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Better late than
never, so here is my long overdue update.
To start the year,
the most worthwhile experience to describe is the Lunar New Year or as they
call it here: Tet. It happens in
February and this year, given that is falls on a weekend, everyone got 9 days
off. This is a big challenge for
businesses that work internationally like us, given that to have workers work
during Tet costs a minimum of 300% multiplied by hours and days. But that is the current reality and it gets
built into price of doing business.
Tet is anticipated
by everyone and reminds me of Spain and people waiting for the holly week. They say that people work all year to save
enough money to go home and buy gifts for everyone. It is a tradition for people to return to
their villages so Saigon becomes a very pleasant place with little traffic and
noise.
Right before Tet, it
is customary to get a peach blossom tree in the south with yellow blossoms and
a cherry blossom tree in the north. Prices range from several dollars for a small
one to hundreds of dollars for big ones.
It is considered lucky if the tree blooms exactly during the New Year
and has many flowers. And they seem to
do so on queue: it looks very magical.
On the first day of
New Year everyone awaits their lucky money envelopes: people purchase red gold
envelopes and put money bills into them to later exchange with family and
friends. There are some important rules
around this activity: bills should be brand new, never used, amount depends on
relationship (kids and older parents get most) and middle age people get almost
none, given that they can earn. I was a
bit disappointed when I went to my offices on the new years day and handed out
hundreds of envelopes to my staff (yes, all 1200 staff get one!), yet the boss
got none. After expressing my
bewilderment to my management team after I did a lucky draw of envelopes for
them also, I ended up getting a few, I think because they felt bad. So I don't think I will be starting any new
trends on lucky money, simply will have to adjust my expectation for next
year.
One more thing:
seemed that all the excitement was anticipating the new year and the lucky
money: people receiving the money treated it like it was normal, I was really
surprised at the discrepancy of the build - up to it and then very low key
reactions. So when it comes to really
celebrating, I say Spain wins.
Just before the new
year we had year end parties for our employees in both locations. Those were big gala dinners and
entertainment, something that in the western world got cut out of company
budgets long ago. My managers encouraged
me to do a little Vietnamese singing, so after some practice, I did and it was
a big hit. Even though it was a few
lines of very famous song, staff were screaming so loud I could not hear
myself.
Also, I got to wear
a traditional Vietnamese Ao Di (won't
even try to explain how to pronounce it), and when walking downtown with my
lady friend, I was a total celebrity: both local people and foreigners thought
it was awesome!
After a few days in
the deserted city on new year, we decided to go to Malaysia for s short
getaway. It was an interesting trip:
country is well developed, lots of construction, very good prices and amazing
shopping. We hit majority of the tourist
things with the highlight being the Petronas towers, dressed up in burka and
visited biggest mosque in KL, had some nice food and even tried a shisha for
the first time (a light version of tobacco in a water filtered contraption).
We stayed in a good
apartment close to the city that featured a rooftop infinity pool and bar that
had a view out of this world.
Overall impression:
nice clean country with good food, millions of tourists and a traction and
great shopping. However, the service and
local knowledge of people was astoundingly poor. Taxi drivers haggled the price every time
despite the fact that it is illegal, they had no clue where city's mail Islamic
art museum was and people working in services could not have been less helpful. Maybe we just hit an unlucky string of
events, but the feeling of the surroundings completely did not match the people
living in KL.
We were supposed to
take a side trip to Singapore, but that
did not work out as we underestimated the time it was going to take to get
there, about 6 hours on a bus, so left it for next time.
In March, Sam came
to visit on his way from Australia to Vancouver. It was very nice to have him and to show him
some of the local lifestyle. I think he
was quite happy to be pampered for a week, to meet my friends and enjoy some
Vietnamese cuisine. We went to the
famous Cu Chi tunnels that were used during the Vietnam war by the resistance
fighters. We even crawled into some of
the tunnels: I did one and could not imagine how people could live for years in
them, considering the ones we went into were enlarged for tourists and we still
had to crawl hunched down. Not a good
place for anyone afraid of confined spaces.
Sam did some extra crawling as he was a bit more adventurous, we tried
some tapioca food they used in the war and got to shoot some AK 47 rounds at
the range there. Interesting place with
very dark past. Sam left to make room
for Cathy and the girls coming next.
