March journal

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I’m back in Vietnam, after a two week trip that whisked me halfway round the world on six flights, three air carriers and through five separate countries.

From the humid south east over to the spring weather of bustling Dhaka, and onto the grey skies of London, where friends and family were all on great form and collectively excited about the clock change last night, and the prospect of saying farewell to winter days.

Saigon greeted me on Friday with that type of warmth you associate when you first step off the plane on a summer holiday in any part of the world where thermometers seldom drop below seventy five degrees.  I’d not been in shorts for a fortnight, and it was great to adjust back into being ‘home’.

If truth be told, I am not a great flyer.  Despite all the statistics I am still uncomfortable with the notion of hundreds of tonnes of metal, people and oversized suitcases cruising three miles up in the stratosphere.  Give me a nice train any day. Continue reading →

On top of the world

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And so to Kathmandu, where I have been for the past four days…

The capital of Nepal, and a city worthy of the much used phrase “a melting pot,” Kathmandu is breathtaking.  Breathtaking in every sense of the word.

The city has a population of 5 million, and is situated at the foot of the Himalayas, in a valley so enclosed by mountains that all flights coming in and going out are forced to perform spiralling ascents and descents, so as to successfully avoid giving their passengers too close a view of the snowy topped peaks.

There is no grass in Kathmandu.  That is, there are no parks and lawns.  In terms of other grass that one might smoke, there is plenty.  In fact on Monday when I arrived, it was the god Shiva’s most holy day of the year.  The temples were inundated, as were the local pot dealers, because Monday marked the one day of the year when smoking dope in Nepal is fully legal (I heard this from a colleague you understand, rather than from experience….ahem…) Continue reading →

The Art of Inner Voice

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The folks from WordPress encourage their blogging disciples to use different “categories” for our posts, so I have reverted to incorporating “The Art Of…” as one of these.

I would, however, caveat that I am not proffering any form of artistic advice or guidance in the words to follow, themselves arguably a bi-product of my own ‘Inner Voice’ and stream of consciousness. In fact, it was Florence, our 3 year old, who first put the idea in my head to write about this subject, earlier today, whilst playing in her bedroom.

Not for the first time in recent months I found myself propped up on Flo’s beanbag at 6.30am this morning, clutching the day’s first cup of tea, and attempting to follow the non-stop chatter she was managing to keep up for a good twenty minutes, breathlessly switching topics, from barbie dolls to doctors and nurses, to renaming her plastic farm animals to listing out options of what her best friend, Velvet, would be wearing later when she comes over for dinner. Continue reading →

January journal + Hoi An photos

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Although I went back to work on Friday, it was with a sense of having been somewhat indulgent, as Vietnam enjoyed its annual lunar New Year shut down last week and, life as we know it here in Saigon, ground to a very pleasant halt.

Our blossoming Tễt tree

Families and friends idled away four days of public holidaying, the focus being on eating festive foods, drinking large quantities of alcohol, and speculating at length what the year ahead might hold (see previous post on Dragons, although for those with less time to spare to read post, the nuts and bolts of it is that the Year of the Dragon is an auspicious year in the twelve yearly zodiac cycle, and there is heightened expectation amongst people here about what 2012 will bring.) Continue reading →

The Year of the Dragon

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Around about this time in January the UK press tend put out articles naming the year’s official most depressing day.

Their logic cites a combination of things such as the dreary winter weather, or the inevitable financial whiplash of Christmas spending.  More often than not the offending day in question is January 23rd (which is unfortunate in our household as this is, and has always been, Lou’s birthday.)

This year in Vietnam will be a quite different affair though, as 23rd January is Chinese New Year and subsequently, due to Vietnam being one of the many countries embracing the lunar calendar, local life in Saigon over the past weeks has been 100% focused on celebrating the beginning of Tễt (the official name for the New Year here) and the 4 days of public holidays which accompany this.

As previously described in this blog, December here was wall-to-wall Christmas eye candy.  On every street you’d find precariously hung fairy lights, young Vietnamese men dressed as Santa and smoking cigarettes, shops and restaurants blaring out festive carols on a 24/7 loop. Continue reading →

Women’s empowerment: the responsibility of business?

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Yesterday, I spoke at a United Nations Global Compact event in Delhi, convened by CARE India, and debating the role and responsibilities of business, in terms of how they address women’s empowerment.

As catchy opening lines go, it’s very possible that half the readership of this blog (yes, both of you) may not instantly be gripped by the idea of 1,500 words on anything just described.  You’d be forgiven for this, of course – it is Friday, a week from Christmas, and there are better things to be doing.

Believe me, there was a moment stepping up to join the panel yesterday when being an Englishman and talking about women’s empowerment and business in the Indian context (during New Delhi’s own centenary week since it was first established under colonial rule) made me wonder what I’d in fact let myself in for. Continue reading →

December journal + Hanoi photos

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Sunday afternoon, and I have a hangover.

A fitting state perhaps to welcome in the start of the festive season, although the combination of last night’s beers, 5 hours sleep, Martha wailing like a banshee, and Florence enthusiastically using me as her personal drum-kit, was not quite the ideal scenario first thing this morning in terms of remedying a sore head.

I used to love December back in the UK.  It can be the most indulgent month of the year, and also the most random in terms of habits.

On the social side, for example, people start warming up their red wine and adding in fruit. More pastry gets consumed in one month than during the whole of the rest of the year.  For some reason, we also decide it important that we simply must meet up with certain friends for Christmas drinks, often people we haven’t seen or heard from since the previous year when we committed to do the same, but one of us bailed out due to being “crazy at work”, “down with the flu” or “double booked” for the night. Continue reading →

Saigon by Vespa

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We’ve had some friends in town recently – Sarah and Manjit – and took them out to experience the sights and sounds Saigon has to offer, on the back of vintage Vespas…

 “Vietnam Vespa Adventures” is the brain child of Steve Mueller, a guy as equally fanatical with the bikes themselves as much as he is with the country in which he has now resided for thirteen years.  Steve’s website offers some useful history on the noble Vespa (the Italian word for “Wasp” – I’ll give you that one for free) and his company’s aim is to provide clients with a perspective on Vietnam otherwise unavailable to the average tourist. Continue reading →