A Day in the Park with the Butterflies

No Halong Bay trip – just looked way too touristy despite what some were saying to the contrary. So off the slightly beaten track it was then to Cuc Phuong National Park about 120km South West of Hanoi. Took nearly 3 hours to get there and once off the main Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City road, the countryside became more and more impressive. Along the way were some pretty enormous concrete factories which were eating up entire limestone karst formations as their primary raw material sources – thank goodness there are thousands of such formations in Vietnam (including Halong Bay!).
The guidebook had promised a glut of butterflies in April and May and it was true to it’s word. The butterflies were everywhere in the final run up to the entrance of the park. There were long lines of white and pale yellow butterflies weaving their way about in a courting ritual. I lost count of the number that must have ended up in the front grille of the car!
First stop at the park was the primate rescue centre which was a worthwhile venture to preserve the at risk primate population of Vietnam. Read more about it and the National Park on their websites.
The park was pristine and very well managed. Also, it was thankfully pretty empty of tourists. The park is mostly visited by Vietnamese visitors on holidays and weekends. The hike through the jungle was great if a little frustrating…heard lots of birds calling but did not spot a single one. The fruits of the butterfy courtships were evident everywhere with caterpillars dangling from the trees at the end of long silky threads. The hike was pretty strenuous with hundreds of steps in places most of which seemed to be going up. A can of Red Bull from lunch helped with the steps!
The long ride back to Hanoi was spent dozing in the vain hope it would stop me worrying about the crazy overtaking habits of the local drivers! I was very much taken aback when the driver stopped to get some diesel – taken aback because 48 litres of diesel cost just 48,000 Dong – about 2 pounds!!!! Just how much tax are we paying in the UK and what profits are the oil companies actually making on a litre of fuel??

First Full Day in Hanoi

Hanoi was even busier today as it was a working day. Thousands of motorbikes – I wonder if the drivers have to pass a driving test?? First challenge of the day was learning to cross the road. Green man signs at traffic lights meant very little to the drivers and the zebra type crossings remain a mystery as to why they even paint the white lines on the road?! The trick to crossing the road is to keep moving across unless a car or a truck is approaching you(!) as the motor-cyclists just drive around you and will give you space to move forward. It took a bit of getting used to but there were only a couple of near misses!
It was a visa day – one for Laos this time as I could not get one in London as the Loatians don’t have an embassy there. Visa issuing was done very efficiently and the young Laos man who processed it for me had a nice smile on his face when I handed over the US$40 express fee (that buys a lot of beers in Hanoi!)
Lunch was great! Barbequed meats (done right on the street) dropped into a thin soup and then served with a plateful of noodles and another plate piled high with salad type leaves. The idea is to pile the noodles into the soup, add some leaves and then slurp up with chopsticks – absolutely delicious! It was easy to order as it was the only dish that the place served.
Highlight of the day was the visit to the Water Puppet theatre. Having experienced some tourist type shows in S.E. Asia before, I feared the worst but was pleasantly surprised. It was very well done indeed although I did not have a clue what the story was about!! The puppets were beautifully made and the and the performance was well drilled.
Trip back to the hotel from the Water Puppets was on a ‘cyclo’ which is a type of rickshaw pedalled by human power (not mine!). Some pretty tough negotiations are required on the price and a ruthless streak helps. The opening offer for the trip was 100,000 Dong (about US$6.50) and the final price was less than a US$1 for a 10 minute ride!

