Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City

The visit at Mr Pham Phu's house was nice. I had tried to get flowers, but it was impossible to find any.. Except a few souvenir shops, everything was closed. I ran around for about 30 minutes trying to find flowers or something else which would be appropriate to offer, but I could not find anything. I therefore arrived at his house late and with empty hands. He did not seem to worry about ot. We chatted about his job and my job, about Europe in general and about his family. He also wanted me to check some of the translations he had done from Vietnamese into French (most;y birth and marriage certificates..), just by using a dictionary (he never learner French). I was quite surprised about the good quality. If you ever read the instructions of some cheap imported product from China, you know what I mean.. ;-) It made sense and there were only some minor mistakes. I jost got to see his wife for 10 seconds and quickly dais hello. I was not even officially inbtroduced. She was in the house, but it seems that she was not allowed to join (or did not want to..) I got a gup of tea, a glass of Australian Port Wine(not sure whether they are still allowed to call ot like that .. ;-)), Banh something (I unfortunately forgot the name.. but it is a roll made with sticky rice and green bean and then cut into slices that you dip in soja sauce..: delicicous..) and a beer with it.. hospitality was first class !!!

In the late afternoon, I went to the airport back to Da Nang and had an evening flight to Ho Chi Minh City (most Vietnamese, especially in the South) actually call it still Sai Gon (and the airport abbreviation is also SGN...)

I was picked up at the aiport by Madame Cuc's guesthouse. The city was by far not as busy as everybody had told me.. because of the Tet holidays... I got a warm welcome in this family run guesthouse run only by the female part of the family... this was just another proof that here women actually work much more than men. I saw a lot of men sitting in front of the houses and drinking or playing cards, while the women were working. I also saw lots of old women woth a "bent" back from hard work, whereas I did not see a single man having this problem...

The next day, I explored the city by foot. I went to see the War Remnant Museum, telling the story of the "American War" as they understandably called it here from the Vietnamese perspective. There certainly is a bit of propaganda that goes with it, but it struck me quite a lot. It was mainly photos taken by journalists (from both sides) showing the terror of war and the horrible war crimes committed by the Americans, especially the consequences of the use of chemical weapons but also other atrocities.

I liked the city even if a lot of people I had met on my trip told me that it was horrible. It was perhaps becuase of the festive atmosphere of the Tet festival: the whole centre was decorated with flowers and sculptures and in the evenings everybody took his or her scooter and went out. It was a street party every night !!!

Today I also walked around a bit, ate for the 5th time a "pho" which is one of the vietnamese national dishes: a noodle soup with varying ingredients. I loved the spicy one.. They have several chains of "pho restaurants", I tried "Pho 24" and "Pho 2000". The last one had been honoured by the presence of US-president Clinton several years ago (I mean Bill Clinton... you never know.. if Hillary will be elected this could lead to confusion for posteriority.. my blog is intended for eternity... ;-) ) There were several photos of the event displayed in the resraurant.

Today in the afternoon, I went to the airport as my trip is about to end.. how sad !!!I was very lucky that the nice lady of Malaysia Airlines was not that strict with the weight of my luggage (which had 22,5 kilos) and that she did not weigh my backpack and the extra bag I had bought in order to put all the stuff I had bought along the way (on all these beautiful markets and in these great shops.. you remeber ??) .. I think the hand luggage has another 15 kilos ore so (whereas a maximum of 7 is allowed..).

Now I am at Kuala Lumpur airport waiting for my flight back to Paris... I will arrive in the early Sunday morning and will be back to Brussels by train at around 8 am. And on Monday: back to work.. I hope I will be able to sleep a bit on the plane..

New Year

The new years celebrations were a lot of fun ! There were huge fireworks and everybody was out in the street on their motorbikes. People kept arriving from all directions to the spot of the fireworks. Just after it had finished everybody started the engine and drove away.. they had their helmets on for the whole time and most of them stayed seated on the motorbike.. It was a kind of "drive through firework". ;-) This provoked some kind of traffic jam for at least 10 to 15 minutes until everybody got away.


Already in the afternoon, I had witnessed a traffic jam in the street where they sell the new years trees and flowers as everybody just stopped on the sides and then buses and other motorbikes just got stuck. I was just standing there and observing this for around 30 minutes and taking some photos. It was really funny: mostly men were buying the flowers and trees, but were not so sure which ones to buy and the women selliing the trees and flowers kept talking to them without a brak trying to convinve to by bigger and more... ;-) they tried to put several trees on the bike, rearranged, put them back on the floor, called some relatives that arrived several minutes later with another bike to help out. I enjoyed this a lot !! It was a real chaos !!

