HIV AIDS month

Last Friday about 7pm I was contacted by phone and invited to attend a performance to launch HIV AIDS month in Vietnam. The invite came from the Ministry of Health and the concert was 7.30 on Sunday. 7.30 in the morning that is! At first I thought about how to get out of it, but eventually my sense of duty to colleagues in the Ministry and the project over-ruled my common sense and I decided to go.

A party on Saturday night was not really the best preparation for the performance, but I duly dragged myself out of bed and headed off on my bicycle to the Friendship Palace - a concrete monolith built by the Russians as a present to the Vietnamese people and one of those structures which has 1960s communist design written all over it. People were arriving in large numbers but the guards on the entrances were not impressed by my bike. I was directed round the back to find a parking space at the tradesman's entrance. I paid my parking fee of 500 dong - 2p at today's exchange rate and walked in the back door. This confused my minder who was waiting for me out the front. I was given a badge, tee shirt and promotional literature and ushered into the concert hall where I had a seat on the second row just behind the really important people. We waited. A few minutes after the official start time a load of Vietnamese government officials arrived including the Vice Prime Minister responsible for AIDS - not the best of titles. We all shook hands and sat down.

I have to say the performance was the best live show I've seen in Vietnam. The performers were from the National Centre for Dance and Music, a sort of performing arts university and they were as professional as anything I have ever seen. The culmination of the music and dance was a piece of drumming which was started by the Vice Minister for Sport and Tourism - who had clearly been a drummer in his younger days - and concluded with no less than 45 drummers with drums the size of oil barrels thumping the hell out of their instruments enough to make pacemakers give up and leave it to the reverberation off the walls to keep anyone's pulse active.

Then came the speeches, one after another until it was the Vice Prime Ministers turn. None of us saw him speak as he was behind a high lecturn surmounted by an enormous display of flowers and he was surrounded by the Vietnamese press all trying to get the best shot for their paper.

The end of the event required us to go outside and stand at the top of the steps with the Vietnamese dignatories whilst a cavalcade of motorbikes, cars and lorries did a fly past as they set out to spend the day polluting the streets of Hanoi promoting the efforts of the fight against AIDS.

The party broke up and we went for coffee in a nearby bar. It was not yet 10 am on Sunday and I had spent over 2 hours at a concert - before I even had my breakfast!

Lau Dac Biet

There's a big Bia Hoi not far from my house. We went there in the early days but I've not been there since 2007, so it was a surprise when a couple of friends texted me to say would I join them for a Lau and when I finally worked out the address I realised it was the big Bia Hoi.

This is also the place where I could see them roasting dog when I lived in the apartment (did I mention I moved out of the apartment in June? Maybe not)

I think the owner must have bought a job lot of table top gas cookers, because I don't remember Lau being on the menu before. Now they have a whole page of Lau and by the time I arrived my dining companions had already ordered Lau Dac Biet.

Lau is sometimes translated as "fire pot" or "hot pot" or "fondue". It is basically a metal or ceramic bowl of tasty broth placed on a stove on your table. The broth boils and you drop in whatever you have chosen to purchase. It goes in raw and comes out cooked to your taste. The flavour of the broth increases as the evening passes and usually by the time you are reduced to cooking noodles it is delicious. The meat or seafood is usually very fresh when it arrives at your table. On one occasion I picked up a prawn to drop in the broth and it promptly wriggled out of my chopsticks and hopped across the table heading for the door. It didn't get far before a Vietnamese friend caught it deftly and tipped it into the pot.

Prawns were on the menu tonight. Dac Biet means 'speciality' and the steaming pot arrived accompanied by a heaped tray of mixed meats and seafood and baskets of raw vegetables and noodles.

The delicacies included Frogs and snails along with slivers of fish and beef, large whole prawns, slices of eel and squid, which appeared to be mainly the tentacles. Topping the broth were sheets of fried tofu, spring onions and one of the many Vietnamese vegetables which they say is 'cabbage' but which looks nothing like cabbage.

Accompanying all this were glasses of Bia Hoi, the light refreshing beer brewed daily. Bia Hoi is no longer brewed at the restaurants, now it is factory produced just outside Hanoi. We ate and drank.

Its a long time since I ate frog and I had forgotten how delicate the meat is when cooked to perfection, the frogs are big so the small bones are big enough to remove either in your mouth or, for the more skillful, with your chopsticks. The snails taste like tyre rubber, but that is just my opinion of snails. Everything else was great and we finished the whole pot, eating the noodles last and slurping the dregs of the soup like we hadn't eaten for weeks.

It may be shorter than a year before I go back to this place, especially as the bill divided by four came to less than £3 each including the drinks.

Yoga and more Yoga

The road - converted to a rice drying platform

Half way through last week I remembered there was a yoga retreat at Mai Chau, a place in the mountains outside Hanoi. With the weekend forecast for yet more torrential rain (which did not happen) I decided a bit of meditation and relaxation was what was in order.

