Marvin - someones man in Ha Noi

So I poured the still beating heart into my mouth and swallowed

2010-02-11T21:28:00.002+07:00

Snake has been on the menu for a long time. "We must take you for snake" say my colleagues with broad smiles, but in three years it never happened.

We were discussing this failure. The reason offered was that the colleague making the offer wanted another colleague to go along, however that colleague was born in the year of the snake and did not eat her relatives. So the saga had dragged on but was brought to a head by the rapidly approaching Lunar new year and my departure for the UK. It had to be now..... unfortunately "now" meant the night I had reserved for packing my bags.

Common sense prevailed and we went for snake.

Now you don't just go anywhere for snake, you have to go to the famous snake village, which involved a 30 minute motorbike ride through the pre Tet (Pre Christmas to those of you who live in the UK) traffic and then wriggling through a rabbit warren of narrow backstreets with no clear signage other than large billboards showing pictures of Cobras and announcing delicious Bamboo snake, or Bamboo snake gardens; until the road eventually ran out and we were faced with a small gateway which looked like a temple entrance but which was actually the entrance to THE snake restaurant.

Inside we parked motorbikes infront of an altar and saw a caged off area where two guys in wellingtons were handling writhing bags, which obviously contained snakes. We were shown to our seats and then invited to go choose our snake.

This is a Vietnamese custom not for the squeemish. I've seen restaurants which advertise "turtle killed at your table" and I have seen eels being bled to make potent rice wine which looks like a cross between Shiraz and cherryade. This was the first time I was going to partake.

There was an exchange in Vietnamese between my hosts and the staff and two rather lively snakes were dragged out of a cage. We were told they were bamboo snakes, that there was no English name for them, that they were farmed rather than wild and that they weighed 450 grams. We were also told that they were not poisonous, which somewhat disclaimed all the posters which offered Bamboo snake but showed pictures of cobras.

The snake handlers were more than a match for the poor reptiles which, having been weighed, were dragged out of the bags, stretched out, had their throats cut, their blood drained, chest cavity opened and heart removed all in a matter of seconds. The still writhing bodies with heads removed were then skinned and gutted in large bowls of hot water in a matter of minutes. I watched a dismembered head slowly crawling across the floor propelled by the mouth which was opening and closing convulsively... Until one of the staff who had not seen it stood on it and it stopped moving altogether.

We retrurned to our table to find a bottle of blood rice wine, a bottle of snake bile rice wine and a bottle of specially brewed rice wine. The special brew was guaranteed to make men strong (wink wink). It tasted pretty poor.

More concerning was the small petri dish sitting in the middle of the table. It contained the still beating hearts of our two snakes. Now this really does make men strong.... providing the pathogens in the raw blood don't kill you that is. I looked at the dish, hypnotised by the movement. There were three men at the table and two hearts. The Vietnamese guy said "I'm not having a heart", so graceous, that leaves one for each of us.

As we pondered what to do a guy appeared, poured blood rice wine into our glasses and used a toothpick to flick one heart into each glass. Photos were taken and apprehensively we picked up our glasses and looking into them. Little ripples in the rice wine every time the heart pulsed.

I took a deep breath, looked at my colleague, we touched glasses in a toast and the I poured the still beating heart into my mouth and swallowed.

Contrary to popular belief I could not feel it pulsing down my throat, or in my stomach. It just went and that was it.

The rest of the snakes was then served in ten different dishes starting with snake soup and going all the way up to snake entrails. Actually, it was quite good.

Price is everything

2009-01-18T10:46:00.002+07:00

I've just returned from three weeks in the UK so the current 15 degrees C in Hanoi feels warm. To the Vietnamese this is the depth of winter and everyone is wearing coats, hats, gloves and anything else they can wrap up in.

I've moved house again and now occupy a three floor French Villa in the "French quarter" a euphemism for an area south of Hoan Kiem Lake which is heavily populated with similar properties. I'm in the process of buying stuff to make the house into a home as most of the furnishings and utensils in my last two houses belonged to the landlords or other people.

So it was that I came out of the supermarket with four heavy bags full of shopping. Too much to walk back to the house. I looked round for a taxi there were none. One of the gaggle of Xe Om (motorbike taxi) drivers huddled on the corner spotted me and a gleam came into his eye - here was a chance to make some money.

Inwardly I groaned, if I took this route home the first step would be a vicious battle over the price, in Vietnamese where he would start by asking for a fee equivalent to hiring a limo and I would have to bat him down.

I gave him the address - 12 Truong Han Sieu, "Yes, Yes" he said not looking at me, handing me a helmet and turning to start his bike. This is a common ploy - the driver will wait to tell you the price until you get to the destination and then ask for something exhorbitant. I stood my ground and did not take the helmet. I waited until he looked at me and asked "how much?" He smiled and said "25,000" my response "too expensive - more than a taxi, I'll pay you 5,000". "No No No!" he exclaimed. I turned to walk away "ok ok he said - 10,000".

Now I know that is still too much and more than a Vietnamese would pay but I don't begrudge these guys 40 pence for taking me a kilometre or so. I turned back to him and said OK. He smiled and then turned to the other Xe Om drivers who had been watching with interest. "Where is Truong Han Sieu?" he asked them.

Price is everything.

And Twan raised his bicycle seat

2008-12-14T09:20:00.002+07:00

I'm coming to the end of my current contract and have to move out of the house I've lived in for the past six months. This should not have been difficult since all my worldly possessions in Vietnam fit into half a dozen boxes. So Saturday morning I packed everything apart from the stuff I'm taking back to the UK for Christmas and one set of bedsheets then I called a Vietnamese colleague who had volunteered to help me move.

He arrived on his bicycle, actually a woman's bike but a modern design with semi-fat tyres and 28 gears.

The plan was simple, we would get a large taxi (people carrier to you) and load it with my six boxes and two bedside cabinets and take all my stuff to the store room at work until I find a new house in January. I needed my friend to explain where the taxi had to go - a narrow street which a big taxi can only access from one direction. I also needed him to stand on the pavement whilst I brought the boxes out so the recyclers didn't take them away as fast I as put them down.

The first bit went fine, I put the boxes in front of a four wheel drive which was parked in the lane blocking half it's width. My friend stood in the road looking for the taxi. On my fourth trip from the house he was on the phone - "taxi won't come in" he said. A heated debate followed after which it appeared the driver had agreed to come up the lane. A small taxi appeared and parked opposite the boxes reducing the width of the road at that point by two thirds. I went for the last box.

When I returned the big taxi had arrived and swung into a gateway to turn round. He almost reversed into the small taxi which decided to make space by pulling forward. The two drivers exchanged words then the small taxi drove even further down the road. I indicated to the driver that he should reverse up to the boxes, on the same side of the road as the 4x4. Instead he reversed on to the other side parking opposite the boxes and leaving enough space for two motorbikes to pass in between. We now had to get the boxes across the gap with motorbikes flying through sounding their horns.

At this point a small taxi appeared from behind us. No way could he get through the gap. I moved two of the bigger boxes which were causing the biggest obstruction and the small taxi driver eased his way into the gap. Two motorbikes coming the other way stopped to let him come through (unusual) but then a young woman drove her motorbike passed the other two and into the gap between the small taxi and the parked 4x4 (usual procedure). She couldn't get through and now neither could the taxi. The taxi was not giving way; the woman just looked confused and the horde of motorbikes either side of the blockage began to sound their horns in unison. In less than two minutes we had achieved total gridlock. I focused on getting the rest of my stuff in the taxi.

A man walking by told the young woman to get off her bike and he physically dragged it out of the way. The boxes gone the small taxi driver attempted to complete his manouver but before he could do so a young guy on a motorbike tried to get through the even smaller gap and gridlock was restored. We got in the big taxi and our driver eased away, getting maybe 10 metres before another motorbike drove up to his front bumper and looked puzzled by the fact that he couldn't go any further. Such is roadcraft in Vietnam.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, my belongings were stored and we headed back to the house. There was time to spare so I suggested a beer at my local bia hoi. I also suggested that as my friend coverted my bike maybe we could cycle together back to his house and he could use my bike and I would use his. This was a good idea. We got our bikes and cycled down to the Bia Hoi waking up the owner who was sleeping between the little tables. My friend invited another colleague to join us and we sat drinking bia whilst waiting for the arrival. This other guy lived about 15 minutes drive away, but it took him over an hour to arrive by which time a few beers had been consumed. We drank a couple more and my friend said it was time to go.

As we swopped bikes he asked if I would like to visit the new house he was building as well. Conscious of an evening dinnner date I asked him how far it was. He said "my house is 15 minutes from your house and my new house is 20 minutes from your house" I thought, ok an extra five minutes is doable. And we set off. After 20 metres he said to me "your saddle is too high". His bike had the typical Vietnamese configuration - saddle as low as possible so I was cycling with my knees round my ears. He contiued to complain until we got on the main road. Then, as we picked up speed, he looked at me with wonder and said "this is better!". By the time we reached his house he was enthusing. "I will raise my saddle, it is so much better!" And it was, he quickly learned to step off the saddle as the bike came to a halt, he saw the benefit of being able to see over the motorbikes and cars, he could go faster because he was using the full stretch of his legs.

He needed to go faster because he had meant to say that his new house was 20 minutes from his old house, so our journey was 35 minutes including obligatory stops for fruit at his old house and a grand tour of the new house which should be finished in a month.

I did make it for my dinner date, but as we separated and he disappeared off down another road I couldn't help but feel my major achievement of the day had been capacity building in the area of cycling technique.

Finally, I slept with a Man!

2008-12-04T00:15:00.004+07:00

Our 77 year old host administers corn wine from a recycled water bottle

The cockerel obviously did not have clock. If it had had a clock it would have known that 3am was not the right time to announce the dawn. The man who shouted abuse at the cockerel probably did have a clock, but the cockerel didn’t speak Vietnamese either so it carried on crowing.

The guy in bed at the side of me said something, maybe in his sleep, but he spoke Dutch so I didn’t understand that either. I was sharing a bed with a man, this has come close to happening several times since I came to Vietnam. In one case it was planned that I would share a bed with two men but then that trip was cancelled. This bed was so wide that sharing it was never going to be a problem. We were sleeping in a typical Vietnamese “Nha Nghi” – a guest house. Being in a tourist centre this room was costing us £6 for the night. That’s £3 each. A Vietnamese family of five or six might share a bed like the one we were sleeping on. And we had separate quilts.

This was my last weekend away in Vietnam before going home to the UK for Christmas. A chance to visit the famous Bac Ha Sunday market for the second time and drink a few beers with friends. The adventure started with the Friday night trip from Hanoi to Lao Cai on the overnight train. I arrived at the wrong station to find everyone else waiting. A failed attempt to get onto the platform revealed we did not actually have tickets. We only had vouchers to be exchanged for tickets at the OTHER Hanoi railway station. We hot footed it to Station B (a good old fashioned communist inspired name), found the woman with the tickets and found our train assisted by one of the touts who hang around on the platform to show you where to go, even if you know where to go, and then expects a tip.

We were in our compartments with 10 minutes to spare. The journey was noisy, the train was old and the window would not shut letting in the cool night air as well as the sounds of the engine. The mattresses are thin but sleep came easily and after several false stops (this was the last train of the night and inter-hamlet rather than inter-city) we arrived in Lao Cai around 7.30am.

Rather than take three hours on a rickety public bus to Bac Ha we had reserved a private minibus and we were met by our ‘guide’ who didn’t actually speak English. He led us to the white van sitting outside the station. The sliding door was eventually heaved open and we looked in. Five of the seats were ok, covered in dust but ok. The seat back of two of the seats was bent forward in a position which looked like it might cause permanent spinal damage to the occupants. Neither of the two fold down seats had seat backs at all. We climbed in. One of the group leaned across to close the side window nearest the back of the bus. After a few moments of confusion it became clear there was no window. The guide smiled, the driver desperately tried to start the noisiest diesel engine I’ve heard in a while and we bounced off down the road. The cool morning air was in danger of inducing hypothermia so sign language was used to get the guide and driver to close their windows. That was achieved by the driver winding the handle until the window stopped moving then getting hold of the glass and pulling it up until he could jam in into the top of the frame. He did this with two hands whilst the guide held the steering wheel and the bus continued to career down the road.

Apart from the cold the trip was fairly uneventful, the road to Bac Ha has taken another hammering in the recent bad weather. Repairs following the floods in February were not complete when the heavy rains of September and October compounded the damage. The bus stalled in a bed of loose sand on a steep hill and we all held our breath until the driver managed to restart it and the van crawled out of the ruts. In the end our luxury bus took almost as long as the public bus and by the time we had driven once round Bac Ha trying to get the guide to understand where the hotel was there was just time to check in, find the electricity was off and go for lunch.

A couple of beers and a bowl of rice later we were ready for new adventures. The plate of chopped bananas which arrived instead of banana flower salad and a few other interesting interpretations of the menu meant that we had not exactly eaten excessively so an afternoon walk with a local school teacher who teaches English showing us the sights seemed about right.

We walked and talked for two or three kilometres when he suggested we should just drop into this house and meet one of the locals. Inside a small group of men broke up as we approached leaving a laughing guy in a leather jacket and woolly hat as the centre of attention. He welcomed us all and began to heap compliments on the women as we sat down. Bac Ha corn wine arrived in the usual deceptive plastic water bottle and shot glasses were put out for everyone. We drank our collective health and the glasses were full again by the time they hit the table. Toasting health with this stuff is a bit like saying smoking is bad for you whilst dragging on five lit cigarettes in each hand. Bac Ha corn wine is probably used as fuel in the Chinese space program.

We drank three… or was it four rounds before finally taking leave of our host who was still consuming the wine and assuring us of the health benefits, after all he was 77 years old. We staggered off up the hill. Our teacher guide said we would be back in town in 15 minutes. This was shortly after he said it was another 5 kilometres and only five minutes before he directed us into another house to meet another of his ‘helpers’. This time our host was a mere sixty something years old. Again the corn wine came out and health was toasted. This guy thought entertainment was in order as well so he brought out several ethnic minority instruments and performed music and dance between toasts. Then we had to join in. Several people headed for the toilet (on the right next to the pig sty). These ‘helpers’ are effectively retired locals of good status who act as voluntary truancy officers, persuading children to go to school and persuading parent farmers with too much work to do to let their young labourers leave the fields and go to lessons. The commitment is obvious and whilst I left both houses cursing corn wine I have the greatest amount of respect for those men, the life they live and the importance they see in the education of the next generation. It was dark when we arrived back in town.

A great meal in a local restaurant was accompanied by… complimentary Bac Ha corn wine but by now most people were past caring. Meal over we retired to a local Karaoke bar where, after the first song from our group, the few Vietnamese in the place left. We staggered back to the hotel about midnight for the third round of ‘hunt the room key’ (don’t ask) and retired to bed for three hours sleep before the ruddy rooster decided it was dawn.

Sunday in Bac Ha is the big day of the week. Hundreds of people come in from the minority villages around the province for one of the biggest and most colourful markets in North Vietnam. You can sit outside the cafes having breakfast and watching vendors and buyers arriving, all dressed in the traditional costumes of their people and carrying or leading their offerings. Here a woman in a bright outfit carrying a shopping bag with two ducks, their heads sticking out and looking round, there a small boy pulls on the cord through the nose a reluctant one tonne buffalo on its way to be sold. Many products don’t even make it to market. As I sat and drank coffee on the steps of our hotel the owner stopped a man going past with a bag on his shoulder. The bag was dumped on the pavement. It squealed loudly. The seller opened the bag to show the hotel owner the pig inside. They agreed a price and the bag disappeared into the back of the hotel. The seller with his money and smile on his face, headed towards the market now going as a buyer.

I met the rest of the group for breakfast and then we went our separate ways into the market which covers a large area. I bought a few Christmas presents but spent most of my time watching the transactions between the local peoples. Two men sat on their heels in a quiet corner playing pipes made of bamboo with a ceramic horn on the end. A third man sat in front of them, his face screwed up in total concentration as he tried to decide which was the better instrument.

The man in the hat listens intently to the two 'clarinets'

In the bottom of the market by the river is a ‘food court’ – rows of small stalls with rectangular seating areas under low blue tarpaulins where the internal organs of many different animals are boiled, carved and mixed with rice noodles to form many different breakfast soups. Sometimes it’s the feet or the jaw which provides the delicacies. You don’t see any Europeans eating here (me included). Around the edges of the market, where the roads are tarmac rather than mud, are all the stalls selling handmade fabrics, clothes, wall hangings and many other items which are attractive to tourists. These are the stall where a few words of English are spoken and where most of the tourists try their hand at barter. I was not very successful, the young girl I was pitted against was just too cute to disappoint. She was smiling from ear to ear when I left with my purchases.

This time I did not try to buy a buffalo, or a horse or a pig. Instead I settled for bags and cushion covers. Then I made my way back to the small bar outside the market where the group was gradually reassembling as enthusiasm for shopping (or money) ran out. We drank beer at 10.30 in the morning and watched as the bulk of the tourist busses arrived from Sapa with the day shoppers. We lunched in the same restaurant (there’s not much choice) walked in the hills for an hour or so and then collected our things as the luxury bus coughed and wheezed up to the front of the hotel. A slightly faster and warmer trip back to Lao Cai was followed by another ticket collecting saga and a bowl of Pho in a local café before we climbed on the early train back to Hanoi. Once again it was easy to sleep and the journey passed in forgotten dreams before the guard banged on the door and shouted “Ha Noi”. It was around 5am on Monday morning as I pushed through the taxi drivers and walked home in the dark. Once away from the station the streets were quiet, only the noodle soup vendors were in evidence busily preparing breakfast for their clients. By 5.30am Monday morning I was back in bed for a couple of hours sleep before work.

HIV AIDS month

2008-11-19T21:59:00.002+07:00

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

2008-11-12T18:40:00.003+07:00

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

2008-11-10T19:36:00.003+07:00

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?

2008-11-04T22:00:00.003+07:00

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

2008-11-03T23:06:00.002+07:00

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

2008-11-01T15:55:00.002+07:00

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.

Halloween

2008-10-31T19:35:00.002+07:00

About midnight on the 30th of October it started to rain.. And it rained and it rained.

I was cooking lunch for 24 Vietnamese at work so I had a lot to carry on the old bicycle. Just as I left the house it stopped! I cycled through street running with water and little traffic - everyone was still hiding. I got to the office, unloaded my bike and.... it started raining again.

That was the pattern for the day. Rain RAIN RAIN!!! then stop, then start again. I ventured out to get the last items for lunch and avoided the lake which always forms at the junction of Nguyen Du and Ba Trieu. Pleased with myself I got onto Quang Trung only to find an ocean complete with waves washing up to my thighs.

A neuveau riche Vietnamese in his Toyota Camry had stopped - going too slow and using as low revs as possible his exaughst had flooded. He opened the car door - big mistake.

Buffetted by the waves I got to the shops and back and the day continued.

6pm and I'm about to leave when the cleaner calls me to another flood in the offices. We mop up and make temporary repairs then I'm on my way home - only knee deep on the bike this time. 7.30pm and the rain gets heavier - is that possible? A colleague texts me to say she is still in a taxi trying to get home having left Saigon 8 hours before (normally a 3 hour journey). And it has now been raining with short breaks for 20 hours.

The ghosts are having a great time this Halloween, pity about all the parties that have been cancelled tonight.

Return to Hanoi

2008-03-03T21:16:00.001+07:00

The lounge in my new apartment in Hanoi

I got off the plane at East Midlands Airport in mid December and it was really cold, below freezing. A friend picked me up and we drove into Nottingham along roads which seemed to be really quiet and with little traffic despite it being the week before Christmas. As I settled into another friend’s house the streets seemed deserted, void of human life compared to the crazy bustle of Hanoi.

Eight weeks later when I got off the plane in Hanoi on Saturday 9th of February it felt just the same. It was the day after Tet, the Lunar New Year. Over 30% of the population of Hanoi go back to their home town for anything from a week to a month, all the shops and markets close and people stay in the house. It was also the coldest winter since the late 1960s with temperatures below 10C – and that feels really cold if you don’t have any heating.

I haggled at the taxi rank, even the normally reliable firms were asking for more than twice the usual fare for a trip from the airport into town. We settled on a figure which was only just over 10% higher than I normally pay and I thought I’d done well.

As we drove into town the streets were silent – not enough traffic to make it worth sounding your horn – and everyone I passed appeared to be wearing every item of clothing they owned.

The hotel too was quiet, a few foreign tourists who had mistimed their trip not realising Vietnam was closed and me. The surrounding building sites were deserted. I had lunch with some friends, collected my bike from the old house, slept off some of my jetlag and then went for a walk in the early evening. I found a few noodle soup sellers on the pavement by Lenin Park and ate a bowl for four times the usual price.

The Government of Vietnam has a real problem with inflation now. I’ve noticed prices creeping up at an increasing rate over the last twelve months. Now the papers have confirmed the worst. Overall inflation stands at 10% with food inflation at 25%. Property inflation is 14% and the consumer price index is going up by 2% month on month. GDP growth meanwhile continues at 8%. People are starting to feel it and as this is still largely a cash society increasing interest rates is not likely to have the same impact as it would in the West. I think there are some hard times coming.

On the Sunday morning I moved into my new apartment.

First I had to call at my office to collect the apartment keys. As I walked into the building entrance the head of security stood up to greet me and wished me a prosperous new year then insisted I sat and drank tea with him and his staff. My limited Vietnamese was more rusty than usual but he was happy to see me back and as we sat eating butter cookies and drinking the strong and bitter green tea I discovered the teenager who parks my bicycle each morning is actually 28 years old and has two young children. The head of security has children who are at university. There were many other parts to the conversation but I have no idea what they were.

I got the keys and walked back to the hotel and my boss arrived in a taxi to pick up my suitcase whilst I cycled down to number 10 Hoa Lu street where the 17 storey tower block I was about call home is located. It’s a nice apartment, two bedrooms an open plan lounge/dining area with a corridor kitchen a small bathroom and a balcony overlooking the street. It had almost everything I need; a bed, fridge, hob, sink, shower, mustard and black two piece leather suite and an amazing chandelier in the lounge. We walked round to where I used to live, only a block or so away and collected the rest of my worldly possessions – six bags of books, clothes, a few ornaments and a few toiletries – dumped them in the apartment and went for lunch.

In the afternoon I shopped in the big supermarket in Vincom Towers which was the only place open but which also had many empty shelves. I managed to procure enough to live for a few days. Once in the apartment I realised I had to go back to the supermarket and buy things which would enable me to open the cans and cook the food. The kitchen had a few basics but not that much.

Monday was my first day at work, but my Vietnamese colleagues did not start until Tuesday. In the office nothing was working, the internet was off and there is no heating. No one else came in. I stuck it for four hours then went home and continued to work there with the benefit of air conditioners which also heat.

Tuesday traffic levels were noticeably higher but many schools were still closed because of the cold. In the evening I went to the Bia Hoi and greeted the patrons. The owner sat me down and we proceeded to catch up on the events of the last eight weeks, fortunately a retired guy who speaks a bit of English was there as well and the landlord’s 16 year old daughter also came down to act as interpreter. It was strange sitting there with everyone in overcoats, woolly hats and in some cases drinking beer with gloves on. Not really like the tropics are supposed to be! As I sat there I got a text inviting me to dinner and I left them after a couple of glasses still huddled over the little green tables debating how expensive an apartment at number 10 Hoa Lu must be.

The whole transition of that first week felt similar to the way I felt when I arrived in England, like I was a spectator rather than a real participant. During my eight weeks in England that never really passed, now I’ve been back in Hanoi for a few weeks it does feel more like home again helped by the weather warming, the bustle returning and a whirl of social events which have left me only having to cook on my own on four occasions.

Work too is hectic, we have to move offices – the landlord will not renew our lease. We have four weeks to get out. I’m drawing office layouts for the new building and helping the office manager make the removals plan. The projects I was working on are all still there and on top of that the project is being audited which has created an extra raft of jobs. I’m not bored, but I am struggling to see how I can do everything I want to do when I have just 17 weeks to do it all in. It’s started me thinking if I should leave as planned or spend some more time here, long enough to try and get things as I think they should be.

As I sit here and write this I could be anywhere in the world, but there are a few things in my less than a year old flat to remind me this is Vietnam. In the bathroom there is an uphill gradient to the drain in the floor and the water leaking from the shower therefore accumulates in a puddle in front of the toilet. In each room there are bare electricity cables hanging out of the wall in case anyone wants to add more lights later. I have two cable TVs but the building has no cable. The telephone only works when the internet is off. The kitchen is designed for Vietnamese and has a pull out extract fan above the hob. Pull it out and the fan comes on along with a light. The trouble is when it is pulled out it is level with the middle of my chest and I can’t actually see the pans on the hob! At least the washing machine instructions are in English this time – the machine at the old house only had instructions in Chinese.

