Oliver of Otterburn in Vietnam

Ray & Oliver visit friends My & Minh in Saigon

My & Minh's appartment is on the 15th floor

Ho Chi Minh's statue

Cyclo riding through the streets of Saigon

Smiling water seller

 My last report came to you from Cambodia where I have been traveling with my usual shepherd, Ray. Because it is right next door, Ray took the opportunity to go to Vietnam, principally to visit his two good friends My & Minh Nguyen who live in Saigon.
the Americans.

I am very popular with the girls!

 Of course I went along as well.

My owns the MMSoft Company

I was surprised to find the office decorated for Christmas

Here I am meeting the staff at MMSof

It wasn’t long before we were eating some of the delicious Vietnamese food when My & Minh took us to a riverside restaurant which was delightfully cool after the heat of the day. My & Minh live in an apartment on the fifteenth floor of a new building that looks right
over District One of Saigon. This is a huge bustling vibrant city of about eighteen million people. It is now also known as Ho Chi Minh
City and it is about as different from Northumberland as you can get.
There is not much green grass to be seen.
Talking about Ho Chi Minh, we went along to visit his statue. He is the primary figure in modern Vietnamese history, the leader in the

eventually successful fight for independence against the French and I went for a cyclo ride through the streets of Saigon. This is pretty

wool-raising stuff as you sit in a chair in front of the pedaling cyclo driver. That means that you are very immediately face to face
with the traffic whirling around you. It is not for a faint hearted sheep, I can tell you.

Vietnam is so picturesque and so different. Every kind of thing is
available for sale on the streets and there are many smiling ladies
with distinctive conical hats that sell water and tasty eatables.

Everywhere there are pretty girls and, luckily for me, they like to
run their fingers through the wool of a strange looking creature like
me.

One morning I went along to the office of the MMSoft company. This
small IT Consulting company is owned by My. I was very surprised to
find the office decorated for Christmas because Vietnam is
predominantly Buddhist. I was able to meet the staff. They are all
very bright young people, all very cheerful and happy to meet me. They
are the future of this dynamic Asian country where prosperity is
growing rapidly after the traumas of not so very long ago.

Lady Maairy 'My year in the SVS'

 It has taken me a few weeks to get over the Christmas party so here I am writing the last blog for my travels of 2011, in March. I know I said I was a bit sick of travelling by the end but it was rather exciting and I’ve already got offers for Central America, Sri Lanka and the Great Wall of China in 2012 so I may yet be tempted to get my back-pack out again – is this in the rules Sue?

One of my ancestors?

When Dick offered me the opportunity to be a ‘SVS’ ambassador for the year of our travel I was a bit worried by the sound of it. I envisaged some sort of sheepish SAS and I just couldn’t see myself yomping over hundreds of miles of marshland, sleeping rough (no self-respecting ewe would want to do that) and eating whatever I can find in the hedgerows -What do they think I am? A GOAT?

The Little Mermaid statue, Denmark

But no, this SVS turned out to be rather more civilised. The Sheep Veterinary Society are a rather educated lot and claim to know a lot about sheep, although privately they admit that there seems to be an awful lot they don’t know! Just ask them about Schmallenburg virus! I’m just amazed that there is so much stuff written and spoken about our humble species! Although I know most people

in the country think that sheep have a skull full of sawdust, we sheep actually suffer from more brain diseases than anyone else!

Malvern is the home of the National Sheep Association

(Pic 1) On a tour of the new Veterinary department at Nottingham University, I found the sheep skeleton, no wonder I get some much bone ache if I’ve got all those bits!(Pic 2) I was also present at the 2 SVS conferences of 2011. The first was Malmbro, Denmark in May (OK I had to ‘photo-shop’ this picture because: a) the mermaid is in the middle of the harbour and I don’t like swimming; b) Paul Roger says all the pictures have gone missing – very suspicious, I think he must have sold them to ‘Fleece’ or one of those other glamour mags).

Called upon to help the President with his speech

Falkland Island sheep sale - (Stephen Pointing)

(Pic 3)The other was in Malvern, Worcestershire in September where I was called on to help the new president with his after dinner speech and I also hosted a quiz based on my travels. I was particularly disappointed that some of the audience obviously hadn’t been reading my blogs and even more so that Professor Clarkson didn’t know his biblical sheep references – and I was told that

'Deep sea' fishing off Jersey - (Linda Lowseck)

he’d written every book about sheep.

(Pic 4) Malvern is also of course the home of the National Sheep Association, another spiritual home, and thanks to Lesley Stubbings for taking me along to their head office, although I was a bit miffed at being left outside with a paint brush! Got to admit the sign does need some attention.

SVS also lived up to their informal billing of ‘the friendly society’ and as well as the hospitality at the conferences thanks are also due to several members have taken me ‘under their wing’ with extra trips, to e.g.:

The original sheep dip in Israel -(Yoav Alony-Gilboa)

(Pic 5) A Falkland Islands sheep sale (Stephen Pointing)

(Pic 6) ‘Deep Sea’ fishing off Jersey (Linda Lowseck)

(Pic 7) The original sheep dip in Israel (Yoav Alony-Gilboa)

To make me feel more at home they have even held a series of meetings round the country called ‘Talking Sheep’, I’ve only managed to get to 2 of them but then a girl can only do so much!#

Just a shame that my ‘posting’ was only for a year, I hear the next International Sheep Veterinary Association meeting is in New Zealand, February 2013. Now I really fancy (another) trip there!

Tow-rag locks Sue out of Sheep Blog

Several weeks ago, Sue found that some tow-rag had hacked into her Google email account, changed the password and recovery code which also locked her out of the Global Adventures of Northumbrian Sheep blog. Fortunately her computer guru had configured the sheep blog on his own computer so he was able to invite her back in.

The miserable hacker emailed everyone on Sue's address list pretending to be her, saying that she had been mugged in Barcelona and could they send her money via Western Union to fly home. It seems lots of people's emails have been hacked in the same scam. Fortunately, we think that no one was fooled by the request, thinking surely Sue would have asked her husband or son to rescue her .....or even one of us sheep!

Unfortunately Sue has also lost all her email address list and all the photos she had been sent to post on the Sheep blog which were stored in her email site. If your blogs have not been posted yet, and you have not had replies from Sue to your recent emails, please email her again using her old email address but inserting an extra 'e' after the first letter, which will give you her new email address. (There were hundreds of important contacts Sue fears she may never be able to get in touch with again!)

Some of us sheep have really been bitten by the travel bug and are keen to go off traveling again in 2012 so please keep checking the Global Adventures blog for more news of exciting adventures.

Best wishes from Lance the Piper, Lady Maairy, Oliver of Otterburn, Hermie and all the flock.