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.