The World on Two Wheels

They say first impressions count and my first impression of Hanoi was of two wheeled transportation. Honda mopeds everywhere carrying an assortment of riders and cargoes. Crates and crates of drinks, cages with puppies (yes, for the pot I am afraid!), parents with 2 kids, piles of wood, televisions, and a multitude of Ken Dodd tickle sticks (feather dusters for those of you unfamiliar with the King of Knotty Ash!) just a few examples.
Second impression was of the multitude of roadside eateries and the ‘very close to the ground’ stools that the patrons were sitting on and that I was soon going to experience! As the driver got closer to the hotel the crowds of bikers and pedestrians increased significantly. The hotel was tucked into a quiet corner of the ‘Old Quarter’ and was on a very narrow and quietish street – but even that did not stop a constant stream of tooting mopeds weaving their way down the alley like street.
Third impression was a good one, the hotel staff were simply great. They made a real effort to make me feel welcome. Many smiles too which was nice but as I was soon to find out, not everyone had a smile for me!
The hotel had only been open 5 months so it still felt shiny and new. The room was very narrow (like nearly all the buildings in the old quarter) and there was only about 20 cm from the end of the bed to the wall but there was a shoulder room issue as there was a flat screen TV bolted to the wall – in three days I only stubbed my toes against the wall once! As I am beginning to learn, having an exterior window in a hotel room (even one only 5 months old) is not a certainty in Vietnam. There was the tiniest amount of a view but at least they had put some nice bamboo plants (plastic ones) on the wall outside the window! What was a surprise was the computer in the room with free internet access (UK hotels could learn from this!). The huge bowl of fresh fruit (replenished daily) was a nice touch too.
Dinner that night was a case of looking to see what the locals were eating and then much pointing and animal impressions with the waiter to get an order placed. It seemed to work pretty well except the chicken drumsticks came from very small chickens that had run many marathons (a tad tough to chew!). The local beer helped wash down the chicken and noodles and the US$2 bill was a pleasant surprise. I have got to work out this beer on ice thing though!
Got to sleep OK that night and no sleeping tablet this time!

Manchester - Hong Kong - Hanoi

After the rush of trying to get the house sorted and my bags packed right up until Phil (the driver) appeared, the trip from then on ran pretty much to schedule and with no fuss. The high-light of the journey had to be my first time in Heathrow's Terminal 5 - I was impressed! After all the fuss over the opening and the lost bags, I was actually impressed by the quality and facilities in the place. It is as good as any super airport in the Far East and way better than any US or major European Airport...maybe there is hope yet that London can have great facilities for a super Olympics in 2012!
My BA flight arrived in Hong Kong 20 minutes early and all this arriving early advantage was lost in the line to get through immigration! Oh well, my bags were happily carouselling around the super efficient carousels and I was soon on an Express train into Hong Kong. I stayed at the YWCA (yes, men are allowed to stay there) in a nice clean room but with a very, very hard mattress on the bed! I hope the beds during the long trip are not as hard! As a result my first night's sleep was much interrupted and even after I took a sleeping tablet the following night, sleep was hard to experience.
On Sunday morning, the bags were packed and I was super-efficiently checked on my flight at the Hong Kong Station check-in facility - it's so good to drop off the bags this way, why did they have to close the Paddington check-in facilities? Bloody terrorists I suppose. I have no idea how the bags get to Hong Kong Airport as they don't appear to be loaded onto the passenger trains and you never seem to pass a 'bag' train on the line to the airport!!
Tried out my new Priority Pass card to get into an executive lounge at the airport and was quite happily checking http://www.bbc.co.uk/ for news thinking I had plenty of time before my flight to Hanoi...WRONG! A quick check of my boarding pass and...RUN! The last passenger for flight VN791 to Hanoi naughtily blamed a fictitious queue at security for his late boarding!
Plane was a reasonably new Airbus A321 and reasonably full too! Next to me was a reasonably chatty (to the point of too chatty) Kiwi girl about to start a new job in Hanoi. Tried my best to bury my nose in the in-flight magazine with limited success.
Flight landed smoothly at a rather hazy Hanoi Airport which looked spookily like the airport in Auckland, New Zealand - my Kiwi neighbour did not know what to make of that as she had remarked, what a cute little airport when she saw it. Needless to say, we did not chat too much after that!
Immigration and Customs check were a doddle and I got through very quickly and was met by the driver from the hotel I would be staying at.