The quintessential Vietnamese feature is the chandelier; an arrangement of extravagant twisted metal stems each ending in a tulip shaped glass shade with a small but powerful bulb. It gives a nice light in the lounge but if you leave it on for more than an hour or so it just goes out. Half an hour later it comes back on again. One night as I sat there reading I realised something was not right. It took me a few seconds of hard staring to get what it was. It was as if I had not watered a vase of flowers. The tulips had drooped and several were now facing down. I can only assume that it got hot, threads came loose as metal expanded and gravity took control. The landlord insists it has always been like that. Maybe I’ll try and fix it one day.

Last week I invited a friend round for dinner and was just starting to cook when the electricity went off. I stood in the dark and listened. A building of this size and this new must have a generator. Sure enough a few seconds later I heard the deep cough of the diesel engine cutting in and I waited for the lights to come back. After a few minutes I realised the lights on the landing were on but nothing in the apartment. The generator runs the lifts and the stair lights but nothing else. I cooked by light coming in from the open door and my head torch. My friend arrived with candles and we settled down to eat by candlelight just in time for the power to come back. Last summer we had regular 12 hour power cuts – that’s something to look forward to again, I must add candles and a lighter to the shopping list. I feel at home again!

Crocodiles and Global Warming

2007-11-17T11:33:00.000+07:00

I haven’t written anything on this blog for months. I think it’s because life here now seems normal. When I started the blog I wrote about the things which clashed with my values and were new experiences, now I’ve been here nearly 18 months so much is just…. normal.

I’m not a volunteer anymore, I crossed to the “Dark Side” at the beginning of October when my VSO contract finished and I began working as a consultant. So now I’m funded by the US Government and my daily allowance has gone up a bit. And why am I writing now? Well a couple of things have happened recently which made me think, and made me smile.

Sadly global warming is taking its toll in Vietnam and the tropical storms and floods seem to come later, be heavier and last longer. So central Vietnam has had a hammering over the last few months. We were all ‘asked’ to make a contribution to the relief fund - which was no hardship - but it was interesting to see my Vietnamese colleagues interpreting the letter from the Department for Diplomatic workers as an instruction rather than a request!

A side effect of the floods is that I have become aware of crocodile farming in Vietnam. The papers are full of stories that around 80,000 crocodiles have escaped. As the flood waters rise they simply swim over the fences which previously enclosed them. The papers are full of stories of potential horror. Did we know there are 260,000 crocodiles in farms in southern Vietnam and 130,000 actually in Saigon itself? What if they all escape? A major review of the safety arrangements for containing these animals is underway.

But what about those which have already escaped? Poor things, in Vietnam they don’t stand a chance. Whilst the newspapers were trying to make a story out of the threat to mankind from having so many vicious killers on the loose the only actual incidents they could quote involved the demise of the crocodile! In true Vietnamese fashion any opportunity for a meal is seized upon. One report said a 90kg (how did they know that) croc had arrived in a village, so the villagers killed it, chopped it up and sold the meat in the local market (that’s how they knew!) Another report said that crocodile farm owners were despondent that the price of crocodile in the market was higher than they were offering in rewards for returned animals, so they were not getting the animals back.

The second incident is acute diarrhoea, which has broken out in Hanoi and other parts of North Vietnam. It’s actually C h o l e r a, but the government doesn’t like that word. People have actually reacted to this and are taking serious measures to contain it. I sat in a Bun Char street restaurant last Sunday, lunching at the end of a cycle ride and watched the girl preparing the kebabs wash her hands over and over and over and over before shaping and cooking the little meat patties. I’ve also watched as the number of people eating street food everywhere has declined significantly. The pig intestine porridge restaurant outside our office had eight customers on Friday whereas it usually has thirty to forty at a time. Shrimp paste, the evil smelling purple condiment loved by most Vietnamese has disappeared from all food stalls and people are wary of eating any seafood. Advice to stop eating fresh fruit seems to have been ignored, but a lot more washing and peeling is going on. So far no one I know has been affected, but I did hear that a chef at one of the five star hotels had tested positive for the bacteria, so it’s not just the street you have to be careful of!

Finally an old woman who lives near us died last week. Her name is pronounced something like ‘Zooann’ and it turns out she was 77 years old. We had a cold spell when for nearly a week the temperature dropped to around 20 degrees C and this coincided with an increased number of funerals. You know when there’s a funeral as the loud and wailing music goes on for days (and nights) and large tents appear in the street for mourners in their white headbands to sit, eat and drink. But this was different. It appears the family are Christians, and the whole event was more subdued.

She had been part of my life since I came to live in Van Ho. Virtually daily she would greet me whether I was walking or cycling. If walking she might touch my arm or hand, she always smiled and said something I didn’t understand. She gave the impression that a few of her marbles had gone missing, but she was always happy tottering up and down the alley and the street market and she seemed to know everybody.

We got concerned when funereal flags appeared at the end of the alley and canopy was erected round the entrance to her yard, we hadn’t seen her for several days. Then a sign went up on the notice board which seemed to confirm our fears and finally a colleague walking past saw into the house and her picture was on the altar in the main room. It was her.

As we walked back from a break-dancing show two nights ago the gate was open and the light on so we stopped and looked in. An old man I had never seen before beckoned us in and we took off our shoes and followed him. He invited my colleague to light an incense stick and we spent a few moments at the altar before being invited to sit. Situations like this really challenge my very limited Vietnamese, but we managed to determine that the old man was her 83 year old husband and the assembled group were her children and their partners. She had four daughters and two sons. The old man lamented that he was alone now, I reminded him that he had many friends and he nodded his head slowly putting his hand on my foot as we sat cross legged on the floor. Beer and biscuits followed and we tried to express our condolences and explain our connection with the woman. After half an hour we left. It felt good to have connected with her family, even if only briefly and I will miss her smiling face brightening my day.

Pig's bowel porridge

2007-04-06T14:47:00.000+07:00

After the rush - the last few customers finish their meal at the Chao Long restaurant before it turns back into a house

There was a slight air of fun and frivolity about the office. I was the only westerner in and the only male, it was close to lunchtime and a conversation was happening in Vietnamese around me which I was not part of. Eventually someone spoke to me. “Will you have lunch today?” “No” I replied, “I don’t think so”. “Oh come on…. have lunch” I enquired what was on offer and the interest in my attendance became apparent. The proposal was to go to the Chao Long restaurant next door to the office.

I had previously declined an invitation to this establishment. It’s very popular and it only exists during lunchtimes. The rest of the time the restaurant is a gateway to a house. The ground is black with stuff left from previous days but there are no other outward signs of its lunchtime function.

By mid morning each day a glass display cabinet on wheels has appeared along with masses of small plastic tables and stools. There are even tarpaulins erected to keep the rain off. By 11.30am it is heaving with people and the entire pavement has disappeared under the seated masses all talking loudly and eating this delicacy of Vietnamese life.

I steeled myself, in a moment of weakness I’d rashly promised I’d try anything once and I’d always presumed dog would be the one which would take most effort to actually do. But there was something about pig’s intestines which was holding me back. The torment continued with ever wider grins from my colleagues “Oh just do it!” said one. OK I said with more confidence than I felt and we headed downstairs and onto the pavement.

At first it looked like there was no way we would get in – the place appeared more packed than usual. Then, miraculously we were ushered into the gateway itself and in a corner behind the glass case a small wooden table had been cleared and a collection of stools assembled. I stepped over the debris of squeezed lemons and abandoned paper towels, ducked under the plastic sheet acting as a roof and slid around on the greasy floor until I was seated with my knees under my chin. Everyone smiled. Once again I found myself the only westerner in sight and a young member of staff came over and touched me on the arm to make sure I was real.

When I mentioned this meal later both expat and Vietnamese friends were horrified – “You must not eat that dish! It is so unhealthy!” This apparently relates to the inclusion of fresh pig’s blood on the menu, something we didn’t have but which was in evidence on other tables, bright red thin liquid with lumps of white fat looking for all the world like diluted tomato ketchup and boiled tofu. The problem is that the fresh blood may contain pathogens and other nasty things so the Government has official prescribed it.

I knew none of this as I sat and watched the food arriving. The sequence of events was very similar to eating dog. First the salad of mint and other assorted leaves which you can use to wrap the….. what shall I call it? Meat? Offal? To wrap the stuff we were eating. Next the cold boiled intestine and stomach bits with slices of cold liver chunks of kidney and the strong and salty shrimp paste which gives it some flavour. Then the black-pudding-like small intestine dish, more crunchy than the dog version but not unpleasant on the palate. Finally the porridge itself, a large bowl of rice porridge with shredded dried pork on top, more leaves and other garnish I didn’t recognise. Slurping this with a spoon it soon became apparent that it was full of all the things we had already eaten, particularly the small intestine black pudding. It was surprisingly pleasant and I cleaned out my bowl.

As I looked around it was clear this place sold a lot of different delicacies from the inside of a pig and I think I was grateful not to have to try them all. We paid and walked out through the tightly packed tables, my presence still a source of interest to the cliental and staff alike. “Did you like that?” I was asked by one colleague. “Yes” I replied, but I must say I’m not in any rush to go back there. I wonder how many more obscure delicacies they have up their sleeves to keep me on my culinary toes?

Chuc Mung Nam Moi!

2007-04-01T16:58:00.000+07:00

A typical street in Hanoi in the run up to Tet

It’s over a month since I wrote anything here, and that means it’s also over a month since Tet and the start of the lunar New Year – hence the title “Congratulations on the New Year” (more or less). It’s been a busy period (and that’s one excuse for not writing), we’re having a succession of power cuts because of the low rainfall – everything is relative – which means the hydro-electric generators are not contributing enough to the national grid (that’s another reason for not writing), The internet only works spasmodically (that’s incredibly frustrating!!), its also been the most miserable weather so far (I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel now) and there’s not that much happening (well that’s not true at all).

The run up to Tet was just like pre-Christmas in the UK. Traffic congestion got worse and worse until gridlock was the norm. Cumquat trees are the Tet equivalent of Christmas tree here and with their small shiny orange fruit they look quite cute on the back of motor bikes as the proud owners scurried home to decorate their houses for the biggest celebration of the year. The other main decoration, which seems painfully scandalous if you’re a gardener, is young cherry blossom trees. These range from a couple of feet high up to six feet tall and they are simply chopped off at the base as the blossoms break out. They’re sold by the road side in their hundreds and three days after Tet they’re sitting in the rubbish skips of Hanoi. Literally thousands of cherry trees grown each year then sacrificed for three or four days of decoration!

Tet presents seem to consist of small red envelopes containing new 10,000 dong notes which are given to children (lucky money) and food baskets given to friends or more likely as a gift from one organisation to another. These baskets look at bit like what you might get a giant Easter egg in and they are wrapped in cellophane so you can see the neatly arranged contents. Prices for pre-packed baskets sold in the Tet markets range from £6 to over £50 and they include such delicacies as Lipton Tea bags and instant noodles. Organisations give and receive Tet gifts and in many cases recycling goes on – the received gift is unpacked, a few interesting components removed, add in other stuff you don’t like, and then make it up as a new gift and send it to someone else. I guess if you are at the end of this food chain you just get tea bags and noodles.

The streets during this time are adorned with red and gold to welcome the New Year. In the old Quarter there are several roads which are closed off (in so far as that is ever possible) and strewn with red and gold market stalls selling decorations and every conceivable design of a pig – it’s now the year of the pig – from pig Buddhas to piggy banks to pigs in feather boas.

The rate of pregnancies is up significantly since everyone wants to have child who is a pig. Pigs have an easy life – they appear lazy but everything comes to them and its easy for them to get fat (read healthy and rich for fat) so to have a son born in the year of the pig is a big thing.

In the last few days before Tet itself everything reaches fever pitch, we were invited out to eat Lau no less than five time in just over a week, the rice wine flowing freely on all occasions. Traffic got worse and worse whilst the amount of work that was done rapidly diminished to zero. Contractors were not available, jobs could not be done now and people started to disappear. Expats in the know made a rush out of the country, whilst locals started to trek home to their family village and the new middle class headed off on family holidays. It’s the most expensive time to travel – ticket prices go up and hotel accommodation can be as much as ten times normal prices.

It was in this climate that we decided to head south for a week to the delights of Nha Trang, a holiday resort, and Whale Island a small French resort on an island about two hours drive north of Nha Trang where the humpbacks are known to appear in the summer.

With the benefit of hindsight it might have been better to stay in Hanoi and experience the city at its quietest. As the masses leave on Tet eve and the first day of Tet itself the population shrinks by over 30%. Everything is closed and the roads are deserted. Unlike the UK at Christmas this condition last for a full week. A society where most people still shop for food twice a day closes down entirely for a week! But instead of that experience we headed for the sun and the watersports.

Our trip started with an early taxi ride to the airport to meet two volunteers flying up from Saigon on their way to Laos. They had intended to go into Hanoi for their four hour stopover, but the realisation that everything was closed and they might spend the whole time just getting to Hanoi and back resulted in a change of plan and four hours in the only airport coffee bar which was still open. We chatted for half an hour then left them and moved to the departure lounge to be greeted by an announcement that our flight would be delayed by half an hour.

The flight was uneventful and we landed at Nha Trang’s new airport – a collection to tin huts amongst the sand dunes half an hour’s drive from the town – to be met by smiling bus driver. There was another party of six people with us for the transfer and as we got on the bus it dawned on us the we knew them from previous encounters so lively conversation followed as we made the transfer first to Nha Trang and then to Whale Island. It’s a trek but the road was exceptionally good and looked a lot like the coast road from Malaga to Nerja in Spain. When we commented on this fantastic piece of tarmac the owner of the resort looked downcast. It’s the first step in turning the inlet around the island in to an $8billion container port, which he does not think will be good for business! There are no public enquiries or appeals procedures here.

The island was quiet and I am putting some photos on Flickr – if our internet connection ever works properly!! - Its getting very annoying and if we could work out how to do it we would probably change the service provider. On the island which is only half a mile offshore we stayed in bungalows buried in palm trees along the edge of the beach. The walls and roof made from bamboo and palm leaves; a solar shower in a tiled ensuite, and doors which you lock by tying a piece of string from one handle to the other.

I was going to dive for the full three days we were there but visibility on the first day was as low as six metres so I saved the rest of my money and snorkelled instead. We canoed round the island, walked round the island ate, drank, read and stayed out of the midday sun. Derek gave a few windsurfing lessons without the assistance of any wind and we ran up a healthy drinks bill. And so it was that we passed into the year of the pig, without any celebrations. The staff told me they had a party after all the visitors had gone to bed, but in this expat paradise the New Year passed without comment.

The contrast between Whale Island and Nha Trang is that which exists between a desert island and Blackpool. We transferred back in the late afternoon to our seafront hotel without a sea view and re-entered the world of Vietnamese traffic chaos. We discovered we had agreed to pay a price which was twice the high season rate for each room and we also discovered that many of the better restaurants had closed for Tet.

We went our separate ways for our only full day in the town and I found myself with two friends at the mud baths in the late morning. The usual ritual of trying to get you to buy the top price packages (£75) followed by acceptance that you really are only going to buy the standard package (£1) and an optional massage (£2) leads to the issuing of tickets which have to be stamped and torn by various officials until you finally arrive at the preliminary spar shower in your bathers. After the shower, depending on your soggy ticket, you are allocated to a concrete bath which the attendant fills with muddy water from a four inch faucet. We shared ours with three boisterous Vietnamese young men. Plastic saucepans are provided which you can either wear and pretend you’re a Dalek or use to pour the liquid chocolate solution over your head. The boys went for the Dalek look. A strictly timed 20 minutes in the mud then off to sit in the sun for 10 minutes while the coating on your body bakes to the point where it’s difficult to blink then into the showers again. The two shower areas are clearly marked up as “men” and “women” but no one took any notice. Next stop a short cold blast in corridor of water jets which come at you from all angles and then 45 minutes in a bath of hot spring water, also carefully timed. After that we headed for the massage parlour where a girl who looked about 14 but was apparently a lot older than that walked up and down my back for half an hour. There are lots of pools and different seating areas – Sunbeds for executive guests, Sunbeds for foreign guests, Area for ordinary guests. Each of these has similarly reserved swimming pool areas. It’s a waste of time really, no one takes any notice at all.

We left about three in the afternoon as the place was packed out and the queues resembled a football match. Outside a long row of coaches full of Korean and Chinese tourists were winding through the narrow streets towards the baths. I hate to think how full the place must have been by the end of the afternoon.

In the evening we ate at a seafood restaurant and experienced the worst service I’ve ever had in Vietnam. They were operating western style serving individual courses. My main course arrived before anything else, so I sent it back, and my starter twenty minutes after everyone else’s starter. It was difficult to see how they could get so mixed up given the number of staff on hand versus the number of customers. Other people were leaving without eating as the waiting time was so long, but the management were only concerned with the fact that one of the waitresses on another table had not filled out the computerised order form correctly. The manager stood staring at the screen of his new toy for the whole time we were there. He appeared mesmerised by it and unable to move.

We returned to Hanoi to find the weather had finally changed. The season of cold damp drizzle had arrived. It’s very deceptive, you leave the house thinking it’s not bad and get to your destination to find you are soaked and you really should have put on the raincoat. The twice daily heavy rain for four days followed by a week of perpetual drizzle increased the humidity and washing hung out to dry on the covered balcony was still as wet a week later. The humidity permeated the house and walls, windows and doors ran with condensation. The ceramic tile floors became death traps with a fine film of water on the surface. Even the stair banisters felt wet to the touch. Bed clothes felt cold and damp and the air began to smell dank. It was the most uncomfortable time I’ve had since I arrived. Faced with mountains of wet clothes the landlord’s maid resorted to hanging wet stuff in the wardrobes which just contributed to the smell and the only way to get things dry was to iron them over and over. My washbag developed a thin film of mould and my bike began to rust despite frequent applications of oil.

Given that the Vietnamese electricity system has no earth I began to hold my breath whenever I switched anything on – wet floors and walls don’t mix well with the number of bare cables you see around here! But then the Electric Company helped out by announcing a series of 12 hour power cuts because of the low output from the hydro electric plants – there’s not enough rain and mountain reservoirs are low. It’s starting to feel like home though no one has actually said there’s a drought… yet. At least the generator at work and candles at home mean life can go on. Chuc Mung Nam Moi!

I'm thinking of returning to full time education

2007-02-24T14:35:00.000+07:00

Rice wine, Lau, the Lunar month and amnesia

2007-02-02T17:12:00.000+07:00

Work is getting busier now and I’ve reached the point where there are so many plates spinning I’m starting to forget things. So it came to pass that I totally forgot Tod’s birthday celebration (Tod is the German of dog fame). It had been a week heavy with meetings and pharmacy terms I’m still trying to get to grips with. So when, in the office, it was suggested we retire to a Japanese restaurant for a few beers, Sushi and the odd bowl of noodles I quickly acquiesced.

We walked the short distance to the restaurant, the doorman took care of my bike and we shed our shoes and made our way into a booth made to look like a room in a traditional Japanese house. The whole top floor of the restaurant is arranged like that with bamboo mats to sit on and low tables. When I sat down I realised it was a cheat, there was a large hole in the floor under the table to allow inflexible westerners to drop their legs in, so it looks like you’re sitting cross legged but it’s actually like sitting on a chair. I sat cross legged on my mat as a matter of principle, feeling superior, and ate a selection of very good raw fish, Tempura and curried noodles. I also drank a few beers…. maybe more. Meal over we went our separate ways and I arrived home to realise the house was empty because everyone else was at the birthday party in the big Van Ho Bia Hoi.

The invite had been issued at the small Bia Hoi as we ate Lau and drank rice wine the previous Sunday. The owner had invited us after we failed to turn up to his Christmas Lau – that occasion was not amnesia, more it was a measure of my command of the Vietnamese language.

We arrived just after 8pm – a few minutes late by European standards but early for Vietnamese social ethics – and were seated and given glasses of beer. We conversed (badly) with the locals, then the Germans arrived and the conversation picked up (Kate speaks very good Vietnamese). The small plastic tables were pulled out into the middle of the floor. As the last of the paying customers departed the landlord’s two young daughters and their cousin appeared from upstairs with bowls of noodles, tofu, raw fish, squid, prawns and vegetables including chrysanthemum leaves. The rice bowls and chopsticks came out and then the hotpot, or fondue, or steam boat – it has many English names. In Vietnamese it’s called Lau and you will see it all over Hanoi. If you order one make sure you are hungry. The pot is either something like a casserole dish which sits on a gas burner or in this case a self contained electric unit which sat on the table in front of me. We stretched the power cable to a socket on the wall. The socket was the wrong shape for the plug, something solved simply by bending the pins and forcing it in. Derek sat straddling the cable.

Its arrival coincided with the appearance of the rice wine. This is the landlord’s own brew. Not the clear liquid you buy in the shops. It was dark, infused with a rich bouquet of herbs and spices. Very tasty, very drinkable, very potent.

As the thick rich broth of stock, vegetables and tomatoes heated up to the boil we toasted family, friends, pending Vietnamese New Year and good health. There were a few too many “100 percent” s for my liking so I held my glass firmly to ensure no one could see if I’d drained it or not. At least one of my housemates played the game by the rules and went very quiet after a few rounds.

By now family and friends of the landlord were arriving and introducing themselves with a toast, Zung, Chung, Chang, Tang, Nock – the names were flowing as fast as the wine. In all fifteen people sat round the table. The pot was now boiling and the girls were dunking the raw fish and prawns into the liquid just long enough to barely cook them. They also had their own version of dipping sauce a beautiful mix of chilli, fish sauce, sugar, lemon juice and dill which added to the flavours of the food. We sat and ate as our bowls were filled over and over. The herbal rice wine – served from a 2 litre coke bottle – ran out and a bottle of Hanoi Vodka (local name for mass produced rice wine) came out. By now we were drinking the broth as a soup since everyone had had their fill of the food. As the drink threatened to run out again the birthday invites for the following week were being issued to the party and buoyed up by the now absent rice wine I had the idea that the Vietnamese might like Single Malt Whisky.

After a brief debate about “Zeeoc Scotland” I excused myself and returned with a bottle of Glenfiddich. The participants nodded approvingly and rinsed the Saki glasses before filling up on the amber liquid. One guy had now been gently caressing my thigh for about ten minutes – an indication that we are friends for life and soon the “Tram Phan Tram” – 100% s started again – the Vietnamese equivalent of “down the hatch”. Kate had already disappeared out the door looking green and without saying a word, now the whole place began to go quiet. I took a deep breath and excused myself saying I had to work in the morning and with a sigh of relief the whole party broke up. We left the balance of the Whisky and staggered back home to sleep well.

The next day, Monday, was unusual in several respects. Firstly I walked to a meeting with one of my Vietnamese colleagues. Secondly she complained that she needed new lenses for her glasses and asked me if I would go with her on the way back from the meeting. This would be my first trip to a Vietnamese optician’s, as with most shops there are whole streets of them but we were going somewhere a bit different.

We walked into the yard of a large building which turned out to be the national eye hospital. In the corner was a small building about five metres long and three metres wide, open on two sides. Along the open sides in an L shape there were glass topped counters full of spectacle frames and five women dealing with about a dozen or more customers.

Behind the women in the middle of the space was an optician doing eye tests. No chairs or darkened rooms here, the patients simply stood with their feet against a line on the outside of the counters and read from a chart on the opposite wall. When he had tested them and decided a prescription was necessary on went a device like the one you look through in the opticians in the UK, but this one was worn like a pair of glasses leaving the individual looking like something out of Doctor Who. The patient and optician then selected the right lenses by looking round and reading the eye chart.

When it was determined the prescription was correct the patient went for a walk round wearing this contraption to make sure, after which they were told the prescription and went off to buy their glasses. In the back of the space under the eye chart were three men in white coats with a four machines making the glasses up from frames and lenses.

We pushed our way through to the front of the counter. My colleague didn’t need an eye test she had had one somewhere else. I thought we were just there to look but she suddenly produced some money (from her right boot!?), told the woman her new prescription which was scribbled on a note pad and handed over her existing glasses. I asked her how long it would take, I was thinking about the need to get back to work. Fifteen minutes she answered (whatever happened to the one hour service? – eat your heart out BOL). But they were back in two minutes – the frames were too worn to take new lenses. My colleague didn’t want to spend a lot so we brooded over frames for about ten minutes and she tried on several plastic frames in dark colours. All the designer names were there, at designer prices too – but apparently all counterfeits.

