Where am I going to be 'healthier and safer'?

Greetings everyone,

I'm sitting here at home on saturday 9th February and tonight is New Year's Eve. The office has closed for a week, and we are told that Hanoi will be empty for the next few days as so many people have gone back to their home town in the provinces and all the expats have gone on holiday. We are going to enjoy a quiet Hanoi ( that will be weird) and watch all the celebrations tonight.

So the topic this week is 'Health and Safety'. Over the years ( and without any facts or figures) my feeling is that Europe has created a whole industry with rules, jobs,fines,legislation and media influence around Health and Safety. And now I am questionning whether what Europe has done is a little over the top.

But before talking about Vietnam , I'm going to talk about a company I did some work with in Liverpool. It made playground equipment including the ground areas for playgrounds. As you can imagine the company was beseiged by safety standards that goverened every single thing it did. Yet chatting to the older guys there, they did'nt really believe that what they did was totally worthwhile. Typically the story went......'in my day everything was concrete and if we fell off we learned the lesson, got bandaged up, and went back to playing again'. So arguably the safer you try to make something, the more compromised it becomes in terms of a learning experience.

Vietnam does have health and safety standards.. But if you go out in the street, within 10 seconds you'll see something that would be immediately closed down in Europe. And are their buildings falling down, fires in the streets, multiple pile ups, epidemics of typhoid, and all the things that H&S is meant to prevent? Err......no,at least not apparently so. People tend to look out for themselves, which doesn't seem such a bad idea to me.

 Take a look at these photos, both of which are less than 50 metres from our house. Who knows what is going on with this 'highly traditional ' cooking method for street food which seems to comprise a multiplug, a piece of wood, a plastic bag, a portable stove, a pot with some food in and an unidentified electrical gadget which certainly isn't on sale at Currys.

And the other photo shows an alleyway's electrical system. There are thousands of these 'spaghetti junctions' in Hanoi.

And one other highly refreshing aspect , whilst I'm on the subject. If you transported the pavements of Hanoi to any UK town , it would be a 'kerb trippers' paradise. ( See the lovely little toe breaker just down the road). But there ain't no insurance companies here paying out on this kind of thing. So there's one  industry that will find it hard making its way to Vietnam.

 I am not saying that H&S is a waste of time and money. But what I am questionning is how to create an objective view of the state of affairs and to consider no further expansion in legislation once the law of diminishing returns comes into play.Put another way, a rethink of the balance between legislation  and common sense.Indeed a study I looked at last night commissioned by the UK government suggested that there needs to be a higher level of engagement with society about what 'risk' actually means. Probably a niaive standpoint from me on this, but isn't part of the point of a blog just to make people think?

The H&S area that Hanoi is crying out for is to improve the pollution levels. It's arguably got the worst air quality of all cities in SE Asia , and my guess is that it is vehicles ( rather than industry) which is to blame. When I was told that there are real plans for an Underground I just laughed wondering when Vietnamese April Fool's day is. But there are plans which  I have now seen, although I don't think that I'll be trying to buy my annual season ticket to Tay Son Street any time soon.

Changing the subject, do you remember that in a previous edition I told you that shops of the same type are grouped together? ( ie all the sports shops are together, all the bookshops etc etc......), well I was in a taxi the other day and went down 'maternity dress street'. Pretty much all the pregnant clothes mannequins in the world are in one street in Hanoi.

So now you know..........

very best everyone; and here's some more snaps

kevin

See above what we found in our chicken stew given to us as a gift. Nothing goes to waste here you know.

Above shows what appears to be beautiful blossom on a small tree at a garden nursery. But check out the black branches which are in fact plastic , as is the white blossom. Astonishing.

And finally, this is a huge world map covering one wall of Hanoi Post Office. It's odd to see Australia and Asia in the middle ( rather than to the right which is what we are used to). But given where we are it's screamingly obvious that world maps will be drawn up like this.

WHITE BEDOUIN

Hello Everyone,

We've been back in Hanoi for a week (after Xmas and New Year in the UK) and now we know why the shops in Hanoi were full to bursting point with thick winter coats. When we left on 14th December it was 25 degrees, and now it's 10. The house is freezing and the first thig we did was work out how to use the air conditoners as heaters. There can only be two or three months in the year when the temperature is fairly neutral and the house doesn't need cooling down or warming up!

