Tinker Sailor

My first thoughts as I toured Vietnam is that the Chinese influence is strong. Every where in the life of Vietnam, there's no running away from it. Be it the people (who look like Chinese), the food (pho - noodles, tidbits - chinese kueys etc...), the temples (with kings dressed in Chinese emperor's robes) , their first university (strong Confucius influence) and to the water puppet show (with it's chinese music accompaniment).

My second thoughts are this is a very poor country, and the thought revert me back to how fortunate we are in Singapore. Now I really understand why our neighbours say we are a very clean country. Our streets are actually very clean. But really, we must also thank the army of cleaners we have to keep the dirt out of our streets. But one observable fact is the lact of dust or dirt on our streets. I somehow suspect the rainy weather we have here to be part of the reason.

I recall a boat ride through Tam Coc where two middle aged ladies rowed the sampan we were in for more than 2 hours. I don't think they were paid much, because I only paid US$18 for the entire day trip, which includes a 3 hour car ride to and from the city, a lunch and a visit to some tombs. A somewhat bad experience towards the end of the trip was when these 2 ladies tried their level best to sell their "wares" to us. There was really nothing we want in their wares - which were embroideries of table cloth, T shirts, pillow cases etc... we tried to tipped them with some US coins which totalled up to US$1each, but they turned it down. We coul'nt understand why initially, but later we surmised that it was because they find it difficult to change the coins into dollar notes. Hence they refused our coins. We could'nt fathom their line of thoughts, so I gave them some Dong. But we coul'nt stomach it when they asked us to give them more Dong for 2 persons, meaning the first time we gave was for one person only. In my heart, I'm thinking that we are fortunate in Singapore where we have education that can lift every one who wants to study out of poverty and stand us up proud so we may never go begging for the favours of tourists.

I recall asking the young tour guide (Duc, who wants to be known as Duke) what the yound people aspire to be in Vietnam. I was given a rude awakening to the stark realities by his reply. He says the young wants to be politicians, because that's where the money is . Not because of the high salaries, but because of the opportunity to take bribes. Corruption is rampant in Vietnam and nothing works without a bribe. A fellow tourist from Australia told me his friend has a resort built in Vietnam experience the reality of not only paying a bribe, but to who and when to do it. To give to the wrong people would mean you have to pay others, but to give to the right people so that he can distribut it correctly. To give too early means you have to give again etc...

Blog site of Mr Kon: Photos from Sarawak

Recently went to Suzhou and saw this stall claiming to sell his food fresh.

I will be in Shantou (previously known as Swatow) China for a conference from 5 - 9 Nov.

So if you are a student of mine and reading this, you'd be delighted...Yeah? No? Sad? Happy?

Well, it's all worth the effort as you would have already made up all the lessons with me this week (6).

It will be quite a hectic week over there, and I'll be trying out the Shantou University's broadband network to see if it can support Centra.

So, meantime, I still have to do a lot of work in school before I leave - conduct short courses for industry participants. Attend workshop and meet up with people etc...Argh!!! Wish I have a clone and can send him around to represent me...:>)