Just another day at the office…
I’ve already said it. I’m a lucky girl. This is a photo I took at Kamu Lodge, Apple Tree’s eco-lodge in the heart of the Laos forrest, just a couple hours from the UNESCO heritage city, Luang Prabang.
I love the lodge for the chance to get a way from modern civilization. There are no phones, no internet connections, no cell signals. It’s a complete chance to reconnect with nature and rejuvenate your soul.
I went to sleep in my tent to the sounds of crickets, birds, frogs and all sorts of other creatures who sung me to sleep and woke me up, all at the same time.
I was here to evaluate our property, to see how we can improve, how to best market this wonderful place, but damn, I’m lucky to “have” to do this job! What a refreshing environment from which to work!
On the Bright Side,
Shanna
A week in Saigon
At the tail end of a busy week, jam packed with meetings, we attended The Guide Awards and picked up one each for the Emeraude and the Press Club.
The week was a busy one with 6-8 appointments throughout the day and in various parts of the city. One thing I will say about Saigon – it made me appreciate living in Hanoi. The traffic in Saigon is horrendous. A sea of motor bikes and cars squishing together on tiny roads, as there is lots of construction in the streets, and all over the place (I think they are fixing the sewer system). I can definitely appreciate Saigon for a better selection of restaurants and shopping venues, but the noise and pollution from all that traffic makes Hanoi look like a green zone. World of difference!
The week ended with a dinner and award program for Vietnam’s The Economic Times Guide. It’s pretty much a thank you to all who advertised during the year. While I was happy to do my duty and attend the event, I was not so happy that it made me miss Friday Night on The Terrace. This is the biggest social event of the month in Hanoi and I love our party for the meet-new-people factor and for the possibility of a step forward with Project Shanna 2009. Having to sit this one out really irked me.
For those of you who have not heard about Project Shanna 2009, it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what the goal is for this year. I should probably name it Project Shanna +1 so that we are all clear. Or Project Shanna +The Dude, so that we are even more in sync. It’s six months into the year, and by missing a big event like Friday Night on the Terrace, I almost feel like I’ve missed a whole month of efforts! Yikes!
Anywhoo, June will be busy with a move into my new apartment hopefully on the 10th and then a trip to Laos, two visits to Saigon and who knows what else which may be thrown in my direction. My job keeps getting busier and busier! I love it, but there are just not enough hours in the day!
The important thing is that I’m ready and I’m game. And I’m not talking about work!!!
On the Bright Side,
Shanna
Another day at the office.
Emeraude’s 5th Annual Wine & Dine Cruise Classic was a big hit this past weekend! I remember being in Hanoi last year at this time, staying with Kurt and Anna and hearing about this wine cruise where there is a black tie dinner, a winemaker, and such. So having sat in meetings for the past six months to help plan the event, I was more than excited!
One thing I was excited for too was the chance to wear my formal gown. I bought two from this great designer, Chula, and took both with me. I choose the one which was more suited for a cruise. Although i may wear the other one next year. In any case, I’m armed with a formal gown in the event I get asked out to a formal event!
The whole weekend was a smashing success. We started with breakfast at the Press Club, rode luxury buses out to Halong Bay and then began the cruise. The afternoon was spent at the beach and the weekend’s big moment was dinner by candle light in Drum Cave. You can check out some photos HERE. The dramatic setting of the cave made for a spectacular evening. It would take a strange person not to enjoy that kind of event. So unique and beautiful!
I don’t know yet how we will top this next year – we have our work cut out for us! The great news is, we’ve already got half the cabins reserved!
On the Bright Side,
Shanna
A few other photos from the event:
I’m Still Liking It
I’m such a goof! That’s me with Thomas and Kurt on the Emeraude, just taking a bunch of silly photos.
Without a doubt, this past week was the worst week I’ve experienced in Vietnam. The house leak situation, my foot, a bank transfer fiasco and the tailor screwing up 3 suit jackets really tested my patience.
There is no question Vietnam, and Hanoi in particular is a challenging place to live. It is a far cry from the orderly and beautiful life I lived in Japan. I’ve missed the simplicity of my life there very much recently.
While I am sure that as I get adjusted to my job, to my new surroundings, to my new life, that I will have a bad day or two sprinkled among all the great ones. My teaching background comes in handy here. I’m as much a teacher as i am a Director, Sales & Marketing. I provide lots of opportunities for professional growth for the sales staff I work with. And it is satisfying when they learn a lesson and do something well on their own.
I also love what I’m doing. My job, as I’ve mentioned, is a big one, and there are so many projects for me to tackle. I like that. I am energized by having a challenging job and a division of the company which has sooo much potential for greatness. In most of my jobs, I have created or built-up departments, and it is no different here.