My major topic this month is 'roots', because I've realised that I've met several men in Vietnam, the type of which I have never really dealt with before. They are 'western', speak with a perfect, but undefinable English accent, and to all extents and purposes are 'English'. But they are not. I suppose that this is a feature of my 'sheltered life' ( joke), but I have never come across people who were maybe born in the UK (or certainly to a UK family), have lived all or most of their life abroad, and so whilst appearing 'English' have no real affinity to the UK at all.  They may been educated at a series of international schools or, depending on their parents' postings, in boarding school.  They  have no real desire to visit the UK and certainly would not wish (ever) to live there (unless it was a work posting). Several admit to being completely 'rootless'. When I ask the 'well worn ' tax domicile question ,"Where would choose to go to die?", then the answer is "Dunno really".  Somebody in conversation recently referred to them as 'White Bedouin'. What a great turn of phrase.

So I guess we all have differing needs for our roots and where we feel that ultimately we belong. I was thrilled to feel, on my way back from a business trip in Europe the other week, that I was 'going home' to our house in Hanoi. I don't think that I ultimately belong here, and I know that the UK still has a major part to play in my life, but this experience has really made me question my 'roots' and whether I could ever join the itinerant 'white bedouin'.

Changing the subject, here are some photos...........

Our local  'cock fighting' ring . (I have inserted the word 'fighting' here to prevent my immediate arrest.) Cock fighting is legal here, but gambling on the result isn't.

A fish being kept in a pot by the side of the road at a restaurant (as is the norm here), obviously decided to make a bid for freedom and I watched it jump out of the pot and zig zag across the road. The locals thought it was hilarious that I wanted to take a photo.

A snake on the pavement near our house, eating something or other.

The Xmas reindeer outside our offices (where there is also a shopping mall). I love this photo.

Finally I should let you know that if I have a shiny red nose and veined face the next time you see me , it will be because I have joined the Hanoi Whisky Club. It's run by two venerable Scots guys here and they 'inaugurated' me a few weeks ago.Every meeting you have to take a bottle of single malt. I will be taking a bottle of Welsh Single malt that one of my clients bought me as a leaving present (thankyou Dawn!), but I have no idea whether this will be welcomed as a 'great change' or made fun of as an 'imposter'. Hopefully the former, because it's a fantastic bottle of whisky.

So that's it for now everyone......

Very best for 2013.

Kevin

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.

The real story...........

Hello everybody,

Whilst everything that I’ve told you so far is completely true , some of it is at the margins in terms of importance and it's about time that I told you the other  story here.The only reason for telling you is in order to make a real point, and it's probably the most important point that I'm going to make in all my newsletters. (I am also glad to tell you that I've had my employer's backing to release this edition.)  Let’s start at the very beginning then.........


When I came out here I knew it wasn’t going to be a ‘bed of roses’.  I knew there would be challenges, obstacles, and hurdles to overcome. Our operation  here was a ‘ bringing together’ of a Vietnamese business and our own self-generated business. The integration had been problematic and part of my job was to gently and slowly soothe the tension. The first few weeks were ok and progress seemed steady; slowly but surely we were moving forward.Then, at the end of April, the Vietnamese partners in Hanoi just walked out of the business one afternoon, taking all the staff, files, laptops, servers ....everything. The office was  emptied around me leaving the three of us who were left staring at a load of old furniture, and four walls, bare  apart from some  company posters. And  I never had the chance to ask my former colleagues what the Vietnamese translation is for “Oh shit.............”

After half an hour of watching the hive of activity buzzing around me, desperately trying to work out what I should do, I decided there was nothing else to be done, other than to remain calm and dignified (not an easy feat whilst my heart was racing, my adrenaline bursting, and my brain spinning like the wheels on a fruit machine). In discussion with my colleague in Ho Chi Minh City, we realised that there was no point calling the police, and over next few days we also realised that seeking legal redress would be a long, narrow, and winding road leading to nowhere in particular.

 This is where the 'real point' of this story begins to impact.