I called the company organising the weekend and they confirmed they still had places and a room was duly booked. On Thursday a man arrived to collect my deposit and on Friday afternoon I found myself a motorbike taxi and set off for the meeting point. The driver, born and bred in Hanoi and not a spring chicken had no idea where he was going and we eventually arrived at the destination with me giving the directions. He then offered to wait for me and I had to try and explain I was not going home until Sunday night. Eventually, looking a bit crest fallen he set off to try and find his way home.

Six hours later we arrived at the lodge and immediately changed for the first class, a session which lasted 2 hours. Dinner and bed - once the local ethnic dancing display had finished.

Unlike the forecast Saturday morning was damp (it did rain in the night) but clear and therefore cool. Our practice room was a floating bamboo and palm building on a lake and was not the warmest of places. Class overran again and it was over three hours later when we emerged for breakfast. This was followed by a 2 hour cycle ride. We didn't follow the intended route because all the locals were using every inch of concrete paving to frantically dry rice which they had salvaged from the previous week's floods. Everywhere everyone was drying rice in the autumn sunshine.

We stopped for a beer on the way back and in keeping with the theme of the weekend were nearly 2 hours late for lunch. The lodge was getting used to us.

After a relaxing afternoon the third session of yoga started at 5.30pm and also overan to nearly 8.30pm, so it was dinner and bed again. There were a couple of absentees by the time the 7.30am Sunday session started and also overan. That left time for breakfast, a walk into the local minority village to try and shop (I didn't buy anything apart from a beer), lunch, check out and travel back to Hanoi, which took five hours.

I slept well on Sunday night but today I am far from flexible. I ache all over.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs - here to help?

At the weekend I decided I could not put off the onerous task of the annual tax return any longer and so I logged on to the self assessment website to find that I am no longer able to use it.

During this year I was granted non-resident status for tax purposes. What they didn't mention was that this removes my ability to file a tax return on line. Self assessment via the net no longer applies to those who are thousands of miles from their tax office and would therefore most benefit from it.

Now this is a source of concern since the deadline for paper returns has just passed and I my paper return is somewhere in a pile of unopened post in Nottingham. So I rang the self assessment helpline to ask what my options were. I successfully answered the five security questions after which the nice young lady told me that I could not use on-line self assessment, but she couldn't tell me what my options were since my tax records were held somewhere else. She could give me the number for that office but that was all. I took the number and dialed it.

"Hello you are through to Deborah" the voice was not welcoming. The voice was that of a member of the Stazi in a bad mood. I failed the security checks. How was I to remember the mobile phone number I left behind in the UK in 2006? Who knows their company pension reference number off the top of their head?? Now she was suspicious, officious and mean - I was obviously a terrorist trying to blow up the phone line. "You have failed the security checks I cannot access your records or tell you anything" "But how can you expect me to remember a phone number I have not used for two years?" "I ask zee questions" (actually she said "the advisor has choice of the security questions")

I persisted and explained my plight, she softened - slightly "what is your postcode?" I gave her the address of my parents house. "No the postcode where you live" "I live in Hanoi, Vietnam and they don't have postcodes" (in fact they rarely deliver post). "THEN I CANNOT HELP YOU!" she said. "YOU will have to put your request in writing to this office" "But it will take 5 weeks to reach you" I replied "YOU have had since April the 6th" she retorted "and where is this office?" I asked meekly....... Silence (she didn't know if she could answer this question or not) I let her off the hook "It's South Yorkshire isn't it? I'm sure I can find the address" "Yes" she replied. "Thanks for your help" I said "You must put your request in writing, goodbye" she said with an air of finality.

So I guess I'm screwed.

The aftermath

Not a Jetski - a motorbike!

So its Monday and the scale of the weekend rains is clearer. Over 30 people died. Some were drowned after manhole covers were lifted to speed the drainage of water and the holes became submerged in the flood. People wading by fell into the holes and were sucked into the drains where they drowned. 425mm fell over Friday and Saturday and this lunchtime I still had to choose my route carefully to avoid streets which are still under a foot of water. Some of our staff did not get to work and our maid had the ground floor of her house completely flooded.

The rain has stopped. It has not rained for about 12 hours now and everyone is hoping it will stay like that. Traffic is starting to get back to normal and no doubt a big clean up is going on somewhere.

The rains have now moved south and other parts of the country are being hammered. I expect there will be an appeal for donations from the body which regulates foreign enterprises. It may be compulsory but I really don't mind on occasions like this.

The morning after

The rain did not stop. All night it continued. This morning the news reported 300mm fell on Hanoi on Friday - the highest rainfall for 24 years. In some streets the water was 2 metres high. Broken down vehicles litter the city and several people drowned.

Friends who set off on a 120 mile journey at 7am this morning have still not arrived eight hours later. The planters outside on my balcony are minature lakes and a ragged collection of small birds are sitting desolate on my washing line. Another friend who set of for work, normally a 20 minute journey returned two hours later unable to reach his destination.

Now at 4pm in the afternoon it has paused and the sun has come out. The sounds of motorbikes can be heard again - all I heard so far today is the roar of torrential rain. The birds are singing and the weather men are saying the rain will be back and last another two days.

Over 60,000 hectares of farmland in the region has been devastated and some people are talking of food shortages.... which will start panic buying which will lead to food shortages. The sun is actually very hot, we will soon need the airconditioning on again.