VIETNAM FOR EUROVISION

Hello to everybody,

I've started to write this during a 4 day break in The People's Democratic Republic of Laos. We have come to Vientiane , the capital city, which is only an hour's flight from Hanoi, but frankly could be on another continent. It is hot, but not humid, quiet, sedate, and has what seems to pure and unspoiled air to breathe . It's bliss. I knew nothing about Laos and yesterday we visited a working centre, called COPE, for the manufacture of prosthetic limbs. A strange choice you may say , but it turns out that Laos is the most prolifically bombed country in the world. It has had 280 miliion bombs dropped onto it , of which only 70% exploded on impact. Thus there are at least 100 people that lose a limb every year  by standing on a 'scatter bomb' , and this is after 4 decades and millions of pounds spent on locating and disposing of bombs. Below is a sculpture made from bomb casings at the centre.

I very rarely buy myself beautiful things. Somehow the scales of aesthetics against cost are weighted in favour of prudence. My Rado watch is perhaps an exception. But in Laos yesterday, we were in a Social Enterprise workshop and they were making some stunning polished wood pens and mechanical pencils. No matter how many times I walked away from the display an invisible heartstring kept pulling me back. And now I own one, and in a lovely wooden case. See the photo. I will love using this every day.

Moving on ( and back to Vietnam), Karen and I are convinced that the Euro 'powers that be' should extend the 'boundaries' that now include Israel and Azerbaijan, and invite Vietnam into the the Eurovision song contest. This would be a 'sure fire' method to ensure that Great Bitain does not finish last. There are simply millions of 'would be' Eurovision crooners' in Vietnam , with microphone and karaoke machine in hand ,who we are sure would battle it out in the heats to represent Vietnam. The streets are alive with the sound of 'music' in Hanoi , and of extremely variable quality. The decibel factor seems to be thing that counts here; the competition obviously being to see whether they can be heard in neighbouring countries.

Last time I told you about Health and Safety here. Well just to prove the point, our neighbour decided to demolish their house. See here one of many interesting photos we have. The generally accepted method is to start at the top with your pneumatic drill and demolish from underneath you. It worked perfectly well and we heard of no accidents. I also attatch another H&S photo which really needs no explanation apart from an explanation mark.

One very annoying result of the house next door to us disappearing was the  disruption it clearly caused to the rodent life in our alley. We have a brand new house and no unwelcome guests up to now, but just after the demolition work started our friend Roland Rat came to stay. On paper this should be no problem for us. We have Sally the trained lurcher hunting dog. She has had plenty of rats on our walks ; they seem 'small fry' to her at an almost inconsequential level. In the house though it's a different story. We have polished wooden floors which are not designed for animal killing machines with long spindly legs. Sally knew that already, it seemed , and clearly she made a secret pact with Roland to allow him the 'freeedom of the city' in our house. Not a damn did she give. So the old phrase        ' why keep a dog and bark youself' went straight out of the window and we had to engage the services of our landlord to hunt Roland down, corner him and bash him to submission with a long handled metal rat basher.  Here's a picture of Roland taking his afternoon stroll.

We have now done over a full year in Hanoi and what a year it's been. I generally feel so blessed to have been given the chance to live my life a different way, in a different place, with new colleagues and friends. It's been tough, but in every sense, a life changing experience.

Cheers everybody

kevin

And here are two Vientiane photos. The lower one is

the Laos' Arc De Triomphe', constructed from the

concrete of airforce runways ( we are told), and still

not finished.