White ao dai at seven in the morning: the school day

At about a quarter to seven, a street that has been quiet for an hour fills with white. Teenagers in white ao dai and white shirts arrive on foot, on electric bikes and on the back of a parent's scooter. The gate absorbs them in about 10 minutes.

The Vietnamese school day is one of the four things that decide what the roads do, and it explains a lot of what you see.

What are the hours?

Two blocks with a long gap in the middle, and the gap is the part that surprises visitors.

The midday break is why the traffic has four peaks and not two, and why a city sounds different at 11:15 than at noon. The mornings guide covers the earliest of those waves.

Why the white ao dai?

Because it is the uniform, not a costume. Upper secondary schools in much of the country put senior girls in a plain white ao dai: daily in some schools, on Mondays and ceremonies in others. It has become one of the standing images of Vietnam.

Younger pupils wear white shirts with dark trousers or skirts and the school's badge on the sleeve. The textiles guide covers the garment's other lives; this is the one that most Vietnamese people actually wore.

What is the school year?

September to May. A ceremony on 5 September opens it, and every school in the country holds that morning together: flags, speeches, drums and new uniforms. Summer runs June to August, and Tet takes a fortnight or more out of the middle.

The Tet guide explains what that fortnight does to travel. For a visitor the useful part is simpler. In June and July the daytime streets have children in them, and the noise moves from the school gate to the swimming pool.

What are the evening classes?

Hoc them — extra tuition, paid for privately, taken after the timetable ends. Maths, literature and English above all, taught in a teacher's front room, a language centre or a tutoring chain. It is the reason children are on the roads again at 21:00.

The scale of it is hard to overstate: it is a national industry, a real household expense, and a recurring subject of official complaint. It also explains why the English of a teenager who approaches you on the street is often much better than you expected.

Who is riding what?

Everybody, from an age that startles visitors. Teenagers ride electric bikes and 50cc scooters to school in large numbers; the rules limit engine size and age, and enforcement is patchy.

Younger children ride pillion, frequently two or three deep on a parent's bike, in the school-run wave that the motorbike taxi guide shares the road with. Helmets on children are now much more common than they were, which is a visible change rather than a claim.

Can you photograph it?

Not without asking. A courtyard of pupils in white is exactly the photograph people come home with, and it is still thirty children whose parents did not agree to it.

Ask a teacher, or photograph the gate and the bicycles rather than the faces. The photography guide sets out the general rule, and children are the case where it is applied strictly.

Why does any of this matter to a traveller?

Because it is most of what the street does at four fixed hours a day, and because it is the least performed thing you will see here. Nobody arranges a school run for visitors.

The school run is also where the conversations start. An English teacher will ask you into a classroom. A teenager will practise a sentence on you at a bus stop, and the language guide suggests what to say back.