On How Iván Vallejo Helped Me to Better Know Myself

Who likes group e-mail? I don't. Yet I get plenty of those every day. I can't help but thinking about e-mails meant for groups of people as being somewhere in the middle of the spectrum that goes from very personal messages to online newspapers. The closer and more interconnected the group that the e-mail is addressed to, the closer to the "personal message" side of the spectrum I consider it.

For months, actually for years now, I have been receiving group e-mails from somebody have never met in person. His name is Iván Vallejo, and he is a mountaineer -although he defines himself as an "expeditionary"-. These are emails that are, to my understanding, sent to a relatively large number of people. That is to say, these are the kind of e-mails that I would typically not read or read very briefly, and swiftly take them out of my Inbox. But today, when I received a message from him, I noticed I didn't delete it. Then I looked back at my saved files, and I noticed that apparently I have not deleted any of the many e-mails that I have received from his account...

The question that followed was: What does it mean? Does it say anything about me? Iván Vallejo is a well-known and well-respected person in our country, Ecuador. But I doubt that is the reason why I kept his correspondence - I do receive similar emails from other people with similar characteristics, and I tend to be pretty efficient in vanishing them from my archives. It was then that it clicked that there is something I deeply respect in him, something that I look up to, something that I feel inspired by...

A few years ago, he set a goal to himself: he was to climb the 14 tallest mountains in the world, all above 8 ,000 meters high, and all without oxygen. It was not an easy challenge. Not only did he have to find sponsors to be able to devote himself to this endeavor, but most importantly, he had to overcome thousands of small and huge obstacles along the way. He failed more than once, having to come back from mountains without reaching the top after weeks and even months of preparation, after being just so very close. The only think he had left in those occasions was to turn the page and to start over, not letting the disappointment stop him. And he did star over. Once, twice, as many times as needed. He documented in videos and in his online diary his personal struggles. Not afraid to show the weaknesses, the fears, the lack of air, the pains, the hopes, the frustration, and eventually, the happiness each time a mountain top was reached. And on May 1st. of 2008 he reached the top of the Dhaulagiri, in Nepal, fulfilling his goal.

What did he do next? Well, he set himself a new goal! The new project involves bringing along more people with him. "Somos Ecuador" gathers together group of Ecuadorian mountaineers in order to climb the big mountains of the world, and eventually climb the Himalayas. He proved he could do it on his own. Now he means to lead the way in order to prove that they can do it as a team. This just revealed very clearly what his greater goal is and has been since the beginning. The ultimate purpose of Vallejo's expeditions is to inspire and to mobilize others.

I find here one of the most beautiful metaphors of life, or better, of how to live life to its fullest, facing the challenges with optimism and purpose. It is not about not being fearful, it is about overcoming fear. It is not about the physical strength, it is about the strength of the mind and, above all, of the soul. It is about you as an individual, but just as long as you can also make it about your community, about inspiring and mobilizing other people to set and achieve their own and the shared goals. And this morning, as I discovered that I have not deleted any of the messages that I have received from Vallejo, I learned that these are amongst the values that I hold in greatest esteem, and that I really want to learn more and practice more of. Looking at the picture that I am posting here (which I borrowed from his website), taken from the top of Mont Blanc, I see both the beauty of this landscape as seen from the furthest point above, and the beauty of the path behind, the testimony of the struggle within each of the expeditionaries' hearts, and their success.

This is what I learned from Iván Vallejo about myself. I thank him for that, and wish all of the best to the "Somos Ecuador" team who are currently in Huaraz, Perú.

Vietnam's Blogosphere

In Vietnam about a quarter of the population is on the Internet. This is a quite impressive statistic: their connectivity is noticeably superior to most other countries in the so-called Developing World. But that is not what impressed me the most, but the use that the Vietnamese are giving to this technology. The government puts much less effort to control access and contents that are divulged through the Internet than other Socialist countries like, say, China. Thus, the Web has become in an instrument for people to exercise their freedom of speech, which is otherwise restricted in the country (although, again, not to the extent of other countries with similar systems).

Not so long ago a lawyer, relatively well known in the Saigon intellectual circles, was charged with sedition and arrested in a very public, well-orchestrated operation. He had been calling for some political changes in the country and questioning the authority of the party for some time, but it looks as if he went a little too far (in terms of the Vietnamese regime level of tolerance) by establishing international connections to support his cause and, above all, by writing an alternative constitution for the country that he used to promote his ideas of change. When we mentioned this news over lunch to a Vietnamese colleague of us, he just commented: “It will be interesting to see how the blogging community reacts…. He wouldn’t have dared to do something as risky if he was not counting on public support….”