In the end she chose and handed over more money. Five minutes later her old glasses were back, cleaned and with the old lenses back in. Whilst we waited she insisted I tried them on and we had competitions to see who could read what with and without the glasses. That didn’t last long because after another five minutes her new glasses arrived. She tried them on, looked around and pronounced herself satisfied, insisted I tried them as well and then we left. New frames and lenses had cost £10 and the whole process from start to finish had taken less than half an hour – amazing!

Monday lunch time was the third unusual event. It was the last day of the lunar month and as you know that is the best time to eat dog. We’d been joking about this for months and I guess I just picked the wrong day to revisit the subject. Eyes immediately lit up and an enthusiasm I have not seen before took hold. Plans were made and the rest of the Westerners in the office made their excuses and headed for the Belgian cafe! It was just me and seven Vietnamese.

So we went, it was a street restaurant up a Ngo and it was packed. They cleared a table for us and we waited as one of my colleagues wiped the tables, and the stools, and the chopsticks and the bowls before tearing up a cardboard box in the corner to use as a table cloth. Dog will make you hot, I was told. You should not eat dog if you’re pregnant as pregnant women are hot already and might overheat if they ate dog. It didn’t taste at all hot, but the heat we’re talking about is a concept of traditional medicine, not curry powder or hot coals.

First came the giant poppadom, well it looks like that but it's made of rice not wheat flour. We crunched bits and someone found a bag of salad in a box behind where we were sitting so he opened it and we ate that as well. Next the boiled dog arrived - it looked a bit like the steamed goat I’d had the previous week and it had cold dog liver on the top with a root similar to ginger in big slices on top of that. No heat in this – it was all served cold. There was strong, salty, shrimp dipping paste with a salad of mint, something I didn't recognise and what looked like geranium leaves - the ones with the velvet finish. We ate; it’s ok but a bit greasy and fatty. There was also lemon grass which we peeled and then ate the core dipped in the paste. That tasted a bit like eating a lollypop stick. I asked if this was it? My neighbour shook her head - much more to come.

Next plates of what looked like black pudding, thin black pudding. This was dog intestine. It tasted like black pudding. It was served hot with more dog liver on the top and this time the gingery stuff was shredded over the dish as a garnish. Next plates of barbequed dog, also hot but a bit underdone for me. I did find a few crispy bits which were nice but most of it was still soft making the skin very chewy. This was followed by noodles and dog and bamboo soup – a clear but greasy broth with a slightly unappetising odour. Add it to the noodles then eat and drink with whatever dog is left on the table.

There was a heated discussion about the bill. A colleague complained we were paying more than a bigger group who left a few minutes before (its supposed to be all you can eat, but it looked to me like the matriarch was counting plates) then we paid and it was over. The cost of a dog lunch for eight? It was £2.60! And it’s imported dog too. Restaurants only serve farmed dog from Cambodia or Thailand. Is that good value or not? Mind you, I wouldn’t rush back – apart from the intestines I didn’t think it was an exceptionally tasty dish and questioning my colleagues as we walked back to the office it emerged that they only eat dog once or twice a year, despite its exotic reputation.

The rest of the week passed in a blur of meetings, working late, language classes and VSO meetings so that by the Friday sushi I’d forgotten all about the birthday party invite.

Now I was standing in the empty kitchen, having had more than enough beer already contemplating the impact of my memory loss. I decide it was still early enough for me to show my face, have a single beer (the food would be over wouldn’t it?) and still get a relatively early night since I’d agreed to work on Saturday.

I headed off to the big Bia Hoi. It was easy to find them. Vietnamese eat and drink early and it was now gone 8.30 in the evening. The open air restaurant is vast but only one table was occupied, a mix of about a dozen locals and foreigners and a noise level which implied a good time was being had by all. I said hello and was welcomed into the group with a rice bowl and a beer. It looked like the food was over, there was a selection of nearly empty plates scattered across the table. I introduced myself to a few people I didn’t know and put a prawn into my bowl and sipped my beer. A couple of minutes later the group from the small Bia Hoi arrived. Loud welcomes were given and extra tables pulled up. As I’d been sitting at the end of the table I now found myself in the middle of the newly arrived group. I smiled and said hello and decided to use the opportunity to embed some names. I was not the worst at this, the landlord asked my name at least ten times as we sat there. To my horror fresh plates of food arrived for the new arrivals and out came the Saki glasses. A large bottle of Hanoi Vodka appeared and the 100% s started. I cringed, but there was no escape. Zung at the end of the table filled my glass every time I took a sip and the landlord’s daughter sitting to my left took great delight in putting food into my rice bowl every time I turned my back. I explained I had to work and how I’d had a headache after the previous Sunday (not true, but I was desperate for any escape mechanism). The headache story caused great amusement and as for having to work – well they all had to work every day. I gave up, drank my drink, ate my prawns and tried to practice my Vietnamese.

Then…. the Lau arrived. The previous Sunday fifteen of us sat around one pot. This time sixteen of us sat around four pots. The main ingredient was eel, sliced and trimmed into portions even I could handle with chopsticks. The landlord’s daughter beamed and settled into her self appointed role of building me up to be a sumo wrestler. More beer, more Hanoi Vodka, more food. We had a great time. In the end I did make my excuses and walked unsteadily home to enjoy a deep sleep and another loss of memory - somewhere during the evening I’d invited all our Vietnamese friends to our house for dinner! That’s a house where we boast a total of eight plates and six forks. I’d even agreed a date with them. Worse still days later I still had no recollection of making that invitation.

Saturday morning I crawled out of bed and barely made it on time. We met in the Hilton for a bacon and egg breakfast on the executive floor – great hangover cure, toured a factory and lunched at a noodle soup restaurant. The afternoon continued with a walking tour of central Hanoi, an early evening drink in the rooftop bar on the 20th floor of the Sofitel Plaza (fifteen times the price of a beer in the Bia Hoi) and then on for dinner with a Vietnamese woman who is a keen cyclist (I’m supposed to be going for a ride with her soon) and who is secretary to the Friends of Vietnam Heritage group. When we arrived at the restaurant she had already ordered – a Lau. It was delicious and at least this time I was spared the rice wine, just a few beers and I walked home stuffed but steady on my feet.

Return of the German

2007-01-16T17:15:00.000+07:00

Early December in the little Bia Hoi. The guy on the far right is a retired colonel from the Vietnamese Army

The weekend after New Year was relatively quiet and we decided to go see the new Bond movie at the pictures in Vincom Towers. Vincom’s a modern shopping mall with four floors of shops, a cinema complex and then two towers of offices rising to 21 floors. The lift system is something of a mystery. To get to the offices you enter via one side of the building where there are two sets of three lifts. One set is signed as being for the even floors and one set as being for the odd numbered floors.

I will mention at this stage (though it has nothing to do with this story) that the Vietnamese word for “odd” as in “odd numbers” is the same word for “extension” as in telephone extension. So the English versions of many Vietnamese business cards have the business telephone number and then the words “odd number” 108 or whatever. The first time I saw this I said “but 108 isn’t an odd number” “Yes it is” said my interpreter. There followed several minutes of confusion before yet another double meaning was understood by both sides.

Despite the signage on the lifts they all appear to go to all floors, but late in the afternoon when everyone is supposed to be going home they will not go up. I stood on the 14th floor wanting to go to the 21st floor but no upward going lift would stop. They went straight from ground to 21st and then worked their way down stopping to collect people wanting to go home. We tried every combination of buttons we could think of but in the end we had to walk the seven flights of stairs. Once again I arrived at the top to find none of my Vietnamese colleagues capable of speaking. They spend too much time on motorbikes.

The lifts in the shopping complex are straightforward and not excessively used since there are escalators, but reaching the cinema on the 6th floor is more of a challenge, if you don’t know how.

The cinema is signed off the street, at the opposite end of the building to the offices entrance there is a little doorway which looks like a fire exit with the cinema sign above it and which leads onto a staircase which is actually a fire escape. Climb these metal stairs for six floors and you arrive in the corner of the cinema suite, the opposite corner to where the ticket desks are. There are also a couple of lifts (which I have yet to find) which make this journey less exhausting for the Vietnamese. This does not seem like enough access for a multi-screen complex and the secret is back on the top floor of the shopping complex. Unsigned and hidden in the back corners of the fourth floor, near the toilets, there are two sets of lifts which just go between the fourth floor and the sixth floor. It’s as if they don’t want anyone to see the movies. Despite all this the cinema was well attended and we enjoyed Casino Royale, even though we were on the front row next to the sound system – must remember to buy tickets in advance next time.

By Wednesday I could hear again and it was time for our language lesson. This time Derek had come up with the idea we should have the class in a restaurant and learn more about food. Teacher was delighted, and promised us he would not have lunch to make sure he was really hungry. We had intended to go to the big Van Ho Bia Hoi, but then thought better of it as all the seating is outside and it is still relatively cold at the minute. After a little debate I suggested we went to the restaurant at the end of the road, otherwise known as the restaurant with no food. We went there once before when we accidentally found it just inside the exhibition centre near the local supermarket. On that occasion it was empty and the staff outnumbered us three to one.

We trouped back there, five students and one teacher. Outside the door he helped us to translate the signs. It’s called ‘Countryside’ and that is the type of cuisine it claims to offer. It also caters for parties, weddings and special events. We went in. It was empty. A girl greeted us and showed us to the same table we occupied last time. She chatted to our teacher and he translated. She remembered us from before and was glad we had come again. She then told him what we had to eat last time, which sort of confirmed my view that they don’t get many customers since our last visit was over three months ago.

The menu in this place is long and extensive and we spent half an hour just practicing pronunciation and translating – it’s important to understand all the words for intestines if you want a pleasant dining experience.

Then we started to order, and as before the majority of the menu was off. They didn’t have 95% of the salads listed and only one of the beef dishes, and so it went on. Whole pages of the menu were not available today. We couldn’t have prawns because they were too expensive – said the waitress. When one of the group insisted on having snails the waitress looked at the ceiling and sighed, after which she said she would have to give us a discount on the minimum quantity as they were so expensive. None of these goings on seemed unusual to our teacher who at one point commented that the crab and vegetable soup I had tried to order was only available at lunchtimes – everyone in Vietnam knows that (apparently). Eventually we found enough to constitute a meal which we all enjoyed. Afterwards we were asked if we would like dessert, even though they didn’t have any. They would send out for it. We had green bean ice cream and green tea.

By pre-arrangement one of the women paid for the whole meal, this was our attempt to disconcert our teacher who had once given us a definition of a real man as “smokes, drinks and pays for the food”. He didn’t look too disconcerted, but then he has given up smoking recently.

We walked back slowly, trying to explain all our different leaving dates in Vietnamese – it’s hard to believe that the first of the volunteers I came out with will leave Vietnam in just over two months. As we sauntered past the little Bia Hoi the owner leapt out and called us in. Teacher made his excuses and set off home whilst the rest of us tried to explain we could not come to the Bia Hoi party at Tet. We drank beer and discussed many things few of which were understood. A Western couple walked past and were also called in and greeted like lost family. We were all seated together and began a light conversation in which it transpired they were Germans and lived not far from our house. Derek thought he recognised the man’s voice and similar thoughts were going through my mind, but he said he had only been here three weeks, so our theory seemed disproved before it got started. We drank, toasted and passed the time of day.

After a few more glasses he began to tell me about his love of dogs and about how he got quite angry that when he walked his dog the locals criticised him for not having it muzzled. “They don’t muzzle their dogs and at least mine is trained to behave” he warmed to his theme about double standards and how they put his back up. Then he said “I try to stay calm, but when I was here on holiday in September I really lost it, there was a dog which barked all night long. I totally lost my cool and took an iron bar to their gate”. At this point we all looked at each other and I said “IT WAS YOU! You’re THE German!” (see “Why more people should eat dog”)

I explained about the blog and our memories of the night he impersonated the Rank Gong. He laughed and his wife looked somewhat like she wanted to disown that particular episode of life. I don’t know what he is called yet, but I’ll probably find out tonight as the Bia Hoi owner thought we were getting on so well he’s invited us all round for dinner. Better not miss this one!

On Thursday evening I flew down to Saigon (HCMC). The complexity of design of the Vincom lifts plus my experiences at the two airports made me think in general about how the Vietnamese design things.

At the airports there are no consistent security procedures, at Hanoi my bag was scanned once and my passport checked twice, at HCMC the bag was scanned twice my passport checked three times and my ticket four times – its different every trip. The airports look like they could be anywhere in the world, modern with curved metal and glass roofs, polished floors, security guards and opulent business class lounges but the processes are distinctly Vietnamese.

I sat in the only comfy seats available to economy class passengers in one of the domestic departure lounges at Hanoi (there are two domestic departure lounges at opposite ends of the airport building – check the gate number before you follow the signs). I read my book feeling I was being watched. I was, firstly by the catering staff who insisted I had to buy something to sit in a comfy chair and secondly by a medium sized rat sitting in a large Chinese vase containing an artificial plant and munching on a previous traveller’s leftovers.

Once through the gate and out onto the tarmac we could see the plane less than fifty yards away, but we got on a bus to do a kilometre circuit round it. As the bus stopped by the plane all the people with seats at the front ran up the back stairs and visa versa, with the inevitable but apparently unforeseen consequences. Then we sat on the tarmac with no announcements until the plane finally pushed back half an hour late. There are hourly flights between Hanoi and HCMC and it can get confusing since a majority are late – the five o’clock flight that day left at the same time as the six o’clock, delays of four hours on a two hour flight are not uncommon, so it is possible to take a later flight and arrive before the earlier flight.

In HCMC the airport has been carefully designed to make the locals feel at home with built in congestion. Careful scheduling is also used to aid the process. When we arrived ours was the only plane disembarking and there was only one plane loading – but we were both in the same place. The corridor system from the gate lounges to the tarmac is shared. Getting on a plane you go out of the first floor gate lounge, along the corridor, down the stairs and across the tarmac. Getting off you go up the tunnel to the (same) first floor corridor and then down the (same) stairs into baggage reclaim. So we stood at the end of the corridor with Vietnam Airlines staff forming a wall in front of us whilst the departing passengers filled the corridor and stairs. Fifteen minutes later we had use of the corridor and stairs. There’s a flight of stairs for every two gates, I could see at least two more (empty) from where we were waiting, but there’s no way past the embarking passengers to reach them. Having only hand luggage I headed out to my next challenge – the taxis.

I think my main issue with taxis is communication. I’m not aware of being ripped off by those who drive you round the city ten times before they finally head for your hotel, nor those who try to haggle a fare which will be more than the meter (at Hanoi Airport it is the other way round – the meter will cost you more than the fixed prices on offer). However I never really manage to make myself completely understood. My taxi to the airport had driven straight past the pick up point, phoned me twice and rabbitted on in Vietnamese despite my pleas that I didn’t understand. He also insisted on conversing with me all the way to the airport. Nice guy but I hardly understood any of it and he didn’t seem too impressed with my answers to his questions either. It was the same in HCMC. The guy wanted to talk and I had the added disadvantage of the southern dialect to cope with. My brain hurt by the time he pulled up outside the hotel, I tipped him (he was friendly after all) which prompted him to jump out of the taxi and lead me across the road like I was a pensioner (oops, that’s true), hug me like a long lost lover and then walk backwards across the road to his taxi waving to me. When I went back to the airport it was a slow and gentle journey in a Lada which didn’t give the impression it could do much more than five miles an hour and the driver was silent so opportunities for miscommunication were limited.

My experiences have made me more attuned and sympathetic to those who have to communicate in a second language with someone who is also using a second language. I had a good example on the plane back. There were a group of Russians opposite me, two of them looked like retired shot putters who had put on a bit of weight and they spilled out of their seats threatening to crush the tiny Vietnamese woman sitting by them. As soon as the plane was in the air the young woman shot into the galley and a slightly hysterical conversation could be heard. She returned with a look of relief and a big smile. Picking up her things she turned to the Russians and said “You need all three seats, I go now” and was lead off to a free seat by the stewardess. The Russians took no offence and duly put up the seat arms and spread out. A little later dinner arrived and the stewardess asked “do you want pork with rice or beef with noodles?” “I will have the fish” replied one of the Russians.

That was no better than my last taxi ride of the day, from Hanoi airport back home. I went to the firm which offers fixed rates and was put into a seven seater taxi with a fixed price of $10. This usually causes a problem because our house is at the far end of town. As soon as I explained where I lived (I don’t expect the drivers to know where the road is anymore) the driver began to rant about how far it was and $10 was not a fair fare. He phoned his office who told him to shut up and get on with it after which he continued to chunter under his breath and shake his head a lot. I have some sympathy for these guys as it is further than the hotel district on which the prices are based. So after a while I said to him, in my best Vietnamese, “Ok, I’ll pay you 180,000 dong”, which is heading for $12. He immediately went into a rant, banging on the dash board and shouting “No No No ten do-lar ten do-lar” I can only assume he thought I was trying to get the price down even further. I tried again with equal success so in despair I left it. He muttered under his breath for the next ten miles and then engaged me in a conversation about how long I’d been in Vietnam. When I got out I gave him the 180,000 and all of a sudden we were bosom buddies again. I hate to think what would happen if I ever had to converse with a Thai or Cambodian using Vietnamese as a common language. Its just lucky for me my first language is English.

Meetings - what meetings!

2007-01-13T12:16:00.000+07:00

We arrive about 15 minutes late. The receptionist looks confused - she was not expecting us and then shows us to a small but functional conference room. The four of us sit down. A woman enters, nods a greeting and sits down. The receptionist returns with some bottles of water and glasses followed by another woman carrying the same. Both leave then the second woman returns with more glasses. She goes again. We sit in silence, the seated woman looks at her hands.

Ten minutes pass and a man arrives, he shakes hands with us all and takes a seat opposite. A few words are exchanged and he rises and leaves the room. A further ten minutes pass in silence and two more women arrive and sit at the end of the room with the first woman. The one wearing glasses immediately gets up again and leaves the room. Another ten minutes and the man returns, more words are exchanged then we wait in silence. It is now fifty minutes after the meeting start time.

The woman with glasses returns and a brief discussion takes place after which one of the other women leaves and returns five minutes later with a second man who sits opposite us. Another woman follows him in a few minutes later and sits away from the table, despite there being many seats.

A discussion has started, but the first man is not engaged, he is underlining sentences in a document. He finishes and leaves the room again, as he does so he tells the woman seated away from the table to come to the table, she does so and takes his seat.

Its now one hour after the meeting start time and we appear to be getting down to business when the woman with glasses leaves again, apparently to get something, and we sit in silence again. She returns with a ledger. Five minutes later the man returns and moves the other woman out of his seat, the woman with glasses leaves the room again and the man talks for five minutes after which another new woman enters the room and sits down, followed a few minutes later by the woman with glasses. The new woman is wearing a face mask and a blue hairnet, she looks like someone who does things and she appears to be the person who knows because she talks almost continuously, answering questions and emphasising points. The first man leaves the room again and the second man follows a few minutes later when his mobile starts ringing. Its now an hour and a quarter after the meeting start time and it feels like progress is starting to be made, though one woman appears to be asleep. The woman with the face mask is reading from the ledger using the glasses of the woman who was wearing glasses, she has her eyes screwed up also trying to read the ledger. The woman with the face mask begins to talk animatedly, the woman who was wearing glasses reclaims her glasses and the woman with the face mask, clearly emotional, gets out a tissue and begins to dab her eyes.

After an hour and a half the group has come alive and everyone is talking over one another. At one hour forty-five after the start time the first man returns to hear the outcomes of the discussion and the meeting closes.

That situation is not made up, it really happened and it is not untypical of meetings in Vietnam. In eight months I’ve only been to one or two which actually started on time, 15 minutes late is pretty good, many start half an hour late. Comings and goings are also normal as is answering your phone. More often than not people answer their mobiles at the table. At one meeting recently I counted - literally half the people in the room were on their phones at the same time. Some cover their mouth with their hand so they can talk louder, others bend over and shout under the table. The most amusing example though was the guy doing simultaneous translation at a big meeting. We were all sitting with our headphones listening to him translating a Vietnamese speaker when his phone rang. He answered it without turning his microphone off and treated the English speaking part of the audience to a Vietnamese telephone conversation whilst the speaker carried on oblivious. We’ll never know what we missed, or what we heard for that matter.

The fact is meeting culture is not the same here, big events are organised at very short notice so preparation is inevitably poor and late start plus overrunning is normal, partly due to the fact that any official meeting always has speeches to open it and close it, sometimes the speeches go on for a long time. There’s a general rule that the more important the meeting the longer the speeches and the more people who make speeches. Maybe that’s why so many people are late for meetings. It’s the vicious circle – the speeches can’t start because the people have not arrived and the people have not arrived because they don’t want to listen to the speeches.

At the other end of the day most people leave early, so it’s tough if you’re at the end of the agenda. That’s happened to me twice – in both cases groups of 25 to 30 people had shrunk to 10 or less before we got to the last items on the agenda. Shrinkage is exaggerated by the 2 to 3 hour lunch breaks which accompany full day meetings organised by the Vietnamese. This is to allow people to rest or go home and eat with the family. What actually happens is that most people stop for any lunch which might be on offer and then, faced with maybe two hours to fill, they decide it would be better to go back to work. On full day meetings afternoon sessions are always significantly less well attended than morning sessions.

I’m not sure I’ll get used to it, I still turn my phone off when I go into a meeting and I still try to be there for the official start time, but then I miss stuff when I get distracted by observing the antics of latecomers, people answering phones and people sneaking off.

Rules of the Road

2007-01-09T17:20:00.000+07:00

There is nothing which cannot be carried on a motorbike

I thought it might be useful to others if I wrote down the traffic rules which actually apply in Vietnam, since no one else appears to have done so.
When I look for some kind of logic in this I can only think that it is based on a bastardised version of French road rules, handed down from generation to generation and complimented by a few ideas from places like New Zealand which have been completely misinterpreted in implementation.

Anyway, this is my understanding after seven months of experience.

Rule number one – never stop
If you stop, even in the middle of a junction, everyone will assume you have parked and treat you as such. You will never get started again. Hence everyone teeters along at standing pace rather than put their feet on the floor and give the impression of being stationary. Cars cannot always achieve this, there’s a limit to the space a car can crawl into and the use of brakes is justification to motorcyclists to drive round the car, block it in on every side and generally cause gridlock.

Rule number two – never give way
If you give way to anyone, even if it’s because you have no where to go and by not giving way you will cause gridlock, then you should still not give way. If you give way penalties outlined in rule number one will be applied.

Rule number three – if you see a space fill it
If you do not drive into an apparent space on the road then someone else will. Filling any available space also increases the chances you will comply with rules one and two. You should weave from space to space even if it means you are going away from your intended direction of travel. You will eventually cause gridlock, but that’s ok because everyone else will be in the same position by then.

Rule number four – sound your horn whenever possible
This ensures the roads in Vietnam are very noisy. It also creates a deaf culture where ambulances and fire engines are ignored by other road users. Some road users try to gain an advantage by fitting a horn from another vehicle to their vehicle. So a moped driver tries to fool everybody by fitting the horn from a bus (a vehicle feared by many motorcyclists). This is actually illegal, there is a prescribed horn for each size and type of vehicle (generally deeper and louder the bigger the vehicle) but it doesn’t stop people fitting sirens and all sorts to their motorbikes. However, everyone knows this, so the result is rule number five.

Rule number five – ignore anyone who sounds their horn
The only exceptions to this are the police who have a unique and distinctive siren which everyone respects and who habitually confiscate the motorbikes of people who ignore them.

Rule number six – never look behind or to the sides
If you do you will become mortally afraid, and in any case you have as much as your senses can cope with avoiding what is in front of you. If only some of THEM actually looked before THEY backed the motorbike out into the junction, or changed lane without signalling then you might have time to think about signalling or looking behind. But that will never happen.

Rule number seven – never use your indicators or lights
Using lights wears out the bulbs, in some cases the bulbs wore out long ago and replacement costs are to be avoided, save that money for important things like putting more air in your bald and permanently leaking tyres. And if you used your indicators people would know where you were going, and that would take the fun out of driving. Occasionally it is ok to put your indicators on providing you are a) not turning at all, or b) turning in the opposite direction to the indicator.

Rule number eight – always take the opposite lane to the direction in which you are turning
This could have arisen from somewhere like New Zealand, where one of the weird rules of the road is that you should pull onto the hard shoulder before making a turn across the traffic. The idea is that you don’t disrupt the flow by sitting in the middle of the road and you can successfully make your turn when the traffic in both directions has cleared. This sort of thing will never work in Vietnam where rules one to seven apply. The end result is that diligent motorists pull into the kerb then (without stopping) swing slowly out to cross both lanes of traffic at right angles and complete their turn. There are some junctions which are actually marked up with arrows which imply UK style rules apply, if you’re turning right get in the right hand lane, if left get in the left hand lane, if straight on the middle lane. This leads to rule number nine.

