René Seifert – Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

… which is not just the title of a comedy-drama movie of the 80s, but also serves well as a motto for travelling in this lush and vibrant country. In the first place that means: Things start really early in Vietnam. Breakfast at 6 am and even in top-category hotels like Majestic in Saigon it ends at 9.30 am. So you better get up with the sun, before the hunger goes under with you. Then latest at 7 am the the omnipresent tsunami of motorbikes will start rushing through the city with each and every driver pursuing his  ambition for the day under the mandatory helmet. 

As Vietnam is so full of beautiful people, landscapes, situations and expressions, it is photographers' paradise. I took some 300 shots, here on my Flickr-set. If I had to select my favourite one, it's this, from a young woman at a street market in the Mekong-Delta who is selling live chicken and ducks. 

Overall, as we learnt from our Vietnamese tour-guide Long, that "if it moves, it's edible." The Vietnamese cuisine will not eschew stuff like crocodile (there are farms from breeding them), lots of eel, sometimes even dog (I made a pass on that) and in various forms the snake will trail its way onto the table. What I tried, seems to be a true speciality (here are all the pics on my first collage on Slide): The snake gets brought alive to your table, in this case it was a venomous one, where it gets killed with a knife on the spot, its blood gets poured into a jar of vodka, likewise its still pulsating heart in another one after which it goes down with a toast. As Long explained: "Snake blood makes you strong!" 

I am not exactly sure about that, yet as I got critical comments for "killing innocent lives" for this snake-drink, let me tell you my view: From the perspective of a strict vegetarian, this might indeed me true, and then in very general terms for each and every piece of meat you consume. This moral stance is fully accepted. Yet, the very fact that the act happens in front of your very eyes, for me at least brings back the reality what each and every meal incurring meat means: Killing lives. When I saw it, I also felt lightly at unease – admittedly. Yet I also felt that I am not just an accidental bystander, but rather – if not the actual agent of the action – its very promoter. I for everyone being critical on that, the same person should consider the poor lamb in a remote slaughterhouse when all you see and taste is the yummy sausage on the plate in front of you. Finally, to just finalize on the snake: We did not "waste" it just for the sake of its blood, but we ate it in total in a soup which simmered in front of us, and made it a dignified element in the food chain. How it tastes? Let's say chewy and hard-bitten, but not bad at all.

Vietnam has been one of the darlings of the emerging markets, as the Economist neatly explains in its recent special "Half-way from rags to riches" with average annual growth rates of 7.5 % GDP, an elevation of a majority of its people from poverty and an open and accessible economy to foreign investors. One thing the puzzles me when I travel the length of the world, is the concentration of top-designer brands all over the place at one spot. In Saigon, how everyone still calls what officially is Ho Chi Minh City, it's on Dong Khoi Street where the Versaces and Luis Vuittons have set up shop.

How well visited these will be during the current economic crisis, remains to be seen, looking into them these days the ratio between shop assistants and customers was consistently 5:0. But still, it show that affluence has arrived to a country which used to be sealed off, at the brink of a famine and its infamous "boat people" being the living nightmare on the shores of its neighbours. But then there is still the "Old Vietnam" which constitutes the true charm of travelling. Take the floating market of Cai Rang on the Mekong River where basically the entirely life happens on the water. Babies get born on the 15 meters long family boat which deals for one season only with pineapples (the entire hulk is full of them), exchange of goods and money happens on the river, couples get married, whole families live, eat and sleep on one boat. We even came across a funeral ceremony taking place on a vessel. Small scale business are around as well, what was approaching our boat was something like the "Starbucks" of Cai Rang.

The lady would bind her vessel to ours, pour coffee in a glass, add super-sweet thick milk with ice-cubes and blend it all together. So this is your Vietnamese version of an "I-Caffeee" (so the pronunciation for "ice-coffee :-) to go or rather "to float". Especially in the South people are so extremely hospitable and friendly, would greet you, children smile at you and make you really feel welcome in their country. It's quite amazing to reflect what the same kin of people have gone through when U.S.-forces bombed, shelled and gassed their homeland back to stone-age during the Vietnam-war. Although all this has to be put into the specific historical context of that era, I do hold a lot of the respect for the perseverance and resilience of the Vietnamese people to eventually prevail. A site not to be missed out for a close-up inspection are the Cu Chi tunnels close to Saigon, where the Vietcong rebels spun a 250 km underground network for surprise attacks on the G.I.s. before vanishing as quickly as they had emerged. 

Yet, Vietnam is not just forest and river, it's also beautiful beaches, as on the island of Phu Quoc in the Golf of Thailand, just 15 km south of Cambodia. In a rather simplistic comparison it reminded me of Koh Samui in Thailand 15 years ago: simple beach huts,  rudimentary restaurants, street-markets with food stalls and the vast majority of streets still dust and not concrete. But things are changing also on Phu Quo, too, lots of development for hotels is happening, one fantastic 5-star boutique resort "La Veranda " is already there (I recommend :-), streets are getting done and an international airport is in the planning phase. The nice thing, though, that at present is still has maintained its picturesque and genuine flair where remote and secluded beaches are in reach of a 45-minute motorbike-ride over the bumpy street. 

In 9 days I am aware that I have barely scratched the surface of Vietnam, maybe dug a bit deeper in the South. Reversely, there is still so much to explore to the North, in Hanoi and its vast hinterland in the mountains. I feel I have to come back for more.