"I lack water at work. Not for drinking but for watching. At least that the feng shui expert who has analyzed our new office in Ho Chi Minh City. Based on the birth dates he has calculated for each employee idelen the workplace, for me it was so on the water shortage. Others missing as wood or the color red has as immediate aid me my secretary a bowl of water placed on a desktop. For a few weeks, we now have a large saltwater aquarium in the office. The many companies here. There are external aquarium keepers who go from office to office, feed the fish, change the water and also get new fish when time one dies. I now live in Vietnam for 18 years, before I was five years in Beijing. In the beginning I Feng Shui not taken seriously, but now I find that really interesting. We had already more feng shui expert in the office, and the financial results have improved significantly each time. Maybe I should sometimes have someone analyze my home. I studied Sinology, which was in the eighties a very exotic subject – and out after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre totally at once. Back then nobody wanted to have anything to do with China. I was tempted but the job prospects. Indeed, I found right after I graduated, 1989, a post in the German logistics company Schenker in Beijing to take care of the transportation for the then-new Lufthansa Center. So I have come to the logistics – and stayed there. Only the Chinese Studies has come to me over the years somehow lost. When I took over in 1994 the office of Schenker in Ho Chi Minh City, we were three people, now there are more than 500 The country has changed in that time: to be the cheap production site, where mainly produced footwear and textiles, the site for quality work. Samsung and Intel have such factories. Myth dog roast Schenker belongs since 2002 to Deutsche Bahn. We offer the full spectrum of logistics, from the sea and air freight to move care. Meanwhile, there are at least 20 German haulage companies. Geostrategically Vietnam is very well located, it is fast in Bangkok or Singapore, it has also equidistant to Europe or Australia. And Vietnam since 2007, the World Trade Organization is a party, it can compete economically with many countries. This, however, prices have risen significantly. Vietnamese food you get at food stalls still very low, a supermarket shopping can be very expensive, more expensive than in Germany. Find exotic things like dog roast it here, too, but that's a subculture. Nine out of ten Vietnamese eat that either. Ho Chi Minh City is very international, foreign ghettos do not exist. I think ausgesprchen pleasant. The Vietnamese are very friendly to strangers, but unfortunately relatively noise insensitive. Are legally required rest periods, it is not, since it is ever in the middle of the night, a hole drilled in the wall. For a rather focused on the German peace is not always easy to bear. Rents have recently fallen back somewhat. For a three-room apartment in Saigon, the old city center of Ho Chi Minh City, you can expect about $ 1,000 to rent, there is no upward limit. Almost everyone here has a maid at home, cooking and taking care of the children, which is quite normal in Vietnam and not a privilege of the foreigner. Education and care for children here has a high priority. Nap under my desk, I underestimated the language. As Sinologist I learn Vietnamese but easy, I thought. Far from it. In Chinese, there are four tones in Vietnamese six. This makes it very difficult – and incidentally I have to still work. After three attempts I gave up. The suffering is not big enough, with English you continue everywhere. That is also our home, the family language. My wife is from Russia, our sons grow therefore trilingual, with English, German and Russian. Vietnamese understand them, but rarely talk about it. Go here to the international school. We regularly holiday in Germany and are traveling in winter to Mittenwald for skiing. After nearly 25 years in Asia, I am always on it, if I can not sleep without air conditioning. I am originally from Cologne, my sons have already become real FC Cologne fans. Return to Germany at the moment but I can hardly imagine. I like Vietnam. It is perhaps not as exotic and interesting for tourists as Thailand or Cambodia, but for the people here are more on the ball, very diligent and agile. Only the daily nap I can not get used: Between 12 30 and 13 30 clock roll my employees their mattresses on the floor, turn the lights off and sleep under their desks. Then they get up and keep going. I could not do. "