Rule number nine – ignore all lane markings, traffic signs and traffic signals
And I mean ALL lane markings and traffic signs. The only white line which motorists comply with in Vietnam is one foot wide, three feet high and made of concrete. This creates a number of rules for pedestrians as well, particularly about what you can expect in a one way street, but that’s for another time. After seven months there is no known traffic regulation in the universe which I have not seen violated in Hanoi. Wrong way down one way streets, round roundabouts, down dual carriageways – its all normal, partly facilitated by rule number ten.

Rule number ten – always take the shortest route from A to B
This extends to going round corners. There is a right angle bend in the road not far from where we live. All the traffic which should have to go round the long side of the corner simply cuts the corner whilst the traffic which should be on that side of the road has nowhere else to go but through the traffic coming towards them on the wrong side of the road. So at the apex of the bend there is a piece of unworn, unused tarmac whilst at the inside of the corner there are two streams of traffic, head to head fighting it out to see who will be the first to break rule number two. Whilst rule ten largely explains the origin of rule nine, rule eleven provides a complete justification.

Rule number eleven – always assume you have right of way
This is a big enabler of rules one, two, five, nine and ten. Part of this possibly comes from the old French road rule of priority to the right, which was responsible for Paris having the highest rate of rear end shunts in Europe. Certainly everyone coming out of a side road into a main road applies rules number six and eleven. Only today I passed a tee junction where three motorcyclists, each coming from a separate leg of the tee had religiously applied rule number eleven. The result was three mangled motorbikes sitting head to head in the middle of the junction. Other motorists were behaving as if these bikes had broken rule number one, this relieves the police of any need to cordon off accidents or set up diversions – which would be pointless anyway since rule number nine would apply if they did.

Rule number twelve – the policeman is always right
And if he stops you then you did something wrong, even if you didn’t (which is unlikely). When he stops you it will cost you. If there are two or more police you might get a ticket and an official fine. If its one policeman the chances are you will have the opportunity to contribute to his personal benevolent fund. Hence;

Rule number thirteen – avoid the police at all costs
This rule is followed in extremis. I’ve seen drivers go at half the official speed limit because they heard there was a speed trap in the area. I’ve seen drivers do suicidal U turns in the middle of busy junctions because they could see a police check point on the other side of the junction. I’ve seen taxi drivers drive an extra block rather than make a turn at a corner where a policeman was standing and I’ve seen the miserable near to tears expressions of those who have just had their motorbike confiscated – something which is done on the spot for tax or insurance violations, of which there are many.

The police are unpredictable. I’ve watched them ignore all violations as they lean on trees at street corners. I’ve seen checkpoints in the middle of roads which caused more congestion than anything else going on and I’ve seen a policeman running diagonally across the traffic, like a lioness singling out one zebra to catch in a stampede. He planted his baton on the front of one motorbike which swerved and skidded to a stop. I have no idea what that guy did which no one else had done – so may be I still have more rules to learn. In the meantime if you’re planning to drive in Hanoi – take a taxi.

Tyhoons from China and Tornado's from Nottingham

2007-01-08T17:29:00.000+07:00

Fiona in her finest on xe om heading for a night out

I’m writing this three full weeks after Fiona went home. It doesn’t seem that long but that’s another example of just how time seems to fly by. Christmas has gone and tomorrow night is New Year’s Eve, then its 2007 – can you remember celebrating New Year’s Eve 1999?

Her visit was just like our trip in 2005– a blur of activity with little breathing space, lots of new places, tastes and smells (most of them pleasant) and plenty of exercise (you can see the photo’s on Flickr) and yes, she's the tornado.

She arrived on Saturday 25th of November and I took the bus to the Airport to meet her. This is a two bus journey and the number 7 which does the airport leg is a more expensive bus so the total journey costs a staggering 26 pence. It can take a long time – I was advised to allow one and three-quarter hours – but on this day everything went very smoothly. I walked through the village to the bus stop turned round and there was a bus. The first journey took exactly the time I was told it would and when I changed buses the number 7 was waiting behind the bus I got off. It was good advice to change before Kim Ma bus station for as the bus pulled in and the doors opened a flood of people ran on, pushing and shoving to get the remaining seats before the long journey out to NoiBai. As it left Kim Ma the bus was packed. Once again the journey was smooth and I found myself in the arrivals lounge just over an hour after leaving the house, and well before Fiona’s plane was due.

I sat in the coffee bar having a snack, watching everyone sitting smoking under the no smoking signs (and using the ashtrays provided) and glued to the tv where an Eddie Murphy movie was showing. The movie was in English but the voice soundtrack was faded almost to nothing. A single woman’s voice dubbed all the different actor’s lines into Vietnamese.

The plane was late I sat longer. The Bangkok flight arrived and people started to trickle out from the baggage hall. The Singapore flight was in and Fiona was one of the first off. The doors opened and the familiar vision complete with rucksack and enormous pink kit bag came striding out. It didn’t feel like we hadn’t seen each other for six months. A long kiss, a few words and a taxi back to the house pointing out the sights of Hanoi on the way.

I’d booked us into Hoa Sua, the street kids training restaurant on the special private balcony table for her first Vietnamese evening meal (the one in Bangkok doesn’t count) I got extra brownie points for the string quartet which I didn’t actually know were performing until we got there.

Sunday we wandered Hanoi and caught up with gossip. The temperature had climbed back to the high 20’s – thankfully – so it felt like a holiday. We tried the motorbike taxis which she took to immediately, looked for the turtle in the lake (we only saw the stuffed one) then did the two people on one bicycle thing from West Lake back to Van Ho stopping off at the Goethe Institute for a Germanic late lunch. In the evening we had a pizza!!

Monday the fun started. The itinerary looked like this;

Monday – Ha Long bay for two nights
Tuesday – Full day of Kayaking on the bay
Wednesday – Visit some caves on the bay then back to Hanoi to catch the night train to Sapa
Thursday – Three nights at the Eco-lodge 45 minutes drive from Sapa
Friday – Morning around the lodge. Afternoon a half day walk through local villages
Saturday – Do a day walk in half a day then get motorbike taxis back up the mountain
Sunday – Do a two day trek in one walking right back to Sapa for the night train to Hanoi
Monday – Arrive in Hanoi 4.30am, walk back to the house, change and catch the afternoon flight to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), have an evening in the city
Tuesday – Three day two night cycling trip in the Mekong, starting during Typhoon Durian.
Wednesday – cycling down to Can Tho where we saw the floating markets
Thursday – early start to cycle around Can Tho before we go back to HCMC for a tour of the War Remnants museum and the evening flight back to Hanoi
Friday – Visit my offices, bit of shopping, eat in with the other house guests
Saturday – Meet a Shaman, do another cycling trip with some Australians I know and then eat out with a load of people at an event put on by Catherine
Sunday – Pack and take her to the Airport

I went to bed early that Sunday night!

The most memorable part of the trip for me was the cycling. The first morning involved a two hour drive to our start point. We ate breakfast to the sound of torrential rain beating down on the restaurant roof and when we got outside the palms and bananas were bending in the wind. As we drove out of HCMC the weather was showing no signs of abating and our guide’s mobile was ringing every few minutes with changes to the itinerary brought on by the impact of the passing typhoon.

It’s not often typhoons hit the south of Vietnam. They normally strike the middle of the country. This is given as the reason the area was ill prepared and so much damage occurred. Over 100 people were killed, 34,000 houses destroyed and a further 200,000 damaged and over 800 fishing boats were lost in the space of 24 hours.

We cycled in the wind and the rain as the storm moved away passing power lines which were laid in flooded rice fields which should have been dry at this time of year. We saw houses which had lost all the walls and roof. Bamboo or concrete platforms with furniture and other belongings scattered about were the only evidence they had ever been houses. My saddle developed a mind of its own and was soon pointing at the sky, that’s a bit painful! I fixed it once myself but it moved again so we stopped at a village workshop and raised an oily mechanic from his hammock. He fixed the offending item with a few twists of an alan key and we were underway again. We could choose from 22km or 50km, no prizes for guessing which route we did.

Our afternoon trip on the river and overnight stay on an island was cancelled – the police had closed the river so we had to overnight at the place we had lunch, an old Japanese style house with restaurant, large orchard garden and a big veranda where we could sit, eat, drink and watch the rain in the evening. From here in the late afternoon we took a small boat along the canals stopping to talk to people stripping fruit to make candy – if you work fast you can earn £1.30 a day – and a woman who makes palm leaf tiles for the roof and walls of bamboo huts. She sells her tiles for a tenth of a penny each and makes enough to earn 60pence a day. Her business was booming in the aftermath of the storm. We also visited rice paper production and coconut candy makers, but they were not working as everyone had gone home to deal with the typhoon. As a concession the rice paper producer made a few sheets for her family’s tea, just so we could watch.

Our revised route that day had taken us through narrow muddy tracks for most of the journey so bikes and clothes needed cleaning, we washed and hung our stuff up to dry before yet another cookery lesson in the art of making Nem. These were made in a rice flour lattice rather than the usual thick rice paper. They looked different but tasted the same. The wife of the house owner took to Fiona and we received special attention for the whole of our stay. We ate our own cooking, had a couple more drinks and retired.

Breakfast was not one of my favourite meals. Everything was sweet, apart from the dry bread. Sticky rice is a triumph of design over common sense and I also take my hat off to the marketing department at Laughing Cow – their version of Dairy Lea cream cheese wedges is served everywhere in Vietnam by hotel owners who think that is what westerners eat for breakfast, but it’s not my idea of how to start the day. The awful instant coffee completed the picture. Oh for a bowl of Vietnamese rice porridge or Pho. They just can’t do a western breakfast, but they can’t believe we would eat a Vietnamese breakfast either. We cycled to meet the van and be transported to the day’s start point.

That day we tried Durian fruit, visited a brick works and a tile and ornament factory, drank Mia Dah – the sugar cane drink and gorged on all sorts of other fruits along our route. Durian has a peculiar smell which means it is actually banned from aeroplanes and many westerners can’t get past the smell to eat the fruit. The smell didn’t bother either of us and the fruit was delicious. As we ate the woman whose shop we had bought the fruit at asked all sorts of personal questions through the guide. He answered without asking us so now we’re married and left the kids at home for our holidays. I was surprised to find the brick kilns using rice husk as fuel. The stuff arriving in barge loads to be carried in baskets to the ovens. It must take a massive amount of the stuff to generate enough heat to keep the kilns to temperature.

That’s just one example of many interdependencies in the economy of this region. Another was the source of clay used in making the tiles, bricks and ornaments at these factories. It comes from rice paddies. Every so often the rice farmers have to lower the level of the rice fields to make sure the water levels stay right. To do this they move the top soil and dig out the clay below. The clay is then bought by the factories, compressed back into large blocks and cut with cheese wires to make anything from a brick to a Buddha.

Unusually Fiona was finding all this industry interesting. She was also finding the cycling hard as the temperatures started to climb in the wake of the typhoon. There were no requests for more demanding mileage. Hammering along the long straight roads in the strengthening sun was enough and even when the guide shortened the last leg of the day – concerned that we would not make it to Can Tho before rush hour congestion blocked the ferry – she did not complain. We arrived in the city and the hotel looked fine, it was only later we discovered our room was beneath the disco and it started to look like a long night.

Our guide had booked us a table on the upstairs terrace of the best restaurant in Can Tho, with views of the Statue of Uncle Ho and the fish market. The latter is not such a great view now that it’s enclosed. Fiona had had her fill of Vietnamese food by now so she ate pizza and I had a steak, the first for months. After dinner we wandered the streets and along the river front. Despite the fact that Fiona was tanning quite quickly her skin was still fair enough to attract admiring stares from local women who aspire to have white skin. If you have wealth, high status and don’t have to work in the fields then your skin will be pale, so even if you do work in the fields cover up and try to be as pale as possible so people will think you have wealth and high status. Fiona’s skin colour is highly desirable here.

Thursday morning we started the day with a boat trip to the floating markets. These are not tourist markets, they are places where villages bring their produce to sell to market traders who then sell it in the city. Whatever a particular boat has to sell is strapped to the mast so buyers can see which boats to head for. Some boats were the size of river barges and had many different fruits and vegetables strapped on the bamboo pole. If you see one of the palm leaf roof tiles strapped to the pole then it’s the boat itself which is for sale. Mobile bakeries, tea trolleys and snack stalls float amongst the bigger boats providing sustenance for vendors and buyers alike.

We passed yet more damaged houses and weaved through a network of canals to rendezvous with the van and start the day’s cycling. Once again Fiona was not fidgeting, she had enjoyed the markets and now we undertook a leisurely cycle ride through the countryside to the East of the city, but this was a short day. The ferry had to be negotiated again. There seemed to be fewer boats running and our river crossing took over half an hour. We made a quick stop at one of the many roadside restaurants, all personally approved by the tour company’s owner and arrived back in HCMC in time to spend an hour in the War Remnants Museum.

Previously called the Museum of American and Chinese war crimes, the re-badgeing coincided with the increase in American and Chinese tourists. But once inside the original name holds true as exhibit after exhibit shows the painful truth about war and what it does to people. Graphic colour photos and eye witness descriptions of massacres, the devastation of napalm and the long term effects of Agent Orange. Anyone seeing this would be moved. There were many Vietnamese students wandering round making notes and sketching some of the exhibits. In the yard we appreciated the size of some of the weapons used in the war. The last part of the museum showed how the French had suppressed nationalism during the late 1940s including one of the guillotines used to execute convicted “terrorists”. I do admire the way the Vietnamese appear to have put all these things behind them and focus on the future.

Fiona laughed at my antics attempting to say “airport” to the taxi driver but then became a bit more sympathetic when he eventually got what I was saying and repeated it back to me. To both of us his rendition sounded just like what I had been saying to him. If I can’t hear the difference, how can I ever get it right?? The day before our guide had apologetically taken me on one side and explained that I was not saying “hello” to the nice children along the road side who all know one English word (hello) and use it frequently. My attempts to respond in Vietnamese were failing miserably as usual. My pronunciation of hello was coming out as a request for rice porridge.

The rest of our trip was full of new experiences too, like being asked by one of the young staff at the Eco-lodge to help him learn to pronounce “Cathedral” I don’t know why he wanted to know but teaching the pronunciation was hard work! Or sitting in the house of a group of Red Dao, on a bare earth floor with everything – even the mosquito nets on the beds – blackened by soot from the pit fires throughout the house which had no chimneys, everything except the tv that is, which was kept covered when not in use. We walked the hills of Sapa with a female guide who had resigned herself to remaining a spinster after splitting with her boyfriend and so was heading for university in Hanoi intending to start her own business in a few years time. On Ha Long Bay Fiona became the only woman on board to jump off the top of the boat. We held hands, which was a big mistake since I travelled down faster than she did and we both hit the water at an angle making a loud noise and raising a few bruises. We also lead the way on the kayaking, since I’d been to the area before the guide allowed us to make a few detours and we had the enjoyment of being alone in one of the secret lagoons before the rest caught up – a few minutes of silent magic.

At the airport as Fiona checked in we saw a fellow traveller from the Ha Long Bay trip and three acquaintances from the previous night, all on their way to Singapore and on the same flight as Fiona. The first leg of her return journey turned into a party.

It felt very quiet after she left. On Saturday we were cycling along the dyke roads outside Hanoi with every smiling child we passed shouting “Hello” and by the following Tuesday we were both back at work in offices five thousand miles apart. Still, now we have the pleasure of planning the next one and the added connection which comes from Fiona having seen the people and places we talk about on Skype.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T12:58:00.000+07:00

The Road, complete with stage, by Hoan Kiem Lake on New Year's Eve

Welcome to 2007. Communication is not great at the minute, the internet performance here has gone down the tubes in the last week. Our mutterings about the quality of service (a long term complaint) have been tempered a bit by the thought that the problem might be exacerbated by all the undersea cables damaged by the Taiwan earthquake last week. The news did say Asia had been particularly hit. Personally I’ve not been able to access my email since Wednesday and it’s possible to fall asleep waiting for a web page to load. Anyway enough of that, yesterday was New Year’s Eve and today is the first day of 2007. It’s the first time I’ve seen in the New Year outside the UK so I was keen to know what the Vietnamese do.

The Eve was a quiet day, even for a Sunday. I cycled to the bakery with noticeably less traffic than usual. Surprisingly, more shops than usual were closed including Western Canned Foods, but as most of their regular clientele are out of the country for two weeks it’s a good time to take a break. The day passed without event and come early evening I decided to walk up through town and see what was going on. I left just after 5.30 planning to meet the others for dinner at 7pm near the Cathedral.

Life seemed very normal walking across to the main one way system, people cooking their evening meal, the streetside barber’s busy as usual and with an audience for some reason I don’t understand. No shortage of motorbike taxis all trying to attract my custom. On the main road it seemed to me that there was less traffic than on Christmas Eve and that impression stayed with me for the rest of the evening.

Up at Hoan Kiem Lake two large stages had been set up. One near the lake pagoda where the road splits and an offshoot goes into the old quarter. The other was on the traffic island on lake view corner. Both were positioned so that the audience would have to stand in the road to get a clear view. As you might expect neither road was actually closed off. One stage was in late rehearsal, a heavy metal band were playing Auld Lang Syne whilst two screens showed dancers apparently dancing to some other music. A large crowd had gathered consisting of both pedestrians and motorcyclists who just stopped in the road to watch. The flow of traffic had slowed and buses and taxis were crawling through the audience with horns blaring.

I moved on round the lake to the second stage which was in darkness. People were already gathering on pavements and balconies of surrounding buildings in anticipation. All in all it was still a lot quieter than Christmas Eve. The ice cream vendors were doing a healthy trade and a strange smell was starting to permeate – burning charcoal and dead fish. Every few metres round the top of the lake vendors were setting up with baskets of dried squid. Behind them on the lake edge they had laid out bamboo mats or even rugs. Customers were sitting on the rugs and eating the dried fish which had been heated over a charcoal stove and was served with chilli sauce and sometimes beer. There were literally dozens of these squid vendors.

I headed for the restaurant where we were eating. Despite the occasion only one other table was taken when I arrived. The rest of the group arrived and we enjoyed a very nice meal, even if the recipes of various dishes seemed to have changed since last time we ate there. I still wonder how this place makes any money. Whilst we were there only three tables were occupied.

After the meal we walked back to the lake. The stage on the traffic island had now come to life with a series of acts from the local circus including trapeze and rollerblading on a tiny circular platform. By now the buses had stopped but the road was still open to traffic. Spectators completely filled the junction and cars and motorbikes honked and crawled through trying desperately to keep a channel open round each side of the stage. Not a policeman in sight.

The show finished abruptly, the lights went out and the audience quickly disappeared. It was not yet 10pm on New Year’s Eve and they were dismantling the stage! We followed the flow back round the lake towards the other stage where the sound of classical music could be heard. The smell of burning squid was becoming quite noxious now, the vendors were doing great business and several tried to attract us to sample their wares. Fortunately I was not in the least bit hungry. At the second stage a ballet was being performed to the Blue Danube and once again the road was blocked by the audience. Some kind of informal diversion was in place as there were very few motorbikes trying to get through, though we did nearly get run down a few times on the pavement by bikes taking an alternative route round the mob. Again squid was in evidence as were the balloon sellers, all desperate to make their fortune by overcharging a westerner.

We headed back into the old quarter and to a bar where we joined a few other colleagues for a few drinks as the clock moved on towards midnight. By majority decision we opted to go back to the lake for midnight so we passed by the first darkened and dismantled stage and back to the stage by the pagoda. The heavy metal band was now performing and the crowd filled the road and pavements, very little traffic was moving here now. Two guys came past carrying a motorbike over the low fences at the edge of the grass areas by the pagoda entrance. Tonight there was no sign of the attendant with the whistle who normally ensures the ‘keep off the grass’ signs are enforced. All the grass areas were taken over by squid vendors charging 10000dong to sit on their mats if you weren’t buying squid.

The music reached a crescendo and a loud cheer went up as the midnight hour was announced and the stage erupted in fireworks (I thought they were banned in Vietnam). The music continued until five past twelve, then there was a short announcement, the lights went out on the stage, silence fell and everyone went home. All of a sudden motorbikes appeared from nowhere driven across grass, pavements and through shrubberies and everyone was moving off.

My friends were heading back to another club, but I’d had enough and started my walk home. On the main streets traffic was still flowing busily and noisily but as I turned onto the side streets all was quiet and in darkness. A solitary rat eyed me up before deciding to sit under a car until I passed by. It was like any other evening here, a late night meal going on at the recycling centre at the top of the village with eight or nine people eating under a single lightbulb. A large family group in overcoats hunched round a small table in the middle of the pavement outside an ice cream parlour. They looked bizarre sitting on high bar stools shoulder to shoulder with their ice creams and nothing else around. The teenagers and 20 something’s were still playing computer games in the village internet café at quarter to one in the morning.

It felt a bit weird going to bed knowing my UK friends would not be starting their parties for another two or three hours, whilst ours was over and 2007 had arrived.

They don't celebrate Christmas here...

2006-12-24T23:34:00.000+07:00

I think I’ve just reduced my life expectancy by a few years. What did I do? I went out on Christmas Eve in Hanoi. And on top of that I didn’t have to go out because I’d had an invitation to dinner, but as it was in Vietnamese I didn’t understand it so I didn’t go and now I have to think of how I’m going to apologise to a Vietnamese who doesn’t speak English without making things even worse.

My first inkling of reduced life expectancy came when I cycled out of the village and turned onto one of the main streets in the one way system. The temperature rose noticeably, as did the fumes. There were more motorbikes at 5pm on a Sunday than during a weekday rush hour. I weaved through the traffic and made my way to the old quarter to the pub where we were meeting and then blissfully forgot about the traffic as we sank a few drinks, debated life the universe and everything and tried to get a consensus about where to eat. When we took to the streets again we walked through a closing market, so things seemed normal and at the restaurant we ate upstairs - again away from traffic. It was at this point that the phone call came advising me that I should have been somewhere else. Too late to recover that situation!

After the meal I was the last one to leave and as I stepped out into the street I couldn’t move. It was one of the narrow streets in the old quarter and it was gridlocked. The number of people walking on the road equalled the number on motorbikes trying to drive on it and the situation was compounded by a large dustbin lorry sitting in the middle collecting the day’s refuse. For a moment I lost my way and as I wandered through the streets on the way back to the pub I was surrounded by Vietnamese wearing Santa Claus hats and carrying balloons, the night market was lit up like…. like a Christmas tree. I got back to the pub and enjoyed a final drink before climbing on the bike and heading home.

It was now 9.30pm and the first few metres of the journey were normal. The LED lights my employer provided after my last cycle accident flashed brightly as I headed towards the lake. The first indication that this would not be a normal journey came at the first crossroads where I had to step down and shuffle to get through the congestion. As I turned onto the lake side everything stopped.

It was like a football stadium turning out. The road is maybe 25 metres wide at this point and it was completely stationary. Sellers of balloons and other tat were walking amongst the motorbikes and the fumes were horrendous – enough to make my stomach turn. The odd car was marooned in the middle of the mass. No one was sounding their horn, everyone realised it was pointless.

My lights were now one of the attractions, presumably most of those smiling and pointing thought they were another set of Christmas decorations. The police had closed off the side roads leading away from the lake so there was no escape. I shuffled along with the rest making new friends as I went.

Eventually the log jam eased and I could get back in the saddle cycling slowly round pedestrians and vendors. Two cross roads further on another jam – each time the lights changed a few more motorbikes drove into the mass stuck in the middle of the junction. I took evasive action and went far to the left, into the clear side of the one way street which was going head to head with the one way street I was on. Round the edge of the mass and then up on the pavement, right and left and back onto my original route (mountain bikes are good at that sort of thing) the road was then fairly clear. Even in the village there were people wandering along with red felt hats with Merry Christmas on (Always in English?) and the sounds of singing a high spirits were far louder than on any Sunday night I’ve experienced here so far. A journey which normally takes 15 minutes took an hour.

So, they don’t celebrate Christmas here, however they do celebrate Western New Year and they go bananas at Tet – Vietnamese New Year. I can’t wait for next week!

Winter has arrived!

