I was in the habit of taking my recorder to improvise on the sand, and I decided to do so one evening after dark.  The staff had closed off the entrance to the beach however, by closing the gate and dragging a heavy couch in front of it.  They didnt want to lose their guests to a nocturnal ocean current.  I had to re-cross the length of the compound back up to the road and look for a path between houses.  I soon came to a vacant lot covered with trees and sand, with patches of an ankle-deep plant that crackled as I walked through it.  I enjoyed the sound and the feel of dry twigs snapping until the thought of snakes and sandals caused me to move back onto the sand.  The further I moved from the street lights the less I could make out on the ground, but I picked my way along and soon came to the moon bouncing off the South China Sea. A tropical beach at night is a magical place.  I stopped and stared, not sure if I should fall to my knees in wonder or shout with the waves for joy.  For a long time I gaped like a lunatic, then, hypnotized by the white moonlight and the white noise of the sea, I walked out a little and sat, never taking my eyes from the scene before me.  The recorder seemed helpless to express such wonderment, but I tried.  It was hopeless.  I finally lay back beneath a sky half of which was filled with unfamiliar stars and let the sounds of the water wash over me.  I think I dozed, but something made me wake and look to my left.  A small herd of cows, about a dozen, were coming straight at me, their hooves silent in the sand and their bodies grey shapes against the grey background.  I am a city boy who knows little of bovine behaviour except that they eat grass quietly all day and are stupid.  Would they see me?  Would they walk on me?  Would they care?  I had only moments to decide what to do, and despite their placid amble I felt like I was in front of a speeding truck.  My life did not flash before me but visions of bruises and broken bones did.  If I got up suddenly would I spook them and cause a stampede?  I got up, presenting minimal aspect.  They walked calmly by on both sides, eyeing me but paying little attention.  The man and dog following them looked at me too, and walked on.  I stared after them till they faded away, trying to calm myself and feeling very foolish, then I went home. A seaside town always has the smell of dead fish about it, but Mui Ne had something extra in the air:  the odour of nuoc mam.  Every home had large ceramic vats a metre high, with wooden covers, holding an oily and moldy looking brew of fermenting fish.  After a number of months in the hot sun, a yellowish oil is drawn off and used in nearly every Vietnamese dish.  The smell is pungent but you get used to it, and we didn't find it too offensive.  A couple of local men proudly showed us their vat garden and let us look inside them.  I am a winemaker and accustomed to fermenting musts, but this was pretty revolting.  The sauce that is thus created however, is faintly sweet and quite delicious.  Every shop had many bottles of the stuff on display and again we wondered how any of them could make a profit.  We read somewhere that unpasteurized nuoc mam can give you liver flukes, whatever those are, but we continued to enjoy the flavour with our meals - myself more than Ruth I think.

Previous articles on Vietnam: A Ramble in South East Asia: Part 5 - What a difference 30 years makes!  And the Indian restaurant in the evening brought warfare of a different kind:  coriander and cumin exploded on the palate and rich peppers built a fine fire in the mouth.  How could anyone bomb this place?  What were they thinking? A Ramble in South East Asia: Part 4 - The floating village stretched along the watercourse for some distance, and I would not have given it that name.  True, there were many small boats with families living in them, but there were also many permanent buildings on the shore.  The colourful name was probably given to promote tourist visitation. A Ramble in South East Asia: Part 3 - More than once on my I travels was painfully aware, and more than a little embarrassed, by my wealth and soft life compared to these people.  I had been reduced to bankruptcy in Canada, yet I was still far better off and had many more opportunities than these labourers.  They were cutting irregular chunks of red clay from the ground with their shovels and stacking them piece by piece, bucket by bucket, onto the circle.  What they put inside to fire the clay was not clear.  They noticed us and waved, making jokes that may or may not have been polite. A Ramble in South East Asia - Continuing Ron Hannah's observational and perceptive ramble...."We were interested in the villages around Sapa and I wanted to see Dien Bien Phu where the French were defeated in 1954.  We heard from returning travellers that it was below freezing up there, and that travel was difficult.  The spectre of a very large Australian tourist at a streetside shop trying to buy a sweater that would fit him in this land of small people, was what finally scrubbed those plans, I think." A Ramble in South East Asia - Ron Hannah, a Canadian who 'came of age' in the 1960s, the 'Vietnam War' era, takes a ramble around 21st century Vietnam.  This is the first of six 'musings'.....more to follow in the coming months..... The motorcycles of Hanoi - ah, who would have thought, in the let's-bomb-them-back to-the-stone-age sixties, that Hanoi would ever again have streets, let alone vehicles?  But vehicles it has "by the glory" (Ruth's favourite phrase), and the two-wheeled motorized variety predominates by far. Live and work in Hong Kong