Very slowly,  but at a constant pace, our  little gang of three  were approached both by staff who had been made to leave at the end of April , and staff who had previously worked for us.   They wanted to stay with us, and ‘to a person’ they each gave the same reasons: we are an international firm and a good employer which had invested in bringing a Westerner into Hanoi. We gained momentum and by the middle of June there were twenty of us and (with the organisation's  backing) we moved to our new offices for a fresh start. The clients have seen our activity and easily enough of them have stayed with us to maintain a small, but very happy and productive office.

So what's the point I'm trying to make? Well, you'll see from the attached photo (taken a couple of weeks ago) that our workforce comprises  young people. They all want to be part of something global, something joined up with the rest of Asia Pacific, to Europe, to the Americas.   They understand the need for Vietnam to play  its part in the world's commerce and politics, and have a desire for the country to fulfil its potential on the international stage. They are optimistic, hard working, and a joy to be around.

 Now this  newsletter is not  designed to be an endorsement of my firm's global strategy (which, incidentally, I totally agree with), but surely the actions of these people is a total validation  of what my firm is trying to achieve.  The more people we have in the world  who are curious and seek to embrace the different cultures of the world, then the more chance we have of moral, spiritual and commercial prosperity.

 And this  newsletter is not designed to give my organisation any message; but if there is one, it's to keep up the work in connecting all of our staff around the world to feel part of the same thing . We see it on TV don’t we? . Like the HSBC adverts  showing  a global brand that understands the different cultures around the world, but is still being HSBC in an HSBC way. Well this whole affair has made that come real for me and I believe in it.

So for this newsletter, no amusing anecdotes; just one photo, and hopefully an explanation that makes sense and rings a bell for you.

Cheers all

Kevin

ARE WE HAPPY THEN?

Hello everybody,

Welcome to the next edition of my newsletter. My wife and I are always commenting that everybody smiles in Vietnam. I know that's a bit of an exaggeration , but broadly it's true. There's a 'hard to put your finger on' feeling of contentment and lack of tension pretty much wherever you go. So it's no surprise to me that Vietnam ranks second in the world in the 2012 Happy Planet Index (HPI), a  measurement introduced in 2006 by the New Economics Foundation. HPI takes account of 'human well being', life expectancy, and general life fulfillment , set against the ecological and enviromental effects that will infringe on future generations in that country. Costa Rica is top and Qatar is bottom. So money is'nt everything; but I guess we all know that don't we?

Moving on, one newspaper article that fascinated me here , had the headline 'Top leaders join in self -criticism'. Obviously I had to read it. It described a new Government Resolution whereby all top officials ( including the Prime Minister) have to make self criticism speeches in front of their peers, the Politburo and the Party Central Committee. It sounds like a wonderful idea to me. I'm sure we all know lot's of people who would have a real struggle with that; so hey , let's hope Vietnam is leading the way on this initiative.

I'm so grateful to those people who respond to my blog. I love writing it, but it's even better when somebody drpos me an email to say that they like reading them. One common feature of people's responses to me is that ' we must be having a fantastic time'. And yes we are. But there are some downsides and difficulties here. So without getting too depressed , here are 3 ' not great ' things about life in Hanoi;

a) The Weather. We have been here 6 months. The first 2 were like living in a lukewarm grey and damp cloud. The next one started to get swelteringly hot and humid. And for the last 3 we have had incessant 'oven like ' temperatures (with humidity to match), mixed with thunderstorms that rattle your teeth. We are told that september to november are lovely , and then that december and january are are cold and humid and that you feel it in your bones. So you don't come to Hanoi for the invigorating climate. And one side effect of the humidity is that things in your house ( particularly anything wooden or leather grow a lovely mould on them ; it's a rather fetching green/grey colour).

b) The Pollution. A very high percentage of scooter riders ( and some pedestrians) wear face masks and when you are in heavy traffic ( when are you not in heavy traffic?), the emissions must be sky high. We are told that there is a huge incidence of bronchial problems in Hanoi, and both my wife and I have had the 'Hanoi hacking cough'. Also we are both horrified to see the number of dead fish which gently float on the surface of Westlake every morning. I asked somebody at work whether this is to do with the high level of pollution , and was told that this is partly to blame , but that the humidity is a big factor. How do fish die of humidity? My wife told me that I must allow myself to be more gullible when a local gives me an explanation like that.

c) Petty Bureaucracy. I've highlighted this before, but last week my morning taxi was singled out by the traffic police and my journey delayed till the poor taxi driver paid up for some unspecified offence. After 10 minutes of sitting waiting in the back of the taxi , I decided to to get out and look as menacing and annoyed as I could ( I am rather 'tall' here you know) , and actually it seemed to do the trick as the episode settled very quickly after that. Taxi drivers here have a hard enough job as it is; It's a tough and competitive life, so it's a real bummer to be stopped and 'fined' at 7.30 in the morning.