2006-12-12T22:27:00.000+07:00

I’m finally accepting that Winter has arrived in Hanoi. Last night I sat opposite a colleague in our house trying to explain why the November - December North Easterly monsoon means it can get cold here even though we’re in the tropics. She sat there eating her spaghetti bolognaise visibly shivering in her overcoat. Next to her another female colleague thoughtfully chewed on her dinner wearing two sweaters and a woolly hat – day dreaming of houses with heating I suspect

I’m still holding out, 14 degrees or whatever it is now is still warm for someone from the UK so I’m cycling to work in the same short sleeved shirts I wore when it was 40 degrees, only now I don’t have to wringe the shirt out when I get there but my appearance does attract attention. The Xe Om driver at the end of our road pointed to my bare arms as I walked past him and screwed up his face before doing an impressive shudder and shaking his head. He was wearing an anorak, scarf and fleece lined cap.

All the guys who guard our bikes at the office have now donned smart suit jackets to go with their navy trousers and as I cycled in this morning one looked at me in admiration and said “Rat Khoe” (Zut Quair) which roughly translates as “very strong”. Everywhere you look the whole population has produced hats, scarves, jumpers, overcoats and socks. I noticed one colleague arriving at work wearing two coats the other day. The only exceptions to this seem to be the aerobics enthusiasts in the park who are still wearing shorts to jump around in the mornings and evenings.

I had noticed the temperature dips whenever a typhoon comes in and worked out this must be because the direction of rotation pulls cold air down from the north. Up to now each typhoon inspired cold spell has been followed by a return to normality – at least 28 degrees C, but not this time. This week each morning seems cooler than the last. The house is starting to have that musty smell that goes with rising damp and washed clothes now hang on the line for several days before they dry. We’ve even started ironing – not to get the creases out but to speed up the drying process. On the wildlife front the household Geckoes have disappeared and the mosquitoes are moving more slowly.

The ceramic floors in all rooms except the kitchen (what is under the kitchen floor I wonder?) are now noticeably colder on the feet and most of my colleagues have started wearing socks around the house. The butter stays hard whether in the fridge or out of it and I have put the thin quilt I bought on the bed, though I occasionally still wake up sweating.

Sweating has become an issue at work as the air-conditioning has been turned over to heating mode and I find it sweltering. My Vietnamese colleagues on the other hand are still wearing boots and scarves around the office!

One piece of headgear I am going to get is a cycle helmet. On Friday evening I had my third collision with a motorbike, the most serious yet. The (young, reckless etc) guy hit me from behind as happened on the previous occasions. This time however he was travelling fast enough to take the cycle completely from under me so I ended up on my back with the motorbike under my legs and my cycle on top of my legs. As I went backwards I cracked my head on the road and added yet another head wound to my collection. My assailant must have jumped off when he realised the collision was inevitable since he was standing without a scratch before I had even fully taken in where I was.

I do wonder how these incidents happen, there was a clear ten metres of tarmac on the side he came from. With all that space why did he have to try and occupy the little bit of road my bike needed? The first time I was hit was the first day I had my first bike (remember I’m on my third bike now). I saw this guy coming, he was behind me and to my right and I caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye. I was in heavy traffic with nowhere to go so I stopped dead and put my feet down as he drove straight past me into my front wheel, turning it at right angles to the handlebars. At this point he seemed to be aware of my presence for the first time and turned to look at me, grinning to reveal a mouth full of black teeth before he carried on his way.

The second time I was on the VSO mountain bike stopped at a set of traffic lights when a motorbike ran into the back of the bike, not fast enough to cause whiplash or anything like that but fast enough to make me jump forward to stay upright. “Sorree” sang the smiling youth who had probably intended to go straight through the red light until he noticed I was in his way.

So if I’m going to keep getting hit from behind a helmet might be a good idea. I know from experience that they are not great at preventing injury when I go over the handlebars, but on Friday last a helmet would have stopped me getting the latest two inch diameter hole in my head. Still the guy did not get off lightly. After I extracted myself from the tangle and picked my bike up, he quickly pulled his motorbike upright and made to jump on it. Unfortunately for him one of the soldiers who guard embassies stationed across the road had seen the whole thing and, unusually, decided to intervene. He pulled the young man back off his machine, told him to stay where he was and came over to me. I felt ok, I’d done the two legs, two arms type checks before I got off the floor but I was aware the back of my head was bleeding. I’d also checked the bike, which miraculously appeared to be undamaged – just the handlebars a few degrees out of line.

The man in uniform looked at me enquiringly, was it ok to let the offender go? I decided to ham it up a bit so I looked in pain and dramatically wiped a handful of blood from the back of my head and held it out. The guard stepped back in shock and looked outraged. The young man made for his motorbike again but was pulled back again and told to stand still. A crowd was gathering, most of them standing in a semi-circle behind me to look at my wounds and making ohh arh noises. I shook my head and looked sternly as my assailant. The guard took this as his cue and marched up to the now nervous looking young man, who was also surrounded by the crowd. The guard said something and the young guy turned to face him. The guard stood to attention, looked sternly at the now shaking motorcyclist and proceeded to give him a lecture which appeared to finish with something like “now get on your bike and never darken my doors again” which is what he did. The crowd made sympathetic noises to me and the Vietnamese equivalent of tut tutting in the direction of the departing motorbike. I smiled at them, got on my bike and headed home. Along the way a woman overtook me and shouted back to me “excuse me your head is broke”. I thanked her and continued home to let Fiona practice her new first aid skills.

The other side of APEC

2006-11-19T13:46:00.000+07:00

Drying Tree Bark

I have to say the Vietnamese security forces have proved very adept at dealing with the APEC conference, but the bits you see on the news don’t tell the full story of what life is really like now in conference obsessed Hanoi.

George arrived on Friday, and various pieces of misinformation were flying round in various media for at least a month before. One Hanoi information website listed ALL the major roads in the city as being closed from 6am until 10pm for both Friday and Saturday. This caused a small panic amongst those who bother to read these things, especially my boss who had to get to the airport on Saturday morning. As most people don’t comply with traffic regulations anyway, and therefore don’t waste time reading websites like that, absolute chaos would have reigned if it had been true. Traffic was actually less than usual on Friday but if our office was anything to go by that was because people either stayed home or went home early to avoid the anticipated traffic jams, thus there were no traffic jams. This was claimed as a success by some of the international organisations based here who had`come up with the idea of a work from home day to help the Hanoi authorities reduce traffic levels. That was noble and self sacrificing of them wasn’t it? More accurate information from the American Embassy said there was a lorry ban from 6am to 10pm and the roads would be closed whenever APEC traffic was passing.

This proved to be the case and when I cycled up past West Lake at 7am this morning heading for my second ride with the cycle group I narrowly missed being held up by the road blocks. On the last stretch to the Sofitel Plaza – home of many delegates – the police were busy moving everyone on, clearing all parked motorbikes and preparing their famous rope barricades across side roads and junctions. I say famous since these are the same ropes which act as traps for motorcyclists who jump red lights. Pull up the rope which is tied between two lampposts and the faster the offending motorcyclist is driving the harder he falls!

As I reached the Plaza where we were meeting the wail of sirens announced the departure of a convoy, led by outriders wearing white dress uniforms, white helmets similar to world war two German army helmets and riding pure white Honda Goldwing bikes with red flashing lights. A police car followed and then a train of minibuses all with APEC number plates. Minibuses means they were minor officials, the big guys get Mercedes or custom built coaches whilst George has brought his own Cadillac.

Uniforms are a big feature of Hanoi’s response to the conference. Every policeman and soldier on every street corner has donned his dress jacket and Sam Brown belt. Every guard outside the many embassies has left his open shirt and machine gun at home and is now wearing full ceremonial dress with a holstered pistol. These guys have it the hardest, they usually slouch against the wall, machine gun on hip looking menacing. For the last ten days they have been standing to attention on little square wooden platforms with patio umbrellas over the top. I asked several colleagues why they were in this position a full week before the conference started. “Its normal” came the reply, “they need to practice for at least a week.”

The presence of all these dress uniforms has made me realise I don’t know half the different divisions in the security forces. I’ve worked out that the beige uniform is a traffic cop, mainly because we see them on street corners and motorists behave when they are around. But what does a green uniform signify? or a blue one? or a white one? Suddenly I’m noticing different uniforms everywhere. Someone commented that the ones to really worry about were the ones you couldn’t see – the plainclothes guys, but I’ll settle for worrying about the ones in black combat fatigues with the big guns. Fortunately the big guns have a reflective strip otherwise I might not be here to write this. In an unlit backstreet a couple of nights ago I almost ran into two of these guys, me on the bike and them crossing the road in the dark with dark skin and black outfits. I only just saw the strips in time. Even the usual newsreaders have been replaced by stern faced women wearing white dress uniforms with lots of scrambled egg on the epaulets.

This is not the only impact of the conference. We’ve heard the staff at the Sheraton have been given a week off and the American delegation has taken over the whole hotel and brought their own hotel staff with them. Certainly the Sheraton is a good location for anyone with a security obsession. It backs onto the lake and has only one road in. Hundreds of street vendors have been swept away from their usual spots both as a security measure and to make the city look tidy. Motor bike parks have disappeared so it’s possible to walk down pavements and car drivers have been really hit as all car parking along any route to the conference and outside any official building has been completely banned. A little more sinister, we have also heard that many street children have been collected up and whisked off to the 02 “training” centre outside Hanoi where they will stay for three months before being sent back to their home village. Optimists say this is giving them a new start. Cynics say it’s another form of street cleaning.

One real impact on us is that pubs and clubs being held to their official closing times. Le Pub, a place we often start or end an evening has suffered a double blow. There are delegates stopping in the tiny hotel next door (I wonder which country is so skinflint as to use a place only one step up from a hostel?) so Le Pub has to clear all it’s patrons out by 11pm instead of the usual 1am. Then to add insult to injury the owner has to keep staff on all night to provide free drinks to the occupants of the temporary Police tent set up opposite the hotel entrance. The stall holders of the local market which normally takes place where the tent is aren’t too impressed either – they have been told to stay away for a week.

Every major hotel in the city is fully booked for the rest of this month and most of December as conference delegates and their families stop over to complete other business or take holidays and tourist areas are experiencing “APEC prices” – even our glass of sugar cane juice at the end of today’s ride cost us 60% more than normal.

Today’s ride was 64km and my absence of fitness showed. More people turned up this time - there were 12 riders - and I finished last at every stage. By the final six kilometres I had run out of steam and really needed that frothy sugar drink to get me home the last mile or so through the town. The unseasonable heat (31C today) continues and with the sun out and a headwind it was hard work. I drank 2 litres of water without pause when I got home. The route meandered along a tributary of the Red River, crossing once by bridge and once by ferry. Today’s rural occupation of note was drying tree bark. I don’t know where it comes from or what they use it for but it was very neatly cut in to pieces about a metre square and laid out at the side of the road – for miles! By the time we circled back it had all dried and passing lorries were blowing it all over the place. We also rode through an area where farmers were drying rice by the traditional (?) method – lay it out on a tarmac road, leave two clear tracks to allow two way traffic for motorbikes or one way traffic for lorries and cars, turn it every so often using a device a bit like a snow shovel and collect it again when its dry. I’ve seen this done along the edges of major roads, but it’s the first time I’ve seen the entire road taken over as a drying bed.

Tonight its quiet, but I think I’d sleep well even if the dogs, cats and rowing machines were all going full pelt. I’m now on my 4th litre of water and still slightly thirsty and I’m a pretty shade of red despite the factor 50 sunscreen. Must be time for bed.

The last month - Finger lickin good?

2006-11-11T15:36:00.000+07:00

Four men in a boat - cyclists crossing the Red River by ferry

The last month (October, yes I’ve been here five and a half months now) has been different. I realise I’ve got into a work mentality and a lot of what was previously catching my imagination and curiosity has now become background noise.

The impact of this has been that I’ve not felt any compelling need to write any of it down, which is a shame since some of it is still fascinating (to me) and when I don’t record the little incidents they soon fade from memory.

I have settled into work and almost a routine – an eight(ish) till five(ish) day with a mix of meetings, writings and visits. Two weeks ago I had my first trip to Ho Chi Minh City. Curiously most of the locals I met call it Saigon and when I asked one up and coming young business man why that was he replied “its easier to say” no resounding political message there then.

The city is more brash than Hanoi, lifestyles appear more western. I saw fat Vietnamese people, something which is very rare in Hanoi and these were young and fat, definitely a lifestyle thing. One night as I sat in a large and noisy coffee bar having drinks with a group of young Vietnamese professionals I looked around. I was the oldest person in the place and apart from the obvious ethnicity of the people there, the behaviours could have been anywhere in the West. Vietnam is changing and contacts I’m having with young people suggest the country will be a very different place in a generation.

There’s also a lot of high rise building in Saigon, hotels and office blocks and wide boulevards which probably predate the buildings. From the backseat of a taxi it doesn’t look that much different from Hanoi, and in the time I was there most of my views were from the backseat of a taxi. One morning as we crawled along in the rush hour heading for a warehouse somewhere I was just gazing out of the window, not really present to the world, when I noticed a motorbike driving past with a box strapped on the back. Not unusual, but then I realised it was a wood frame like a rabbit hutch with chicken wire round the outside. I looked a bit closer, curious to see what was in it. The unblinking eyes of at least 20 snakes stared back, swaying in rhythm with the motorbike. All their heads raised up to cushion the bumps and presumably on their way to a restaurant somewhere.

There were many more moments like that but I forget them. I ate out in a variety of restaurants. The two which stand out were a crab restaurant where we had (small) crab salad followed by boiled (big) crab followed by fried soft shell crab – a large crab which has just shed its old shell and is caught and cooked before its new shell hardens. No messing with this critter you just eat it as it comes, shell and all. And the other memorable place was the local KFC. Yes Kentucky Fried Chicken has made it into Vietnam. The combo which comes with rice, mashed potato and onion gravy seems to be doing well… maybe they’ll introduce that in the UK? I finished up there as my minder, also from Hanoi was desperate to have a portion of KFC – a rare treat as there aren’t any in Hanoi. In Saigon they’re on every other street corner. We were met at the doors by two greeters – one for each door. Combos are the order of the day, no choice about large fries or any messing about like that. Every combo had two pieces and something plus a coke (they don’t do coffee). If you’re eating in it comes on a prison style compartmentalised plate with a real knife and fork. When you’ve finished girls come round and clear your table – Vietnamese men don’t do clearing up. In fact my minder was a bit put out by the whole concept of self service. Anyway he need not have been so desperate, by the time we got back to Hanoi two branches of the international chicken king had miraculously appeared there too. So next week I’ll be getting the treat again as the guys from work head off to try the latest western food fad to hit their town.

My hotel was actually pretty luxurious, for £24 a night I had a small suite, an office come lounge with three piece suite, desk and WiFi, and a bedroom with king-size bed and all the usual trimmings. I also had two bathrooms and four phones and so many light switches it took a while to get to bed. We inspected an alternative hotel whilst in the city spending half an hour walking from room to room with a girl with a bundle of keys so we could see what a premium deluxe looked like and then work our way down to a standard, which was a sort of windowless box filled by a bed. I’m pleased to say where we stayed was better value, its nice to get something right.

I also took the opportunity to visit Mr Thanh’s bike shop, supposedly the only place in Vietnam where you can buy a decent cycle. The taxi dropped me outside what looked like a closed up house and I found the bell and rang it. A small man with glasses answered the door and led me in past a woman who didn’t look like the happiest of people, but then not many women would like the idea of their house being filled with bikes and people wandering in and out of the bedroom to try them out. We climbed to the top of the five storey building past frames and wheels hanging off the walls and on the stairs into a large room lined with glass cabinets full of bike spares. The floor was covered in bikes and there were several in pieces. In the next room a mechanic surrounded by bits and grease was busy assembling a road racer.

Mr Thanh proudly showed me a road bike. I politely asked how much such a machine would cost, just over $1000 he replied (carbon fibre frame). I explained my budget. He shook his head and we worked our way down through the house trying different bikes until I was sitting on a very nice Italian hybrid, stylish, lightweight and with good running gear - $500. Still outside my price range especially when you added on the cost of transport to Hanoi. Sadly we parted company without a deal having been struck and I headed off to my next warehouse.

Apart from the bike buying episode the trip was a success but next time I’ll allow more time for the sights, such as the museum of war remnants which includes tanks, planes and other equipment from the conflicts with the French, Chinese and Americans. It used to be called the museum of American and Chinese War Crimes, but attitudes have mellowed these days. The population of Vietnam is so young that over half of them were not born even in the last conflict with China in the late 70’s.

Back in Hanoi I decided I could not put the bike purchase off any longer, the VSO bike I borrowed was reaching the point of needing major renovation, the remaining brake was taking longer and longer to stop me and the random gear changes were getting more frequent. I decided I had to brave the world of counterfeit brands and low quality originals. Someone from work agreed to go with me and we walked to the row of bike shops just round the corner from the office.

Now despite the fact that every one of these units had its own minder and more than one had the same bikes outside, it turned out to be one big concern. The whole lot was owned by one family. To my surprise I found a large selection of high quality mountain and road bikes. The only trouble was they were the same sort of price as those in Saigon. When I asked about hybrids they produced exactly the same brand of Italian bike I had sat on at the other end of the country!

We had a chat about budget. The guy looked stern and rubbed his chin.

Then, to remind me that you can’t get quality for nothing he produced a few awful machines, stiff brakes, gears that would not change and handlebars that felt like they were going to bend if you leaned on them. I said no yet again. By now he had the expression of a salesman who has found the customer from hell. But he persieved, or rather I spotted an almost mountain bike at the back of one of the shops. He smiled and pulled it out. It was a good price, he said, because he had bought it at the end of a trade fayre. It had front suspension, Shimano gears (18) and brakes and an aluminium frame. It was big enough for me and had a long saddle stem. Perfect. I reserved it and with the assistance of the office cleaner purchased it the next morning. 2,700,000VND or just under £90 to you AND I’ve got a 12 month written guarantee. It’s made in Taiwan, but there again so are all the Raleigh bikes you buy these days. Now I have brakes that stop me and working gears which means I can keep up with most of the motorbikes in the city.

Fate intervened that same afternoon, an email from the cycling group I’d contacted the previous month announced a ride at the weekend. Meet 6.30am Saturday morning Sofitel Plaza for a trip up the Dyke Road. Hmmm no excuses now, but I haven’t done a ride of any distance for over six months and these guys reputedly do 80-90km on a weekend trip. I took a deep breath and signed up.

Up at 5.30am on Saturday morning I had to cycle the three kilometres to the meeting point before the ride started. There were three guys at the start, all big and all German and all with the full gear, camelback waterpouches, racing helmets, lycra and, as they were all expatriates, bikes they had brought with them from Germany. They looked at my new bike with a mixture of interest and disbelief (how much?). We headed off up the dyke road weaving in and out of the traffic at a pace I could just about keep up with and collected a big Dutch guy a few miles further on. Then we ploughed on into the countryside. The dyke road soon became just that, a strip of tarmac on top a flood defence dyke. It passed through rural communities each one seeming to major in one task. One village had ponds and thousands of ducks everywhere, one was like a giant timber yard stretching for several miles and one had rice drying along the road side. I understand there’s even a noodle village where you will find house after house with sting noodles hanging, drying from the rooftops, a bit like the BBC’s spaghetti tree April fool of many years back, but not a joke here.

To make the ride into a loop it was decided to cross the Red River and some ten minutes was spent finding a ferry. Eventually we bounced down a muddy single track to the water’s edge where a sampan waited to take our dong. We ate bananas as the boat chugged across the still river and deposited us in fields on the other side. It was not yet 9am. We cycled along a wide dirt track weaving through a maze of buildings which looked like thatched barns but which were actually brick kilns. On every side bricks were stacked up, either finished and waiting for transport to Hanoi or in one of the stages of production. Everywhere women with baskets and bandanas were carrying bricks, to the kilns or from the kilns. We were subject to the Vietnamese equivalent of the building site wolf whistle more than a few times.

Eventually we found tarmac again and once again on a dyke we headed through the haze back towards the city. I’d never realised just how hazy this country is until I stood on the 17th floor of an office block in Saigon and realised I couldn’t see more than half a mile, and here at 10am on a sunny Saturday morning the view fade into a grey backdrop at about the same distance. We reached one of the big bridges crossing the river, got lost in a small village and finished up crossing some fields to reach its base and then cycle over the small “foot”bridge underneath back to the Hanoi side of the river - along with the usual collection of motorbikes, cyclos and any other vehicle which could fit through the entrance. The most exclusive housing development in Hanoi is just across the river and we were taking a short cut through it. I almost missed the turn as I was distracted by a small snake which was wriggling faster than a snake should be capable of in order to get across the road in one piece. I swerved to avoid it and then realised everyone else had gone - manhandling their bikes over the central reservation to do a quick trip the wrong way on the other side of the dual carriageway and into the complex. The entrance is like a cross between the Arc de Triumph in Paris and the arch at Hyde Park Corner and has an enormous bronze on top of a chariot pulled by a team of horses. We cycled underneath smiled at the security guard as if we lived there and pedalled into the estate along long wide boulevards void of traffic and through large areas where big houses are being built on a grid pattern at least three metres apart. This is a real departure for Vietnam!

Two more security check points later and we’re on the original route going back towards the city. We pulled into a side road and stopped at a small shop for a couple of glasses of the sugar cane drink with ice and lemon then we weaved through allotments, past the funfair and the waterpark to arrive on one of the backroads in West Lake. One by one my new friends peeled off and headed to their houses in the plush area of town until I was the only one left heading back into the city centre to do my extra kilometres to get home. Before I left the last guy he looked at his computer and told me we had ridden over 45km, my legs knew it. Pity they had all had other engagements he said, otherwise they had intended to do another 30km the other way down the river. Maybe next time. It was still morning – just – when I got home.

That was days ago and now I’ve finished writing I’m going to bed. My neighbours who provide so much of my entertainment have just added a rowing machine to the five young cats they acquired last month. The machine has displaced the cats who have been singing outside my bedroom window for the last couple of weeks. Tonight one of the men of the house is vigorously whooshing back and forth whilst one of the women sits nearby singing in time with the rowing. Its 11pm, I wonder if she does lullabies?

Mooncake Madness

2006-10-07T00:02:00.000+07:00

Hanoi has been a little crazier than usual this week. Tonight was the full moon festival, sometimes called the autumn festival sometimes called the festival of the hungry ghosts and to some less generous people the “My god why can’t they control their kids festival”. That was certainly the look on Derek’s face tonight as we sat in a restaurant and a babe in arms with an electric lantern on a stick kept swinging it round until the inevitable contact with Derek’s head.

The buzz has been building all week. At work more and more mooncakes appeared as the week went on and their were discussions about what presents the kids would get. The mooncake shops have been supplemented by the appearance of street stalls selling every conceivable children’s toy from Barbie dolls to Rambo type Chinese machine guns in environmentally unfriendly plastic which glow in the dark and make star wars like noises. I know - my neighbours young son was playing with one outside my window at 11.30 last night.

There’s more traffic on the roads and the procession round the one way system has been there every night. Last night I went to the supermarket fairly late on and walked into some kind of kids festival just finishing. The road was gridlocked with the usual crowd of motorbikes waiting for their offspring with the added complication of two large coaches parked outside the hall and several taxis. Then there was an elderly gentleman in a really old and filthy car who was performing a 93 point turn in the middle of all this traffic.

Earlier in the week I was on my way back from work after trying to find the Hanoi Cinema club. Well actually I found it but the staff behind the desk pointed out that it was the wrong time to try and join and it was also the wrong time to get tickets, so I had to come back later. I stopped at the traffic lights and a motorbike pulled up alongside me – very close beside me. I turned my head and found myself looking into the eyes of an old man, he had a thin face and probably no teeth as he was gurning admirably. He stared me squarely in the eye and slowly and deliberately looked me up and down. I returned the favour. He was wearing the green pith helmet favoured by many Vietnamese men, an anorak style jacket and striped cotton pyjamas. No, not the outfits Vietnamese wear which look like pyjamas, these were the real thing. My eyes wandered a little further and caught sight of the bag hanging on the handlebars of his bike. The bag with the yellow liquid and the clear label “URINE” the tube from it disappeared inside the said pyjamas. The lights changed and the incident was over.

I took a detour to have one last attempt at joining the gym at a local hotel. Its expensive by my standards but my fitness has completely gone down the pan now and I need to do something about it. They turned me down by email, so I thought I’d try the personal approach. I pedalled my knackered Chinese mountain bike round the Mercedes and BMWs up the ramp into their multi-storey car park. Got a ticket and took the lift to the gym. A nice man greeted me and showed me the facilities and all the prices. The place was deserted, not a single person using any of the facilities. I said, its very nice, I’d like to join. He offered me a day guest pass, I said no I’d like to join. At first he looked confused, then the lights came on and he said “Ahh, join! Sorry we are full”. It turns out they only allow 100 members and they’ve had 100 since April, so that is it – the gym is empty but its full.