I am loving being back in hospitality, and being in a much more expansive segment than the private club industry (although Kurt and I reminisce how easy it is to just take care of one club versus an entire group of properties!).
I’m still working on my personal life, as I need a serious boost of attention there. But I’m taking steps to fulfill this aspect of my life…it’s not going to happen overnight. I’m meeting new people all the time and trying to get out more so that I can continue to meet new people.
The thing is – I love the adventure of living life abroad. The challenges which are presented to me only make me a stronger and better person, more patient, and lend experiences which I would never have in the US. And I like that.
So while it seems, like this week, that the odds are not in my favor, I know that I will come out on the bright side of all this a much better person.
So when Kurt asks me every once in awhile, “Are you still liking it?” I have to say, without a doubt, “Yes.” And I am. I’m still liking it.
On the Bright Side,
Shanna
A VIP on Board
One of the perks in working in the hospitality industry is that you get the occasional VIP visitor. That was the case when the McCain delegation decided to book a cruise on board our boat, the Emeraude. We were delighted to have the group sail with us. Everything went super smoothly, thank goodness. Everyone in the group commented that it was the highlight of their trip.
Here’s the press release:
U.S. Senator John McCain cruises Halong Bay aboard the Emeraude
HALONG BAY, Vietnam (9 April 2009) — U.S. Senator John McCain toured Halong Bay as a passenger aboard Emeraude Classic Cruises April 6 – 7.
McCain, who was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 election and who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi from 1967 to 1973, was accompanied by an American delegation that included Senators Lindsey Graham (R – S.C.) and Amy Klobuchar (D – Minn.).
During the overnight cruise, McCain fielded questions from fellow passengers. He and his entourage visited Surprise Cave. Like everyone else, he stood on the deck and marveled at the karsts. Several members of his delegation attended a screening of the French epic, Indochine on the Emeraude’s sun-deck after dark.
“They insisted on no special treatment,” said Kurt Walter, general manager of Emeraude Classic Cruises. “That was the really remarkable thing about this entourage, and they were very clear about it – no red carpet, no special menu. They only wanted to experience Halong Bay the way all of our passengers were experiencing it.”
When it came to dining, the 2008 presidential candidate waited on line at the buffet and served himself.
None of the Emeraude’s passengers had been given advance warning about the McCain trip.
“It was a big surprise when he walked into the restaurant,” said Walter. “You could see everybody’s eyes grow larger.”
McCain fielded questions from fellow passengers, four of whom were American. He spent the night on the upper deck of the vessel in the Paul Roque Suite.
“He didn’t ask for the suite, but we insisted,” said Walter.
McCain told Walter that the cruise on the Emeraude was his first overnight cruise on a pleasure craft. They talked about hotels in Hanoi, and Walter told the senator about a fine, new hotel on West Lake.
“’West Lake,’ the senator said to me. I landed a plane on that lake 40 years ago – on Truc Bach Lake,” Walter recalled. “Truc Bach Lake the senator remembers.”
ABOUT EMERAUDE CLASSIC CRUISES
Since its maiden voyage in late 2004, the Emeraude has set the standard for upscale passage on Halong Bay. Modeled on a paddle steamer of the same name that cruised Halong Bay from 1906-1937, the Emeraude accommodates 74 passengers in 12 superior cabins, 24 deluxe cabins and three suites. The vessel evokes the romance of the nautical age with classic architecture, polished wooden floors, beadboard wainscoting and brass fixtures. The Restaurant specializes in western fare and freshly caught seafood. Each cabin features outdoor seating, as does the commodious sun-deck up top where the crew screens a movie nightly.
Emeraude Classic Cruises is owned and operated by The Apple Tree Group, a French-owned, Ho Chi Minh City-based company with interests in tourism and hospitality, real estate and construction and import and distribution all over Southeast Asia. Its hospitality properties also include La Residence Hotel & Spa in Hue and the Press Club in Hanoi, as well as the Kamu Lodge on the Mekong River near Luang Prabang and the Villa Maly, a boutique hotel in Luang Prabang.
On the Bright Side,
Shanna
Never Ever
How tempting is this button? How many e-mails do you have in your in-box. I’m still trying to catch up and organize my files, so I still have more than 1500. Surely, there are some I can delete?
In the midst of a skype chat, I received this stream from my IT Manager today:
shanna
don’t delete emails
never
ever
He had asked my source for information and I recollected but said that I had deleted the e-mail, since the project was completed. That was the response. Never ever.
All I can say is – WHY?