The beach I went to yesterday afternoon was really beautiful. Not many people were there and I walked for more than 2 hours. Unfortunately they keep building these hotel resorts, which are all half empty because there are not that may tourists here.. so it does not really make sense to buiild even more of them.. When I was sitting on the beach watching the sea, I was quite surprised to see an ELEPHANT walking by. Together with his owner, they were having a nice walk along the beach and definetely having fun. The elephant seemed however to be scared of the water (quite surprisingly.. as usually they love to play with water and have a bath.. but probably it is because of the salt water) .. he almost jumped back each time the water was getting too close.

About new year. There was some confusion about the year of the rat, as here they put mice on the walls and I saw several times written "year of the mouse". First I thought it was a wrong translation for rat and thought this was funny. I researched a little bit and found out that both are possible as the Chinese sign 鼠 means both rat and mouse. And it it true that "mouse" is a little bit nicer than "rat"... ;-)


In the restaurant where I had dinner, I met a local English teacher and translator, Mr Pham Phu Dung, with whom I chatted a little bit and who then invited me for today to his family home. It is a tradition that families invite somebody to come to their house as the first person entering the home on the first day of the new year brings luck for the new year. Normally it is an honourable man with several children (that's what the Lonely Planet says..) And it seems to be a big honour as a foreigner to be invited to someone's house. So I try to live up to the expectations. I will buy some red flowers as white and yellow flowers are only given as a religious offering or to the dead... it is always good to read the guidebook in detail: always a source of knowledge !! I have to admit that when I read this I thought that this was pretty useless as I would certainly not get the opportunity to be invited and to have to offer flowers.. but I was wrong..

Together with an English girl I met also in the restaurant, we went around town, played some of the local games at the stalls set up along the streets and had some drinks. After the fireworks, we went dancing, but it was mostly westerners around because the vietnamese go the pagoda to pray right after midnight.. only at about 2 they started coming back. We partied until 4 in the morning...

Happy new year !!!

As I had written already, today is the last year of the lunar year and all Vietnam is getting ready for "Tet NguyenDan" (Festival of the first day), which will start the year of the rat. This is the most significant date in the Vietnamese calendar and is Christmas, New Year and birthday all in one. You can imagine the atmosphere..!! It's the time for families to reunite in the hope of good fortunefor the coming year, and the spirits of the ancestors are invited back into the family home. The rites already start 7 days before when the Tao Quan - the 3 spirits of the hearth (found in the kitchen of every house) ascend to heaven in order to report to the Jade Emperor on the past year's events. In each hous, you find altarswith plenty of offerings, assenlbed in the preparation of the god's departure in the hope of receiving a favourable report and thus ensuring good luck for the family in the coming year. People clean and renovate their houses in order to get rid of the bad spirits of the old year and have a good start ine new one. When I walked through Hoi an the last days, everybody was cleaing, painting, organising their houses. This was actually quite funny to see. I now also know why they all carry these tress (which are kumquat trees). It is the so called "cay neu", the new year's tree ahich is supposed to keep out evil spirits. A lot of other people have abricot blossom trees. Sometimes they carry two or more of them on a motorbike, in huge pots..

Tonight atmidnight there will be huge celebrations out on the streets, with fireworks. It seems to be a huge street party..On new year's eve, the Tao Quan return to earth and at the stroke of midnight all problems from the past year are left behind and chaos start: the goal seems to be to make as much noise as possible in order to chase away the bad spirits: drums, fireworks, etc.

Then, the events of the first day of the year are curcial as they are belived to affect the course of the new year: people take care not to be rude or show anger and some activities - supposd to attract bad spirits - are totally taboo, such as sweeping, swearing, breaking things...and: sewing !!!! Now I also know why all the tailor shops are closed, as sewing cloths attracts bad spirits... A propos: I got my suit yesterday. First they said that it was just perfect and they wanted me to just pay and go. I stood in front of the mrror for at least 20 minutes trying to figure out all possible little problems. They tried to deny at first and wanted to tell me that it is supposed to be like that, but I insisted. So they made some more changes and I had to go back l;ater in the evening. I think that the suit is fine now, but there are still two little detauils that I would have preferred to be changed, but it was just impossible to explain to them.