My next mistake of the week was to make contact with a local expat cycle club. Apparently, to do the stuff they do, I need a proper bike which will cost me three months allowance and have to be got in Ho Chi Minh City. They go out at 6am and do 30 kilometres before breakfast on weekdays, longer at weekends. Many of the members have names which sound like Tour de France riders. The bike I’m currently riding has a front brake that causes the wheel to judder when applied, a back brake which does not work at all, mudguards held on with string, gear changers which do not actually move the gears since the cables have rusted solid, a bottom bracket which is bent and a loose chain wheel so the front gears change whenever they feel like it. It feels like a solid iron bedstead, and weighs accordingly. Last week I had two flat tyres and the chain broke. I don’t think it will do 30km at all – even if I could.

The prospect of bike shopping is one I both relish and fear, I’ll enjoy the haggle but I’m afraid of what I might get. I want a mid range hybrid, I can’t afford the sort of bikes the club members have got. The trouble is whilst there are bikes which LOOK like what I want many are cheap Chinese counterfeits carrying famous names. They will break on the first off-road bump or the gear changers will not work after the first three weeks. Its very hard to tell the quality just from a visual inspection, they LOOK authentic. I’ve come to realise this is a skill in Chinese manufacturing. They build quality according to the market the product is going to be sold in. So in Europe and the States you buy Chinese products which are really good. In Vietnam they suck. I may already have said we have had two halogen bedside lamps melt and the webcam I bought lasted two months, now I’m the green man from outer-space – when I can actually get a picture at all. So I need to be careful or very lucky, my budget is about a fifth of the price of a real bike.

Still the mountain bike is getting me around, like tonight we got back from the cinema when I realised I no longer had my mobile phone. I knew what had happened – slide back in the seat when watching the movie, my trouser pockets tilt and the phone slides silently out onto the seat and then onto the floor when I get up to leave. We had stopped in the Bia Hoi on the way home, but they had run out of beer so it turned into a one sided conversation as we sat and were talked at. I borrowed a phone and rang my number, holding my breath. An American voice answered. Jerry, who runs the cinema, had my phone on his desk and he’d be there for another half hour. I left the pub with no beer put my shorts on – my white legs are the nearest thing I have to dayglo clothing and cycled (sans lights) out into the moon festival madness. Pho Hue was just like a weekday rush hour except that many of the riders were wearing Halloween masks, lots of the girls were wearing illuminated little devil horns implying something or other. And lots of bikes also had kids on – all waving their new light up noise making electronic toys. I was passed by a motorbike with an enormous bag of (inflated) helium balloons on the back – I mean enormous it was the size of a small car. I decided to keep up with the motorbikes which fascinated the children and amused the boy racers two of whom passed me more than once. I recovered my phone and made the return journey down Ba Trieu in traffic which was moving like they were on a dance floor. The whole exercise took under half an hour.

Anyway it midnight and I’m going to bed. The dog is quiet and there is no siren. Instead it is the turn of the cat and my neighbours new toy, which he is playing with with great delight just a couple of feet from where I’m sitting.

Moon Cakes

2006-09-30T23:46:00.000+07:00

Cake Kiosks outside Vincom Towers Mall

The lunar calendar is different from the whatever-it-is calendar we use. I don’t know why and I’m not going to try to explain. Its enough for you to know that they overlap and we’re now in a period with an (August) moon festival which is celebrated each year with the giving of moon cakes.

The more sophisticated of our Vietnamese colleagues turn their noses up at the cakes, relating them to a bygone era. The festival itself was supposed to be a children’s event but it has become one of those things taken over by adults.

I knew nothing about any of this until new shopfronts began appearing all over Hanoi. The dowdy peanut shop, stationers or electrical cable shop suddenly acquired an extension in red and gold which protruded another metre into the street. Shining glass counters stacked high with red and gold boxes or bags appeared and surrounding trees were strung with fairy lights and Chinese lanterns. To see one or two shops so converted would be unusual enough but literally dozens of shops have been modified. At a modern shopping mall near our house a whole row of kiosks appeared overnight all dressed in the same livery.

When it started, about three weeks ago, the pavements were packed with shoppers. Crowds pushing and shoved to get served at the most favoured vendors. Less favoured locations a few metres away, and apparently selling identical produce, were deserted – that’s the way it works here, reputation is everything. Sales continued well into the evening and beyond the times when Vietnamese businesses usually close. Teams of extra staff could be seen sitting on pavements and in doorways furiously assembling the red and gold boxes into which the moon cakes are carefully packed, desperately trying to keep up with demand.

Given that we’ve been told city folk don’t go for the cakes (its more of a country thing you know) yet everyone buys them and everyone gives them to all their relatives I wonder where they all finish up? Certainly they seem a bit rich for the kids, I tried one, they look like ornamental mini pork pies. A decorated pastry crust and a rice based filling with a hard boiled egg yolk at the centre. The filling is sweet not savoury and it’s the quality of the filling that differentiates the good from the indifferent.

I’d been meaning to get some nighttime photos of these shops and finally got round to it on Saturday night – there being nothing else on this week. It was after nine and despite everyone telling me it is now Autumn the temperature was still in the high twenties. I was sweating and getting sticky before I got to the end of the road.

I stopped to watch the rats at the end of our alley, we noticed a few nights back that they use the electricity cables as their own mass transit system. If you stand and watch for a few minutes you can see dozens of them, they hurtle past - far more confident than any tightrope walker - moving up a level or branching off as they reach a pole. They obviously use these routes regularly - there’s no hesitation at junctions.

On the main road the Saturday night parade of motorbikes was in full swing, motorbikes all with two people on and many wearing their best outfits. They cruise the main streets of the one way system, a couple of friends chatting as they weave through the traffic, three or four couples riding side by side laughing and calling to each other or pairs of lovers - the pillion passenger hugging close to the driver. Occasionally the hugging is very obviously very intimate and one wonders how the driver is managing to stay on the road!

I took some photos by the shopping mall and then moved on towards the old quarter where I’d seen the most spectacular displays. But the festival is nearly over and the cluster of shopfronts I really wanted to photograph had already gone, as had the lights. The street which had been teeming with people two weeks ago was dark, quiet and closed.

Walking back in a wide circle which brought me down the side of Lenin Park gave me the opportunity to study more closely the small terrace of shops at the end of Van Ho II. They are tiny, maybe three metres square and not even two stories. More like one and a half – there’s a loft over each shop which is not quite high enough to stand up. The terrace backs onto the park wall, so they only have the one room. Most of them are either tailors or hairdressers. What had not been apparent to me before was that the owners actually live on the premises. At this time of night the steel grills are pulled part way across the entrance and the families sit on the floor watching tv and cooking on a gas burner, children get ready for bed, presumably in the loft. It does bring home that Vietnam is a developing country and not everyone is riding the crest of the economic boom. That said all of these small spaces contained a tv and at least one motorbike, dragged off the road overnight and parked next to the hairdresser’s chair or the tailor’s sewing machine for safe keeping.

By the time I got back into our alley all the grills and shutters were closed and the houses silent and in darkness. Startled I jumped to one side to avoid a young woman on a very quiet motorbike who emerged from a side alley without any lights, she braked hard to avoid me. We didn’t make that much of a commotion, but it was enough to disturb one resident. I slunk back to the house in the shadows, hoping no one saw me as THE dog began its machine-like bark.

Dog Story 2

2006-09-26T09:21:00.000+07:00

The calm of our local street market at midnight

On the way to work this morning I had two near disasters. The problem is reading what other road users are going to do. Since no one follows any of the rules of the road traffic proceeds by telepathic agreement between drivers. This is especially true where a left turn is involved (remember they drive on the right). I regularly see a woman on a motor bike who always goes to the inside edge of the road before making a wide sweep out to the left ensuring she has to cross the path of every other driver on the road to make her turn. At least I know what to expect when I see her.

This morning I was cycling up Van Ho two and reached a small junction where the majority of motorbikes coming towards me turn across me. The art is to guess which ones will go in front of me and which will go behind, effectively I have to find a gap through the flow despite the fact that in theory I have priority.

This morning a guy who I expected to go in front of me decided to go behind me and we were on collision course until I finally realised his intent, a quick swerve using my one working brake and we slipped by each other with inches to spare. At the next junction – the opposite problem, but this time the guy actually waved to let me know he was going in front. My bike juddered as the brake, long past its sell by date, tried to slow me enough to let him pass. This cat just lost another two lives!

At the last junction before work I experienced another classic Hanoi syndrome. On a two way road cars and bikes had spread across both lanes as they waited for the traffic lights to change (they wait at this junction because the volume of traffic crossing the other way is such that even a local can see it would be suicide to try and go against the lights). I was on the centre line as I had to turn left after the junction, but I had as many motorbikes to my left as to my right. The two opposing armies faced each other and rushed into battle as the lights changed. Its times like this when I tend to hang back or position myself behind a car, not that that is ideal since you never know what the car is going to do; stop, make an illegal left turn, park in the middle of the road or worse still start reversing! Anyway I made it to work where a colleague showed me his bruises from last night when someone on his left at the lights made a right turn in front of him when the lights changed – another favourite – causing him to fall off his motorbike. His bike’s scratched and he is sore but still alive as he put it. His experience happens dozens of times a day here.

Last night had a couple of highlights for us too. For starters Mike locked himself out of his bedroom. He has the most secure room in the house with the best fitting door which does not have a handle. It is opened by turning the key, which was now inside the room with the door closed and Mike on the outside. This happens to him a lot, but on previous occasions it has been in hotels where housekeeping or reception can easily remedy the situation. Here there was only one key – in the room.

Well I wasn’t chairman of the South Notts Crime Prevention Panel for two years without learning a few tricks of the trade and after Mike had gone out (contemplating spending the night on the roof or on the bed settee) I found an old plastic card – credit card style and proved I have not lost my touch. After a few abysmal attempts I finally got the angle right, the card slid down, the lock clicked and the door was open. We spent the rest of the evening sending Mike texts winding him up about not being able to get the spare mattress out as the storeroom was locked.

The dog which sounds like a hacksaw has also made a comeback in the last week. On a number of occasions it has started up then stopped barking abruptly, usually ending with a chocking sound suggesting someone has grabbed it by the throat. However, on three occasions recently it has gone on a bit and a new phenomenon has arisen.

After the dog has barked continuously for about five minutes a siren starts. It’s not a quiet siren, very few are. This is a siren very much like American Police cars in 1960’s movies. It penetrates through the neighbourhood drowning out the dog and everything else. The first time I heard it I thought we had a fire engine in the yard – impossible since our alley is less than 2 metres wide. The siren continues until the dog stops, or is stopped – usually the latter. Last night, as the siren wailed and the dog chocked the German could be heard ranting in the background, but without any kicking of doors. I wonder if he was complaining about the dog or the siren?

Birthday Dinner

2006-09-24T12:36:00.000+07:00

There’s something in Vietnamese culture about having food left on the table at the end of a meal, it means everyone was satisfied. If you don’t have anything left then you didn’t cook enough. This philosophy also abounds in Africa, and as we had appointed an African colleague as head chef for a small dinner party on Saturday night, the shopping list for the event was extensive. There is of course another side to this, a sort of paradoxical paranoia – if too much food is left, then it obviously was not to the taste of the guests and that is bad. It’s a fine line.

The event was the birthday of the oldest of our colleagues. She does not normally celebrate these events, but had been persuaded over the last few weeks that she should allow us to put on some small event in her honour. It’s a miracle we got there, the previous 24 hours my communication had been confused and we had lost the plan we made the previous week. Head Chef was in Ha Long all week and travelling back on Friday. She sent a message saying we would meet on Saturday morning and querying the time as she had been invited to a Vietnamese cultural event at 8.30, she was not sure she would have time to go (to the event). I thought she meant Saturday morning and replied saying she had plenty of time. She meant Friday evening and had intended us to go with her. I missed that bit altogether and so we were in the Bia Hoi, with the retired colonel drawing armaments for us to guess the names of, with my phone on charge back at the house when she phoned Derek to ask where we were. Oops!

10.30am Saturday we finally got together and planned. The meal was for eight. The menu was fish curry, mashed potato, fried chicken (must get that recipe), spiced rice, peanut and sesame sauce and the famous chapatti. One guest would bring ratatouille and another some fruit. Derek would cook flambé banana and pineapple dessert. Mike would provide transport for the shopping.

Chef and delivery boy departed for the markets and I went in search of wine and Gordon’s Gin – birthday girl’s favourite. I also wanted some birthday cards. Both cards and Gin proved elusive. The card shop I usually used had decided to take the day off and was closed. I found the gin in the third shop I tried and a few overpriced cards in Vincom Tours – the nearest mall. Cycling down Ba Trieu I was overtaken by Mike and Chef, now laden down with supplies for the cooking operation.

Much of the afternoon was then taken with cooking. I was not allowed near the kitchen. If Derek is possessive the Chef was more so. I didn’t even qualify as washer up. Delicious smells started to permeate the house and as the rice steamer started to heat up an army of our tiny indigenous ants staged an evacuation via the handle, swarming down the casing and across the table to meet their demise on a passing dish cloth.

I was allowed to learn the art of making Chapatti, flour, oil, water (warm) a little salt and sugar, knead the dough, roll it out spread with oil, cut into strips and fold the oiled surface in, roll out again, fry in a dry frying pan, as the dough sets turn it and oil the side which is part cooked, turn back and oil the other side, turn once more and remove as the blisters begin to brown. It takes so long! Cooking Chapatti for a large family must take hours. Anyway timing was perfect, cooking was finished as the guest began to arrive. Drinks were dispensed and the dishes cooked earlier in the afternoon reheated, cards issued, congratulations proffered and then down to the serious matter of eating. There was a LOT left but many contented noises.

We washed up and took a break before dessert (no option but to wash up, every utensil in the house had been used on the first course). Then Derek started the banana and pineapple flambé, which is when the gas ran out.

We’re on bottled gas here. The only mains utilities being the electricity which arrives by a cable precariously strung from a collection of telegraph poles and water which is metered and arrives in the yard before being pumped up to a tank on the roof. Whilst the electricity man comes once a month, with a bill to be paid in cash (in fact he arrived half way through the meal) gas had never been an issue. The bottle had been there when we arrived, over two months ago.

We found a phone number on the cylinder and called it, it was disconnected. We found another phone number and one of our colleagues who really does speak Vietnamese placed the call. Sentences were punctuated with the words “gas cylinder” – afterwards he admitted he didn’t know the Vietnamese for gas cylinder but thought they might know the English. The call was a failure, the woman on the other end just kept saying she didn’t know what he was talking about. You’d think she might have had a guess that we were ringing up for some gas, as it was the 24 hour gas supply line. Derek tried to flambé his bananas with a cigarette lighter, but the mixture had not reached flash point.

Then the phone rang! Someone at the gas company had taken a flier that we might be after some gas and called us back. A second conversation followed in which our address was requested and questions were asked which we were unable to answer, but which turned out to be about the size of the cylinder. Fortunately the guy at the other end of the phone guessed right.

Within half an hour a motorbike carrying two men and a 12kg gas cylinder arrived at the door. Change over was swift and at 200,000VND – less than £7 – seemed good value. We’re cooking on gas!

Dessert was followed by more drinks and we retired to the balcony for music and yet more drinks. The last of the single malt was consumed and guests began to leave. Birthday girl was bedding down on the new bed settee in the lounge (the last one was destroyed in the second flood) and as we assembled her bed she paid tribute to a lovely evening. So everyone was content and we have enough food left to keep us going until next weekend.

Why more people should eat dog

2006-09-11T10:53:00.000+07:00

Its nearly midnight and I can’t sleep tonight, its not the heat and its not the rain. It’s a minor war going on out in the street. The perpetrator is an expat, probably a German or East European judging from the accent and war broke out with an enormous crash as he took something heavy to the steel panelled gates of one of our neighbours. This was followed by much screaming at the top of his voice, all of it in John Cleese accented English with a common theme of “shut the f***ing dog up!”

Last Saturday night, at the end of our party, the hard core retired to one of the balconies, where after a few drinks I pointed out to them the normal background noise to our neighbourhood. The small dog with a penetrating bark like someone hacksawing metal without lubricant and which goes on for hour after hour after hour after hour throughout the night. This dog can bark without breathing and does it with such rhythmic consistency that I’m not the only one who has mistaken it for an industrial machine working overtime. Once aware the assembled party goers were unable to blot out the sound. They began to stab themselves in the head with forks, stuff empty beer cans in their ears and hatch elaborate plots to kill the f***ing dog. When the last ones left the dog was still only just getting into its stride.

For my part I’ve adjusted to it pretty well. Its become one of those familiar sounds to go to sleep to, like the ticking of a clock or your partner’s snoring.

The German has obviously not adjusted and having reached the end of his tether has gone in search of the dog. He has now succeeded in creating total bedlam.

The number of active voices outside has grown to about ten, I’ve just wandered out onto one of the balconies and whilst I can’t see any of the action I can tell where it is from the number of our neighbours who are out on their balconies observing, they are there in force. The Vietnamese love a good street argument but I suspect the high level of interest is because the German has a lot of sympathisers.

Voices are getting louder, the noise of the dog has been drowned out by the German’s threats and the dog owners responses. Voices for and against the demise of the dog can now be heard in both English and Vietnamese and every time the dog’s yap rises above the melee something heavy hits the steel gate which is now sounding like the Rank movies gong, but louder. The German sounds as if he might be foaming at the mouth and the opposition are obviously wilting under the onslaught. I can hear some acknowledgements that the dog can be made to be quiet. Anger is going out of the German’s voice to be replaced by reason, he only wants to sleep, he has to work, he’s reached his limit, the dog is driving him crazy (obviously).

Silence falls, for a few minutes. Then the dog starts sawing again, the Rank gong plays the finale to the 1812 overture and the German is back in full frenzy, the cacophony of voices erupts again and then slowly subsides. Now total silence, it looks like the show is over. Total, absolute, silence. I can’t sleep!

Postscript – absolute silence lasted less than an hour, then the dog started again. The German didn’t come back so it looks like the dog won and I can go to bed now.

Flight to Paradise? (3rd August 2006)

2006-09-09T15:19:00.000+07:00

Eriyadu island

The main problem with holidaying on a desert island is getting there. My Trip to Eriyadu is good example. It seemed to take place in chunks of two hours, the first getting to Noi Bai Airport in Hanoi. I had toyed with various ideas, the bus was cheapest – 10p to Kim Ma and then 15p to the airport. But I was unsure where Kim Ma bus station was, or how long it would take. So I decided to play safe and go for a taxi. This would be just over £4 for the 30km journey.

I left the house at 8.30am with shoulder bag and suitcase. Then fate took a hand. On the corner was our favourite Xe Om driver. This guy is notorious for trying to dramatically overcharge us. This morning I waved him aside but he persisted in asking me where I was going, “San bay” I replied, he made an impersonation of an aeroplane – he had understood. 80,000 dong he said (£2.60) my response was automatic “No, 50” “70” he said. I stopped, looked at him with an incredulous expression and pointed to my enormous suitcase. No problem he said. I believed him, having recently seen two motorbikes one carrying six 20 litre barrels of beer and the other a three piece suite.

I slung my shoulder bag, put on my hat and climbed onto his bike. A bystander handed me the suitcase which was jammed between the two of us and off we went. It was fine, a cool breeze took off the heat and everything felt secure. However, when we had travelled a distance which should have cost 10 to 15,000 dong he stopped and motioned me to a minibus. Damn this communication business he was never going to take me to the airport! The bus doors were closing so I threw the bag in as a holding measure and with the minibus driver gunning the engine started to pay the beaming xe om driver. My expression clearly conveyed how I felt and he stopped me once I’d handed him 50,000, indicating I need not give him anymore. I glared at him one more time and jumped on the bus as it pulled away.

The bus fare was 30,000 dong, less than the xe om and for three times the distance! Still the overall cost was less than a taxi. I spent the rest of the journey, which was similar to the M1 at Watford Gap on a Friday afternoon, plotting my revenge.

So two hours after leaving the house I arrived at the airport. A very nice young lady from Singapore Airlines (I think they are cloned) explained that things were different here, whereas in Europe latest check-in is two hours before the flight in Hanoi check-in would not open until two hours before the flight. I sat in the airport doorway drinking water for an hour, along with all the other western passengers.

Check-in was painless, except for the debate about visas – you need a visa for the Maldives – no I don’t – yes you do – no I don’t. In the end it was agreed I could purchase one on arrival and my luggage was booked right through to Male. I now had virtually 2 hours in the departures lounge. I headed for security and just in time spotted the ‘traveller’s surcharge desk’ – departure tax by any other name. $14US to get out. I paid up and went through security where my house keys were taken from my bag and examined one by one, I have no idea why. Departures was largely empty, both of people and facilities. There are not that many international flights. It consisted of one completely empty, grossly overpriced restaurant and a series of duty free shops all selling exactly the same things. Less than half the retail units are let. I eyed up a single malt, not bad at half the UK price. I asked about taking alcohol into the Maldives, it is a Muslim state after all. A brief check brought the response that I could take 2 litres of spirits for my own use. I bought a bottle of Laphroig. I sat and read for the rest of the two hours before joining the short queue of economy class passengers watching the long line of business class passengers boarding. We left 15 minutes late for an almost 2 hour flight to Singapore where perversely the clocks were an hour ahead of Hanoi, despite the fact that we flew west. Then 2 hours wait in Changi Airport where I was amazed to find an O’Briens sandwich bar just like in Nottingham. Two gate changes to confuse me and onto the flight for Male. A four hour flight but we go back in time by three hours on the way so arrive an hour after we left if you get what I mean.

Singapore Airlines are very good, food and drink as good as any I’ve had on a plane and those amazing stewardesses. Is it the uniform of low cut tight bodice and long pencil skirt that makes them all look so attractive, or is there a bit of discrimination going on in the recruitment process? Surely all the women in Singapore can’t be that tall, that slim and have such long slender necks, emphasised by wearing their hair up? I lay back and drifted off for a while but was awoken by the young, large, Chinese tourist sitting beside me. He was snoring loudly and gradually sliding further and further onto me. His elbow was just balanced on the edge of his seat arm. I gently nudged it the last millimetre and he woke with a start an instance before his head would have crashed into my lap. He looked dazed, apologised and rolled over the other way – mission accomplished.

I woke up to the landing announcements, one in particular caught my attention – “you are reminded that it is illegal to take alcohol into the Maldives” Hmmm, does anyone actually know anything about the outside world in Vietnam? I decided to play it by ear and got through passport control after explained to the immigration officer that Vietnam was in Asia (?) the need for a visa having never come up. Then I realised I would have to come clean. Here they x-ray all your luggage as you leave the customs hall. As we waited for the carousel to start I wandered over to the nearest group of customs officers and explained my plight. They looked serious until I reached my conclusion – I had a bottle of alcohol I now knew I should not have brought. Then it was all broad smiles, not a problem I could just leave it with them. They would give me a receipt and I could collect it when I left. And that’s what I did.

Outside the airport its hot but not extreme, 29 degrees C, low humidity and an evening breeze – that feels good! I look along the line of tour reps, all waving their signs, for the man from AAA Travel, but there isn’t one. I walk out towards the road and a man walks up to me “Good evening Mr Couldwell, how was your flight?” How do they do that? He delivers me fifty metres to another man behind a Peanuts style psychiatrist’s booth, shakes my hand and disappears. The second man smiles and hands me a hotel registration card to fill out. He then walks me fifty metres to a boat and hands me over again.

There are five crew, an Inman – tomorrow’s Friday and the island has a mosque - and an Indian. I’m the last on board. The boat has 14 airline style seats. The captain walks over with a silver platter stacked with rolled chilled towels. He hands me one with silver tongs and as I wipe my face I can smell the strong odour of lavender. He returns with a bottle of mineral water which he opens with a flourish and hands to me and then returns again with the silver tray and tongues to take the towel away – they really are trying to emulate Singapore Airlines, but they won’t succeed unless they find a few slim amazons to hand out the water. His final visit is to brief me, the journey will take 45 minutes and the life jackets are on the overhead racks, then we’re off.

It’s a fast boat and we skim the flat sea at about 40mph with the nearly full moon reflecting off the surface. The lights of Male soon fade to be replaced by small clusters round the horizon – more tourist islands scattered across the Athol. They don’t mix tourism with the locals here. Only one of the 87 tourist resort islands has a bridge link to a local community. All the rest are separate. Another 11 tourist islands are planned to the same pattern. I slept for most of the journey and was met on the jetty at Eriyadu by a receptionist who walked me to the main building for a welcome cocktail before showing me to my room. I dumped my bags on the floor and just climbed into bed. My journey to paradise had lasted 16 hours.

