Moved yesterday to the conference hotel, which is really more of a compound of freestanding “Villas” in a lovely landscape of topiary and tennis courts, one of which is right outside my window. The Vietnamese are great sportsmen and sportswomen — they start playing before six in the morning and don’t leave off until nearly eleven at night. The facility was once used exclusively by members of the government and is clearly still pretty much the playground of the ruling class. Incredibly, there is no internet in the entire facility — at least in the public parts of it — so this morning I’ve escaped back to the Old Quarter to an internet cafe with a cracking fast connection. The conference facilities, clearly, exist outside the  influence of market forces. I love this place and all its crazy contradictions — almost as many as my own country.