The last two weeks have been all go. My mandate moved forward much faster than expected and the final report was delivered earlier this week. It seemed very well accepted, but sometimes the language barriers make it a little hard to tell. I really hope Hoa Sua takes the recommendations forward as they really should [...]

The Hoa Sua School runs a number of restaurants in Hanoi, and one training hotel/restaurant in Sapa, a mountain village in the far north of Vietnam. Fortunately for me, the hotel in Sapa needed to be reviewed, so Catherine and I took the night train their on Thursday night, worked from the restaurant on Friday, [...]

Two very exciting things have happened this week. The more universally exciting thing was… I took a motorbike ride for the Hoa Sua School to one of their bakeries. I was escorted by my ever so helpful translator and accounting consultant, Huyen. Although she was obviously a very conservative rider, I had to look the [...]

Very upset to report that the weekend trip to Ha Long Bay was an epic fail… fog cancelled the sailing. Fortunately a last minute substitute trip to Tam Coc on Sunday was successful, and resulted in a few rather nice shots! My mandate was finalized today and revolves around financial analysis and a process review [...]

My mandate, is both interesting and challenging. Accounting 101 in Vietnamese is a baptism of fire that I don’t recommend for the feint hearted! Balancing the selfless desire to help the Hoa Sua School with a more selfish desire to experience Vietnam and a requirement to sleep is going to be tough. I’ll elaborate more [...]

At the end of day two, I’m blogging in bed. It’s the only place I’ve been able to get warm. It’s odd to think that I could arrive in Vietnam from Canada and complain about the cold. The temperature is certainly higher than Vancouver, but the humidity leaves most of my clothes with a slightly [...]

Made it! Visa issue that nearly stopped me coming… resolved. Mega flight… flown. Seen Mount McKinley from the air… check. Seen huge amounts of see ice… check. First impressions… lots of smog and lots of beeping… good fruit, interesting buildings. Actually done anything in Hanoi… Not yet. Post over!

A few weeks ago I attended the long awaited pre departure orientation. It introduced Uniterra, it’s mandate, the administrative requirements and had a cultural training component in which we were introduced to a representative from our host country to give us the low down on how to thrive. There were a few takeaway items that [...]

Although it looks like these post are a few days apart, it was actually over two months ago that I was accepted on the program (Last September) and about 10 days ago I found out where I’ll be working and what I’ll be doing. I’m only on post 2 and I’m neglecting my blogging duties! [...]

Wow… I’m leaving for change. After a month and a half long process of finding out about the program, filling in application forms and interviewing I got accepted into the program. The finer details haven’t been worked out yet, but it looks very much like I’ll be going to Vietnam early next year and helping [...]