Saturday night fever
15 January 2009 | Saigon
sz / sunny
Saturday my girlfriend Linh wanted to visit the disco: It was fun to see the upper class vietnames showing off; The volume of the music was far beyond the limit of health risks, the bass almost made the glasses fall off the tables! After 2 hours I decided I am to old for this!
Asia is the best
05 January 2009 | Saigon
sz / partly cloudy
In a couple of days its been a month since I arrived in Saigon. I have prganized the basics of life (Hotelroom for a good price, bought a motorbike, Visa for 6 month, local sim card). After spending almost 3 years mostly in small fishing villages, tourist areas and remote anchorages, I love the rythmn of this City, the markets, the chaotic traffic, the noise. Life is good and easy here, things work very well: Yesterday I had a flat tire on my motorbike, for 5USD it got repaired around the corner while I had a coffee! It took a visit to one travel agency, payment of 65USD and 3 days later I had a visa for 6 month! No stress with forms and opening hours of administration! Laundry in the hotel is about 1USD for about 15 items.
The people here are very friendly, in the more modern areas of Saigon many speak some words english, but I still have to work a lot on my vietnamese to get along in more remote areas.
This is the end
06 December 2008 | Singapore
sz / hot and wet
Kapurna got damaged in a thunderstorm in Massawa Harbour: I fought with port authorities for two weeks, because they don't allow sailboats anymore to the inner anchorage, where it is save to anchor a small boat: They care more about control the people then about safety of the boats and wether the yachts still visit the country! I did not trust the boat to sail back to Egypt, and a proper repair in Eritrea was impossible. Plus I started to get ill (small injuries resulted in bad infections) and I started run out of antibiotics. So I gave Gattuso to another ship and booked a flight to Cairo, and left Kapurna to the stalinistic regime in Eritrea! From Cairo I flew to singapore, tomorrow I will go on to Saigon (Vietnam).
I did take this decision because I found out two things:
1. A sailboat is not the right thing to travel in the third world (in the med it is great)
2. I get tired of always new places, i need a place to live in and some work to do.
Eritrea was anyhow a good experience, seeing a country so poor, that things like credit crunch and financial crisis get completly different perspectifs: The country is so poor, that even flower cannot be bought, most people have no shoes, the soldiers no guns. (Maybe this is because the goverment is afraid they make revolution if they give them guns).
I consider the country very dangerous, not for the population (it is safe to walk around even in the early morning hours), but for the goverment: People do disappear without any traces and government officials behave like dictators! You get the impression, that they don't want tourist anymore, they don't want foreign investors. Even when you marry a girl (I had 5 marriage offers from nice girls in the early twenties) and have a child with her, you will never get a residency or work permit!