More than ten years ago (wow) I worked for the American Film Institute. While I hated working for a dictator who never washed her hands in the bathroom, I truly loved most all my other colleagues. I have made some of the most solid friendships of my life via the AFI. What was great in the day, was our hallway chats. You’d walk down the hall to the restroom or to someone’s office to check-in and say hello and you would bump into someone and begin a conversation. It may have lasted just 10 minutes, but usually some good idea was sparked and a meeting would follow and something new would be implemented. Lots and lots of projects and programs we born from those hallway chats. Sometimes we even call each other up and ask to meet in the hall; our springboard for creativity. The only thing I miss about e-mails at the AFI was that for a time, we had an “unsend” button. Now THAT is a feature I’d love to have! Especially when I forget to attach the attachment!
At the City Club, I hosted numerous committee meetings. Who dreads these? Not me. You learn a lot about people from group communication. When a committee pulls itself together and starts cooperating, it’s magic. So many great things can come of it. Imagine trying to host a committee meeting via group chat. Yikes. A nightmare! My former GM, Larry also had his management team meet twice a week. We met first thing Monday morning to discuss our goals and at the end of the day on Friday to review financials and give status reports on our projects. We also all ate lunch together as a group, our dysfunctional little family as we liked to say. This helped us solidify our realtions. We groaned sometimes that we were always in meetings. But we never had an excuse that we didn’t know something or weren’t aware. A simple, “I mentioned it in the meeting” would suffice.
Having stepped away from the hard-core business world for a short time, I must say that I am a little disappointed with the lack of talking people do. Others around me may say that it’s an American thing, but I think this is very much a human thing. We are communicative beings. We have been blessed with the skill of language. And while we have had amazing technological developments (who doesn’t love their Mac? ;p ) I’m afraid we are trading one skill set for the other.
To give you another example, our chef came by my office to have a chat. We talked, we discussed, we agreed. For me, end of story. I’m a smart girl, I have a memory, I understood every word he said. But ONE DAY LATER, I received and e-mail which cc’d our GM telling me the same thing. It’s as though there is a need to document every bloody word which leaves our mouths. Why do I need an e-mail to confirm that a conversation happened? And why do I need to keep that e-mail? I simply cannot get my head around this.
Mind you, e-mail and skype is terrific for keeping up with friends and colleagues who are overseas or in another office. Skype has allowed my colleagues and I to transfer large files too big for e-mail and my parents and I to chat for free over the computer. Phone calls are expensive, and computer technology is a blessing in this regard. But C’MON! If you sit across from someone or within walking distance of desks – do we actually NEED an e-mail? An e-mail will never convey your exact tone of voice, your facial expressions, or even your intentions. These are all things which we can only gather in eye contact, body language and intonation. How many of you have read an e-mail and “heard” the tone of the sender. Strongly or even well-written e-mails can come across possibly as angry or upset when the intention is really just to be thorough or clear. As much as body language can be picked up in person-to-person discussions, an e-mail recipient has a near, default-mode of reading between the lines. Let’s not even begin discussion on the decline of our language skills in e-mails. Just to throw it out there – when’s the last time you hand-wrote something longer than one page?
I am very perplexed by this everything by e-mail trend. Is it a lack of trust? A need for evidence? An innocent back-up for a bad memory? An inability to use a pen and paper to take a note? Are we really operating so much in a CYA mode that we cut conversations short and say, “Can you send me an e-mail on that?” ??? Do people really see e-mail as an effective means of communication? Does anyone realize it actually takes a person a greater chunk of time to write all that nonsense out versus walking over to a desk and telling someone?
Am I alone in this thought or are some of you out there just as tired of all these e-mails and crave face-to-face conversations? Of course I realize that you will most likely e-mail me your thoughts….
On the Bright Side,
Shanna
ITB Berlin
Aside from meeting Paul for a weekend, I was pretty excited to attend ITB Berlin (International Travel Bourse). It’s the largest travel trade event in the world. Within the context of my new job, ths is the biggest learning curve for me – the intricacies of the travel industry.
I was lucky to share a booth with our sister company, Exotissimo. What an eclectic mix of people. Edwin from Holland now lives in Bangkok. Pantanida is from Thailand, but runs our Berlin office. Wah Wah is from Myanmar. And Dominik is German but wrks in our Saigon office. And then little ol’ me from San Diego, California. This is one of the joys of being an expat is that you are always meeting super interesting people.
The exhibition itself, verges on ridiculous. I don’t think we have a convention hall in the US that could compare to the massive layout which is Berlin Messe. The site covers 160,000 square meters. Our booth was located in Hall 26b. We were one of over 11,098 exhibitors. On one day, I had a chunk of time available – 3 hours, and so I decided I would walk around the convention and take pictures of nice booths, as well as shop for brochure designs. I also just wanted to see as much as I could see.
