RANDOM THOUGHTS

Hello everyone,

After the rather serious edition last time, this one is just a collection of random thoughts about life here. There are 4 themes and if anybody can spot a link between them, then please let me know. So my 4 themes are as follows;

• Eating dog meat in Vietnam,
• That I am an attractive man,
• The Catholic Church in Vietnam,
• Taxi drivers' fingernails.

Ok, so when was in the UK and telling people that we were transfering to Vietnam, how many times did I have to smile and endure the 'joke' about Sally being stolen and eaten? Loads of times and it did wear a bit thin, partly because we didn't really know any of the facts. Anyway, we have been told that Westerners can have their dogs stolen, but not to be eaten, just to be sold as pets. So we are more vigilent, particularly as Sally must be one of the few of her type in Vietnam and gets constantly admired and photgraphed by locals.

So here are some facts;

• Around 7 tons of dog meat is supplied to Hanoi every week,
• The dogs (a specific breed) come from the north of Vietnam, but also from Cambodia, Thailand and Laos,
• Dogs that have been poisoned are still eaten, but usually not the intestines (as it is thought that that's where the poison will remain).
• Amongst the delicacies is Doi, which is ground entrails mixed with blood and stuffed into intestines,
• The public hate 'dog nappers' and recently 2 dognappers were killed by a revenge mob,
• It's fairly unregulated both from a slaughterhouse and eaterie perspective,
• Demand is growing,
• I got all this information from Vietweek a newspaper magazine,on a Vietnam Airways plane,
• Personally I find it gruesome, but this isn't my country, so I've no right (or desire) to do anything except not eat it.

There is a photo right at the bottom of this edition. I'll leave it to you as to whether you look at it or not.

Moving right along........here's a really nice photo just to change the mood.......it's one of about 20 Xmas decoration shops that have just opened on Hang Ma Street

Before we came out here I was warned several times that as a Western man , I would get 'hit on' on a regular basis. Well I can tell you that I must be an very attractive man. That sounds great doesn't it? Very good for my self esteem and all that? But there's one problem. It isn't Vietnamese women that I attract. It's 25 stone Australian men who always sit on the aeroplane seat in front of me, recline the groaning seat immediately, bounce up and down relentlessly, and usually give me a lovely helping of their dandruff. Now to be fair I do have to tell you that one lady I followed up after a business event to ask if we could meet up to see if our organisations coud work together, did ask me to a nightclub on a Friday evening. I um......declined. There is no photograph to accompany this section.

So to the Catholic Church in Vietnam. Pictured here is St Joseph's Cathedral in Hanoi. I'm not big into churches, but its just beautiful. And we went in and heard Mass both in French and Vietnamese. The Catholic Church has a very uneasy tenure in Vietnam (as you can imagine). The priests and bishops are both chosen and limited in number by the Vietnamese government and there have many unsuccessful attempts to create an easy working relationship. I have seen some suggestions of oppression of priests in the provinces. So there you have two powerful organistions, and you can just picture neither wanting to give way. To my mind this is quite an important issue as there are 6m Catholics (out of 85m) in Vietnam.

And to finish.......a phenomenon that I have never seen before, and to date have not recieved any sensible explanation for. Why do many taxi drivers and coach drivers have long (and I mean LONG) fingernails? Sometimes it's just their little finger. Once again it's not my country but to me it looks weird....not effeminite because they look like 'mens fingernails', but why? I'm not going to lose sleep over not knowing, and I have tried to get a photo, but surprisingly I get a very odd reaction when I ask a taxi driver if I can take a photo of his hand!

So my next blog will be from UK as we are home for Xmas.

Take care everyone.

Cheers

Kevin

Pictured below are Karen wearing a Hanoi face mask. There must be millions of these sold in Hanoi every year.........AND......a dog meat  stall. Sorry but there's no point me not showing you.