I will finally go to the beach now, even if it is still overcast and a little bit windy. But at leat once I have to go there, as it seems tobe really beautiful. But it will be for a walk rather then for a swim , I think.

chuc mung nam moi !!!! (means: happy new year !!) ;-)

old houses in Hoi An:

Hoi An

Yesterday in the early afternoon, I arrived to Hoi An, a lovely town (and again UNESCO world heritage) 130 km south of Hue. I took a train, which was an interesting experience itself. I was the only westerner in my coach, which was packed with people. The train took almost three hours for 100 km (The train does not directly go to Hoi An but to Da Nang about 30 km away). But the ride was beautiful as the train goes around some higher mountains along the seaside and there were several spectacular views. But life within the train was much more interesting actually. Next to me was a boy of 10 or so with his parents. He was already quite chubby and did nothing else than eating - for three hours... it was just fascinating what he could eat and the parents just let him.. While the train was really basic, there was a catering service (with a variety of hot dishes) and a "bord restaurant" (having seen it you would understand why I put it in brackets..;-) ), which is much more than the train from Strasbourg to Brussels has to offer... ;-) By the way: you will see a little bit of the chubby boy in the pictures below.. ;-)

The toilets were not usable because they were packed with people's stuff, escpecially huge kumquat or mandarine trees (I could not really tell..) which people carry hime for the TET-festival. Tet festival is the lunar new year, which has a particular importance for Vietnamese. Half of Vietnam is actually somewhere on the road to join the family for one week family gathering. Everybody is carrying enormous bags with gifts (most of it real kitch... you can see it as they wrap it in transparent foil) , much worse than on the train I took back from Brussels to Germany just before Christmas... New Year (beginning of the year of the rat) starts in the night of 6 to 7 February, but shops and everything alse is already closing tomorrow (5 February).

Somebody from my hotel picked me up at the train station, waiting with a sign with my name, which is quite a nice feeling, you feel welcome..

Hoi An is a small and relatively quiet place, with an old town with plenty of traditional houses. The speciality here is however tailoring. There are tailor shops all over town and everybody coming here leaves with plenty of bags with tailor made suits, dresses, shirts etc. but also with other souvenirs such as lanterns or scarved wooden boxes with chop sticks..

I thought that I should leave this rather to one of the next days since I stay here for 4 nights. I chose to stay longer since I wanted to go to the very nice beach (just 5 km form town) and relax before heading to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and then back to Brussels. So I did the tourist visit first. For this morning I booked a cooking class and I thought I would then have a look at the tailor shops this afternoon. During the cooking class, I learned howver, and I was so naive not to think about it myself, that all the shops would be closed for at least 3 days for Tet!!! I panicked as I really wanted to have one or two suits made..

The cooking class was great fun. We prepared the rice paper which you need to prepare fresh spring rolls and rice noodles (this is really easy !!!) and the fresh spring rolls taste just so much better if you prepare the rice paper yourself (see the photo below with me holding proudly my freshly rolled spring rolls) !!! yummie ! We also prepared green papaya and mango salad with warm squid and shrimp served in a pineapple (see photo), eggplant stew with lemongrass (see photo) and traditional Hoi An pancakes (made from rice). It was just so good and in a really nice location where we went by boat (and I managed for the first time to get a photo of a fisherman throwing out his net...). The stuff was really funny and it was much better than any cooking show on television than you can imagine. We were 20 participants and two thirds were Australians of which half a group of ladies in their fifties having left their husbands alone at home.. we had quite a laugh... ;-) We also had one lesson on decoration of plates. Please admire particularly the rose I prepared from a tomato skin..

When coming back into town, I realised however that it was not true that one of the recommended tailor shops was open throughout the new year festival, as one of the Australians had told me. Everything closed !!! Sh.... !!!! (see the empty sowing room below ...) I was so annoyed and angry with myself and most of you would have been surprised when they had seen me in this hour or two.

In the end, after wandering around quite a bit, I found three possibilities (all non recommended places). And I took the risk.. It was more expensive than I wanted, but still really cheap for European standards: 100 % wool with 100 % silk lining (the An area is also famous for the silk production; see the silk worms on one of the picture..) .. I just hope that everything will turn out fine and that they do not rip me off.. I will know tomorrow afternoon at 4 pm when I have to go there for the fitting. Then they will do further adjustments (if necessary) and the day after the suit will be ready. Please, cross all the fingers you have for me... ;-)

Now it is dinner time... ;-)

Imperial City of Hue

I explored Hue in two days: the main sights are the Imperial Enclosure (with the Purple Forbidden City and other palaces around) and the royal tombs a little outside of town. This is the heritage of the Nguyen dynasty who ruled the country from 1804 to 1945, when the Emperor Bao Dai abdicated in favor of Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary government. The city went through tough times during the Vietnam War, when it was conquered by the Viet Cong and held for 24 days, during which the Viet Cong slaughtered around 1,000 people suspected of sympathizing with the South, and then subject to an American bombing campaign to retake the city. This distroyed major parts of the city. However, in a huge effort, the city was and is still being rebuilt. The UNESCO world heritage status helps very much in this undertaking.