It turns out that the blogging community is one of the most influential mechanisms to which independent opinions are expressed in the country. Thousands of blogs, being updated daily from pretty much every point of Vietnam’s geography are the most open, autonomous, and effective means through which information and opinions on the daily happenings are exchanged. Issues like corruption, poor government practices, sports (I love Asia, they really follow soccer!) (what’s wrong with the US!?), and so on are broadly discussed. The most influential bloggers are middle age journalists that have access to more information than the common citizen. They get to say on the web some of the things that you don’t read on the papers or see on TV. However, they still write much less than what they know: they seem to understand better than our hero of the previous paragraph (the apocryphal constitution’s author) that this system can be pushed just up to a certain limit…

In between China and India

A lunch with a couple of professors at the School (who provided a unique combination of the American and the Vietnamese perspectives) yielded a very interesting conversation about land ownership and infrastructure in a country where, at least officially, you don’t have markets to allocate resources.

The topic at hand was land ownership, and here are some of the things I learned. Officially, all land in Vietnam belongs to the State and the Government grants long-terms rights to usage (which because of their length function very much as full ownership). Those rights can be transferred to other people in exchange for compensations (so there is a market…), but the Government in different stages must approve the transfer. There are 3 different “official” uses of land: agriculture, residence and industry. The rights of use of agricultural land usually are in the hands of local farmers, who live in villages close to the plots, and they are most frequently used to grow rice or other agricultural commodities.

What if an investor wants to use some agricultural land to develop an industrial project? This is how it works. The developer first needs to deal with the government, and get a temporary permit that states that the government has authorized to change the type of usage of the land (from agricultural to industrial) and authorized they to advance an agreement with the current owners of the land rights. Then a negotiation process takes place: the developer would approach the farmers, and offer them to take their land in exchange for a given compensation. Sometimes, the compensation would reflect “market prices”, that is, the value that the land would have in the current state given all the available information on possible future developments that would affect the price.

Often enough, though, the developers would trick the farmers into giving them their land, frequently telling them untrue stories… “You know, now the government has declared this land to be for industrial use, so you won’t be able to use it to grow rice anymore. It is of no use to you, so you may as well sell it to me”. The compensation given to the farmers would frequently be as low as it can get: around 2 dollars per square meter. Once there is an agreement with the farmer, the developer needs to go back to the government officials to get a definitive authorization, and then they would have to make an additional payment: since the land is changing classification, it works like they where granting usage rights for the first time, and the government gets to collect the respective fee.

Collusion between investors and bureaucrats seems to be… not uncommon. Frequently, just after the land has been transferred from farmers to developers, there would be “news” about the government building a big road or bridge connecting the recently transferred land to the city or the ports. Thus, the value of the land would increase dramatically. Let me borrow the following example: imagine… that the developer manages to get a large amount of agricultural land deprived of infrastructure and connectivity to the city, with the intention of turning it into some productive facility. They get the land for 2 dollars a meter, and they pay the fee to the government… 5 dollars a meter. Then they invest in basic infrastructure, bringing the costs (and the value of the land) up by 10 additional dollars per meter, for a total of 17 dollars per meter. Then the news of the government’s investment comes and, all of the sudden, the price of the land rights goes up to 100 dollars a meter!



Then come the land disputes. Farmers, seeing the land value skyrocketing and having been paid only 2 dollars per meter, demand from developers an additional compensation. And they go to the authorities asking for justice, and they protest in Saigon or in Hanoi… It wasn’t clear to me how these conflicts usually get settled, but it looks like, at least occasionally, farmers get some additional compensation.

“Here in Vietnam”, our Vietnamese friend said, “we are sort in between China and India. Unlike the way it is in China, here the local governments here cannot decide to allocate a piece of land to an investor; each rights owner has to agree to the transaction. So we are not as efficient as China, but certainly more democratic. However, we don’t get to be as democratic as India…”

What struck me as unique is that in this socialist system ownership rights can be far more extreme than in many market economies. If the owner of a land right, urban or rural, doesn’t agree to transfer his or her right, nothing can be built on that piece of land without authorization. And the point is that sometimes people just do not agree, and you get 4 lanes roads turning 2 lanes along a short stretch, or houses placed right in the middle of a racetrack in a stadium...

