King's Bananas

I was on a work trip to Ninh Binh City which is southwest of Hanoi over the weekend. FCM & ACVN are initiating a Communities in Bloom project and Ninh Binh is one of our pilot areas.

The bananas in the pic are known as the king's bananas because way back when, only the king was allowed to eat them - they are small and sweet, I have tried them in Canada a couple of times, but they taste much better here since you can eat them right off the tree.

I finally moved into a house! After living in a guest house/hotel and out of my suitcase for 5 weeks I was ready! It is a 4 floor house, really spacious and has a small pond with fishies and a turtle. As soon as I saw it I knew it was the one. Patience paid off. I will be dedicating a separate entry to my new home once I get settled in. I am already planning a house party ...

Hanoi is gearing up for APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) conference being held in mid-November. Bush and Harper are coming, the Chinese president, and leaders from the other Asian and Pacific countries. Security has definitely been heightened - more police on the streets, stricter enforcement of traffic control, special cars for the dignitaries have been practicing their routes, street vendors are getting cleared from the sidewalks. It will be interesting to see what happens and how everything is run.

I like to add random facts as I learn them: Vietnam has a 2-child policy, I did not know this at all (and feel kind of silly that I did not know this). You hear about China's 1-child policy often, but I did not realize that VN had a similar one. I heard that VN is the 14 densist country in the world. I just did some stats for my colleague's presentation and there are 258 people per sq.km in Vietnam while there is 3.6 people per sq.km in Canada - however there is a qualifer here, 90% of the Cdn population is within 160 km of the US border.