Nearer the village were steaming trays of tiny silver fish.  They lay in the sun on 1 metre square wood-framed screens set out on racks a little off the ground, and they covered wide areas.  We wandered between them and up the hill away from the beach, through some narrow alleys, and came to a plant where sweating young men were dipping these screen trays of fish, about 6 deep, into boiling water fueled by a blazing fire below, in preparation for drying in the sun.  They did this all day and they smiled!

After the bustle of the village it was a pleasure to encounter a small monastery where a single monk tended a large garden.  Ruth is a gardener and she delighted in the species she recognized and puzzled over the ones she didn't.  We stood respectfully before the monks altar and he picked a few loquats for us.  On the hot and dusty road toward home, following the contour of the beach generally but not really knowing where we were, we chanced a tangy noodle breakfast from a roadside vendor named Ba, or so we think.  Later we sent her a photo, but we have no idea if it arrived.  Eating at these numerous stands is always chancy, but this time we were lucky, the food was tasty, and Ba and a few onlookers were friendly.

There was construction going on at the guest house - a 3 storey hotel or dormitory was being built by the edge of the beach.  During the workers midday break there was competition for the hammocks so we generally stayed away then.  They deserved them more than we did.  The tall coconut palms were everywhere, leaning out over the sand, and one day a wiry fellow tied a length of cloth from ankle to ankle with a tree between, and used it to shinny up the tree as easy as you please.  Soon coconuts came raining down, thumping heavily and sometimes splitting open.  One could see how dangerous they can be.  Flies were a problem, so I learned to leave something sweet, mango peelings for instance, across the table from me as I wrote.  They didn't buzz around me so much then.  Yes, the place was teeming with life - even supper was alive and one of my fresh prawns jumped off the table before I could put it into the hot pot.  I really hated to leave this place.

We had heard stories about how much faster life was in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City only if you are a government official) than in Hanoi, how much more materialistic the people were, and how high the crime rate was.  If you set your bag down a thief on a motorcyle would zip by within seconds and snatch it away.  So the stories went, but to me it seemed not much different to its northern counterpart.  The bus ride into town was uneventful, the usual shops and dusty streets, except for the neat lawns surrounding neighbourhood Catholic churches every kilometre or so with regularity.  Lawns and picket fences are unheard of in Asia, but here they were straight out of Western suburbia and looking as alien as the creed they represent.  Do Vietnamese Christians envisage heaven with a lawn and picket fence?  Buddhist and Hindu (and in some areas, Moslem) traditions have become richly intermingled here, so here was some new colour to add.  I wondered if the average western Catholic would recognize the result.  There is a cathedral in Saigon too, and its cool interior might have been welcome on the hot day we visited but for the large wedding party occupying it.

We had a cyclo guide for a high price which we later found out was the going rate, who was very informed and candid.  We would sit in the wheelbarrows attached to the front of his and his partners bicycles and they would propel us into the traffic.  You have to have faith, whatever your religion, to travel here unless of course you choose to stay at home while travelling by riding in luxury buses between Hiltons.  Ruth's driver got ahead of us on the very crowded streets, and I had to strain sometimes to see where they had got to.  My driver pointed out the old American embassy, the place in the famous photograph of desperate people trying to board a Marine helicopter as the Americans pulled out years ago.  He took us to a Cham art muserm and in the courtyard showed us a mango tree that had been scored many times with a machete - punishment for not bearing fruit.  Ruth later explained to me that this kind of stress will make some trees bear more heavily.  He pointed out shopping areas and a bookstore since we asked, and also an Indian restaurant also since we asked.  It was expensive and only so-so.