Placidity

Saturday night was just right, from the start until the end. I started by obtaining the most basic survival resource, which I had longed for since I arrived in Vietnam: Cheese! Real cheese! We found the place to get it (the same French restaurant where we celebrated Widhar’s birthday), and I just couldn’t hold myself. It is unbelievable how something that you are used to have on a regular basis and suddenly becomes scarce can turn into the most precious treasure.

Cheese in hand, we needed to stop by our place in order to drop it in the fridge. As we arrived, we found a very typical scene: in front of the house, on the street, a few small plastic chairs had been placed and the landlady was sitting there with her mother and her son, having a relaxed and happy chat. When she saw us arriving, she promptly took out additional chairs, and invited us to sit and chat with them. It was a very pleasant conversation indeed… although I missed at least half of it. Well, the lady, lovely as she is, doesn’t speak a word in English, and her mother speaks a little less than her. Luckily enough the son does, and between his occasional translations and Djudju’s “Basic Vietnamese Phrases” Book (I should comment on the chapter “romance and sex” of that book one of these days) we managed to learn a little more about our host and her family.



Then, straight to our last stop of the night: Café Serenata, a sound recommendation of Lonely Planet: “Tables here are scattered around a lush, pond-filled courtyard and inside a charming villa. Popular with couples after dark with live music some nights”… and that was one of those nights! The Menu had the most unique feature: there were two sets of prices, one for the day, and one for after dark (s.t.f.e.: a case of effective price discrimination).

And after the talk, the music came. There was a small band that played alone first, and then two lady singers followed. The first of them sang exclusively in Vietnamese, and had a very strict routine for each piece: First, with the most charming smile and a very delicate and feminine voice, she announced the name of the song. Second, her face turned inexpressive and she looked as if she hated each and everyone in the room while she stood there waiting for the band to start playing. Third, just as the melody started to sound and as in an act of magic the smile reappeared, and she graciously sang a song that, although always indecipherable to me, was unequivocally romantic.



The second singer, on the other hand, was specialized in foreign language songs. She didn’t have a routine as structured as her predecessor: just sat there and got the job done. It was, however, a great performance. Inspiration followed. Smiles. Pure placidity.

Ben Tanh Market

Our first Saturday stop was Ben Tanh Market, one of the highlights of Ho Chi Minh City. Even though I had visited it the week before, just upon arriving to Saigon, this time the experience was completely different.

We had brunch in one of those places where locals and tourists alike gather to enjoy the most colourful and tasteful buffet of traditional Vietnamese food. Ordering consisted of finger picking what you wanted out of the many delicious-looking options exhibited in the small display cabinet, which were neatly divided into the meatless dishes and the non-vegetarian dishes (there is always a way of saying something simple in a more complicated way, hehe…). And then, as if the previous was not enough, we were offered coconut water. In the middle of the market they set up a low table and a set of plastic chairs, those really small ones that in my country would be used exclusively by children. And then, the feast followed.



Then we took time to explore the place. It has everything, of the most varied qualities. We found exotic fruits, candies, a great variety of coffee, rice, handicrafts, clothing, travelling bags, barber shops, beauty shops, house supplies… and what you couldn’t’t find in the market itself, you could find in the surrounding neighborhood.

The best part of the market is that nothing has a fixed price, that is, it was the perfect way to put to use my Bahia-de-Guayaquil developed bargaining skills (ask the Ecuadorians about it), so underutilized in the last few moths. It just happened to be that I needed a pair of sandals, and we passed by a local that had just the ones I was looking for. The lady started by asking 35 US dollars,… perfect for Payless Shoesource but completely out of place for Ben Tanh Market. I just smiled and pretended I was leaving. She stopped me, and said that she was willing to sell the sandals to me for 30 dollars. Mistake: not only did she reveal to me that she was way above her last price (s.t.f.e.: reservation utility), but she lost her advantageous position in the negotiation… now it was me who got to make the call (hehehe). Five, I said. She looked at me as if she was offended, and said “noooo, that is too little!”. “Ok, thank you then” I muttered as I waived her good bye. She just thought for a second… “Ok Ok, pay one more dollar”… So I got the sandals for 6 dollars, and I am positive that it still was good business for the lady (s.t.f.e.: I did not extract all her surplus). I guess that growing up in a country like Ecuador does equip you with some of the essential skills of a development practitioner, after all…

"On the Move" Barber Shop

As every day since I got to Vietnam, this Friday was a journey of culinary discoveries. For the first time ever (I love that line, specially because I get to use it a lot lately) I tried Che, which in Vietnam is not a well reputed revolutionary but a sweet soup that can be had hot or cold, and that it is usually served as dessert. It combines fruits and beans, and mine today had also coconut milk. Very recommendable. And, as some of the best things, happened without being planned: Uyen, the administrative assistant of the school, asked me if I wanted to try some just as I was on my way out to find a new place to have lunch.