Ok ; off my soapbox. We spotted a supermarket product which I am sure you can't buy in the UK. You remember my discussion about vegetables and the 'middle class' fear of pesticides by local farmers? Well just buy a bottle of VEGY  to wash all your veg in. It looks just like Fairy Liquid.

So to finish I thought I woud tell you about our company trip. The whole firm ( about 90 people) are going to Bali for 4 days. It's pretty cheap to get there from here, and company trips like this are often the norm. But before you get too jealous; We can't go! It co-incides with one of our lads coming to visit and we can't get the logistics to work. But as Bali is an easy trip , I reckon that we might have a romantic weekend there at some point.

Here's an explanation of the photos above;

a) This is apparently the longest ceramic mural in the world. It's several kilometers long, and covers one of the dyke walls that protects the city from flooding. Local and international businesses and schools all contributed to the project, which is just fabulous.

b) Pumping water from one lake to another is a common scene. This one is near our house both lakes are used for farming water lillies.

c) 2 photos showing sunset scenes from our roof terrace.

d ) A typical traffic scene from the morning rush. All the scooters on the left are actually on the pavement!

e) The house opposite the end of our alley needed a crane to lift two huge bonsai trees into his back garden. The road was closed for 3 hours without warning and led to lots of arguments!

Till next time.

kevin

RETAIL THERAPY.............

Hello everybody

Well we've back a week from our break in the UK, although as soon as we landed we went off to Halong Bay for the weekend. It's simply stunning , and a 'must' for any visitor to Vietnam. A photographer's paradise.

In my last posting I promised to discuss shopping and retail......so here I go, although it's hard to know where to start. I guess the first thing to say is that I just can't get to grips with the economics of retail in Hanoi. There are simply thousands of shops. These range from shopping malls, row upon row of independent shops, roadside stalls, women on bikes with flowers ( see below) or a glass cabinet on the back, and lots of markets. And they all have one thing in common......they are stacked 'sky high' with stock; sometimes to the point that you can't get in the door. Heaven alone knows what will happen when internet shopping takes over in Vietnam.

I can't present any logical order to my thoughts about retail, so this is just a series of observations I guess.......

There are very few 'familiar' retail names out here. On the 'fast food 'front KFC is massive , but we've yet to see a Starbucks or Mcdonalds. The 'Mcdonalds' here is called Lotteria and I've tried one and I'd happily go back. I'm guessing that the issues around creating a retail franchise network in Vietnam are quite complicated and the competition would be fierce.

In many cases shops selling the same kind of goods are clustered together. So you will get a row of shops selling sunglasses, a row of shops selling sports goods, hardware shops, shoe shops etc etc. To me this only heightens the level of competition, but I guess it's a cultural thing whereby the consumer broadly knows the city area and street to go to.

A very interesting phenomenom is the 'trust' that is given to supermarkets. In the UK ( and I am really generalising here) , we would tend to 'trust' an independent greengrocer or a market stall more than we would a supermarket. Here though (and I think this is more from the 'middle classes') we have been told 'always buy your fruit and veg from the supermarkets as you can trust them way more than a local vendor where you just don't know what chemicals they have sprayed '.

Whilst I'm not a lawyer so can't really explain this properly I am told that copyright law either doesn't exist in Vietnam, or is very weak. That is one of the reasons why (I have read) some 'high tech' businesses are reticent about bringing their operations to Vietnam, which therefore remains largely a home for 'low tech' business investment. In respect to retail , weak copyright has real implications. Consider this; we met a person who had bought a watch from the Duty Free at Hanoi airport and was very pleased that at 'several hundered dollars' it was a real bargain as 'back home' it woud have been at least a thousand bucks. All was well for a year until it went in for service to an authorised service centre in the US, only to be told that it was a fake.

