We had an afternoon of impromptu English practice, with me asking
questions about their families, hometowns and university study, and them
quizzing me about Australia’s geography and customs.
The students insisted on meeting me for dinner, where we sampled many special
Vietnamese dishes, not to mention artichoke tea (they assured me it would do me
good!). And then they insisted that we go elsewhere for coffee – and the only
way for me to get there was on the back of a motor scooter. I decided on the
spot that I’d had a good life, and that if I died helmetless in the Saigon
traffic, so be it.
But I’m still here to tell the tale. My advice to anyone who has the chance to
travel with their job is: Grab it! As you can see from my many asides, work is
but half the opportunity for learning.
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