After the dessert, however, I was still in the need for a bite of… whatever should have come before the dessert… so I headed out for a short “exploring the surroundings” operation. I didn’t find quite what I was looking for, but I did encounter another bit of what will constitute my memories of hot and humid Ho Chi Minh City. In the middle of the sidewalk, quasi blocking the pedestrian transit flow, a small business, testimony of the entrepreneurial spirit of the Vietnamese. It was a mobile barbershop, mobile in the sense that it wasn’t settled in a fixed place, but could be taken to where it could be needed. The C.E.O. and only full time employee of this apparently flourishing business decided to put all he needed in the basket of his bike, along with a chair and a mirror, and just bring the service to the costumers. When I bumped into him in the middle of the sidewalk he was in absolute trance, focusing in his work as I have seen few people focus, while his costumer supervised everything through the mirror. The motorbikes and cars passed one after the other, just a couple of meters away, but somehow this time they seemed not to be as noisy as usual.

When it rains in Saigon...

Since the very first day here, Widhar and I had been telling ourselves that we should get an umbrella or a water poncho. It rains pretty much every day during this season, only that until now it had only rained during office hours, when we were indoors.

I am sure you noticed I said “until now”… Well… today when we where half the way to the school, I felt the first drop… and then the second, and the thousand thirds, and the million forths… we decided to stop and stand on the sidewalk, protected by the salient roof of some store, until the rain stopped. It usually rains unexpectedly and hard, but just for 5 minutes…. Well, not this time. This time it wouldn’t stop. At some point, Widhar disappeared. Alone with my camera and my random thoughts, I tried to capture in images the wilderness of the city under the rain… The motorbikers were still there, as active as always, only that now everyone was wearing a water poncho. For the rest, business as usual.



And just as I was starting to wonder what kind of crazy people venture into such a storm equipped only with that plastic garment and sailed on a two-wheeled vehicle on these streets turned into small rivers and as trafficked as usual, Widhar showed up again, bringing a pair of brand new Saigon-style water ponchos and that big smile of his. So of course we put them on, got on our bikes, rolled up the sleeves of our pants, and resumed our journey.



A day of happenings… Today was also the day of our first blackout in Vietnam. The wind was very strong, and it was clear that it was going to rain again any moment. Then, all of the sudden, the lights went off. And the wind seemed to blow harder. I didn’t feel that surprised; after all, we do get blackouts from time to time in Quito. The people of the School, however, said that it was unusual. It took me a while to understand that it wasn’t unusual to get blackouts in Vietnam, just in the School, since it is placed in the same neighborhood where the Party’s headquarters is, and where many influential people live… A colleague just got to the School a few minutes after the blackout, and told us that the wind was so strong that trees branches were falling on the streets, and that that may have been the cause of the blackout… At any rate, we seized the opportunity to have a long chat with our coworkers about the history of the country, its government and the liberties that there are and that there are not, and possible weekend-travelling locations. Lots of plans already cooking…

So much for the benevolent central planner...

It was a quiet, mildly rainy day that started a little before 6 AM. We were planning on going for a run at 6 in a stadium that is located just half a block away from our alley. On our way out of the house, we bumped into a small magical moment. The landlady was kneeling in front of a small altar that is placed on the floor, by the stairs that lead to the guest rooms. She was holding five lightened incense sticks, while bowing towards the altar in some sort of ritual. The family is Buddhist, like a large part of Vietnam’s population. But you would not see such prayers in other Buddhist countries (Widhar, a Buddhist himself, wasn’t familiar with them), as Vietnamese Buddhism is different than other types, focusing more on ceremonial rituals that on meditation. Thus, it is not infrequent to see small altars, just like the one in our house, in many places around the city… We remained silent for a moment, and waited until she had finished and left the still-burning incenses in the altar before heading outside the house.



We found the stadium right away, and headed right into the racetrack. The first thing we noticed is that it was made out of a seemingly very expensive synthetic material… quite an investment in sports infrastructure, arguably a bit too much for a country with many others evidently unmet needs… Talking about this we started running, among the locals who frequent the place to jog, practice Tai-Chi, or just to hang out and enjoy the open space. Everything was going just fine until we ran into a house.

