I got back to London early on Monday morning. Early morning temperature 5 degrees centigrade. I’m missing Hanoi already, at least as far as the temperature goes!

I arrive at the Foreign Office to learn that there have been changes across the government (what we call a “reshuffle”). Meg Munn, the minister for South East Asia has left, to head the Westminster Foundation for Democracy – an institution which is comprised of representatives across the UK political party system to promote the UK system of democratic government and parliament (www.wfd.org). We have several new ministers (see www.fco.gov.uk).  The new minister for South East Asia is Bill Rammell, who has previously been a Foreign Office Minister and most recently was an Education Minister. Bill knows Vietnam well – he visited in 2006 and signed the UK-Vietnam education agreement with MOET Vice Minister Nhung when PM Dung visited London in March.

I had a chat with Bill Rammell on Wednesday before we met Vice Minister Pham Binh Minh, who is visiting London. He told me that, despite his very big portfolio of responsibilities, he is keen to visit Vietnam again soon. He was deeply impressed with the development he saw in his last visit, and very much understands the value of educational cooperation in our relationship.

The UK, like the rest of the world, is currently affected by the turbulence in global financial markets. The UK Chancellor, Alistair Darling, issued a statement on this on Wednesday setting out a package of measures. Economic cooperation is one of the areas we will be discussing with our Vietnamese colleagues this week.

Meanwhile I’m talking with people here who have an interest in the 5 areas of UK-Vietnam cooperation (Trade and investment, education, foreign affairs, development and migration/organised crime). It was good to catch up with Ambassador Hoan too.

I’ve taken some pictures with my mobile phone, but I can’t find the right adaptor to download to my computer. I’ll try to find one in the shops this weekend. I took photos of lots of famous landmarks near the Foreign Office - including Big Ben (see Splendid Hoang’s recent post). Please keep your comments coming – I do read them, with the help of my Vietnamese-English dictionary (though sometimes I’m a bit slow, it helps me learn new vocabulary). And include links to your sites – I found many of them fascinating- and of course include links to my blog from yours! My favourite quote from this week comes from Quoc Nguyen’s site, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference”.

I'm also attaching a link to an article about our new Ambassador to Moscow, who I used to work with. I'm sorry that it, like many of the other links, is only in English [Read the article].

I have asked the representative of DFID in Vietnam, Fiona Lappin, to make a special post on the fight against poverty. This will be posted on 15 October – Blog action Day. Please read it!

- Mark Kent, British Ambassador to Vietnam

Notes for Editors

See also: Ambassador's vietnamese language blog

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