Đầu Xuôi Đuôi Lọt: A Good Start is Half the Battle

Dear friends and family!

I hope you are all doing fine. It's time for an update from Hanoi, Vietnam :-)

Reading back on my blog, I realized that it has been quite a while since my last post. Needless to say, much has happened since then: many impressions and new experiences at my work, more travels and adventures, saying goodbye to my roommate and best friend in Vietnam, meeting new people and making new friends…, surely too much to cover in one update. Nonetheless, I’m happy to try my best!

Mid-February, I started “really” working for the law firm. Because of the internship that I had done there the month before, I already had a good feeling with them and until now I have been enjoying my work a lot. Even though we have four offices: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Yangon (Myanmar) and Ulan Bator (Mongolia), our Hanoi office is not that big. With two partners, about eight lawyers, two translators, two secretaries and a receptionist, our team is an enthusiastic and friendly bunch of about fifteen Vietnamese, French, Irish and Dutch (!) people. All of our clients are foreign investors and we advise them on a broad range of issues and legal fields. Questions that they may have, for example, include: what are the requirements to set up a company in Vietnam; what legal structure should we use; and which sectors are open and which sectors are closed for foreign investment? Besides that, we also assist those foreign investors who are already present in Vietnam with for example commercial contracts, labour law issues and commercial litigation.

The atmosphere at the office is “fresh” and comfortable, our location just outside the Old Quarter of Hanoi is charming, I’m working with people from different countries and in several languages every day and the kind of work that I’m doing is quite diverse. Two weeks ago, for example, I had the chance to make my debut as a teacher… :-) I was surely a bit nervous beforehand, but the excitement that I felt when giving a seminar to a group of about 60 critical, young lawyers, was fortunately much bigger!

At the end of February, my father and I welcomed my brother Sander in Hanoi. During the two and a half weeks that he was with us, we showed him about everything that we had discovered so far and of course, we made some beautiful trips on the motorbike. We also visited “Sapa”, a hill station in the North-West of Vietnam with minority villages, beautiful lush green mountains and small roads that are just waiting to be explored…., and so we did! Sander and I further spent two days on a boat in popular “Halong Bay” and we also made an adventurous trip to “Ninh Binh” and the “Perfume Pagoda”. We really enjoyed his company and I guess he did so too, because in less than two months, he is coming back with his girlfriend…., and I can’t wait!!

By the beginning of May, we had another visitor in Hanoi: Marieke, one of my best friends from the Netherlands who I have known for a long-long time already :-) It really felt like Sander and Marieke brought a bit of “home” to Vietnam and I enjoyed every minut of Marieke’s visit. Besides exploring some new places in Hanoi (“the Note cafe” for excellent smoothies; “La Commune” for delicious food and “Luong Van Can” for designer glasses :-P…), Marieke surprised me with a tailor made trip to Halong Bay and less crowded “Bai Tu Long Bay” and we also made the trip by night train to Sapa.

When visiting the North of Vietnam, there are just a few places that you must see and obviously Halong Bay and Sapa are two of them. Personally, I can’t get enough of Sapa and in fact, I have been there last weekend again, this time with two of my colleagues and a friend!

In the meanwhile, living together with my father in the apartment that we rent from the lovely “Dinh family” and exploring this amazing city was in itself a GREAT experience. Sometimes after my work, I would drive to the Dutch school where my father was working and together we would get tired in the school’s gym before finishing the evening in one of our favorite Vietnamese (“Dieu’s Cuisine”) or Thai (“Madake”) restaurants. Most of the weekends, we would pack our bags, start our motorbikes and set off to explore the area around Hanoi. The most beautiful trip that I made so far in Vietnam has been with my father to the very North of the country: “Ha Giang”… Being just as close to the Chinese border as Sapa, the mountain scenery of Ha Giang is much more dramatic, the views from the roads are simply breathtaking and it is mostly off the beaten tourist track. I will try to add some pictures of that trip to my blog!

The reason that I wrote the last paragraph in the past tense is that in the meanwhile, my father has returned to the Netherlands... His contract with the Dutch school was initially for one year and even though I know for sure that my father enjoyed his first year in Vietnam very much, at the same time he missed my mother very-very much! Therefore, my father decided to go back to the Netherlands to be close to my mother again :-) It has been about six weeks ago that we said goodbye at “Noi Bai Airport” and even though I surely miss having him around, it feels good to know that my parents are happily living together again and I will certainly not forget our Vietnam adventure together :-) Besides, living on my own in Hanoi is a different, but a very nice experience as well!

I have become a bit more active in looking for new ways to spend my free time and I have already found a very nice one. Since a few weeks, I’m following an intensive French language course at “L’Espace”, the French Institute. As France still has very close ties with its former colony and as many of my colleagues and most of our clients are French, I thought it would be an excellent oppportunity to improve my French. Fortunately, I didn’t forget everything that I had learned during my exchange semester in Montreal (Canada) in 2007 and slowly but steadily I’m making some progress…. In any way, it turned out to be a very enjoyable way to spend three evenings per week! Furthermore, I have started to play basketball with some friends, I’ve been jogging around the West-Lake where I live (thanks again for bringing along my running shoes, Marieke!) and I’ve started playing tennis on a regular basis with my colleagues. Combined with the many restaurants and bars of Hanoi, the very nice movie theatre (“Cinematheque”) just across the street from my work and the good vibes that I get from living in this Asian, but at the same time quite international metropole, I’m enjoying myself very much :-)

That much for a short overview of my past few months in Vietnam. Obviously, I couldn’t cover everything in this blog, but I will try to add a few pictures of some of my other experiences... It’s noon on Sunday now and I’m enjoying a relaxed weekend in and around my apartment. Last Friday and yesterday, a big storm that started in the Gulf of Tonkin past over the city and it was raining non-stop. In the evening, I went out for a special event organized by the movie theathre (Cinematheque) about Anne Frank, the Jewish girl that wrote her diary during the Second World War when she and her family were hiding in Amsterdam. There was an introduction by a Dutch guest speaker and as there was a link with a Vietnamese doctor (Dang Thuy Tram) who wrote a very famous diary during the “American War”, the family of Dang Thuy Tram was present as well. Later this afternoon, I will jump on my motorbike, cross the “Long Bien bridge” to the other side of the Red River and will play a few hours of tennis with my colleague, hopefully in the sun!

To conclude this update, thanks for your messages and updates! Furthermore, I’m very happy to see that because of this blog, I’ve been able to reach some of you that I hadn’t been in touch with for a long time. For all of you, I wish you a very nice weekend and I send you my very best regards from beautiful Hanoi :-)

Marijn

marijnsprokkereef@hotmail.com