Yes, well read. A house, right in the middle of the racetrack. The only way of continuing our jog was to go around the corner of the house and resume the track on the other side. Again, the images tell more than a 1.000 words, so check out the pics. What happened? How in a socialist system, where decisions are allegedly centralized, can something like that be? I guess the central planners, benevolent as they may be, were either not such good planners or not as centralized as the name suggests.





Meanwhile in the world, Barack Hussein Obama landed on Saudi Arabia, a visit that is mean to signal that we are living a totally new era in the US foreign policy, which includes new ways of relating to the Arab World…. I love the guy, and I think it is a bit unfair that we stopped paying so much attention to his whereabouts once he made it to the White House. So far, he still seems to be fighting the system, at least some hairy ugly parts of it… way to go.

Bicycle and alley (with simultaneous translation for economists)

Riding a bicycle in Ho Chi Minh City looks from the sidewalk just as enjoyable, though a little safer than what it feels once you actually do it. A little after 7:30 Widhar and I got on the vehicles an ventured into Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, the busy street by which the Alley where we live is located. When you are moving along by them you get a totally different perspective of the celebrated Saigon’s motorbikes. They are no longer those curious picturesque objects that carry the widest imaginable variety of characters, and that you navigate among once in a while when trying to cross the road. They are now menacing creatures, half human half wheels, that seem to enjoy (s.t.f.e.: to draw utility from) getting as close to you as possible, that never approach you individually (always at least in pairs), and whose faces, when not covered by masks, have a ridiculously calm, almost cool expression. These creatures, however, just make the ride more fun. Full treat: fun an efficient: it took us less that 15 minutes to get to the School (s.t.f.e.: we produced a Pareto Improvement) (it must be said though, for the sake of completeness, that going back was a little bit more… challenging… in terms of sorting obstacles and avoiding fellow commuters).

I should have gone for the bicycle in the afternoon, when I was trying to decide how to get to an electronics store to get a transformer (I need to use 110V gadgets in this 220V country). The IT guy from the School advised me to get a UPS, and gave me the directions to the store that, he said, was very close to the school. Widhar, before I left, wisely suggested that I should ask the guy if I could borrow an old UPS that they had at the school, but I thought the guy had already suggested that they couldn’t lend it to me, so I didn’t follow that invaluable piece of Indonesian wisdom… Wrong! To make a long story short, lets just say that the idea of “close” and “far away” seems not to be the same for Ecuadorians and Vietnamese… I ended up walking for over an hour, just to find that I would have to pay over 100 dollars for a UPS that I would be of no use back in Cambridge. And when I got back to the School, exhausted, it just occurred to me to explicitly ask the IT guy about borrowing the that old UPS laying against the wall. He just said: sure! And Widhar just looked at me, smiled, and promised not to tell anyone…

After work, it is nice to get back home and just take a minute to enjoy the alley where our place is located. There are many small restaurants that at breakfast, lunch or dinnertime are always full of locals. Tastes and prices are amazing (however let it be on record that I liked the southern Vietnamese food much better than the northern Vietnamese food) (s.t.f.e. SVF is srongly preferred to NVF for consumer i=JP). You can get an amazing breakfast of sticky rice with shredded chicken, fried tiny shrimp, and sausage on top (believe me, tastes great, no matter how it sounds) for about 50 cents, much cheaper than what you would have to pay for the same food just few blocks away, in the touristic district (s.t.f.e. the fact that we effectively want to and do take the local’s “contract” is indisputable evidence that in this context we are the “high type”). You also find a DVD shop, a dry cleaner (which I should visit one of these days), a couple of barber shops (which I should definitely visit one of these days), a tailor, small fruits and vegetables stores, convenience stores, a cellular phones store, and many other businesses, all very convenient to have nearby. What a lively, busy, exciting place we ended up in.



Meanwhile in the world, I am sure something is going on… but that TV set is staying off tonight, I’ll find out in the future (s.t.f.e.: my daily energy constraint is binding, good night). 

Glossary: s.t.f.e. = Simultaneous translation for economists.

First day of work in Saigon

What is supposed to be the story of my first day of work at the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program, will end up being the story of Widhar and myself, wondering around Ho Chi Minh City trying to find one place or the other.

