Viet Nam 2010: Ha Noi - Days 2 & 3

I meet Emile for breakfast and we go to the State Bank of Vietnam for our meetings. Which are confidential, of course. Suffice it to say that the first day wasn’t what we’d hoped. This is reflected by us having three hours with nothing particular to do in the early afternoon, before we go on to more productive meetings on the sidelines. We head, at my suggestion, to the Temple of Literature, which takes us past a fair trade crafts store and a Martial-Arts-specific sports store I’d noticed on my way back to the hotel the day before.
The Temple of Literature, I’m told, is a recent rebuild, although there has been a temple building in its spot since its founding (1070!). It has served as a university starting in 1076 until, I believe, some time in the 1700s. It’s picturesque, and the stone stelae commemorating outstanding deeds of its graduates at least are original, a fact mutely attested to by the severe weathering they’ve undergone.
On my way back, I try to buy a Gi – I’d like a tough, lightweight white one that I can take on business trips with me to use at whatever style I might encounter. It would be really, really cheap here – if they had one in my size. The only one they have has lots of black markings on it, which does not become a white belt. But they do have open-fingered gloves of the type I’d like to have to use on my boxing bag, and the one pair they have is even in my size. It’s not expensive at 10 USD, but I still reflexively attempt to haggle. And am told, to my astonishment, that no, he can’t go down on price with these – they’re imports, from China! Of course I am amazed to hear what good quality I am getting and hand over my 200,000 Dong. ;-) On our way back to the hotel (and our next work meeting), Emile and I are given to ruminate again how much perspectives change from place to place.
The meeting in the afternoon doesn’t seem to establish much we didn’t know. Emile suggests the gym thereafter, which seems the perfect place to work off some frustration. In the sauna thereafter we tell us that needing several hours to get precious few useful answers in personal meetings means we would never have gotten these answers through email, so – supposing we really wanted those answers – it really was necessary to come.
We’d asked for a meeting with a very senior person, admittedly at short notice. I had hoped this would be decided today – if we’re not meeting that person tomorrow, there seems little point in me going to the State Bank at all, and I might instead do the three-day tour of Ha Long Bay, with hiking included and everything. But the last email we get that day tells us it hasn’t been decided yet. While I consider this an indicator that a positive decision is very unlikely, I don’t want to take the chance of missing out on a meeting that could actually produce results. So I call off the three-day tour, incurring some charges for the late cancellation in the process, and resign myself to another day of possibly pointless meetings. What I’m getting paid for, after all.
It turns out that our Friday meeting goes much better than expected. We even manage to meet the very senior person in a very short meeting between two appointments and get things decided. We exchange high fives in the elevator afterwards – this has been a very good day. The afternoon informational session in the country office also provides a good bit of context for what I’ll be doing here, so I’m happy. We both are, as we say our goodbyes – Emile flies back to DC after nearly a month on the road, while I pack my backpack for the weekend.