tracks

Following the tracks of another kind of travellers… Still it is hotel rooms to live in, but everyday life and tasks have changed. One has to adapt to the unknown world of adults, change the outfit and follow the unwritten rules such as joining all kinds of social gatherings, at least to a certain amount. Privacy reduces to the hotel room and a visit to a Khmer pagoda.


However, it seems the intern will be very promising. The workshop was on corporate development plans, strategies for the functional divisions of the target companies and action-plans aiming to implement those strategies. In general it is management consultancy, in specific it shall establish efficiently and sustainable operating public wastewater facilities. My colleagues are very nice and I feel good in the team.

informal discussions: “Is it all bullshit or a good job we are doing?”


My boss is also a very pleasant person, he seems to be critical, non-opportunistic and he is settling on Bali – that makes him sympathetic. Sunday was our day off and we were invited to a trip to the riverbanks in the delta area where the Mekong river meets the ocean. I don’t know how to define where the river ends and where the ocean starts, but what is said still to be river was at that place so broad that it seemed like an ocean. But waves were brown and muddy and the locality had nothing to offer but some monkeys and pythons in cages and again: seafood. So this is nothing for me. And once more I see no potential in Vietnam for international tourism of the kind that is offered by other destinations in the region.


The way there and back was the most pleasant part of the trip, despite the fact that offroad vehicles do only make fun if you are not sitting in the trunk. The dusty roads led through the countryside of South Vietnam. It is relatively poor here, people live from petty farming and their huts are made of palm leaf. Already back at noon I spent the rest of the day with exploring the city and a Buddhist pagoda. A long chat with a monk was gave me the confidenece that we still have the option to live the way a Buddhist monk does and that there is still something different from a corporate world.


The before mentioned social gatherings are the opposite of what monks do. The local community in the province uses to drink much and hospitality means invitations that can hardly be refused. On Saturday we drank schnapps from long-drink glasses – we virtually had to. On the final evening I have chosen another strategy and didn’t drink anything. You are in a bad position as one who does not drink out of fifty people who do. But I won’t sell my individualism for shouting “một, hai, ba, yo!” and getting drunk for the sake of “friendship”. I apologized to each man who came to me in order to drink with me and downed a glass of water as a substitute. It worked.


At noon I arrived in Saigon, booked a flight to Hanoi for Sunday noon and later I will meet Jens, whom I had met in Hanoi last year and whose family became friends during my stay on Bali.