Windy Corner

The day started off windy. The fierce easterly wind of the last 2 days rattled the small east facing windows in my bedroom all night long and then at about 6:30am a large gust was the one to get me out of bed. As usual, I had left far too much to be done before Phil (our local driver) was to pick me up at 12:00 noon. As usual the the time flew as I flew around the house! As usual I tried to multi-task my way around the chores that needed doing but like a like a handful of confetti I whooshed myself randomly around the house. Two loads of laundry (hung bravely on my whirlygig in the terrific wind), sheets stripped/changed, dishwasher unloaded, successful attempt at finding a long lost document for now my now very overdue 2007/8 tax return, moving still unpacked boxes from my Australia move (nearly 18 months ago now) from the guest room to my room (mum is having a house party while I am away!), moving precious wine from the guest room to my room (don't want thirsty guests trying out my 60th birthday party bottles of fine wine in the middle of the night), packing my new and quite cute rucksack (yes, I am 'back-packing but it has wheels and I will do what I can not to stay in back-packer hostels!), packing another bag for the Hong Kong days either side of the 'Big Trip', having breakfast (not too healthy - I ate the last Eccles cake in my cupboard but it was soooo good - I doubt they will have them in Hanoi), tidying up the lounge having made a super mess looking for important document mentioned earlier, putting away the enormous pile of ironing that I did last night, re-planting the little box tree outside my back door after it's terracotta pot mysteriously broke and fell apart in the violent winds (that's my story and I am sticking to it), retrieved washing from around the garden from the whirlygig after the super-speed winds toppled it over, turned off anything electrical around the house except the fridge, put a new tax disc in the car (grrrr....that is another story), filled the grey bin to capacity with perishables (including some gnarly garlic from before Christmas!), wheeled grey bin outside the gate (and hope that someone will be very neighbourly and put it back in my garden), buy TV licence on-line (I really thought I had set up a direct debit last year - obviously not), had three cups of coffee (not one after the other), had a long shower, thought about hoovering (decided against it - sorry mum! The vacuum cleaner is under the stairs!), spoke to mum on the phone and then finally (and thankfully) brought my bags downstairs into the kitchen and was spooked when I saw Phil at the back door - 2 minutes early!! Phew! Talk about 'just-in-time'! Phil kindly loaded my two larger bags into the car while I less than diligently checked around the house one last time. Lock the door and load my two carry-ons into the car, sit in the passenger seat and we set off ...well we went about 2 yards! I had left my phone in the house! Say goodbye to the house one last time and then drive off into the battling easterly for the drive to Manchester Airport.

Cars - what colour is yours?

What does you car say about you? Did you choose the colour, did you buy it on the recommendation of another or do you really just not care?

I have had access to various cars (through ownership and company cars) since I passed my driving test (first time pass!) in September 1987. The first car I was given was a white Vauxhall Cavalier with a 1.3 litre engine. A few days after I got the keys to this company car, I discovered that the day before it was handed to me, it came out of the repair shop having being in a pretty severe front end smash. I spent most of the time wondering if the front end would drop off on my many trips to and from London from the North-West. My manager at the time was concerned about the car's history and managed to get me a red BMW 318. Wow, I had been driving for just 2 weeks and the prospect of having access to a Beemer was tremendously appealing. Huge disappointment though when I sat in the drivers seat!!! The car was obviously designed to be driven by vertically challenged Bavarians. I would have suffered a permanent crick in the neck if I had taken that car. So I handed the keys back and took back the white cavalier with it's smaller engine and considerably less street cred. In early January 1988, I handed in the keys prior to being posted to Hong Kong. I would not get a set of keys to another car for 3 years!

In January of 1991 I was transferred from Hong Kong to South Carolina, USA (talk about a culture shock!). I was given a long term hire car (for 2 months) until a suitable company vehicle could be arranged for me. The hire car was a maroon Mercury Tracer (a fancy version of a Ford Escort) with a 1.8 litre engine (so small for an American car!!) . I liked it so much that I got a silver Mercury Tracer as a company car but the company insisted it was an automatic (90+% of cars in USA are automatics) in case other employees needed use to the vehicle - so a 'stick-shift' was out of the question! The car was reliable but despite it's attempts to have a 'European' feel, the velour seats and the bizarre mechnical seat belt arrangement made it very American. It also felt particularly small against the typical gas guzzler Detroitmobiles that were still prevelant in the early 1990's in the USA.

It was in the USA that my penchant for more unusal vehicles surfaced. A new car from Dodge (at the time a much maligned and not-taken-seriously car producer) caught my eye. It was the Dodge Stealth R/T- the result of a collaboration with Mitsubishi who sold their version as the Mitsubishi 3000GT. Amazingly, the Dodge version was more eye-catching than the 3000GT - especially in the pearlescent egg shell white colour I opted for. The only option I did not take out on the car was automatic transmission. It seemed inapporiate to have an automatic with a V6 under the 'hood' and 250+ BHP! I was the dealer's first customer to take a Stealth and the dealership staff lined up on the forecourt as I drove off. I loved that car....such power and satisfaction.

On my return to the UK from the USA I had to very reluctantly sell the Dodge Stealth. That was a sad day!

Despite 5 years overseas working my way up the greasy pole of promotions, the best car the company could give me in early 1993 was a red Vauxhall Cavalier! It did though have a phone installed in it!! I did a lot of miles in that car but never cared too much for it and regarded it as a work horse. Later that year after redundancy, I returned the keys. Then started another period of non-car ownership as I lived in London and decided a car was more a liability than an asset there.

