Tuyền has a posting

Exciting day on Monday...it began with breakfast at 6:30am with Tuyền to celebrate his first posting on board a ship!! After completing his course in first place he has been given an immediate posting and will fly to Singapore to join his ship on 15th October....just a week away.

So we had breakfast this morning in case I don't see him after we get back to Hải Phòng.  His first voyage will be for two months, between Japan and Brazil on a bulk carrier and as a trainee, he'll be chipping and painting and other maintenance tasks while he gets his sea legs. Last year on a training run he suffered from sea sickness, and they reckon that overcoming that just takes time.... I hope he acclimatises quickly! His second voyage will be longer - 8 months - and after that he'll do another course to get certification to take his place among the ship's officers on the bridge. Basically that's a year's practicum on top of his uni degree in Navigation.

He laughed when he said that most of his friends chose to be navigators because they wanted to see the world, but the reality is that there are very few ports where the crew are allowed off the ship because too many Vietnamese crew have jumped ship that way! 

The timing for his trip to Hải Phòng was perfect, for this afternoon I caught a bus to Hà Nội to go and meet Katie and Jordan .... won't be back till next week!