I rented a bicycle to explore the tombs. However, given the poor state of the bicycle and its small size, it was not that easy to get around and I looked probably quite ridiculous on this thing. At least it was a great laugh for many people along the road. But it is was fun to travel slowly and the rice fields passing by twith the people working there... while I was on holiday.. ;-) Unfortunately, people were too far away and it was a mistake to take the picture with the digital zoom as the resolution is so bad that I cannot publish any of the pics except one (see below). But I just love these conical hats everybody is wearing here: the fishermen on the boat, the people working in the fields... especially women because they want to keep a pale skin. They sometimes even wear a scarve underneath to cover most of their faces in order not to get tanned. It seems to be an insult to a Vietnamese women to tell her that she has a nice tan (and in Europe it is just the opposite, everybody wants to get a nice tan.. ;-) cultures are really different). I also saw an elephant and his owner just next to the street and the elephant was ripping out small banana trees of a plantation and enjoyed eating them. But nobod around seemed to worry.. perhaps this was his personal garden and the banana trees were just planted for him, but it did not look like it..

The tombs are all in a magnificent setting, beautiful landscape (on a hill or on the side of a river). The weather however, was cold and really cloudy, so the picture does not look that attractive, but this would change so much woth a beautifuk blue sky behind.. but for my friends and colleagues in Brussels this is not anything new.. ;-) At the end of the day it even started raining, which was not very pleasant on the bike.

Below you see the soup I had for lunch on the market (see picture) . It was very tasty and everybody has them in the street or on the market. .. ;-) And yet again, I loved to stroll through the local market's lively tiny streets. Just walk through and experience the atmosphere.. there are always plenty of things happening: people bargaining, arguing, shouting at each other, people carrying incredible amounts of stuff in their baskets, etc. It is just fascinating. I took loads of photos - again!!

In the evening I went to a typical trourist restaurant recommended bu the Lonely Planet, which was - I think - a real rip-off. The really nice thing about it was the decorations: I particularly liked the fried spring rolls served on tooth-sticks which they stuck into a half pineapple set up as a peacock !! (see picture). On the way to the restaurant I got lost since the motorbike-taxi-driver said he knew where the restaurant was, but in fact did not. He problem was that an English speaking colleague of his negotiated evything with him and the guy did not speak a word of Englisg. I cannot blame him, since I do not speak Vietnamese.. but it was extremely annoying.. It took ageds and the help of two teenage girls to make him understand that he went too far and we have to go back .. Whereas the whole day I had to tell all the hundreds of moto-drivers that I do not need their services and once I wanted to take one there was none. I had to walk almost for a kilometer before I saw one..

Pictures:

- me with onbe of the statues of a guard of one of the tombs
- detail of a tomb made out of peices of porcellaine
- always take your shoes off before entering a temple !!
- market impressions
- incens shops (I saw how they are produced.. quite interesting..;-))

Finally: photos !!!

Finally I made it !! I have uploaded the pictures I had promised for a long time. The Angkor pictures, however, still have to wait as they areon a CD-rom and I cannot find an internet cafe which has functioning cd-rom drives available for public.

I also updated the text of the section "a day on the boat" since I forgot something. New text is marked in bold at the end.

Trip back to Vietnam

I am a little behind my schedule. Sorry for this. Two days ago I arrived in the imperial city of Hue in Vietnam. My trip was a bit complicated as this was the other flight which had been cancelled due to the excellent servics of the travelagency in Hanoi (for those who still remember the long and boring story of me wanting to save some dollars by buying the internal flights directly in Vietnam...). They had then booked me a flight (only business class was still available) to Da Nang, around 110 km south of Hue. The problem was just that I arrived auite late and all the trains and buses by that time had already left. Therefore I tried to get a stand by ticket for one of the flights to Hue or an earlier flight to Da Nang. This turned out to be impossible. And for the first time in my life, I was really frustrated for not being able to communicate effectively with people because of language difficulties. My tiny bits of Vietnamese were not enough to explain the complexity of the situation neither was the level of English of any of the ladies from Vietnam Airlines at Ho Chi Minh airport. I had already tried when checking in in Phnom Penh, but there I was told that this operation could only be done in Vietnam.. (I wonder why ??)

