A Hanoi school for an almost entirely Vietnamese child.

One thing that stops me from writing more these days is the need to include a disclaimer at the outset.

Failing to reveal and appreciate privilege before starting to share anything remotely “lifestyle” makes you sound like a Guardian feature writer.

So here’s the deal. Remotely employed white man in Hanoi. Local wife. Locally adopted child.

Employed but no package. No one else is paying for education, healthcare, rent or flights. But still, lucky. Very lucky.

So let’s talk about the extreme options when it comes to education.

International? Realistically we can’t afford it. I mean we could but then we couldn’t ever retire. Couldn’t visit my family in the UK. It would be the single biggest outlay in our life.

But it’s more than that. As a Vietnamese kid, with a Vietnamese mum, who lives in Vietnam, speaks Vietnamese, has been to entirely Vietnamese preschools — she’s basically Vietnamese. She just has a white dad.

And we intend to stay here. Forever.

But there’s more. I’m not entirely comfortable with international schools. The generic Californian accent. The designed-in detachment. My daughter isn’t international. She’s local.

And I don’t think any education should be paid for.

This is the bit where you point out that I’d choose the UN school if someone else was paying.

I don’t know. Maybe. My wife less so. Maybe.

Local? There are legendary tales among foreigners in Vietnam of white people who sent their kids to local schools. It never lasts long. The general consensus seems to be that it’s tough. Just too tough.

However, as I put her on a minibus at 6.30 am each morning, I always wish I could just walk her to the local school.

So we went private Vietnamese. Not a wannabe international school. A very Vietnamese private school.

No white faces, give or take a few English teachers. A handful of returning Vietnamese.

The recommendation came via a middle-class Vietnamese friend whose kids have loved it and are now set to study overseas.

But, the worry.

There’s another issue here. Education stirs memories and strong viewpoints among all Vietnamese and my wife is no different.

As a kid, she walked miles to school each day. Doing well, meant hope for her entire family. Her parents demanded she was top three in her class. Education was something they sacrificed for.

One of her happiest memories as a kid was her dad making her fried rice at midnight so she could study just a little bit more.

And perhaps there’s a feeling there that it shouldn’t be too easy. Privilege should be appreciated. The cost is a quarter of that international school fee but still hefty by Vietnamese standards.

How to get a six-year-old to weigh up all of the above and grasp their opportunity?

Perhaps our east/west viewpoints are entirely opposite. I want to remove pressure. My wife wants to apply it.

I wrote recently about learning Vietnamese. There were four foreigners in our class. Me (English), a Scot, Chinese and Japanese.

The Scot stopped attending. I was comfortably the worst of those who remained. My Japanese and Chinese classmates embarrassed me with their diligence. Life is too easy for many westerners. We take education for granted.

For the past month, we’ve all been irritable and I realise it’s been weighing heavy on us all.

But — so far, so good. She is skipping onto that bus each morning and bounding off it, still smiling. She’s proud of her school, her uniform and herself. She likes school and I’m bursting with pride.

We need to relax. Let her learn. Let her grow and take our focus off this only child.

I think we’ve got it right but it feels like a long experiment.

We all do our best for our kids.

I think this is best.