I was already well familiar with the Asian countries. Thailand was at ITB in full force with a huge booth down the center of our hall. It contained a second story, as did many, with a VIP lounge. The Princess of Thailand was present at one of their daily cocktail parties, greeting guests and singing karaoke. She should really stick to her day job – but a lovely woman! Even some of the major islands, such as Phuket, Koh Samui, Krabi and others had a huge booth. Thailand was doing it’s best to recover from the recent bad press they’ve been receiving.
The Philippines were also musically entertaining with a full band firing up at cocktail hour each evening. Our booth was across from Indonesia, which occupied an entire back wall. The stage in the middle hosted a variety of dancers throughout the day. Anytime you passed by India or Cambodia, you could see traditional dances.
And then there was Vietnam. Very little money was poured into the Vietnam booth. It was dimly lit and not warm or inviting at all. No entertainment. No cocktail parties. It really looked like the bastard child of SE Asia. Neglected and crying for attention. They did give out a mini-version of the traditional straw hats. That only served the purpose of making me giggle several times in a day as some non-industry person would walk by actually wearing one of these things. At one point I saw two huge men with what looked like safari gear on. Bellies protruding, cameras slung around their necks and backpacks full of brochures, with their tiny Vietnam hats on their heads, they looked like they were on some other-worldly travel adventure.
I’m glad I wasn’t posted in the Vietnam booth. The overall look was uninspiring, to say the least. And you know, Vietnam really needs to step up the pep. In the Asian market, all of the other countries have these cool slogans. Incredible India. Amazing Thailand. Philippines Wow. Fiji Me. Malaysia, Truly Asia. Indonesia, The Ultimate in Diversity. Uniquely Singapore. You get the idea.
And Vietnam’s slogan? Vietnam, The Hidden Charm. This country isn’t even interested in showing you it’s beauty. In the least, you have to hunt for it – because it’s hidden! What the hell? How about a bit more proactive like: Vietnam, Discover the Charm. Vietnam, Be Charmed. Charming Vietnam. I could go on and on. So there’s a little side project I hope to work on…help the government better represent itself and polish it up a bit! Me vs. the Vietnamese Government. Yeah – let’s see how that one goes!
My feet took me as far as a few of the European halls. I walked through Germany, a stark contrast to the colorful and mix of cultures in the Asian halls. Deutschland was designed very clean and simply. And Spain. OMG. Class, elegance, sophistication, power. I could have stayed in that hall all day. Very chic design and all of the people working were just beautiful. Impeccably dressed and stylish. The Spanish men are just gorgeous. There are no proper words to describe. Even though I was wearing a tailor-made suit, I fear I looked like a little ragamuffin in comparison. Oh those Spaniards! As much as I have always loved Italy, I think it is Spain which calls for me to live there someday.
The convention center at ITB Berlin is so huge that I couldn’t make it to some of the halls I really wanted to see, like Africa and South America. I would have loved to have seen Italy, too. Of course, I was curious about my home country – USA!
On the fourth day of the convention, the public is welcomed, and MY GOD was the stage is set for people watching. Our booth received great foot traffic on the business days. so the public days were nuts. And how weird are we humans? I put our CDs out and people would just come by and take one without having any clue what was on the CD. I also had two sets of picture books, which I use in my sales pitch. Gone. Why anyone would think that the heavy material was a brochure is beyond me.
While most of our tables were set with brochures for people to take, there were still a few appointments scheduled. And being the hospitable people we are, we had coffee ready and a bowl of tea cookies and snacks for our special guests. Yet members of the public would see the small bowl of treats on the table out of the corner of their eye and bee-line it for the cookies, take two or three and return to the traffic flow around the hall. BIZARRE.
Totally indescribable behavior aside, I realize that for some of these folks, they may never be able to afford to travel to Indonesia or Thailand or even Vietnam, or any host of other countries represented at the exhibition. And for them, this event served as a bit of a dream catcher. Bob and Betty, hand in hand, spending an entire day collecting brochures and CDs and give-aways from all over the world. They may even hang a few of the posters they received and sit at the dinner table saying, “Let go to Cambodia sometime, darling.” And if that makes Bob and Betty happy, to have a dream like that, or if it inspires any of the children present to backpack through South America one day…well then, what’s the harm? I just wish people wouldn’t get caught up in the frenzy of getting free ‘stuff’ and act like morons! Shameful!
Post-exhibition hours, I went along with the my colleagues for cocktail parties and dinners, even stayed out late a couple of nights. I learned a lot, saw much, observed every moment. With each person I met and each meeting I conducted, I realized more and more how happy and lucky I am to have this job. This is a very cool position to be in and I am very much looking forward to all that is to come. This big huge trade event is just the tip of the iceberg!
On the Bright Side,
Shanna
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