In the end, after one hour of hassle and in-depth-reflexion on all the options, I just decided to leave everything as it is and to see what I can do when arriving in Da Nang. I then profited from the business class lounge - something I had never experienced before and I have to say that I could get used to this...

Once arrived in Da Nang, I asked at a desk for taxi services and was told that a taxi would cost 50 US $. But I was lucky: A Vietnamese lady also wanted to gothat way and so we shared the taxi and the costs and I safely made it to Hue, where I arrived at 9 pm. The very nice Vietnamese lady that I shared the taxi with (by the way: we spoke French together !!) tried to convince me not to go to the hotel where I had booked and said that it was a very bad hotel. Knowing this trick from Hanoi, I thougt I was particularly lever to insist to go thereand was especially paying attention to where we were going. She directed the taxi to the right hotel. After having seen, or better smelled my room, I thought that she might have been right. The hotel certainly has seen better times: the room smelled like as if no window had been opened for ages and there was mould in the corners.. After having opened the windows for a while it was actually not that bad anymore..

I still went out for dinner to a place recommended on the Lonely Planet. A restaurant on wooden stilts with Vietnamese people only (which as such is positive), but the problem was that ut was a quite vulgar young crowd, invited by a 40 year old Vietnamese living since nore than 20 years in the US. They were 6 and had already emptied 3 boxes of Carlsberg (with 24 bottles each) and were eating like pigs and spitting on the floor every three or four seconds. The "American" behaved like the big hero and had to show to all the others how rich he was. His English was really bad, escpecially for having lived in the US for 20 years... He wantedto chat with me telling me how cheap everything was here and that he could show me a place where to get a woman for the whole night for only 20 US $. He could not at all understand why I would not do that.. He touched the waitress all the time who became quite angry with him. I ate my soup and grilled fish really quickly and got out of there really quickly...

Phnom Penh

Two days ago I visited the main sites in Phnom Penh. I started with the Genocide museum, as it was just opposite my guesthouse (see picture of my nice and comfy room there). The buildings were under the regime of the Khmer Rouge a secret prison and torture centre where thousands of people got tortured and then after having been brought outside town (to the so called "killing fields") were killed. Before it had been a school which they transformed into small and larger cells (see picture) and "interrogation rooms". A very interesting photo exhibition showed the faces and stories of victims and of those working there for the Khmer Rouge. It was particularly interesting how those working there justified it. But compared to most others, they had at least the courage to have their photograph made and say a few words on the matter. A lot of the photos were scratched with comments in Khmer (see picture), particularly of those saying that they did not regret anything and actually there were several of them. As in other countries, which had overcome a terror regime, the "big bosses" seemed to have got away whereas the smaller figures, at least some of them , ended up in jail.

It was quite a heavy experience, but necessary in order to better understand what had happened in this country.

In the afternoon, I visited the National Museum where a lot of the main statues and reliefs of the temples of Angkor had been brought to. Beautiful with a very nice inner garden (see picture)! The French had however chopped off some of the heads of the statues and still display them in the Musee Guimet in Paris.. I also visited the Royal Palace (seepicture), which has a temple with a floor made of several thousands of silver tiles weighing 1 kg each ! On top of it a life-sized Buddha statue made of gold (90 kg) with more than 1300 diamonds on it !!! I wonder why I am official in the European Commission and not King of Cambodia !! ;-) Actually, as I was told, the current king is gay and not yet married. Perhaps I should give it a try ?? ;-) On this topic I read in the Lonely Planet that, quite surprisingly, already around 30 years ago, the former king of Camobodia introduced equal rights for gay people, including same sex marriages !! Whereas in Europe, America and the rest of the world, at that time, we were still in the dark Middle Ages on that issue..

In the evening, I went out !! A very nice local bar, with only few tourists, and then I joined several locals when they proposed to go to a club: "the Heart of Darkness" - what a name !! ;-) The place was packed with young Cambodians and some expats and tourists. The atmosphere was great and the music good (much better than in most places in Brussels actually ...). The only thing I strongly disliked was the behaviour of some of the Western man there behaving as what they were: sex tourists just after the local women. Quite disgusting to see that, but at least no minors were involved.. Sex tourism is a growing problem in Cambodia whereas Laos is dealing with this quite well it seems. Nevertheless, only a very little minority of the people were there for this and I had lots of fun dancing and talking... I think I only went to bed at 4 in the morning. ;-)