Locusts are off

2006-08-20T14:30:00.000+07:00

The pagoda at West Lake, just after 7am. Giant water lilies in the foreground.

I went cycling this morning. This was an idea I got from Derek who tried it a month or so back. Rise early on a Sunday and enjoy the city before the bedlam starts. Getting up was easy – despite the recent rains I was hot and couldn’t sleep properly so by 6.15am I was getting into the saddle and heading through the back streets. The local market was just setting up – a motorbike loaded with enormous quantities of fruit and veg was being unloaded and blocked the whole of the road in the process. The fish seller had three metal bowls all full to overflowing with river fish.

Whilst the side streets were busy the main roads were virtually empty. Only the Pho sellers were in evidence setting up their urns of boiling beef broth and putting out the tiny stools for their customers. As I went slowly up Pho Hue I passed a woman on a bicycle. She had the seat so low her knees came up higher than her elbows and she was wearing high heels. The sight was familiar, and it came to me a couple of seconds later. She reminded me of Roger, a six foot something guy with learning disabilities who was an integral part of a small community I lived in the early 80’s. Roger liked to dress up as a woman, but he didn’t like shaving and he had a child’s bicycle, so he would be seen in a scarlet dress and high heels, hair and Moses beard flowing in the breeze, cycling along the high street with his handbag round his neck and knees around his ears.

When I arrived at Hoen Kim Lake the difference was noticeable – morning is the time of the older generation here. There were very few youngsters and therefore fewer motorbikes. People were jogging in the road or doing exercises reminiscent of 1940’s war time newsreels. Where, last night, there had been a stage and sound system for a live performance there were now three badminton courts and a dozen elderly residents were enthusiastically competing. As 7am passed the first buses started to go by and the level of horn noise started to increase. More young people were in evidence, a small group of young women were doing aerobics to a ghetto-blaster at the side of the road. Last night this whole area was one seething mass of late teenagers cruising the strip on their polished motorbikes and scooters.

Speaking of last night, we went out with a newly arrived volunteer for a welcome meal, eight of us in total. The restaurant of choice has an interesting section to its menu, which fortunately is in both Vietnamese and English. They do a range of fried, roast and grilled insects. Rather than everyone choose we let a couple of the party order for all of us and inevitably the insect Rubicon had to be crossed. A portion of locusts were duly ordered. Minutes later the waiter returned – locusts were off. Relief didn’t last long – they had silkworms, yum! In the event they were actually very yummy, tasting a bit like pasta in a delicious sauce. After the meal the last four standing, which for once include me, headed for a cocktail bar where a variety of drinks were tried and a couple from Finland drinking Tequila slammers engaged us in conversation.

Cycling out of the old quarter and up towards West Lake I couldn’t actually remember any of the conversation from the previous night, neither did I know where I was. I realised the road I was on was not going anywhere when the number of chickens grubbing around began to exceed the number of motorbikes, the road ran out and I turned round and tried another route. Eventually I stopped and got out the map. I was 50 metres from the lake I wanted to get to, but such is the maze of streets and buildings here I couldn’t see it. The lake was full of trash, dead rats and many fish which were popping up to catch mosquitoes, not a place to stop and sit. After a couple more navigation errors I arrived at the main lake with views of the pagoda, the swan boats and the floating restaurants.

Looking for the Lake View Hotel, reputedly the home of a yoga class, I wandered into the Lake View Apartments causing consternation amongst the security staff, who whilst they are pedantic about their duties, don’t actually like to challenge westerners. The relief on the man’s face when I explained why I was there, and no he had not heard of the hotel but I should leave now as this was not it. I complied.

I cycled back past Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, not open as it was still only just after 7.30am and through the wide boulevards that border the presidential palace and some of the bigger embassies (not the British embassy, which is on the 7th floor of a downtown office block). I made one more map stop and soon found myself back in familiar territory and familiar levels of traffic – Sunday is like any other day in Hanoi. Stopping briefly to pick up some baguettes for my bacon sandwich I got back to the house on the dot of 8am, just a few minutes before the heavens opened again and the day’s tropical downpour started.

A Mr Bean day?

2006-08-18T12:17:00.001+07:00

Yesterday was day of surreal experiences. It really is the rainy season here and for the last two days it has started raining in the early hours and gone on until mid morning. It’s so heavy it wakes you up and so it was yesterday morning. I lay in bed with the rain drowning out the sound of the aircon. Eventually I decided to get up and headed for the bathroom. The blast of hot air hit me as usual when I opened the bedroom door but there was something different as I stepped into the hall, my feet were wet.

A quick look around revealed my towel, hanging on the banister looking like a piece of saturated blotting paper and water on the stairs, landing and banisters. Looking down the stairwell I could see all the way down to the kitchen and a pool of water on the floor. Looking up I got wet. At the top of the stairwell there’s an aluminium and glass pyramid with a rotating cowling on top. This provides natural light onto the stairs and allows the hot air in the house to escape to the outside. The rain had proved too much for it – it was leaking like a sieve.

Worse to come, Derek’s room and the shrine room above that both have slightly sloping floors so the water had run into both rooms and then gone through the floor of the shrine room into the ceiling of Derek’s bedroom where it was dripping on the furniture. One level down the lounge was also flooded. My room and Mike’s room had escaped. I could hear Derek’s dulcet tones already on the phone to the landlady. I decided to stay out of it and go up to the roof room to do a bit of yoga. Half an hour later, our maid having phoned in sick (what did she know?), the landlady’s maid arrived and began to clear up and we all set off for our destinations of the day, in my case to my prospective new employer to try and draft a contract and job description.

Lunchtime I went for a walk and stopped at a Vietnamese café for a bowl of Pho (fur) – the local rice noodle soup. It was a good soup and I paid up and stood on the pavement outside enjoying the coolness after the rain. The pavements were already dry, but the gutters were still running fast with water. Something caught my eye and I looked down. A large fish was going past, working hard to keep moving in the shallow water, its back and dorsal fin clearly showing it wriggled past me and disappeared into the drain and presumably freedom – or a worse fate, I don’t know. I walked back to the office wishing someone else had seen it.

I presume it had escaped from a vendor. They sell live fish here and keep them in water in metal washing up bowls. You pick your fish, they get it out, kill it and wrap it. You have to do the rest. Occasionally in the markets a fish will make a break for freedom, leap out of the bowl and flip flop off down the road pursued by the vendor. Very few actually escape, but I think I witnessed one that did.

Later, as I walked home, a small girl of about four or five ran headlong into me. She was focused on playing with her brother and taking no notice of the calls of her parents to be careful of the Tay (westerner) walking past. Nothing unusual there except that she had pigtails made with elastic bands and her hair between the band and her scalp caught on one of my shirt buttons. Before I could release it she tried to run off yanking my shirt up and pulling her up short. There followed a truly Mr Bean episode whilst She tried to escape, I tried to get her to come back so she could escape and her mother danced round trying to get between us and release my shirt. Eventually we got her to stand still long enough for me to release her and she shot off down an alley without a backward glance, probably traumatised and leaving her embarrassed parents trying to apologise. I was still trying to come to terms with this when a teenage boy cycled out of another alley and rode straight over my feet without a backward glance.

Back at the house, all evidence of floods gone and the cowling repaired, no one was in the mood for cooking so we decided to go out to the Bia Hoi, where our food ordering skills were worse than usual. Two out of six dishes turned out to be what we expected, but at least they were edible. Last time I went there we ordered Ca Long. We knew Ca was fish and assumed this was some variety of fish we hadn’t come across before. It was only later in the evening with the aid of a dictionary that we found out that Long was Vietnamese for intestines!

After the Bia Hoi we walked back the long way to find a cash point and Mike invited us to have coffee at a little café he knows which we were passing. As I stepped towards the door I felt something spongy under my foot, like a tennis ball except that it seemed to be trying to move of its own volition. I looked down to see that I was standing on a very large toad which was not impressed. I hastily removed my foot and the toad swaggered off indignantly. I needed that coffee.

The Beach (7th to 10th July 2006)

2006-08-17T14:35:00.000+07:00

This is something I prepared a while back... but didn't dare publish! Picture is the beach at 6am.

There’s something about the Vietnamese and travel, which I think extends beyond the difficulties of communication across two very different languages. I wonder how a nation where no one seems to read maps or have any idea how long travel takes beat the Americans back in 1975?

The reward for a successful event at my old placement was to be a long weekend at the beach. I was advised we would depart on the 9pm train on Friday, a slow train without air-conditioning for a 9 hour journey to Cau Lo beach. When I was issued with my ticket I saw the departure time was actually 11pm. This made me wonder if we would actually have aircon as the train to Hoi An the previous month had also departed at 11pm and had aircon, despite assurances that it would not.

I was travelling with Richard, a short term (4 weeks) volunteer working in the same organisation. We arrived at the station and passed through the ticket checks, found our carriage and boarded. There was no aircon, well actually there was no electricity at all. The place was like a furnace. We dropped our bags on our bunks and retreated back to the platform. Vietnamese colleagues remonstrated with the railway staff. The eleven o’clock departure time loomed closer and still the carriage sat in darkness. With only minutes left and the guard waving his flag things finally burst into life, lights came on and air-conditioning compressors began to whirr. Within a few minutes condensation was crashing down like a waterfall under the train and as we boarded it already felt reassuringly cool. Yes we had aircon!

The train departed dead on time and after my Vietnamese colleagues had finished a game of musical beds trying different combinations of adults and children until everyone was happy we settled down and put the lights out. A rude awakening by the conductor to return our original tickets and take away our on-train tickets (don’t ask) revealed the journey was actually four and a half hours, not nine. We arrived in Vinh at 4.20am.

We stood in the dark outside the station whilst our leader negotiated with various bus drivers for the half hour journey to the beach. Eventually a guy was engaged and ran off into the darkness returning about ten minutes later with a large bus. We piled on board, adults, children, crates of beer and baggage. As the morning light came up we drove into the beach resort. First impressions were just as in the guide books, a strip of monolithic government run hotels. The bus crawled along the dual carriageway between the hotels and the beach until our hotel was located. It swung into the yard and we unloaded. Leader went into the hotel to announce our arrival. It was 5am. The hotel was not impressed. We could have our rooms at 1pm, after today’s departures had left. Until then we were allocated a small suite to keep our bags in and entertain ourselves. Eight hours in one large room with two double beds, two bathrooms and one TV for a group of 23! No problem. Those who were tired laid out like sardines on the beds and went to sleep, some played cards on the floor, some watched TV and a few of us headed for the beach to walk and watch the sun come up.

The beach was not as bad as I expected. Both Rough Guide and Lonely Planet said this was somewhere you would not want to visit, trash everywhere, nothing to do and plenty of vendors to make life miserable. In fact the local authority is trying to clean the beach up, bins have appeared and a mechanised trash sifter combs the sand along part of the beach before the sun comes up. It’s not that bad. The vendors are not persistent, you say no and they go away – you just have to say no very very often. The beachside cafes are a continuous strip and charge for everything from sitting on double size deckchairs made with bamboo slats to storing your belongings whilst you swim – the latter definitely necessary. Richard left a pair of old flip flops on the sand whilst he took a dip, they disappeared in seconds.

As I walked along the beach and the sun came up I looked up and saw a black cloud swirling above, a closer look revealed it was a swarm of dragon flies. They were present for the whole four days – we were almost breathing them except in the water. Some invisible wall seemed to keep them over the land, never over the sea.

We got our rooms as promised and when Richard and I arrived at our door the maid was just finishing clearing up from the previous inhabitants, she was sweeping a mountain of peanut shells, empty crisp bags, cigarette ends, empty cans and bottles towards the door. It appears Vietnamese behave in hotel rooms as they do in restaurants and bars – any unwanted debris just gets dropped on the floor. The maid had an easy life for the duration of our stay.

As we had had an early start, lunch was planned for 10.30am - another new experience. It took me a while to understand I was also experiencing an extreme version of “bring your own”. We were directed to the restaurant on the beach where lunch would take place. We sat down and immediately food started to appear, my Vietnamese colleagues looked it over, nodded approvingly and we started to eat. I asked who had ordered. No one. Well, was this a set menu? No, its our menu. Please explain? It turned out whilst I had been walking the beach the women had gone down to the market and bought food which they then took to the restaurant and negotiated a price for cooking and service. This was the pattern for the whole weekend, not only was all the drink brought from Hanoi, the day’s food was bought by the team each morning and only cooking was subcontracted. Its cheaper that way and the quality was assured. The lightbulb came on – that was why vendors kept approaching me with raw prawns and squid, if I bought some the place where I was sitting would cook it for me.

Speaking of the vendors, there’s a whole supply chain going on here. Boats similar to large coracles go out throughout the day and night and catch squid and prawn. They bring their catch back to the beach where women wait to buy it. Some buy to eat, some to sell to restaurants or restaurant customers and some buy to sell on to other vendors who are not around when the coracles come in – you see small groups squatting round metal bowls on the pavement deeply engrossed in discussions about quality and price.

Prawns and squid featured in expanding my gastronomic comfort zone on this trip. The first evening I picked up a juicy, very large grilled prawn, pulled off the head, peeled the body and started to eat it. A colleague frowned at me from across the table. She pointed at the discarded head. “It’s good” she said and taking one herself spilt the head open and sucked out the inside. She looked at me, waiting. I took a deep breath and picked up my prawn head. Fortunately my sucking was not terribly proficient so I only got a small taste of prawn brains, not enough to tell if it actually tasted of anything, but enough to make her smile and return to eating her dinner.

Next the squid. I’ve eaten some really tasty and tender squid in Vietnam, but it had all come from large creatures with plenty of flesh. The squid here were small, maybe three inches long, and complete. To be eaten in two mouthfuls. One was dumped in my bowl by a smiling colleague. It looked up at me pitifully. I picked it up with the chopsticks and bit it in half. This was the point when I remembered squid have a sort of bone in the mantle which supports their water pumping muscles. They also have a beak in the middle of the tentacles. I felt the beak go down but managed to catch the bone and delicately deposit it on the side of the plate. These squid were ok, but not as great as those of Hoi An. I didn’t eat many but I did remember to remove the bones after the first.

It was definitely a seafood holiday, fish, crabs, squid, prawns and occasionally pork for every meal, not forgetting the rice and garlic stir fried morning glory of course – staples of virtually every meal in Vietnam.

My boss’s teenage daughter was on the trip. With a friend she asked if they could have an English conversation with me. We sat and talked. I asked a few simple closed questions which were despatched with ease and then more complex open questions which appeared to be easily understood and equally easily answered. Within five minutes we were discussing the difference between Finance and Accounting – she wants to run her own business. After about half an hour she turned to me and said “now I want to ask you a question – what is your life history?” I think the next generation of Vietnamese will be well placed to deal with the western world.

The only entertainment in Cau Lo appeared to be swimming in the sea, (something everyone did between 6am and 10am each morning and between 4pm and when it went dark each afternoon) or hiring a tandem. Yes, bicycles made for two in a country where its possible to see three people on a bicycle made for one. Tandems did not seem to be fully understood though. It was quite common to see Dad on the front, peddling with a small child who could not reach the peddles on the seat behind him whilst Mum sat side-saddle on the luggage rack. On one occasion I saw a mother sitting on the luggage rack peddling whilst her son also sat on the luggage rack in front of her with his feet on the cross bar. In the water you could hire an assortment of rubber rings, tractor inner tubes, inflatable sharks or even real boats. The water was policed by two speed boats which chased people swimming too far out (like me) and turned back those who were desperately trying to recover their hired inner tube as it disappeared towards Australia on the current.

There was of course the much talked of swimming competition. One of the guys starts each day with 100 press ups and he and a couple of the others were keen to show what they could do. For some reason Richard was to be excused this test, even though most of them are in their 20s and Richard is only a few years older than me. This event had been talked of for at least two weeks and now it had arrived.

One guy demonstrated his butterfly (which was good) and another his crawl (not so good) They all looked at me. I did my breast stroke and a few strokes of crawl. Nods of approval. Now for a race. Richard joined in and suggested swimming to a boat about 20 metres away. Much shaking of heads – too far(!). Then the penny dropped, just like the pool in Ha Noi, hardly anyone actually swims full lengths, they do a few strokes and take a rest. Even though three of them were way faster than me at breast stroke, I only had to set a challenge of doing 50 metres and I was bound to win – I’d be the only one to finish! As the weekend progressed I realised that over half the group could not swim at all and actually the best swimmer was one of the girls. She is universally modest, speaking good English without acknowledgment from her colleagues and swam faster and further than most of the boys, again without anyone commenting. Anyway UK honour was retained and Richard and I were acknowledged as number 1 and number 2 swimmers, but they were too polite to tell us in which order we had been ranked.

Each day I swam until I felt like a prune, or could no longer endure the small and invisible stinging creatures which made us all jump every few minutes, then it was back to the beach where hoards of photographers waited. It was very much the done thing to have your photo taken standing in the surf.

Maybe I looked like a soft touch, or maybe I looked like I needed help but everytime I got out of the water a mob of boys aged between 8 and 12 would descend on me and try to force me to part with money for a massage. I don’t know who trains them, and having seen a couple at work I had no intention of accepting their offers but I could NOT get away from them. After the second night I asked Richard what his secret was, how come they left him alone but pestered me relentlessly. Oh, he replied, its easy – everytime one of them approaches me I point to you and say “he needs a massage”.

Richard never stopped during the break. He was restless and relentless and would disappear regularly, usually just before we were required to attend lunch or dinner. His return was always accompanied by some new discovery, be it a new fruit or some sweet snack – which he has a weakness for – discovered on some small beachside stall. He lost his reading glasses and managed to purchase replacements from a guy wandering the beach with a board covered in sunglasses and he would disappoint the beach vendors regularly by picking through all their wares before indicating that he didn’t actually want anything. The only other non Vietnamese on the trip was the husband of one of the female staff. He’s a dry, slow speaking Swedish American who has worked here for many years. Nothing perturbs him. He told me a lot about life in Vietnam and south east asia. Whilst he returns to the US every year and is well into his 60s, he is not showing any signs of wanting to retire, nor return to the states on a permanent basis. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to that stage.

Americans and Europeans are rare here, I saw maybe three others in the four days. I suspect everyone is put off by the guide books, but it is not really that bad and the hotels are reasonable both in price and condition. What the place needs is a few more attractions. I headed off the strip and down into the town behind the beach. It was largely a ghost town. Large boulevards with unfinished houses and beautiful pavier sidewalks - with foot high weeds growing between the gaps. I wanted an internet café, I’d almost given up when suddenly – there were FOUR all side by side. I walked into the first and was directed to possibly the oldest computer in the world. All the letters had worn off the keys, the screen had the image of a dialogue box burned into the middle and I was surrounded by 8 year olds again – all playing on-line games. It was painfully slow, but I managed to read a few emails and then set about typing a few replies. At this point the café fell silent and I had an uneasy feeling that I was being watched. I looked round, I was surrounded by children who had a few minutes ago been engrossed in games. They all knew how to use a mouse and arrow keys, but it was a novelty for them to see (or rather, hear) someone type at speed on a keyboard.

I stuck it as long as I could then, since the audience was showing no sign of waning interest and I could feel the breath on the back of my neck, I paid my five pence fee and headed out to a street vendor squeezing sugar cane into a frothy but not too sweet iced drink. Ten pence bought me a glass and I sat and watched the world go by – very slowly.

They have plans for this place. The hotel front desk manager was proudly showing us. The strategy is to become the major centre for holidaymakers from Ha Noi. The hotel strip is going to more than double in size, roads are already built and new hotels have started to go up. He smiled “soon we will be able to take everyone from Ha Noi!” That’s a scary thought.

By the last day I had had my fill, beach holidays don’t do it for me at the best of times but a place where you can swim or swim is even more limiting. We were going back on the night train again. Unlike when we arrived the hotel allowed us to keep our rooms until we left on our day of departure. We had our final fish, squid and prawn lunch, though I did see a group of my colleagues eating yet more crabs in the late afternoon after the final swim. At 9pm we piled on the bus back to Vinh to sit outside the station for an hour and a half as the train was late. No messing this time, once on board everyone just hit their bunks and next thing I knew we were pulling into Ha Noi at 5.15am, well in time for me to get to my 8am meeting. I walked back through Lenin Park, not like a park would be in the UK at 5.30am. Here everyone gets out to do exercise before the day heats up, so it was a little like being on the London underground in rush hour. All sorts of activities from aerobics to Tai Chi by people of all ages. Home by 6am I showered, changed, breakfasted and headed off to find a Xe Om to get me to my meeting. Long weekend that.

The German House Part 2

2006-07-31T23:12:00.000+07:00

We’ve been in the house for over a month now and things are settling down. Derek is very much in charge of the kitchen, loves cooking and is gradually building our capability with the addition of sauces, herbs and spices and the odd frying pan – we now have three, all different sizes.

For my part I’ve found Lea and Perrins sauce and Marmite in a local store aptly named Western Canned Foods. I’ve also cooked all the recipes I can remember without a book, so Delia on line will be getting a few visits soon.

The maid is gradually getting the hang of having three men around instead of one, though Mike’s bedroom and bathroom still seem to get better service than Derek’s or mine. She buys for us but that is a bit hit and miss. Last time I gave her a list she substituted cauliflower with green beans and a bell pepper with a birds eye chilli, still we managed to make something edible out of it.

There were a number of problems when we arrived and I’m pleased to be able to report most of them have been fixed. One of the last was Derek’s bathroom door which had swollen and would not close – this was resolved when we saw a carpenter going next door and the maid dragged him in and set him to work here instead. We’ve even been given cable tv which was a bonus and finally got our broadband connection when the landlady understood we were not expecting her to pay for it.

One disappointment though is my bathroom – no hot water. They could fix Derek’s by adjusting the thermostat on the water heater, but when they built the house they didn’t install hot water in the top bathroom. Which explains why I don’t get any. All taps are connected to the cold water supply.

We share the house with, in decreasing order of size, Geckos, cockroaches, mosquitoes and Ants. The latter appear in their hundreds if the smallest morsel of food is left on the kitchen side. We don’t know where they come from or go to but when they are around they are in force. We’ve given up any attempts at control. We eat them as a garnish and wipe them up like spilt tea on the tiled work surfaces. Our food scraps go in a small bin in the corner and this is ant central, though again it’s impossible to see where they are coming from. They get into any plastic bags of food, so most stuff stays in the fridge and bagged goods are decanted into plastic containers – another growth industry for us.

Geckos, small lizards which proclaim their territory by laughing like something out of the film Gremlins, are to be encouraged – despite their tendency to get territorial in the early hours of the morning. They eat all insects including mosquitoes. I share my room with at least three and we had one in the sink for nearly a whole day, it was sitting very still assuming that if it didn’t move then we couldn’t see it. He was one of the biggest – about 2 inches long.

We decided to adopt a policy of mutual disregard with the cockroaches. We don’t bother them and they don’t bother us. The mosquitoes are another matter. There is an ornamental water feature in the yard which fills up in the rain and quickly becomes a breeding ground. Then they come into the kitchen at sunset and feast. I picked up 20 bites last week so open warfare has been declared. The water feature is drained on a regular basis, coils burn in the kitchen and jumbo size insect sprays have been purchased. The mosquitoes still seem to be winning though.
I didn’t mention the jumping spiders either. They look like miniscule tarantulas and when you get too close they jump covering enormous distances for their size.

We haven’t had a housewarming yet, but plan to do so in August, but everyone who has been here is well impressed with the place, the space the facilities and the location. I’m just hoping I do get another placement sorted out, Derek and Mike can’t afford a place like this without my contribution!

A photo test!

2006-07-27T17:44:00.000+07:00

This is the Hanoi Opera House, complete with obligatory motorbikes. The Vietnamese language employs a lot of composite words, so the literal translation of the Vietnamese for this building is "House big sing" Its spectacular and just out of shot to the right is the Hilton Hanoi, built in a matching style. Not that I've ever been in on a volunteers salary.

Well, at long last I've worked out how to put a photo in the text. Still not worked out how to do all the other things yet.

I was going to add a link to my Justgiving site, but that expired at the beginning of this week so not much point in that now. Looks like normal service will be resumed when we get the home internet sorted - that's about one weekend away, we hope.

The Bia Hoi - from 16th July

2006-07-25T16:54:00.000+07:00

Bia Hoi are found all over Hanoi, we’ve been to a few big ones which can easily seat over 100 customers and have extensive menus and the smallest I’ve seen comprised three guys squatting on the pavement around a small plastic stool with a tray of four glasses, a cloth, a bag of nuts and a single ten litre keg of this freshly brewed, light and refreshing drink, which translates as fresh beer.

