ASIA TEFL Conference, Hanoi, Vietnam 2010

I haven't had a chance to move my Hanoi photos from my laptop to my desktop yet, so here are some stock photos from the Internet.

This 2010 August Asia TEFL conference got sandwiched in between a trip to the US and obligations back in Japan, so we were in Hanoi for...two nights? It was really in and out. We arrived, slept, presented, met some new and old friends at the conference briefly, crashed from jet lag and exhaustion, and barely got in a few bites of absolutely excellent Vietnamese food and a few cups of aromatic, creamy Vietnamese coffee before boarding a plane back to Narita.

My research partner and Kota presented our paper "Development of Learner Self-Confidence: The Case of a Japanese EAP Program" to a good size group and had some good exchange of ideas with participants from Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and even Uzbekistan.

Next time I need to stay in Hanoi at least a week. I didn't get to tour the bay or the terraced rice fields in the mountains, and the city itself had plenty to do. It felt safe and the people were very friendly. As the motobike scene below shows, the streets of Hanoi look a lot like China. Having lived in Shandong for two years, I felt right at home crossing streets with thousands of mopeds with no stoplights. But everyone is very careful and organically adjusting to traffic even without lanes or lights. Amazing.