Newsroom

A fascinating and very valuable day, which I am very grateful to Mr Thanh for organizing.

It’s 0430 am. I arrived back in London yesterday morning and haven’t got used to the 7 hour time difference yet. So it’s a chance to update my blog. The previous two weeks have been really busy preparing for this trip and finishing off work. Plus a number of other events. We organized with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the European Commission a workshop on negotiations with the European Union to which we invited Adam Steinhouse, head of European School of the UK national School of Government and Guy de Jonquieres, a very experienced writer for the Financial Times and commentator. And I and colleagues from the British Consulate General and British Council took part in the annual Saigon Cyclo challenge which helps raise money for the Saigon children’s charity. On 17 March I attended the Economist Conference in Hanoi (read BBC article) – just before flying off to London. It underlined the difficulty of the current economic situation for the world and Vietnam, and the poor global and regional Asian growth prospects this year. But there was also a common opinion that if Vietnam continued to implement free-market reforms and tackle well-known challenges such as corruption, its medium to long-term potential remained very good.

Yesterday I got back to Heathrow airport accompanied by Madame Nga , MFA Deputy spokesperson, three Vietnamese journalists (Vu Xuan Linh, Truong Huy San, and Vu Ho Diep) and Cam Ha, my colleague from the Embassy. We all squeezed on the London Underground with our cases at rush hour (I don’t think the others had ever experienced this) and then arrived at our hotel. Then a quick interview with Kurt Barling of BBC London about my contacts with the Vietnamese community here. We then met with Parliamentarians from the All-Party Vietnam group, headed by Ben Chapman MP and including Chris Mullin MP. Chris is very knowledgeable about Vietnam and recently took part in the Yoosk project. Then on to the London Borough of Hackney where we met Mr Thanh of the An Viet foundation. He has been in the UK for 30 years and his work for the Vietnamese community here is very famous. We visited a number of local businesses run by people who had emigrated from Vietnam and finished the evening with a wonderful banquet which was attended by many of the local Vietnamese community, local councilors, local businesspeople, local police, and a large number of academic professors wanting to promote university links with Vietnam. A fascinating and very valuable day, which I am very grateful to Mr Thanh for organizing.

This morning we squeeze in a trip to Arsenal training ground (interesting because of the club’s links to Vietnam) before going to the BBC World Service for the official relaunch of the BBC Vietnamese website.

Mark Kent, British Ambassador in Vietnam