Global conversations
We are honoured to welcome our Foreign Secretary William Hague to Hanoi today. The visit will be a symbol of the Strategic Partnership between Vietnam and Britain which Mr Hague himself signed in London, along with then Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem, in September 2010. It will be the first visit by a British Foreign Secretary for over seventeen years. Back in 1994, the headline of our relationship was development … Read more »Welcome to Vietnam to the Foreign Secretary
The twelve good and true young women and men of Danang pictured here are early members of a new branch of UK Alumni Vietnam. Last week I asked them to smile in this photo, and in return they asked me to upload it here. It records the end of a lunch they hosted, with the British Council’s Regional Director Terry Toney (he is sitting in the middle). The liveliness of this … Read more »Youth of Danang
“The music I will play tonight does not yet exist”. Last Tuesday evening, at the historic An Dinh Palace, this was how Tim Exile introduced Britain’s contribution to the 2012 Hue Festival. He used yelps and noises from the festival audience to create looping, pulsing electronic sounds never heard before in Vietnam, or anywhere. To be honest, some of the audience looked a bit bemused. This was nothing like the … Read more »You’ve never heard this before
“People do not always see the real value of what is on their doorstep”, Angela Brady, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), wrote to me on return from Ho Chi Minh City a few days ago. It was my privilege that she joined me there in a conference on sustainable design and architecture between Vietnamese and British urban development experts. “What I really value about HCMC is … Read more »Designing a unique city
The children of Le Quy Don High School in Ho Chi Minh City gave me a lesson in diplomacy (or flattery) a few days ago, when I received some essays which they had written after I attended some of their classes. “I had a special meeting with the British Ambassador”, wrote Nguyen Ngoc Anh Thu. “He was tall and handsome too, look at him! Our class asked him a lot of questions … Read more »A lesson in diplomacy
For Pham Thi Cau, success came at 67. After a lifetime of rice and vegetable farming, struggling to find a way to lift herself from poverty, she joined a mushroom project which has quadrupled her income after three years. “I think this is the most successful project I have ever known”, she said. I met Mrs Cau amidst the rice paddies of Yen Bai to see the project first hand … Read more »The magic of mushrooms
One of the worst moments of my Vietnam life was on 23 February. It took me a few long seconds to take in the message that my colleague Claus Wunderlich, German Ambassador to Vietnam, had died suddenly that afternoon. I did not know Ambassador Wunderlich for long. He began his posting in Vietnam only six months ago. But it was long enough for me to see his inspiring quality of … Read more »A man of inspiration
Please forgive this uninspiring picture of two men who have just signed two pieces of paper. It is not easy to take a good picture of a Memorandum of Understanding. One of the two men holding red files, however, is not so boring. He is the energetic Minister of Finance Vuong Dinh Hue. I had the honour last week of signing, along with Minister Hue, a Vietnam-UK agreement on … Read more »Vietnam’s biggest challenge?
How would you describe Hanoi, in a word? Some might feel, as I did when I first arrived, that it is a city of noise, and in particular a city of motorbike honking. Of course this is the dynamic sound of progress and energy. I have also heard said that it is a city of food. Hanoi cuisine is fabulous, and this is the only city where I have walked … Read more »Hanoi Love Stories
I hope that, like me, you are lucky enough to walk along some of Vietnam’s gorgeous coastline and breath in the sea air. But much of this coast is under threat from sea-level rise. A four degree temperature rise would also put more than 5,000 square kilometres of the Mekong delta under the sea, according to Britain’s Met Office, who visited Vietnam this week. About half Vietnam’s rice comes from … Read more »Vietnam’s beautiful coastline under threat