So whenever I see a 'branded' item for sale , there is always a thought....'.is it the real thing?'. This isn't so much the case for goods like Iphones or Samsung TV's as these work out to be exactly the same price as in the West. And for other things it just doesn't matter. So i'm quite happy to go to the local  DVD store and buy the latest blockbuster movie for about 50 pence or a whole series such as Boardwalk Empire for about 3 pounds. At these prices you have to quesion the authenticity but provided you don't mind the Japanese subtitles (sometimes) ,  I can't tell the difference.

Another fascinating link between copyright and enterprise is in respect to books. Now Karen is a member of two bookgroups. It's, the usual thing; whereby the group decides on a book and everybody reads it and they then discuss it. But how do you buy several copies of the same 'western' paperback in Vietnam? Well what you do is bring one copy into the country, and take it to the local photocopier shop. They will unglue the book, copy it , and produce ( who knows how) several exact copies , including the cover for about 2 dollars each. And you get back your original book which looks as good as new. The whole thing is simply amazing.

What different types of shop or culturally surprisingly different products  do you see? Here are two interesting ones. Firstly there are lots of shops which sell nothing but 'safes'. Big old fashioned ones which weigh a ton and have tumbler dials. I think this must relate to lots of people not yet having bank accounts. We have one of these at home and there is one in the office. Now believe you me , there is an enormous satisfaction in moving the tumbler to and fro to enter the code ( 10 alternate turns altogether) and the safe then creaking open. The second example might just be me not paying attention to new trends in the west , but here the fashion in Hi-Fi is to have the biggest speakers you can possibly find. The Hi-Fi shops ( of course all grouped together) seem to be having a competition as to who can sell the tallest, fattest, speakers. No good for us minimilists. Oh and I forgot to mention shops on boats ( see picture)

I've mentioned it already but the really aspirational brand is 'Apple'. Given what people earn here, and given the number of Iphones and Ipads that we see, people must be happy to commit a vast percentage of their disposable income to own one. And there are shops with 'Apple' signage everywhere. Some say 'authorised reseller', some say 'authorised' and some say nothing. I don't know what level of input Apple has into the way its goods are sold here, but they sure as hell sell a lot of product.

All the shops tend to be open all the way through the day and right into late evening. It's no problem for the staff because if they are tired they just lie down and go to sleep. I've twice left a shop as I didn't want to disturb the gentle slumbers of the shop assistant.

So these are my thoughts. Nothing meaningful or insicive, nothng that a retail analyst looking to invest in Vietnam would find useful. Just my ramblings. But I hope you enjoyed them.And to cap it all I'm finishing with some schoolboy humour. The concept of 'Hung Long' being a minimart made me chuckle.

I'll post again in 2 or 3 weeks.

Cheerio everybody

Kevin

Domestic Life,.......

Hello everybody,

In this blog I thought I would concentrate on domestic life; that is to say our domestic life , and what goes on in our locality. It'll be my last blog for a few weeks as we are coming back to the UK for a well earned break.

Before I get to domestic life though, I'll just share some great news for me. As most of you know, I am an avid Brighton and Hove Albion supporter. When we came out here I subscribed to the club website (so that I can listen to match commentaries on the internet) and also a Brighton fans' message forum called North Stand Chat. So anyway there I was at work the other day, around lunchtime on North Stand Chat , when I noticed a posting from a member whose location was......wait for it......Hanoi. So I sent him a private message and the upshot is that we'll hold the inaugural meeting of the Brighton and Hove Albion Supporters Club Hanoi Branch in July (actually it'll just be several beers, but I'm not sure whether to wear my club shirt).

Anyway; we live up an alley (entrance pictured below), in a huge house (see below), with a beautiful swimming pool (also below) on the ground floor. Lounge and kitchen diner on the first floor, 2 floors of bedrooms, all with huge en-suites and walk in wardrobe areas, a fifth floor with a laundry room, a 'something' room (it's just a room with no purpose which we use to store stuff), and a magnificent lounge. And up again out onto the roof terrace with 360 degree views , 3/4 of which is Westlake, as our area is a kind of a peninsula into the lake. The lift is in the centre of the house, which is also where the wooden staircase is housed.

