The Last Day of 2006

I have stayed in Vietnam for 11 days now and it's time for some more reflections and thoughts of the life here. Due to an earthquake on Taiwan earlier this week the internet connection has been very s l o w, and still is.
The last years I have celebrated Christmas different places; last year I was in Ireland and the year before in China. One year I even celebrated Christmas Eve on an airport in Moscow, Russia that was by far the worst included the ones I have been sick! For anybody who has been there an experienced their (lack of) service will understand. So in a way I'm getting used to it, but this time maybe a bit different because I'm alone.
Outside it's around 24 C and partly sunny and it looks like it will be a nice evening/night.
I have lived in China for some time and I thought I was used to living in South-East Asia, but Vietnam is definately another piece of cake.
Chinese food is famous and rightly so. Vietnamese food is not that very different when it comes to ingredients, but they don't make it that nice and the menues in the restaurants are quite "thin" and it looks the same evrywhere. In most Chinese restaurants you get a big book with photos of the dishes and you can have a good read for quite a long time. Also the dishes here are considerable smaller...but also the people are smaller.
Shops is another story as well. In China you can get (almost) whatever you want. Here I still haven't found a shop I can buy milk and butter. There are a lot of small shops but they all seem to have the same things I don't need or I don't know what is. Luckily I have a housemaid 3 days a week who do the shopping. She came back with milk from Australia; the kind of milk that lasts forever, but the taste was mamahuhu to put it in Chinese.
The butter she found was homemade in a little tin that once had contained something else, luckily I don't understand what.
Last night I was out buying some DVD's. Not very good and updated selection but I choosed 4 so I had something to do this weekend. One of them was ok, the other ones I just have been back to the shop to change. One of the DVD's inside was something completely different than on the cover and I didn't understand a thing.
The two others were dubbed in a special way; one person only telling parts of what the Characters in the film said, like retelling the story...I think no good even for Vietnamese and no subtitles. I hope I have been luckier today.
My story today may seem to be a bit negative, but it's not meant to be like that. I like this place anyway and humans are very adaptable to various conditions, at least I am.

Christmas

It's Christmas time but I don't feel much like it. In fact it's getting warmer and nicer every day now. It's not what I'm used to from Norway where it's the darkest and coldest time of the year.
Today is like the warmest nicest day you will ever have during a Norwegian summer!

Although I've only been here less than a week I already know quite a few Vietnamese.
Nearly half of them are Catholics and the rest Buddhists or nothing. I talked with a woman at work yesterday and she said she was to Church together with her children on Christmas Eve and that the Church was packed. I said; oh, so you are a Catholic...then she laughed and said: no, I'm a Buddhist but I like Christmas and I like to go to Church and listen to Christmas carols and last year my husband even was Santa here for the children.
I felt a bit ashamed because I didn't go to Church mostly because I'm not a Catholic.
I think here is a Protestant Church as well, but I don't know where yet.
But I feel good in another way because it seems people are getting very well on with each other whatever religion they belong to.
From my time in other countries I have a lot of friends belonging to various religions and it's somewhat funny that my closest friends are Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics and Communists.......
My question is: Why is there wars going on everywhere?????
Millions of years and humans are still so stupid....we can go to space and make incredible inventions but still we are f...ing idiots, sorry.

Welcome to My New World

I arrived in Vietnam the 19th of December 2006. It was a warm welcome in many ways both because of the warm weather and the always smiling people.
I stayed in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) for a night and then continued to Dalat the day after. Dalat is a city in the Southern Highlands north of Saigon around 1500 m above sealevel. It's a beautifull place with mountains, lakes, waterfalls and forests and a comfortable climate, not cold and not very hot either.

Dalat is going to be my home for some time as I'm starting to work here for Dalat Hasfarm http://www.agrivina.com as a consultant and advisor for their flower production.

Saigon was hot, noisy and busy. The man from the company who came and picked me up at the airport surprised me by having special knowledge about Norway, my country. He asked me if I lived far from Rosenborg which is the best football team in Norway. Unfortunately I had to disappoint him but I said I had a brother who lived there.
He also knew about the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder and "The World of Sophie".
Sometimes the world is not big at all.

Dalat is a 40 minutes flight or a 4-5 hours busdrive from Saigon. It was sunny and 25 degrees C. I was very well received by evrybody at the company and they all did whatever possible to help me out and get settled there.

My first impression; A beautifull place with beautifull people. I'm living in a big house on the outskirts of the city. The city is hilly and streets are up and down and bended. The traffic consists mainly of motorbikes and scooters...in thousands, but not many cars and that's good. It seems everybody has a bike, old and young, women and men and boys and girls.
Here are lots of small nice hotels and an abundance of Cafes. A cafe is a mix of bar, pub and cafe but doesn't serve any food. Unlike the Chinese the Vietnamese seems to drink a lot of coffee as well.