Entries Tagged 'Photos' ↓
November 28th, 2005 — Asia 2005, Photos, Vietnam
In Hoi An, halfway up the right-hand side of Vietnam, a Paris of the East. Hoi An is renowned for its cut-price tailors. My memory shall be the rain. It’s got progressively wetter as I’ve progressively progressed north. I’ve yet to invest in a poncho or umbrella, but I think it’s only a matter of time. Time is forcing me to type fast as power-outages are common. My speling wlk not fsufferf, thouhg.
I’ve been on a spending spree. I followed a girl on a bicycle (first time since I was twelve) to her aunty’s shop for my first fisting (my speling wlk not fsufferf) for a pair of suits and a couple of shits (my speling etc.). They gave me coffee, compliments and a Next catalogue. I ordered two suits and two shirts. I can happily say I now look like a high-street mannequin. I’m off to a second shop for a second fitting once the rain has stopped dripping on my keyboard and hopefully this time will be dapperer than ever, my suits chosen from a year-old copy of Men’s Health. (I know.)
Five suits (including one safari suit - they refused to do it for me in powder-blue, muttering something about professional integrity,) four shirts and a winter coat for a couple of cents over 300 euros. Not that I’d risk them at the dry-cleaners, though.
I was worried about being taken to the cleaners here, but have enjoyed fixed pricing and fair-trade. The first shop were mighty pushy, though. I learnt to sell things in Malta, when I touted timeshare to the world. It was a skill I soon forgot, and not nearly as effective as the sometimes doe-eyed, sometimes cheeky and sometimes just plain aggressive Vietnamese Close. In Saigon it was “Motorcycle? Marijuana?” In Dalat, “Where you go? I take you.” In Nha Trang, “Motorbike? You very handsome … I suck you?” Here in Hoi An is the honest and direct “You BUY something?” normally followed with “Why NOT?” If you do succumb, as I did this afternoon, you get a sweet nod of thanks, followed by “You BUY something MORE???”
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Most blogs are barred in Vietnam by the big IT department in Hanoi, along with various other websites like MSN Groups and the recruitment website of the British Army (well, my thoughts have been to the future …) I can’t see this blog from anywhere here, which means I can’t post pictures, so I’ll have to give you a link
here. Lots of pretty Shakespeare-worship ones and the like. Soon off to Hanoi for more big-city shenanigans …
November 17th, 2005 — Asia 2005, Photos, Vietnam
I have been avoiding poultry. I read that one man in Vietnam got sick from just eating a chicken. So instead I’m eating snake. In Nam Bo, an overpriced restaurant in Chau Doc, I had the set menu of snake nem (spring rolls) and snake curry. It was satisfyingly neanderthal - “meet ‘em, beat ‘em and eat ‘em” - and very good. To my disappointment, it didn’t taste “just like chicken” but rather, just like lamb, although identifiably serpentine in appearance. I didn’t manage all of mine and suggested that the waitress might like to finish it off. She was, however, “tellified of snakes, but thank you.”
In the past two days I have visited two Buddhist pagodas, a snake farm, a floating market, a rice-husking mill, a rice-noodle factory, a Cham minority village, a joss-stick factory, a fish farm, Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art Museum, the Museum of Vietnamese History and the War Remnants in Vietnam Museum. Consequently the photos attached to this post contain no amusingly inebriated twats, but scenes of bucolic idyll and buildings and rivers and shit.
On the way into Saigon, I saw my first road accident. Actually, what I saw was a pool of blood, a compound fracture and a head wound, accompanied by a traffic-jam of rubber-neckers and dubious first-aid. There are more than 1000 deaths a month on the roads in Vietnam, almost exclusively motorbike riders. That’s more than 30 a day. Builders’ hard hats are favoured as helmets, but what’s favoured most of all is not wearing a helmet. In Cambodia I’m sure the statistics are pretty bad, but everybody drives so slowly you could often out-run them. This place is worse than Malta for road-awareness.
For a Communist country the locals I have met today have an awesome knack for the key concepts of Capitalism. I paid more than 15 times the local price for a coconut (my maths gets wobbly when we have to multiply by anything-thousand). My cyclo-driver, who pedalled me around all day for the agreed ten dollars, suggested, as he threatened to drop me off in the middle of nowhere, that I might like to pay him 20 dollars plus 100 000 dong (about 6$.) It’s a shitty job and I would have tipped handsomely, perhaps feeling more inclined if it had been my initiative. When he reiterated how poor he was by almost showing me his scrotum through the holes in his trousers I caved in …
He was, however, great company. One of the first things he said to me was “Very small Vietnam girl very pretty.” I instantly got a cold chill and contemplated leaping into the oncoming tsunami of motorbikes. Then he explained himself: “Most girl Vietnam very small - maybe 45 kilo. I have seen the English girls - maybe 80 kilo!” and laughing long and loud. For what seemed like forever.
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Incidentally, stopped for a drink at the Continental Hotel, which figures prominently in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. I suspect I would have adored Saigon thirty years ago, with nary a belching motor to be seen. The hotel now is no longer on a tropical town square but a sweaty, toxic roundabout. It didn’t inspire me to literary heights. In fact, had I spent much longer there, I might have been inspired to redesign my facial features with a blunt instrument.
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76 pretty photos here
November 9th, 2005 — Asia 2005, Cambodia, Photos
New hotel, new day, new room 101. Currently reading Voices from S-21 and wonder whether the coincidence is entirely that.
Yesterday ambled around the National Museum - an impressive collection of lingas to make you snigger. Was going to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda today but it’s Independence Day so items of historical and cultural importance are closed.
I stayed in the Grand View Guesthouse by the lake last night, in the heart of backpackerville. The first three places I looked at were under a foot of water - being touted as “with swimming pool” after heavy rain. The smell was awful and didn’t fancy my chances with the mossies. Now back on riverfront at the Khmer Hope and Anchor. Hash browns for breakfast.
Scooting off to the beach tomorrow. Will leave you with some more photos of a grey day in Bangkok and sun and guns in Phnom Penh.
