Day 2 and 3

International Women’s Day
Wednesday March 8, 2006

International Women’s Day (IWD) today. It’s a big thing here in Vietnam – it stems back to the closed socialist days when women were recognized for one day of the year… the women in the office joke that it’s women’s day for one day and men’s day for 364 days of the year. So while IWD is celebrated across the world, it is more celebrated here in Vietnam.

The tradition is for men to give women flowers, so there were flower stalls galore and people crowding around buying everything. There are some big flower stalls on my way to work, so it was quite a sight seeing people buying flowers and carrying flowers everywhere.

Flowers are incredibly cheap here. You can get a bunch of beautiful red roses for around $2 - and they are gorgeous. You also know they are fresh - the women buy them from the markets in the morning, where they have been freshly picked in areas just out of the city completely dedicated to growing flowers.

Fresh flowers in the office as well – bunches of them. Because flowers are so cheap, we have fresh flowers everyday, but today we had more! You could smell them walking into the office.

We went out to lunch for IWD. It was a delicious buffet lunch at a nice restaurant! So many different Vietnamese foods to try! I loved it. Salads (papaya, lotus root), soups, noodles, stirfry dishes, steamed dumplings, seafood galore… and many other delights.

I’m loving the food here in Vietnam. I’m going to be rolling off the plane when I return! However, most of it is quite healthy – I just have to avoid the old lady who fries banana fritters on the street corner of the road just near my place!

While I'd tried Vietnamese food before coming here, and always loved it, it is really cool to have it on tap. I’m eating salads and everything here – which is something we were told we couldn’t do.

While I don’t want to pre-empt anything, I have to say I’ve eaten salads without a worry. We also buy vegetables and salads stuff etc at our local market, and we wash them in boiled water and a bit of vinegar and haven’t had any problem. Of course, I wouldn’t buy salad, or a dish with fresh salad in it, from a street stall, I have absolutely no concern in any kind of restaurant.

A young French girl from a company called Internews was in working on a project with Hue in the morning, so she came out to lunch with us. I enjoyed chatting with her – my age and fluent in English! It was also really interesting to hear about her work. She was in the middle of traveling across Asia working with NGOs to set up internet research training for journalists and women in NGOs, and to also set up forums for information exchange. Awesome hey! She’s from Paris, and used to handle the Eastern block countries, but is now working on Asian projects.

I love the French accent - hearing her speak on the phone was cool. I always joked with Ben that because mums mum's family were French, that I have a natural ear for the language. He always rolls his eyes :) It is certainly something I’d love to learn in years to come.

We returned to the office a little earlier than everyone else, to the office to do some work.


Tuesday March 7, 2006

I got a little lost on my way to work this morning. I was on the right street, but the numbers were all funny and the taxi driver really confused me. It doesn’t help when there is a language barrier!

I jumped out of the taxi and decided to walk along my street – Pham Ngoc Tac to see if I could recognize anything. I had a feeling I was going in the right direction but the numbers were still bamboozling me, so I ended up calling Hue to double check if I was going in the right direction. Turns out when I called, I was less than 20m from the building! I need to trust my instincts more. The good thing is, I’ll never forget now. I’ve put the bridge, the Tiger Beer sign, and the VIB bank umbrella’s firmly in my mind now.

In terms of transport, I’m catching a taxi to work until I get my bearings. I might be able to walk it eventually, but the traffic is horrendous in parts. It’s only $2 - $2.50, depends on what kind of taxi you get. I’m also going to stick with the cars rather than the Xe Om’s (riding on the back of a “motobike”).

They are a little scarey at the moment. Especially with a couple of the roads on my street. I’m really enjoying being at work and feeling useful. We have an “experts meeting” on Thursday, so there’s plenty to do and get organized.

I also finished a media release for International Women’s Day today. A different exercise to what I’m used to at the uni, but we ended up with something everyone was happy with.

Quoting people in the releases is not something they’ve done before, so there was learning on both sides.