When I started with IMS in May 1995, a car was on offer and the tax situation on company cars was still pretty reasonable. I opted for a white Peugeot 405 with a diesel turbo engine. It was quite a nice car and always seemed to have plenty of uuummmpphh despite being diesel. I was amazed at how much less fuel it took than my previous all petrol cars. It did though seem to get through batteries and it was only when a battery replacement guy came to house and fitted a 'truck strength' battery did the starting problems disappear. The car had several trips to Europe through the Channel Tunnel and I made full use of the large boot to stock up on French goodies on the way back home!

The keys of the Peugeot were handed back in December 2001 when I decided it was better to go for the cash for car option at work because the company car tax situation was just not favourable for me. Also, I was ready for a change. My next car was a hate it or love it vehicle. It was a dark blue Chrysler PT Cruiser. I loved it (apart from the turning circle of an ocean liner!). It was a bit noisy (wind) at speed but it was a very comfortable car to sit in and drive. It was a head turner too, especially on the fairly frequent trips up North where it was still quite a rare sight

The PT Cruiser was sold in March 2005 just before I went out to Australia. It is still being well looked after by the person I sold it to.

In Australia I drove around in a anonymous Holden for a couple of months while waiting to take the keys of a silver Mercedes C200 Kompressor that was being handed to me by my predecessor on his retirement. The Merc looked nice, was only 9 months old, had every extra possible and could leave traffic lights avec tout vitisse, however, it really was not a suitable car for a 1.93m tall man! I had to put the seat all the way back making it impossible for anyone with legs to sit behind me. I had to put the seat as low as it would go to prevent my head from being wedged against the roof. The resulting effect was to give me terrible back pains anytime I drove the car for more than an hour. I bitched and moaned to my boss about the unsuitability of the car for a tall Area Vice President and complained that I was the only AVP in his management team that did not have a chauffeur!!! Well, the other AVPs were in India, China, South Korea and Philippines and I guess chauffeurs came cheap there!! My boss relented and let me get a car that was more suitable to my position. Heads were turned when I opted for the fairly recently introduced Chrysler 300C. What a car!!! It was magnificent, all 5.7 litres of Hemi glory and a wealth power under my right foot. As with the PT Cruiser, this new beast of a car turned heads wherever it went. I so miss that car, it was just perfect.

On my return to the UK I opted for a car allowance again but was subsequently made redundant for the second time on returning from an overseas posting! As part of my divorce settlement, I agreed to buy the Lime Green VW Beetle that my wife had bought while I was in Australia. What a come done after the magnificence of the Chrysler!! It is a high spec Beetle but I miss the power under my right foot. I still have the Beetle and I guess it is head turner too...especially the colour it is! I think it will be the only lime green car I will ever own!

What colour is yours?!

Ups, Downs and Ups of Life

A year ago, everything was falling apart in my life. A year later having experienced a major move from Australia back to the UK, redundancy, selling an apartment in London, seeing my son move to the USA with his mother, the loss of my brother Paul unexpectedly and suddenly one day before his 48th birthday, my divorce and my mum needing hospital treatment I sometimes wonder how I managed to get through 2008 all in one piece, but I did. My smile never completely deserted me though and my close friends and family stuck by me through the deep dark days and nights. There were positive experiences though during the year and they helped me mostly maintain my 'the glass is half-full' optimism that gets me through life.

Everything now seems so much calmer for me and life is getting more positive than negative. People often talk about life being a challenge and perhaps this is not the approach to take. Life is about experiences, some of them good, great, fantastic and maybe unbelievable and yet some them are sad, depressing, painful and maybe unbelievable too. The sum of all these experiences make up a life. No-one really gets 'issued' challenges and in the same way they don't really get 'offered' opportunities. People find the challenges and the opportunities themselves. Is it fate to be in the right place/wrong place at the right time/wrong time? Perhaps yes, but then again perhaps no. Is it possible everything that happens to us is of our own making? I guess what I am trying to say is that we should stop looking to blame and start to accept the things that happen to us. Maybe if we embrace the good with the bad we can have a better understanding on how to truly experience a better life and that perhaps this would rub off on the people we love and care for.

Going through a bad patch in life has the potential to make your life perpetually miserable or it can make you realise that there are many aspects of a life that make it worth living, no matter how bad the circumstances might be!

Give someone a hug today...when was a hug ever negative?!