One aspect of houses here that needs understanding is the intensity of the heat that houses generate. We can air condition individual rooms , but the central stairwell starts off cool at the bottom , but by the time you reach the 5th floor it's simply roasting.And the issue we have is the 5th floor lounge which is the best room in the house , as it has views across Westlake , but no airconditioning ( and the landlord will not install it into this room). Our advice to him is that this will cause him problems in the future when he trying to rent to westerners,unless he markets the room as a sauna with magnificent views, but he is having none of it. So we managed to find a portable aircon unit , which vents out of a window ( not ideal , but it suffices). So with that purchase Karen decided to make this room her office . We set the room up as a stunning office, and then arranged for the 'computer man' we know to re-arrange the wireless routers in the house , to get the internet into the room. But no matter how he tried, the room is a complete internet blackspot. So Karen has converted a bedroom to an office , and we'll abandon the best room in the house for the rest of the summer.

Last week all our furniture arrived.....125 packing cases. For the last few weeks we have been really nervous about the 'lobby fee' we would have to pay to get it through customs. Estimates from reliable sources varied from $50 USD to $1500 USD, so really we had no idea. But the day it arrived in the docks we had an interesting email from our shipping company. The email had an attatchment which was a message from a Customs official which read as follows ' Re case 41 labelled 'Samsung 32' FlatScreen TV' we opened this case and there is nothing in it'. Oh well we thought that's life. But Karen wrote quite a straightforward email suggesting that as we have lost a prized possession, that presumably our 'lobby fee' will be quite small. Then when the furniture arrived two days later, there was our TV. You tell me what was going on as I've no clue.

We have a cook/housekeeper. We share her with a couple who work for the British Council , and her name is Chi. Actually her name is Phuc, but for some reason she asked us to call her Chi (I can't think why). She is wonderful and what a pleasure it is to have someone iron my shirts! Her cooking is amazing and she cooks for us 2 or 3 times a week. So to have real home cooked Vietnamese food is such a privilege (actually I am so lucky because Karen is a fabulous cook too). But Chi's cooking doesn't end with us. Oh no.....she cooks for Sally the dog as well: something different every day. When Sally goes to the kennels during our holiday she is going to be wondering if Chi has made her a couple of weeks worth of packed lunches. Pictured here is something Chi bought to turn into one of Sally's dinners. I'm sure these were very cheap , and I'll just let you look at the picture and say no more.

One of the incredible things here is that the poor and the rich seem to live 'side by side' perfectly happily. We have no back garden , and below (left) is a photo of our neighbouring house at the back. And just around the corner on a patch of scrub is a house (below right) inhabited by a family Karen calls 'the Borrowers'. It's a shack constructed from cast offs. But directly opposite the entrance to our alley is a small palace, which must be inhabited by a Government official or politician because the police arrive and close the road whenever a car arrives at or leaves the house. And if two local men stand side by side, most of the time you couldn't tell who lives in the mansion and who lives in the makeshift shack.

Rubbish collection is interesting. You just leave it outside your front door and at 5 o'clock a lady on a bicycle comes and takes it away. (The only element of reclycling I have seen are the ladies that pick up cardboard and strap it to the back of their bikes.) And all this rubbish seems to work its' way back to the local mobile rubbish carts, which are administered by the ladies who sweep the streets (all day) with their long handled palm leaf brushes. Karen took a beautiful photo of a number of  full rubbish carts at twilight by the lake.What we have established is that reclycling is a well honed cottage industry which takes place on a street by street basis by people who scrape a living by collecting and (I guess) selling on different types of rubbish.But there is no information at a residential level about recycling, and when I've mentioned it at work, I've just had a series of blank looks or vague smiles.  (I am very used to this look.....I had it yesterday when I mentioned at work that we are seeing Bruce Springsteen in concert in the UK. I then made the huge mistake of saying 'surely you've heard of the song ''Born in the USA''.....not the most sensible song to mention in Vietnam.)

My final photo below (which I include for no particularly good reason) is the biggest snail I have ever seen......and they are all this big here. And when you step on one by accident, it's a mixture of a crunch and a squelch.

In my next blog I'm going to tell you about retail. It's fascinating for so many reasons.......

Cheerio everybody.