Hai Phong, Socialist Republic of Viet Nam

After a day in Hanoi, I'm in Hai Phong (2 hours drive north, on the Gulf of Tonkin) for the week.

Hai Phong is a lovely little French colonial style town. Lots of great old two-storey buildings in the area we’re in, with tree lined boulevards. The French came here in the 1870’s. Actually, Hai Phong is the third largest city in Viet Nam. Wouldn’t know it from the area we’re in. Arrived here Sunday night, and go back to Hanoi Friday for the weekend, then back here Sunday night for another three nights.

This is a port city, and the Americans heavily mined the harbour here in the early days of the war in an attempt to cut off supplies to the North Vietnamese. It didn’t work.

Staying in a two story police guest house. Four large rooms upstairs. My translator, Anh, is next door. The pictures are of the guest house, and the street out front.

The guest house is quiet, large room and large bathroom but incredibly “basic”. No soap (I have some packed just in case of this), one tiny towel hidden away in a locked drawer in the desk. TV with 40 or so channels, 4 of which are English and 3 of those are sports. Usual hard as a rock bed. The red, orange and white bedspread and matching pillow cases are adorned with large white feathers and “Happy Birthday”. What’s that about? But, there is air conditioning!

Turns out what I thought was the bed spread is in the mattress cover. One blanket to put over myself. I had hoped to use that as extra padding. Bed was far too hard to sleep.

We moved down the street and around the corner at lunch to the hotel “50 Dien Bien Phu”, which coincidentally, is also the address.

Every town has a Dien Bien Phu street to commemorate the ass kicking the Viet Minh (forerunners of the North Viet Nam leadership) gave the French in 1954 at a village (near the northern border with Laos) by that name. That battle was a decisive victory for the Vietnamese, and marked the beginning of the end of French rule, and the birth of the independent North Viet Nam. Very big moment in the birth of a nation.

Constant surprises. The workshop materials for Monday aren’t here. The group was 1/3 the planned size. The three-day course starting Tuesday that was to have 35 participants has 75. I’m getting used to this. What you plan for is invariably not what is actually going to take place. The 200 + page participant manual with all the activities, glossary, etc. wasn’t copied. Then the PowerPoint projector crashed for half an hour. Ah, the life of international consulting…