Sunday evening I’d cooked tea, Mike was not due back for a while and Derek said “I fancy a beer”. I concurred so we strolled out into the street and wandered down to a small establishment we pass most days, maybe the local equivalent of the Rovers Return.

This place is a room about 3 metres square which opens onto the street. Last Thursday evening, as I cycled past in the storm, flood water was lapping on the top step and the bow wave from passing motor bikes was sending small tsunamis running the length of the room. Tonight it was dry and there were just three locals and the owner sitting at one of the three tables. Just inside the doorway there’s a large, shiny, insulated steel cabinet which houses the small wooden kegs of beer and the large blocks of ice which keep them cool. The current keg is attached to a single tap which protrudes from the side of the cabinet just above ground level. A plastic slops bowl sits below the tap beside a bowl of water where the barman rinses used glasses before returning them to the plastic storage tray on top of the cabinet.

We walked in, were looked up and down and given two glasses of frothy beer by the now smiling landlord. As we picked up our glasses he produced his own and clinked glasses with us to a chorus of what sounds like “chocks away” but is actually Vietnamese for cheers. The three guys joined in the toast. We sat and watched the brisk takeaway business as people arrived with an assortment of containers which were carefully filled. If it was a litre bottle filling was straight from the tap, if the volume of the container was unknown then an empty glass was borrowed from one of the barflies and the golden nectar measured out in glass fulls. The barfly would then get his glass back refilled. The departing plastic bottles did remind me of industrial size urine samples!

As we settled into our second glass we were asked where we were from (no, we’re not Germans) and Derek successfully purchased a single cigarette for a few pence. We were now thoroughly integrated and Derek was admiring banana leaf wrapped pork sausages whilst saying he didn’t eat meat. For such a small operation the selection of bar snacks was impressive. The usual foul tasting monkey nuts were supplemented by the sausages and what turned out to be dried fish hanging like pork scratchings in a bag on the wall. We watched as the owner skilfully laid pieces of what looked like Bombay duck which had been under a steam roller into a small grilling frame before… dropping it on the floor. He picked it up, dusted it down, put it back in the frame and burned it black over paraffin ignited in a rice bowl. We decided to try some, much to his surprise and approval. The fish duly arrived hot and hard with some chilli sauce just as Mike strode in. The pub was now crowded, all three tables had three or four patrons and an additional table had been set up outside. Odd words of English were being produced by our Vietnamese drinking friends along with loud demonstrations of how to pronounce Vietnamese words correctly. The pub pipe was out and various customers were taking it in turns to fill it with tobacco and smoke. Actually, looking at the colour of the smoke they could have been filling it with twigs and dried leaves or even shreds of rubber tyre.

We finished pulling our teeth out on the leather like fish, had a couple more beers – ten between the three of us and then headed home. As we left the landlord shook hands with each of us, like we had been friends for years. Our extravagant evening had cost just over £1.50.

As I walked home past the Bia Hoi the next night I was greeted by a chorus of cheers, smiling faces and waving arms. I waved back and declined the invitation to join the throng, but I suspect we will go back there again.

The Taxi - Sat 22nd July

2006-07-24T15:40:00.000+07:00

Saturday night we went to a party at the other VSO house at West Lake. We took a taxi there, a guy who actually knew where he was going for a change and it cost 70,000VND, just over £2.

It was a good evening, we ate at the local Bia Hoi and had a few drinks then back to the house where we had chance to catch up with a few volunteers who we had not seen since the conference in June. I had to tell my story several times as a few people were not up to date with my unemployed status.

As the evening wore on, Mike decided to stay over, Derek had already gone home so Richard Alice and I decided to get a taxi back. We walked out onto the main road and after a few minutes flagged one down.

The guy looked at us and after a few attempts he understood where we wanted to go. He didn’t attempt to negotiate a price but just leaned over and switched on the meter which kicked off at an unusually low 7,000VND starting price – it’s usually 9,000VND in a small taxi and 11,000VND in a large taxi.

He took off using his horn extremely enthusiastically, even when there was no traffic he was beeping away furiously. We sat and chatted about the evening, life, the universe and everything, and I noted the meter seemed to be jacking up the Dong a lot faster than usual. At first I assumed it was a late night tariff thing – it was close to midnight. Then Richard spotted we were going a very convoluted route. Even Alice started to say that the fare was way too expensive. I pointed at the meter and shook my head. The driver glared back and hooted his horn even louder. At one point the meter jumped from 350,000VND to 420,000VND. By now I was not sure whether to laugh and Richard’s stream of derision from the back seat had become continuous.

Soon after we reached our drop off point and the driver pulled over. He looked at me and at the meter which now showed the enormous sum of 478,000VND just over £16 and eight times the cost of getting to the party. I waved my hand dismissively at the meter and asked in my best Vietnamese what the fare was. He looked at the meter, then at me and held up two fingers, he wanted 200,000VND – only three times the cost. I didn’t have chance to answer, there were howls of protest from the back seat as both Alice and Richard screamed in unison “too much”.

By now the guy was looking flustered but continuing to hold up two fingers (was he expressing an opinion I wondered) I took out a 100,000VND note and gave it to him. He said something and held out his hand again. I shook my head and said no, Alice was already out of the car and I followed, we had a fight to get Richard’s door open then all three of us were on the pavement and the taxi shot off – horn noticeably silent. Richard looked after him and said “I bet the bugger had the meter hooked into the horn!” I can’t help but think that he was right.

The German House

2006-07-06T13:28:00.000+07:00

Last Sunday was a red letter day for Mike, Derek and I. We moved out of hotels and into our house - home for the next seventy weeks. We called it the German house as the previous tenant, who we met once, was a german lecturer at one of the universities here in Hanoi.

What we didn't realise at the time was that he owned most of the furniture, so it was a pretty empty house we moved into. Three of us and only two beds - Derek is sleeping on a bed settee, his choice as it means he gets aircon and a ceiling fan.

The house has five floors, a small yard and three balconies two of which are covered and have garden furniture. The ground floor has a small lounge, dining kitchen downstairs loo and store room. The first floor has a large and empty lounge, a double bedroom and a bathroom. The second floor has two bedrooms, a small balcony and a bathroom. The third floor has a bathroom with washing machine, a large balcony with plants and what we hope will become our spare bedroom. Currently it is locked and contains a family altar and shrine. The fourth and top floor has a large bedroom which is too hot to use as such and an open balcony terrace with views over the area.

The house also comes with a maid - Thai. She does not speak much english and has looked after the house for four years. I should have realised my expectations were not going to be met when we asked her what budget she needed for cleaning materials. Through an interpreter she replied she did not need any budget for cleaning materials as she had her own duster. She preferred this as it was quicker. Hmmmm.

As the German was on his own only the first two floors had been used for the last four years. No way is a duster going to make any impact in my bathroom. Anyway if she tries to clean the floor in there she will have to use a wet cloth since the toilet is leaking all over the place.

Mike has the bedroom previously used by the German. This has the added advantage of being built into Thai's daily routine, so he regularly gets his wardrobe rearranged whilst Derek and I have to arrange our own. Its also a bit of a lottery as to who gets whose laundry.

My bedroom is ok, the flourescent light has a habit of self igniting in lightening storms which is a bit disconcerting at 3am and I thought I had lace curtains on the windows, but they were just four year old cobwebs. I don't think it will be long before Thai and I are discussing the definition of cleaning!

Mind you, I can see that some of it is not her fault, what I thought was dirt in my bath turned out to be where someone once mixed concrete.

Meal times are fun, we are gradually gathering a collection of cooking implements, got rid of the mouse droppings out of the cupboards and drawers, fixed the cupboard doors back, found the switch for the extract fan, accepted that we are going to be eaten by mosquitos while ever the door is open and got used to not leaning on the table as the top falls off if we do.

All our efforts to make the hot water work above the first floor have failed and the legs have dropped off a settee we found in the store cupboard and moved to the lounge. Appart from that it is fine.

Shop eat shop eat etc

2006-07-01T12:34:00.000+07:00

I've tried a few interesting foods since we got here, egret did not do it for me and much of the duck and chicken they serve around here is inedible, certainly my teeth are not strong enough to tear it apart. Fish and prawns on the other hand are delicious and big and very cheap. We went to another pub a couple of nights ago, again they spoke German rather than English as a second language but we managed to order a hot pot, or fondue as they call it in some places, or boiled broth in yet other establishments.

Our meal comprised two enormous black fish with vegetables, noodles, fried tofu, boiled tofu and two types of spring rolls. The whole lot cost ten pounds including eight beers and the peanuts and it was delicious.

I have inadvertantly eaten more frogs, or was it dogs - the average vietnamese pronounces English words as bad as I do the vietnamese words and I still have not been courageous enough to try the fried scorpions or roast stink bugs, or brittle pigs stomach, or fish intestines, or chickens testicles (is that a small meal or one involving many cockrels?)

Anyway the food adventures are now interspersed with shopping adventures as we prepare to move into our house.

Today it rained like never before, just as in the UK a whole raft of shops suddenly displayed umbrellas and ponchos. Ponchos here are designed for motorbikes, so they have a transparent panel in the stomach area so you can see the dials and many have two hoods, one behind the other so the passenger can share the protection. I have not seen any with five head holes, so I don't know what families do. Anyway one of these shops had an umbrella that looked like it might work. I wandered up and looked interested. The device was unpacked and demonstrated, all its fine qualities were displayed and finally the price, 120,000 dong. I looked shocked. Four pounds for an umbrella, I could get it for that in England. The haggling began - I'm still useless at this process. The whole transaction took fifteen minutes and I am now the proud owner of an umbrella which cost 100,000 dong - I saved about 66 pence. At the same time I still know I paid over the odds.

The next stop was a market for sheets for the beds in our new home, pity we don't know the sizes of the beds. In the event it made no difference. The market just sells material so you have to make your own up and the maximum width of material will only do a single bed, so all sheets are joined somewhere in the middle. Hmmm lets try the supermarket. They had pillows and pillow cases and towels but no bedding. Time for a coffee. We reflected on the events of the day. It looks like we might need to plan a lot more time for shopping for the house. Still that can wait until after the next meal. Life is really hard here, eat drink shop sleep and the odd bit of work. Must tell you about that next time. Chao.

After the Ball

2006-06-28T21:06:00.000+07:00

I have to apologise, Blogspot is censored in Vietnam so I can't actually read what I write, so I can't remember what I've written so you may get some repetition.

Saturday night was a triumph for my new employer

They organised a concert involving all the edutainment groups from their projects up and down Vietnam. They hired a 600 seat auditorium and sent invitations out - 5 days before the event. And the hall was full, the TV network turned up and everyone had a great evening.

Over 70 people took part on the stage. The quality was excellant and I did such a good job of standing in the doorway smiling that the whole team is going away 300km to a beach resort next weekend, for the whole weekend, to celebrate success. Craig Farina - take note.

For my part it was my first contact with people who actually have HIV and AIDS. Whilst a few of them were clearly unwell and fragile the majority were lively, determined to get the best out of life and very talented. I had a great evening, after which we again tried to perfect the art of 7 people in Daiwoo Matiz taxi.

The first week at work has been good, everyone is extremely friendly, they all want to improve their english skills and more marriage options are emerging every day. I now know my boss has a masters in business finance and economics (what am I doing here?) and that she is as astute as any senior manager I ever worked with at Boots. My honeymoon lasted until last Thursday when she asked for a meeting, handed me a project file and told me that I was presenting the following Monday to a group of about 50 people representing 15 organisations including DFID, UNAIDS and the US Government. My final challenge was to present 8 minutes content in 5 minutes (only a native english speaker could achieve that).

So the next 48 hours was spent learning about the project, how it was set up and what it did.

To take my mind off the coming presentation I headed out to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum on Sunday with Mike and Derek. I then got thrown out when the guards discovered the security check point had not confiscated my camera! Separated from friends and my mobile phone I walked back across town accompanied by Hong, a local with pretty good english who was determined to get me on his motorbike. He failed.

I could tell you lots of things, but I'm distracted by the fact that a guy keeps trying to get into my hotel room - he is knocking on the door now. Last time I opened the door he came in, closed the door and sat on the bed! I have no idea what he wants, and I hate to think what it might be. Now he is outside stripped to the waste. He speaks no english and I not enough Vietnamese to understand what he wants, other than to sit on my bed. So I think I'll leave him outside and do some more language practice. More soon!

The pool

2006-06-23T23:42:00.000+07:00

The pool was a different experience today. The changing rooms were full of mosquitos and there were slightly fewer people, though the visibility underwater was no better than last time. The difference is that I have been noticed

There are two guys in their 60's who are serious swimmers. They have speedo type trunks, rubber caps and goggles. I noticed them watching me the first time I went swimming. Today they were about three lanes away from me when I got in the water and by the time I had done ten lengths they were in the same lane, watching.

When I reached their end of the pool one graciously swept aside and indicated with his hand that I should pass between them. I did so, turned and swam off. I could hear vaguely amused comments behind me. Next time I got to their end one of the them swam out to meet me and then walked backwards in front of me waving his arms and making encouraging noises to make me go faster (they both swim faster than me), he then applauded. After this I switched to front crawl, which no one here can do to an even mediocre standard. As I swam away the noises now sounded distinctly approving and as I swam through a group of lounging teenagers at the other end of the pool I received a "vewey gooood" and lots of smiles.

I can't wait to see what happens next time I go, that is if there is a next time. Today I swallowed a mouthful of the opaque liquid which inhabits the pool. My excuse is that I was in collision with someone who was swimming back and forth ACROSS the lanes.

I finished today attending one of the last rehearsals before Work's concert tomorrow night. There are 70 participants, all HIV positive many with real talent and all with masses of enthusiasm and energy everyone was having a great time. I finished up helping with timing and continuity, apparently the concert has to run to time and finish before the football starts or the audience are likely to walk out!

With the final dress rehearsal in the morning and the concert tomorrow night it looks like the review of my presentation on Monday will actually happen on Sunday, still offices here are all open 24x7 since it is cheaper to employ a guard than buy good locks or an alarm. Time for a beer.

Life in the fast lane

2006-06-23T22:56:00.001+07:00

No this is not more about my internet connection, its more about swimming.

X is the careers officer at work which means he organises vocational training for people with HIV and AIDS who are in one of the centre's projects. He is also a bit of a match maker. The first time I sat next to him at lunch he asked me how old I was, if I was married and when the word divorced was mentioned his eyes lit up and he looked me up and down carefully then tweaked my bicep and started asking questions about why I looked so unfit. He then asked if I would like to meet his wife's sister and if I liked vietnamese girls, to which I diplomatically replied that, in the circumstances, I thought there was no right answer to that question. If I said yes I would be destined for the vietnamese equivalent of blind date and if I said no he, and the rest of the (predominantly female) team would be insulted.

He nodded with a distant look in his eyes and then showed me the correct way to hold my rice bowl.

The next time we sat together he asked if I liked sport and proceeded to tell me all the things he did. I told him I'd been swimming the previous morning at the pool near the hotel. He said he liked swimming and where was the pool. With the aid of a map and an older colleague, who speaks better English we worked out which pool it was. He immediately said he would meet me there the following morning at 6am for a swim. I accepted the challenge, feeling I was still being tested out for some greater purpose. All afternoon whenever he passed my desk he reminded me of the date.

I arrived at the pool dead on 6am, it was as frantic as on the previous occasion. I waited by the entrance until five past then went in, changed and swam my 1500 metres. I left at 7, still no sign of him. Later at work he explained he had got to the pool, there were very few people and hardly any water in the pool, I was not there so he went home. I don't know what to believe, but I do have mounting evidence that vietnamese cannot read maps or navigate their own city. Just take a taxi and show the driver a map, he will study it with a stern expression, nod sagely say a few Ahhs and then set of with confidence which lasts about half a mile, then he stops and asks for directions.

Anyway we have made a date for next week and he is coming to my hotel to pick me up.

Life in the sauna

2006-06-22T21:18:00.000+07:00

Firstly - THANK YOU to everyone who has sent me an email since I started the blog. I have not replied because life has become more complicated since we got back from Hoi An.

At 5.30am in the morning we booked into our new hotel and by lunchtime I was realising we were no longer in a tourist zone. Since we moved here no one has tried to sell me anything. The opium dens which pass for internet cafes are slow, smokey and full of kids playing computer games and loud music. Censorship is also evident in that I can't access things like hotmail or my blog.

The hotel provides internet in the room. Its taken me a week to get it set up and the technically minded will appreciate my problem when I say it connects at 37kb ps. For the non-technical that is SLOW!

So I have not replied to any emails of late, though I have been reading them between time outs.

I started work this week. Work is a really friendly place and operates like a small business. Hence costs are an issue, so there is limited internet access at work and the economy drive extends to not using the aircon unless it is really hot. Tim (my yoga teacher) always says "sweat is good" I hope he is right 'cause I'm producing lots.

I had a sureal Boots moment when the subject of clean desk policies came up at the weekly team meeting and much debate took place about the time lost clearing up each day.

My honeymoon lasted three days where I just read papers and talked to people, partly because that is what I was supposed to do and partly because Work have organised a major concert this weekend - 600 in the audience but in true vietnamese fashion the invitations only went out on Monday! Everyone is running round like headless chickens and working late. No one wanted to talk to me. Even the finance manager was deep in month end reports (its only the 19th! even Fran didn't get that caught up)

However that all ended this morning, the director and my boss asked for a meeting and then explained that work was part of a group with a project funded by the US Government. There was a meeting on Monday next (two working days away) of the 22 organisations involved in the programme and a presentation was required on the progress of work's part of the programme. She could not go, the presentation had to be in English, no one on the staff was good enough to deliver it in 5 minutes - guess what is coming - so could I do it. Here are the project files, a colleague will support me to prepare the flashy powerpoint stuff and I'm presenting about 11am on Monday. Hmmmm. We then discussed the English expression "in at the deep end"

In the afternoon, my mind swimming with project documents, we went out to meet people who actually have HIV and AIDS. These are all performers at the concert on Saturday, drawn from performance arts groups set up as part of work's projects. They were great and soon opened up to tell me (through an interpreter) exactly what they thought of anything and everything. I got a few quotes for the presentation and then it was back to the office to work with one of the translators until 6.30pm. So we have tomorrow to do the presentation and then do it on Monday. Should be fun.

I'm going to close now as the internet will time out any minute. It may be weeks before I get the blog working properly so please bear with me. Oh - about prestidigitation. Its a French word for conjuring. The relevance being that Saturdays concert will include a guy who will conjure with condoms. My life is so full these days.....

Return from Hoi An

2006-06-18T16:17:00.000+07:00

Its Sunday and I've been to bed twice already. The train journey to and from DaNang was not as bad as expected. The carriages were air conditioned and the "hard sleeper" beds were surprisingly comfortable for what was effectively a wooden door laid flat with an inch of foam matress on top. Breakfast was provided in the form of a Vietnamese pot noodle which tasted much like an English pot noodle and a lunch or evening meal was also provided looking very much like airline food served with chopsticks.

We were an hour late leaving DaNang and so arrived in Hanoi about 5.30am. I'd had about five hours sleep on the train and took to my bed in our new hotel for another three hours as soon as we checked in. A cockrel somewhere in the neighbourhood tried to deny me this last sleep, but my body overruled him and I was out like a light.

Hoi An was very much a holiday resort. The hotel VSO had secured with some kind of discount deal had everything, pool, gym, bars and an enormous breakfast buffet. We ate well and drank well and did a bit of work in between. The biggest thing I got out of the four days was to meet nearly all the other volunteers working in Vietnam and learn what they are doing and what they think of the country.

Its a relatively small number who have actually achieved any competence in the language, so I feel better about that. Most work through interpreters, all have some tales of frustration to tell including the odd occasion where the bag has been packed to go home before normal sanity has returned and tempers cooled. I have much to look forward to!

Measurement and evaluation is a hot topic with VSO at present. I have a feeling of Deja Vu - all those months of projects at Boots trying to work out the ideal measures to fit everything without the process taking over the world. It looks like we are about to do it again. I'm still trying to understand where it is lead from. I suspect donors wanting information to reassure them their money has been well spent are the core cause of this interest, but there is some truth in the need to understand how things are going. I hope I can find something which works and does not take too much effort.

Nerves are a little in evidence. Tomorrow is my first day at work and where I find out what the reality is. I'm still looking forward to it, but there is a little anticipation creeping in. Undoubtably I will return to this. But today I leave you with the question - what is prestidigitation?

The last train journey?

2006-06-13T12:18:00.000+07:00

Today will be something of a milestone. At 11pm tonight we get on the overnight "hard" sleeper to DaNang on our way to the annual VSO country conference. It seemed a good idea at the time, especially as flying involved paying the difference between the two fares, but as the time draws closer I do wonder..... Part of my trepidation is the fact that my ticket says I am in coach 4 berth 29 level 3. Ah, said Chung - you are close to the roof, cool with the skylight open. Another part of my discomfort is that this is the "hard" sleeper - their term not mine - hardly the best of marketing. And finally it has sunk in that this journey is 15 hours!

There is good news too though, when we get back we move to a new hotel which is near where I'll be working and supposedly has internet in the rooms, that will be a big advantage. AND we have just heard that we have secured a fantastic house in the centre of Hanoi which will be available the first week in July. It has four bedrooms, several storage areas, lounge, kitchen diner and two balcony gardens on the third and fourth floors. It is big and at the end of a cul de sac. I have my fingers crossed as I am still struggling to believe we have managed to get it. The asking price was above our budget, but we obviously have honest faces as the landlord has accepted our offer after an hour of face to face haggling.

Finally we spent the whole of yesterday in a workshop with our new employers discussing our roles and targets for the first six months. As expected the brief we got in the UK was not entirely accurate. In my case "Public relations" work turns out to be build a website - something I know nothing about. Still I've got until December to work it out.

I'm looking forward to starting, but it will not be without its challenges. The whole organisation works open plan, which is the way I like it, and the main communication medium is a full team all morning meeting each Monday - in Vietnamese! Hmmm.

I have another volunteer working with me for the first month. He is from England and has worked in development for over 30 years - a fanastic information source for me. He is also the first BESO/VSO volunteer in Vietnam. BESO being the old business executive scheme which sends managers out for between one and three months to meet a specific need.

Anyway this will be the last entry for a few days as the conference will require all my concentration and beer drinking skills.

One or two people have emailed me asking how they post comments on the blog, the answer is I don't know. Its taking me a long time to work out how this thing works. I think you have to register as a member of this blog, but I may also have got the settings wrong. When I work it out I'll let you know. In the meantime if anyone out there works it out first then please let me know!

I've joined the world of Bloggers!

2006-06-11T15:24:00.000+07:00

So what do I do next? Write something I suppose. I find it hard to believe I've been here for three weeks, had over a dozen language lessons and learned... well... nothing - even my pronunciation of the word "I" gets criticised and if I try to say something more complicated people just stare at me in disbelief. He's not speaking English, they say to each other, wonder what language it is?

I'm getting used to being here and a few of the bigger differences between this world and the one I left in Nottingham. For example being touched by men - Hung held my hand as we walked out of the airport when we arrived, a few days later a taxi driver stroked my back as I stood waiting to cross the road. The local pub landlord - who thinks we are Germans - gripped my knee as he asked me in half German half Vietnamese where one of our party was last night. Its nothing to worry about, they are just being friendly and some people just want to touch a westerner.

Traffic is a revelation. No one looks before they do anything, they just assume everyone else will move out of their way. No one stops at red lights and you have to look both ways when crossing a one way street. Pavements are for shortcuts and parking your motorbike, the white line is to help you stay straight so you should drive straight down it and the hundred people behind you sounding their horns are not trying to get past, they are just being friendly.

There is nothing which cannot be carried on the back of a motorbike and even a pushbike can handle a fridge freezer! Nominally they drive on the right here, so the best way to turn left is to get on the wrong side of the road, then people can go round you without getting in your way. This includes dual carriageways. After all it doesn't make sense to drive past your turn off and have to come back to it, does it?

I've eaten roast frog (the whole animal, not just the legs) roast Egret (more energy consumed opening it up than derived from eating it), shelled whole king prawns with a pair of chop sticks and got used to the idea that the small prawns are easier eaten whole, forget the shelling its not worth the effort. I've come to realise that if vietnamese women bought food processors they would have nothing to do all day and I've realised I am again in a country where nothing has a fixed price.

Speaking of prices, beer is just over 10p a pint and I can get a good meal on the street for 30p, however my living allowance is about five pounds thirty a day and that includes everything appart from my accommodation costs. I just bought a made to measure suit for 53pounds, ten days allowance gone!

Anyway, that is enough for now. I need to find out more about how this site works, customise it get some photos on and tell you all where to find it.

More later bye for now.