The first place we were trying to find was the School itself. We decided to walk, following the photocopy of a map and the directions of one of our favorite friends (she goes by the name of Google Maps). Of course, as anyone who has visited the city knows, and as every single tourist guide repeatedly mentions, walking around Saigon means being surrounded by motorcycles, the symbol of this city. Simply impressive. Coming out of everywhere, going everywhere, running so close to each other and to the cars that one wonders if they are actually different moving entities… We successfully passed the “crossing the street” test for the first time, and over and over again. Even made a video of that. Indeed, informal institutions do work, or at least they have kept us safe and sound for today.

                                    

We got lost of course. And circled around the school’s neighborhood for a while enjoying… well, while experiencing the kind of tropical heat and humidity that one would never get in cold Cambridge. Perfect time for pictures and for mango-juice stops…

Once in the school everything went just fine. They gave us our desks (right next to each other), set up our computer user accounts, introduced us to the faculty and the staff of the School, and showed us around the place. The usual business. I must admit though, that Vietnamese names give me an even harder time than non-Vietnamese names, both when it comes to pronouncing them, and (even more so) when it comes to remembering them. The exception is the Financial Officer, a lady named Trieu, whose name I will never forget and will always pronounce accurately and, who knows, even graciously, since she took the time to explain the pronunciation to us. The took a piece of paper , wrote “Don’t you”, and asked us to read it loud. Then, she covered the letters “Don”, and asked us to pronounce just the second part…. “Trieu, Trieu… that is how you pronounce my name!”. Trieu also had a couple of cell phones ready for us, which was yet another reason not to forget her.

After a very nice lunch with our host, Jonathan Pincus, we had a short afternoon of semi-work, had our first 4 pm Vietnamese coffee that I intend to turn into a tradition for the next 2 months (strong, really strong) (really really strong) (but good, very good), and decided to venture to our second Ho Chi Minh city walk. This time, the goal was to rent a pair of bicycles for our time here (yes, we decided against the motorbikes option) (yes, we know we may regret it) (we will get over it, though). Soon enough we realized that our second walk didn’t necessarily need to be a walk, and that cabs are, after all, not that expensive around here. And we got on one of those, and it took us to a place that the people from the School had referred to us. As it turns out, people don’t rent bicycles, only motorbikes. Buying a bicycle is cheap enough, making the rental service not that profitable. And there were no bicycles for sale in the neighborhood.

So we got on a second cab, just as rush hour was starting. As we were explaining to the driver that we wanted him to take us to a place where we could buy a bicycle, it became clear to us that the guy really didn’t speak English. Not a word. Not even “yes”. From time to time we would ask if we were still far away from the place he was taking us to, and we would respond in Vietnamese and moving his hands… I interpreted: “Yes, we are almost there. Have patience. There are many bicycles to choose from where I am taking you…”, though I reckon he might just as well could have been saying “I don’t understand anything of what you are saying, I just got that you wanted a bicycle because you drew it to me. I’ll try to take you there, but it is not that close, and there is a lot to traffic. Besides, I am hungry and I miss my mom”… or pretty much anything else… After a while I decided to stop speaking to him in English and started speaking to him in Spanish. It was fantastic. Now he really looked as if he finally understood what we were asking! But then again, who knows: he kept answering in Vietnamese and moving his hands, same same as before.

                                          

The fact is that we eventually got a very nice pair of bikes. We paid for them half of what the first store we visited asked for, and since it was already dark, we put the bikes in the same taxi and drove back home. And we went on with our conversation with the driver, but this time it was not about bicycles anymore. Well, at least not on our side…

I really like the Vietnamese people. I have found it very easy to connect with them straight away: they look you in the eye, they smile a lot, they seem to be just very laid back, not too sophisticated but noticeably smart and friendly people.

The Lonely Planet guide to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and the Greater Mekong, starts its Vietnam section with the phrase: “Welcome to another world, a world where the colours are more vivid, where the landscapes are bolder, the coastline more dramatic, where the culture is richer, the history more compelling, where the tastes are more divine, where the life is lived faster. This is the world of Vietnam, the latest Asian dragon to awake from its slumber”. That spirit has definitely come through after my first couple of days in Conchinchina.

Meanwhile in the world, BBC reports, an Airfrance plane going from Rio de Janeiro to Paris is missing, and Chrysler and General Motors filed for bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy in the history of the US. Unsettling. A reminder of how insignificant the previous account is in the context of this planet’s last 24-hours turn. But aren’t most experiences that are big in your personal history mostly insignificant for the rest of humanity? And still, they remain meaningful as long as you perceive them as such.