How the media in Vietnam offered me a second chapter

June 21, 2025 | 08:00
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It took thousands of kilometres, many years, and plenty of career and personal dead-ends, but VIR sub-editor Ray McRobbie believes he has truly found a second home, in both work and life.
How the media in Vietnam offered me a second chapter
Vietnam is blessed with charming cities full of noise, activity, and plenty of developments to cover. Photo: Le Toan

On one cold, rainy August morning in North-East Scotland in 2008 (we get about three warm days a year there), I went to university for the very first time, classed as a mature student at the grand old age of 25.

A billion thoughts ran through my head that day, but never did I think that I would be using the journalism degree I earned at that university a decade later, at a business newspaper 9,000km away in Hanoi, Vietnam.

In fact, I wasn’t sure if I’d last the first day at university. It was induction day, and dozens of strangers were packed into the hall for a presentation from the course coordinator, a man with a stellar reputation in radio at the likes of the BBC.

In that very first presentation, he outlined via various graphs and tables the dreadful state of the media in 2008 and projections for the next few years while we studied. Some of it was tough to grasp for youngsters, touching on the ongoing global financial crisis and its effects on the industry.

But after it was outlined how much money media employees make in the United Kingdom (spoiler: almost zilch), and when the unpredictable working hours were spelled out, it was understandable enough for about a dozen students to simply stand up, leave, and never return.

I thought about doing the same, for a few seconds. Was I missing something? For me, it all sounded quite dire, but it was not about the money. I waited until my mid-20s to get to university, the first in my entire family, and I was not going to give up before the end of the first day. Besides that, it was the only course I knew I could succeed in. I am terrible at maths, science, sport, geography, and who knows what else. But I knew a badly written sentence when I saw one, I thought.

Four years later, I had my degree in my hands and the world at my feet. I was one of the top overall scorers in my class, but all the obvious and early roles – intern at this newspaper, intern at that radio station – were all strangely offered first to the lower-ranked students who already had contacts (or family members) in the same profession. I had no-one.

I would have been content working for my lowly hometown weekly newspaper, and I applied to work there several times. The first time, they instead gave the job to a fellow student, who marked her first-ever printed story by spelling her name wrong. On the front page. Maybe it was a sign to not settle for that.

The ups and the downs

I started to drift into just wanting any job, but my partner at the time was a chemical engineer and through sheer luck I was offered my first proper media role. We moved to Hamburg, Germany, where we both worked at the shipyard for a British oil and gas company.

My role was created just for me – an internal media communications sort, who compiled reports, sat in on meetings across various departments, and created a monthly internal newsletter full of mini features and interviews with staff.

It was an eye-opening period, discovering that the oil and gas industry at the time was filled with people who were often promoted above their expertise and did not really know what they were doing. My reports and features had to soften that fact for employees (and upper management) in the rest of the company back in the UK, who mostly had no idea how bad things were going at the shipyard.

But at least I was writing sentences and interviewing people.

After a year or so in Hamburg, the entire project was moved to Newcastle, England, which was neither planned nor carried out smoothly. This point of time featured some of the highest highs and lowest lows for me, personally. Hamburg is a wonderful city, and I was being paid better than I ever will again. My partner and I were loving life, and learning, and doing a bit of travel. We bought a house back in Scotland. And then the week after that, I lost my job.

Long story short, we now had a house that was too expensive, working and living in different locations while I tried to find a job near the new house. It was not easy in the slightest. I could not get my foot back into a media role, no matter how hard I tried. Everyone I knew from university who got a job in the industry either stuck rigidly to that same role, or had managed to move up from the inside, going from local radio news host to Scottish Television reporter, or even presenter.

It was now 2015 and things were terrible, frankly. The relationship was on the rocks, financially we were crippled, and I could only find part-time jobs at local pubs. It turned out that my journalism degree was almost useless in the UK.

The one thing I was passionate about was the biggest topic in the media at the time, Scotland’s relationship within the UK. I spent much of my spare time in 2013 and 2014 blogging, carrying out interviews, and writing guest pieces for major Scottish sites. The First Minister of Scotland at the time even mentioned me and my blog on Sky News. I was famous!

But I made zero financially from any of it, and then Scotland did not move in the way I thought it would. I felt like a fraud.

As if tied all neatly together, my relationship ended and my passion ended. It was time to get out.

Branching out

I’ll never forget when that first thought of Vietnam popped up. I was in bed, freezing and miserable, sometime in the first week of 2016. There was no way I could not afford to put the heating on, so I spent most of my days in bed around this time. I remember making a drunken fool of myself on New Year’s Eve and thought enough was enough.

What did I want? Well, that was easy – cheap stuff, warm weather, and a job. So for the first time, I typed into Google, “How to move somewhere hot and cheap”.

By the end of that week, I had a vague plan. The internet made me realise for the first time that my journalism degree was worth something in other places. The main theme to come from the search involved teaching English in various countries.

The more I read, the more I was able to whittle down options. I quickly learned how easy it was for someone like me to move to Southeast Asia, find a place to stay, and work. I watched YouTube videos and read blogs. Emails were sent out to people who moved to the region from the UK or North America, to try and get real tips from those who made a similar move. I had never done something like this before, and I wanted to get it right.

To be honest, “proper” media work was not on my mind throughout this time, because I mostly understood that teaching English was the way to go. That is what most people did, unless they were major experts on something, or diplomats. But I had a degree and that was all that mattered.

I narrowed down my search from Southeast Asia to Vietnam, and then decided to pick Hanoi over Ho Chi Minh City, mainly for the cultural side of things and the fact it had a colder season that I could get accustomed to. I sold my half of my mortgage, sold pretty much everything else, and got a one-way ticket.

It is now almost nine years later. After stints of teaching and working at media outlets such as VOV, for the past six years I have been at Vietnam Investment Review. It is about to overtake a supermarket job I had when 16-23 years old as the longest job I have ever held.

For me, this role has saved me in several ways. I was lost, as many people are, with no real plan career-wise. It is an unorthodox role to have, for sure, but it feels right for me. For the first time, I felt like I knew what I was doing. I felt like I could make a difference, and I felt like I could help others. In many ways, I feel like a fraud no longer.

Some people I know from back home still think, after all this time, that me living in Vietnam is a phase; that I will return and deal with all the big and small things they have to deal with – children, car maintenance, work inflexibility, snow storms, dark winters, scam calls, the negativity, and the extortionate prices of, well, everything. No, thank you.

It is not a phase. Vietnam is a home to me, I’m delighted to have played even the smallest part in its media sphere, and I still have plenty to offer.

By Ray

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