He took us to the Business district too, with its rich towers housing the leather chairs of bankers and CEOs.  We stood in a beautiful garden of flowers and carefully sculpted and trimmed bonsais while he pointed to the endless hovels on the other side of the river.  These are the homes, shacks, of the people who are paid a pittance to cross the river each day and clean those office towers, act as security, do the laundry, and towering over their poor dwellings are huge illuminated signs, a hundred metres high, with the names and logos of the corporations across the way.  Truly name recognition triumphs over human dignity here.
 

Expats Guide to Asian Sales and Marketing A No-Nonsense Expats Guide to Asian Sales and Marketing - No-Nonsense Expats Guide to Asian Sales and Marketing - Interested in making money in the Asian Market?  If you're willing to work hard the yeilds are very lucrative.  I have spent more than 25 years in China trade and Asian sales and marketing generally, and am based in Kuala Lumpur where I have been for 7 years now.   I've set up a number of American and European companies out here, and have had great success at doing it, so I know that what I have to say will be of interest to anyone who has an interest in entering the Asian market. If you want to enter the Asian Market my report has the information you'll require.

Our time in Vietnam was coming to an end, and we were told of various tour operators and their varying service and honesty.  We had elected to reach Cambodia by boat, up the Mekong River, and cross near Chau Doc.  Different tour packages were offered at the place that sounded most reliable, and we selected one that would take us to a floating community, a village, and on through the lovely Mekong delta.  Thus our day began with a bus trip south, across different branches of the huge river, and to a spot I could never hope to find again.  We followed a dirt path between houses somewhere, and came to a place where individual oarswomen took us in a small flotilla out among the floating houses and foul-smelling fish farms.  These women stood behind us as we sat, pushing their oars which criss-crossed in front of them.  They worked hard, and their strokes were surprisingly strong.

Houses lined the river, often with very photogenic foliage and nuoc mam vats, and our first stop was a fish farm.  It wasnt the fish that smelled bad, it was their feed.  Great brown cannonballs of the stuff covered the floor of this building which we had assumed was one of many rather large human residences.  We could not imagine the purpose of these smelly things.  The man in charge took us, all unknowing, into an inner room, opened a trap door and tossed in part of a cannonball which he had broken into small pieces.  Instantly the quiet water beneath the floor erupted in a frenzied froth.  The place had a false bottom it seemed, filled with trapped and growing fish.  They grew to maturity in the river right enough, screened off from predators, but the price of that security was the dinner table.  I asked how these square and not strong looking buildings withstood the periodic typhoons that hit.  The people simply open the large window at each end and let the wind blow through.  How practical!

The village following this was well accustomed to tourists, but the people were not overly aggressive unless you made eye contact, then they would try to sell you something.  It is awkward to be in somebodys backyard and not look at them, but it was still better than that beach at Hoi An - almost pleasant.  I purchased some pastries that I didn't want from some children and gave most of them to an urchin further on.  We walked up the hill away from the river along an elevated bamboo walkway.  At the top was a road along which we spotted a mosque and discovered a group of children learning to write in Arabic while their teacher droned and some of them dozed.

At last we were taken to the motor launch which would deliver us to Cambodia, and were given broad and gracious smiles by our rowers as we tipped them.  Endless greenery ensued, difficult to describe with any justice.  Ah Mekong, shall I compare thee to Apocalypse Now?  It was a 30-foot craft with a noisy diesel engine and two decks.  Our packs were above in the hot sun I soon realized, and went to move ours as others had done, being concerned over the CDs and other sensitive items therein.  The following few hours of contemplation and idle conversation with our fellow travellers passed quickly, and when we landed at the border crossing we were invaded by a swarm of children with trays of fruit to sell.  We bought some mushy bananas and Ruth got a delightful photo of one of them, one I would have loved to take away with me - me, the unsentimental old cynic.
  Photo: by Ruth Forbes

eBooks for Expats - International Relocation Reports - Offshore Investment Reports - Reports On Offshore Real Estate, Moving Overseas,  and a wide range of subjects for those seeking to restart their lives overseas.  eBooks are a great idea.  Consider This: If, for example, you are trying to figure out how to move to Bolivia, buy a ranch, get residency and a passport; you won't find a standard book on how to go about accomplishing those ends at your local library.  You will here.  We have hundreds of great eBooks lined up and coming your way.  Diamond mining in Africa, play the European lottery, where the odds are ten times better than the USA, Homestead in Belize, Moving to Thailand, Working Worldwide from a lap...  our list of titles is growing daily.