sapijantan: June 2011

My inspection and familiarization trip this May took me first to Laos. After a short stopover in Hanoi I met my colleague and one of our clients in the airplane to the capital Vientiane. The time spent together with them became really nice. Guys drive pick-ups. Girls are pretty. Again I got the feeling that anywhere people are more relaxed than in Vietnam. The people are cool, somehow pure, and gentle, in a way also artistic. It is in a way more cosmopolitan, and hospitality concepts are much more beautiful than back in Vietnam. We visited many interesting sights, hotels, restaurants and had nice chats exchanging on the business, on Asia, the travel industry and other things. The trip took us overland from the quiet capital via Vang Vieng through valleys and meandering mountain roads past villages that seem to have been spared from what we call "civilization" to the tranquil and laid back Luang Prabang. Here we met a group of German travel agents. Also these people turned out to be very nice and it was great to finally meet the faces behind the e-mail exchanges of the past year. Our lovely guide did a great job, we had also visited his family at home and the trip and his nice companionship will never be forgotten.

Stopover night at the luxury Sofitel Plaza at Hanoi's West Lake and Truc Bac lake - rewarding views and old memories

On one day my colleague from Germany and I did a private inspection and on the way back to the hotel came across a curve on a country road where a girl was lying on the ground. People were waiving and we stopped our car and rushed to the accident site. Nobody knew what to do, so I went to the injured girls to see what's up. I checked her pulse and her breath. Neither of them existed. Her hands had already turned white and her girlfriend told us that she was already lying there for twenty minutes. Without being a doctor it seemed to me useless to start any reanimation. Also her mouth was blood covered and we had no respiratory mask, and I have to admit that I was also scared, as HIV rates in this region are high. I had made the decision out of an overall appraisal of the facts. We loaded her on to a pick-up truck and told the driver and her friend to bring her to a hospital. The rest of the day I was questioning my action. Did I do the right thing or the wrong? First we need to protect ourselves, then can help others, people always say. I hoped it was right my judgment of the situation was correct. I was scared that even though the situation seemed hopeless, I could at least have tried to reanimate her. The only relief came two days later when our guide told me that the people in the hospital said the head injuries of the girl were so severe that there was nothing we could have done. Still I hope that he did not only say this to calm me down. But possibly it is true; she was dead for long when we came there. She had a beautiful face. I won't forget her friend crying and repeating "Le, Le,…".

Here some pictures from Laos:

The offerings are being taken away right after their donation - an everlasting circle maintained

Pilgrimage tourism at one of Vientiane's oldest and most important temples

A temple gate in Vientiane

The nightlife in the cosy city

Night markets along the Mekong River banks

Street stalls being set-up on late afternoons

A monastery in the city centre

Amenities at one of Vientiane's most luxurious boutique hotels

A simple but stylish boutique guesthouse in the city

Pool at a hotel that will undergo EarthCheck benchmarking as the hotel chain's global strategy

A small luxury hotel in Vientiane…

…and hints on directions that I will be taking.

A Vientiane monument

On a country road in Laos - such one would be one of my sins if I could afford it…

The Buddha Park created by a Lao exile artist

Offerings at the Buddha Park

Indochine style at one of the city's boutique hotels

Public transportation in Vientiane

Seen on the overland road from Vientiane to Luang Prabang between breathtaking valleys

Vang Vieng - a town of stunning nature and drug tourism

Backpackers watching soaps in a Vang Vieng retsaurant

Roadside fish-market somewhere in Laos

Salinas in Laos

Garden at one of the most stylish boutique hotels in Luang Prabang

A restaurant in Luang Prabang

Five-star dinners with our guests from Europe

Luang Prabang from the top

Another monastery…

…and nice chats with the monk after he finished his phone call.

A temple

Four groups of people - who am I?

A monastery...

...with displays of the Buddhist purgatory.

Entrance to the Pak Ou Caves

Net fishing demonstration at the jungle camp

Storage room at the nearby Khmu village

A Khmu processing peanuts

The Khmu village on the hill

Hosts and guests and strange encounters

Sculpturing monks at a temple in Luang Prabang

A temple façade telling of old history in Luang Prabang

After great days in Laos we flew then to Siem Reap in Cambodia, which I hadn't visited for 7 years. The city has grown and much has changed. The temples of course were still the same, but this time I did not have the luck to be there alone as before during the SARS epidemic when people were scared to travel to Asia. Many days with people from the industry I have also again seen that our business is more or less scratching on the surface. This is probably even valid for companies in our business that are supposed to operate in a sustainable manner or try to go deeper. In the end it is all the same. I realized, that my interests are located on a much higher level, and that much of the things I have learnt in my degree program, the languages I have learnt, the experiences I have collected, the friends I have, the support I always had and the inspiring people I had often met and inspiring texts I had red, should enable me to much higher goals. Somehow it is all more or less meaningless what the majority of people do. I saw a few idealists on my trip, people working for NGOs, people engaged in clearing landmines. When to start with doing something more meaningful when not as soon as possible? Life is so short. The example of the young girl has just shown it. Whatever you do, work hard, have the change to see places that other people don't see, even if you make millions of dollars, in the end it is all meaningless, if it does not fulfill you and the people around you in a spiritual way. Somehow the only right way would to become a monk. Monks in Laos took the food of the other people. So with this system, not everybody could become a monk, unless they start to grow their food in gardens instead of receiving it as a donation. A kind of "real communism" would possibly be the only "good" system, similar to the form that had many hundreds of years ago existed in the Pacific islands, possibly, even though also there not everybody had the same rights. Anyhow, today, communism is probably utopia. So we need to make the career in a corporate world. But there, a middle management position does somehow not make much sense to me. Often it seems to me that either a high ranking position, be it in a business, as owner or shareholder, as member of the elite, be it intellectual, political, religious, or whatever or a position as a no-name on the lowest level would both be more advantageous. In a middle position one is to busy to enjoy, and still has too little benefit to feel that the work is an investment for some return in other form; at least in the tourism industry. Possibly for me the right way would be to finally and seriously become invoiced in academics, do research, and thus be more challenged intellectually, have a higher prestige, a more interesting job, less routine, and even less stress and more freedom and time to launch other private initiatives, be it for profit or not for profit, besides the job. I would not unlearn my language skills but improve them. I would work more in-depth again. I will continue to occupy myself with it in the next months. PhD is in my mind, a mini boutique hotel also, becoming involved in auditing and standardization (social & environmental), possibly even with an own consulting firm also. Let's see what comes up…. But it needs to be started, soon.

In Cambodia I had a great driver for my inspection after the group had departed to Phnom Penh while I had two more days of inspections in Siem Reap. Also this country left a lasting impression once more. I left to Saigon on a Saturday evening, which is a very nice time to get home. Sunday is off. Have some phone calls with friends in the taxi on the way from airport, and my ex who occupied the apartment waiting at home with noodle soup and iced coke.

Some pictures from Cambodia: