Mango shake, anyone??

Trailing Another River

2012-01-12T21:52:00.009+07:00

Just realized how long it has been since I posted any pictures here. Life goes on mostly in the same places, but I did get out of town not long ago for a nice wander and found some good photo opportunities.

Most of these shots were taken from the dike road along the Duong River just outside Hanoi. Actually, on Christmas Day, that's why you see all the snow and sleds about (just kidding).

This three wheeled "truck" was going back and forth hauling sand from a barge on the river up to a village on the other side of the dike. Vehicles come in all shapes, sizes, and configurations here, and they usually have one purpose-designed for the job at hand.

Corn above the riverbank. They do grow a great deal of corn around here, but there is rather more variety in the fields than in the corn-bean-alfalfa fields I grew up around.

There was a fair amount of barge traffic on the river. This barge cooperated nicely and I was all set up and ready when it cut through the sunset reflection.

This cheery message was not out by the river, but near my house in Hanoi, and it makes me laugh every time I look at it, which is good for me, and I thought it might be good for you.

Summer Scootering

2011-10-15T01:06:00.006+07:00

One of the particularly enjoyable aspects of my summer here is always the scootering. Riding a scooter effectively forces me to take the back way, to slow down, and encourages stopping to stretch the legs and generally enjoy myself in ways I am less likely to do when driving a full size vehicle. For these reasons, when looking to cross the Susquehanna River this summer, I found the ferry instead of taking the bridge. Yes, there is still a ferry, a wooden paddle boat that takes you across a wide stretch of the river, almost a mile, in a leisurely twenty minutes. Considering that in the summer the river is rarely more than a couple feet deep, one need not be too concerned about the seaworthiness of the vessel! So, here are a few pictures of the scooter and my brother’s cycle on the Roaring Bull.

Most of my scooter miles are, of course, commuter miles. My ride to work is almost always in the middle of the night which, at least in the summertime, is a great time to ride. The stars, the moon and the chorus of bugs that make noises all night long generally make up for hazards such as the occasional sudden cloudburst or the black cow standing in the middle of the black road in the middle of the black night who is not impressed by my scooter whizzing toward her! It’s not generally such a great time to take pictures, but I was impressed by the shadows thrown up by the spotlight on the face of this old mill.

This stone underpass holding up an old railroad, now a rail-trail, was built by Italian laborers back in the day, I’m told. Anyway, it is bumpy under there and always seems to be wet, so it’s a good place to slow down.

Dirt roads are always appealing. Although this scooter is definitely not an off-road vehicle, anyplace with no traffic and summertime shade is hard to resist.

The corn is ready for harvest; summer is apparently over!

Colorado

2011-08-14T23:53:00.000+07:00

'nuf said !

Garden of the Gods, Colorado

2011-08-10T08:04:00.000+07:00

The view of Pike's Peak from Garden of the Gods

Colorado's Western Slope

2011-08-04T07:26:00.008+07:00

Views from Cimarron Valley in southwest Colorado.

The drive across Blue Mesa, and in Lake City looking up.

Black Canyon

Over the River

2011-07-07T20:21:00.002+07:00

The Su Su Run

2011-06-06T16:27:00.004+07:00

A few photos from a ride to Tam Dao a couple weeks ago. Tam Dao, maybe two hours outside Hanoi, is on a mountain that was home to a French 'hill station' back in the day. Currently it is home to some tourist services, some waterfalls, and a lot of su su. That is chayote, and it is delicious - the leaves, the shoots, all of it. And Tam Dao is the place to go for it, it's got the brand all wrapped up, everybody in Hanoi knows where the best su su comes from. Most of the fields you see in these pictures are su su.

This last photo is from the road home, back down on the delta, among rice fields and some kind of beans, I guess, everything green!

Thiên đường Bảo Sơn

2011-05-27T21:14:00.000+07:00

Pebbles

2011-05-22T13:03:00.003+07:00

The Education of a British-Protected Child
Chinua Achebe
A collection of essays, speeches and thoughts from the author of Things Fall Apart, this book somehow reminds me of the rambling, memoir-esque conversations you have here when drinking sugar cane juice in the countryside and grandpa sits down to tell stories.
Igbo proverb: “He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”

Eat Pray Love
Elizabeth Gilbert
Not my favorite, had I noticed that this book came with the “Now a major motion picture” sticker I might not have bought it. Anyway, it is the story of a woman’s year-long sojourn through Italy, India and Indonesia. Actually, it is the story of the author, the travel aspect is backdrop, which I suppose is the way it happened. The story is well written and often funny, but the self-centeredness of it was hard for me to get past…

Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution
Stephen Breyer
A dry but very accessible and concise presentation of Justice Breyer’s approach to the constitution.

Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us
Mike Rose
An impassioned defense of the ideals behind the American experiment with public education.

Granny D: You’re Never Too Old to Raise Little Hell
Doris Haddock/Dennis Burke
“Small towns make up for their lack of people by having everybody be more interesting.”
‘Granny D’ an eighty-nine year old lady from small town New England walks across the US to raise awareness about campaign finance reform. As you might expect from such an eighty-nine year old, the story is full of humor and common sense.
Regarding roadside attractions that only happen on two-lane highways: “A good deal of fun died with Eisenhower’s interstate highway program, which he copied from the Nazis.”
“What is the point of being in Arizona, I decided, if you cannot be a rodeo queen?”

The Poet-Barber

2011-04-16T22:54:00.002+07:00

Hanoi has no shortage of places to get a haircut. In fact, the place involved really does seem irrelevant. This is because the barber often just carries or rolls the tools of the trade to his favorite spot on the sidewalk and sets up shop. Even at night when the sidewalks are empty you can see where the barbers hang out by the piles of hair swept off the curb. My old barber has disappeared, gone around the corner or somewhere without leaving a forwarding address, so I went to a new one the other day.

Sitting on a rickety wooden chair, with its own little awning in case of rain I guess, I look at the mirror hanging crookedly on the wall in front of me. In it, I watch all the passers-by walk behind me, amused to see how many of them do a double-take, stopping just to make sure it really is a foreigner (who has clearly gone far too long without a trim) getting done up at their local barber.

The barber, upon hearing the first hint of a Vietnamese word from me, suddenly pulls some papers out of his wooden tackle-box full of scissors and razors, saying "You should try to read this, can you read this?" It is poetry, his poetry, written in the implausibly neat, rounded script of someone who actually studied penmanship. Poems about spring, about Hanoi, about … Russian women!? After some pronunciation corrections and instruction on how to properly read metered poetry in Vietnamese, my barber is mostly satisfied with my recitation.

Eventually, he gets down to business and cuts the hair. It’s a fast haircut; he’s obviously had lots of practice at barbering, in between writing poetry. A neighbor and friend of the barber stops by to chat. He teaches at the local university, and keeps trying out what I gather is Vietnamese-accented German on me. Sadly, I have no skills in speaking German, so that conversation doesn’t go too far.

“I wish I could grow a beard,” the barber says. He is impressed with my beard (a sort of experiment that’s gone hand in hand with going too long without a haircut). He’s got the classic Asian look going on – smooth clean skin with half a dozen 3 inch long hairs sprouting out of a mole on his chin. He tells me my beard makes me look like somebody, and it takes me awhile to make out exactly who he is talking about.

Engels, Friedrich Engels, the co-father, along with Karl Marx, of Communist Theory. So, hmm, that’s interesting. In spite of living in Hanoi, I have no recollection of what the chins of the fathers of Communism looked like. I have since looked up pictures of Mr. Engels, and I can assure you with utmost sincerity that my beard looks nothing like that. It would take years in a cold climate to get me to that point!!

WAH!

Cây cổ

2011-04-12T16:52:00.000+07:00

And, just for fun, shots of the old building half hidden behind the sparkly new pagoda with the shining horse in it. Somehow I liked this one more .. I guess peeling paint and crooked tiles put me at ease.

Over the River and through the Woods ...

2011-04-09T16:42:00.001+07:00

The procession of rowboats proceeded, happily, one after another, to be swallowed underneath that wee mountain you see above. Passage through the wee mountain's nether regions involved a bit of ducking and a few solid wacks of oar-on-rock in narrow spots, but no further complications.

The rowboaters union rules specify "no dumping of tourists" - even the foreign ones...

Tourism Trang An

2011-04-07T13:24:00.000+07:00

Trang An tourism site takes you on a rowboat ride to ... (wait for it) ... more pagodas. With haughty gold-encrusted dudes in funny hats.

After a short hike from the boat landing into a hidden valley type of place, another pagoda. Altars complete with clementines, flowers, pomelo, small change, beer Hanoi and Choco-pie.

And the smiling-est horse ever, I think she's just glowing because of her new hairdo.

Bai Dinh - Raising the Roof

2011-04-04T13:40:00.000+07:00

This shot shows something of the scale of this place, taken from near the top looking down along the outside of the covered stairway. You can see the bell tower near the bottom of the hill, and the main gate down by the lake.

Does that come with free ringtones??

Bai Dinh - the people

2011-04-02T13:24:00.000+07:00

The 'plaza' in front of the largest building at the top of the mountain. It's basically just a big party.

Sadly, I'm not totally up to speed on Vietnamese deities, so I can't really tell you about this guy. But, while it seems he does have to carry around a few things, he did get the prime real estate of the whole place, on the very peak, and the view is amazing.

This is one of several massive bronze bells that were sitting around waiting to be hung somewhere I guess. Something tells me it's not so easy to get a good ring out of a bell like that, I hope they pay the guy well who has that job!

Yes those are drums - for part of the festival they had a procession which was accompanied by some drumming. Sadly, I don't think I can import one of those back to the US, although I'm sure it would look great sitting in the driveway ... maybe I could park my scooter inside it!

Bai Dinh Pagoda

2011-03-23T13:16:00.007+07:00

Historic Bai Dinh Pagoda is near Hoa Lu, site of the capital of Vietnam before it was moved to Hanoi 1000 years ago (as of last October). There is still an old pagoda there, halfway up a mountain, a small wooden building which sits in front of a cave housing ancient statues, a mystical pond/puddle, some mesmerizing traditional musicians, and a lot of giddy teenagers. But, the main attraction is on the other side of the mountain where they are building a massive compound including three large temples housing the giant Buddhas you see above, a bell tower for a bell the size of a house (smallish house), a covered stairway that goes up the mountain on one side of the compound and back down on the other side, and various other buildings that aren't finished yet. It's really big, that's what I'm trying to say.

Vietnamese temples attract large crowds during 'festival season' in the spring. It seems that, as when judging sidewalk restaurants, people go to the crowded places because if there are that many people it must be worthwhile. Anyway, I was at Bai Dinh for the spring festival there, and since the place is so incredibly massive, while there were crowded spots, it wasn't hard to avoid the crush. These two pictures, I like to think, show the fluidity of motion in the crowd inside the pagodas, its sort of a swirling eddy motion as people come in and push up to the statues and then wiggle back out the same way. Or, all those blurry faces could just mean I have a cheap camera ...

The inside of all the main buildings and the outer wall along the walkways was lined with niches like this, each with its own Buddha statue. The cumulative effect reminded me of an old post office, and I kept looking in them to see if there was anything different about the next Buddha.

Ha Long: The Cruise

2011-02-28T09:58:00.009+07:00

Ha Long Bay is one of the premier tourism destinations in Vietnam, for reasons which are obvious once you actually get to the place and have a good look at it. The famously chaotic dock where you get on your boat is not one of those reasons, but it can be fun none-the-less. The picture above is from one of the islands, looking back toward the dock at Ha Long City.

This above is the harvest at a "pearl farm" which is kind of a fascinating thing to farm, and no, there were no swine on the farm. Below are views from the top deck of the boat, where I spent most of my time. They call them "lounge chairs" for a good reason! Aside from taking in the scenery, the seafood was insanely delicious and the squid fishing highly amusing - if not terribly productive.

Boatloads of pictures from previous Ha Long trips are here.

Not long after my recent trip to Ha Long, sadly, a tourist boat sank there killing a number of tourists who were sleeping on board at the time. Considering that there are some 5 million people visiting Ha Long every year, this accident, while tragic, hardly makes the place a "dangerous tourist attraction" as noted by that most democratic of institutions, Wikipedia. Indeed, the van trip from Ha Noi down to Ha Long City makes even the ricketiest of boats seem like a welcome safe haven!

Buddhas and Other Muses

2011-02-23T22:15:00.009+07:00

More from the Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum.

This guy, the ear-scratching guy, I think is my favorite of these pictures. Buddha statues come in all shapes and poses, but you can just see this one's expression saying, "Aaahhhhh." The following shot is part of a lacquer work. I like lacquer paintings, and the process to make them is just too painstaking to think about.

And something entirely different:

Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum

2011-02-18T09:58:00.003+07:00

Style, a pig with pure style! These are a few pictures from the Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum. This next shot is a woodprint from the village of Dong Ho which is famous for ... woodprints. I like woodprints, the Dong Ho ones are cool even if rather formulaic. This one is of Hai Ba Trung, plus an elephant, so it's got to be high on my list!

Galleries with windows are nice, but they do make for surprising pictures sometimes! And this below, I have no recollection of exactly what that was but I'm pretty sure it didn't happen naturally.

Here we have the "Tall Four Seasons on Silks and Short Wooden People on Pedestal" Gallery:

Street View

2011-02-12T20:12:00.004+07:00

The corn wagon, fully equipped with a charcoal fire, a steamer, a big pile of sweet corn and an umbrella is always a welcome sight. The corn here is a bit more mealy and not quite as sweet as where I come from, but fresh steamed or roasted right there on the street, it still makes a delicious snack.

When you need a place to throw your corncob...

These clouds of balloons, laden down with bicycles, float all over Hanoi. Randomly, it seems. Disney World must be just around the corner!

Ghosts of Tet Past ...

2011-02-01T19:00:00.001+07:00

Bite-sized Sunshine

2011-01-07T23:36:00.006+07:00

For everybody out there enjoying that snowy season – take a good look at these pictures. Hopefully you can glean some vitamin D from them... Ridiculously small, fairly cheap (if you are friendly to the ladies selling them), and jumping-up-and-down sweet, these things are addictive. I'll give you some, but you better get here fast!

Fruit-of-the (new) Day

2010-12-05T09:39:00.004+07:00

Hồng xiêm, the local version of sapodilla. Happily I can buy those at the market 50 meters from my house. If they are not quite ripe, they are firm and have the very strange property of, in spite of being juicy, making your mouth dry up. Well ripened they are soft, consistency like a ripe pear maybe, with a sweet caramel-ly taste. MMMMM. :)

Hà Nội Thủ Đô

2010-11-26T20:35:00.000+07:00

River Route

2010-11-18T20:18:00.001+07:00

Hanoi - Back on the Street

2010-11-12T17:38:00.009+07:00

Back in Hanoi, the rhythm of the streets rolls on without a pause. I think it is one of the most appealing, even addicting, aspects of the city for me, this endless stream of unadulterated, undecorated, raw life ebbing and flowing on every street. Most notable is the buying and selling, but at core, it is mostly about simple population density. Nearly everything that people do gets done on the street. For myself, however, what gets done on the street is largely just observation. Study and work are most successfully pursued in a place with fewer distractions. I suppose it speaks to the quietness of my life before Vietnam, my inability to block out the blindingly vibrant activity to focus on my own task. In any case, it is a manageable and pleasant addiction to cultivate!

Bricks in the Wall

2010-11-06T22:47:00.003+07:00

Iran Awakening
Shirin Ebadi
The gripping story of a determined, intellectual Iranian woman’s experiences, from her childhood under the Shah, as a university student during the Iranian revolution, and her work as a legal professional and eventually a leading human rights advocate within Iran.

Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time
Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin
Mountaineer-turned-development worker Greg Mortenson dives into life in northern Pakistan with an unconventional approach that gets things done. And he drinks tea too, I can dig that!

Red Tape and White Knuckles
Lois Pryce
This woman rides her motorcycle from London to Cape Town. And has a sense of humor writing about it. I liked this book because it is ‘just’ a story about the journey, it’s not a history lesson or political analysis of the places she goes through and it doesn’t try to be. A frank account of what travel in Africa is like, or at least what it was like for her.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
William Kamkwamba, Brian Mealer
William Kamkwamba grew up in a small village in Malawi. Through a combination of curiosity, access to an old science textbook, and frustration at being unable to continue school, he built a windmill next to his house to power electric lights in the evening. With this as evidence of both determination and ability, he is able to return to school, eventually to university, and of course, write a book about it all.

Trucking iPod shuffle-style

2010-09-30T12:25:00.001+07:00

Nhớ Lại Mùa Hè

2010-09-26T06:55:00.001+07:00

Madison

2010-09-23T06:52:00.002+07:00

Family

2010-09-21T06:06:00.009+07:00

Summer Ball Park

2010-09-18T05:34:00.003+07:00

Night Scootering ... Deserves a Quiet Night

2010-09-14T05:21:00.005+07:00

Tigers on Stage

2010-08-24T02:29:00.003+07:00

My favorite picture from Tet 2010, the Year of the Tiger. The Mickey Mouse balloon and pink-and-yellow laser lights to add glitz, the massive theatrical 'happening' (which you can only see a little piece of) on stage with huge cartoon tigers looking on in the background, all of this hubbub going on and stopping traffic in front of the normally rather staid, solemn and thoroughly colonial Hanoi Opera House.

I'm not a lumberjack, and I'm still ok

2010-08-12T09:28:00.005+07:00

Vietnam Institute of Musicology

2010-07-18T10:59:00.006+07:00

Four performances on traditional instruments from the Vietnam Institute of Musicology

Lá Xanh

2010-05-27T23:16:00.006+07:00

Trên Đường Về

2010-05-24T23:11:00.003+07:00

DIY Grotto

2010-05-21T23:00:00.001+07:00

Ba Vi Cactus-arium

2010-05-17T22:35:00.011+07:00

Clatter

2010-05-04T21:49:00.011+07:00

Engines are not designed to clatter. That, at least, is my opinion. Purring as in a 425 Cat or barking as in an R Model are not to be confused with clattering. What my motorbike developed, slowly but surely, was unmistakably a clatter. Something akin to the noise made by a ball peen hammer inside a tin kettle in the back of a CJ-7 on the washboard road to Shenk’s Ferry. This particular clatter, I like to think, was there when I bought my motorbike, albeit in an undeveloped form - small, fuzzy and slightly charming, like a Rottweiler puppy. If the clatter was there when I bought it - that means it’s not my fault, right? Eventually, the clattering got to be hard to ignore, which is saying a lot for a clatter – I have long and well documented experience in ignoring funny noises in vehicles! My favored motorbike mechanic started, a couple years ago, to tell me every time I stopped in that I need to buy a new motorbike. He long since gave up on that, instead he took to shaking a crankshaft in my face and telling me I needed one of those. I took my bike up Ba Vi Mountain last fall, and started thinking about that noise, as it got louder. Then I came back down the mountain and didn’t think about it so much. That happened again the next time I went up a mountain. Then it started clattering on flat roads. I was kind of waiting for it to fall apart underneath me, then I would know that it was time to fix it, but it’s a Honda and I just kept on waiting and waiting…

Eventually my mechanic prevailed, convincing me that I didn’t really want it to fall apart underneath me in the middle of nowhere, where I go occasionally. So he replaced the engine, which is roughly the size of a small Thanksgiving turkey. He also replaced the “transmission” which is the size of a short stack of pancakes at the Iron Skillet. Deconstructing my bike into a couple pieces of plastic, a pile of greasy bits on the floor, and a sad, skeletal wheels-frame-and-seat nha quê looking affair didn’t take long at all. Reassembly with the new bits inside didn’t take much longer. So, after two hours or so of drinking tea on the sidewalk, my bike came back. That set me back maybe 10% the cost of a new motorbike, or, say, 17 hours on the clock of doing whatever it is I now do! Unfortunately, you can’t really see any of the shiny new bits unless you look underneath, but for the driver it does indeed feel like a whole new machine.

The next week, as I was still driving around getting a big smile on my face from hearing the sound of a new motor with the conspicuous absence of clatter, I had a flat tire. Rounding the corner at the end the alley to my house I heard something metal stuck in my tire clicking on the pavement. About a centimeter long, the thing I pulled out of my tire appeared to be the broken off tip of a sewing machine needle, the tip bent slightly so as to catch a tire rolling over it even when lying flat, and of course it is hollow and therefore perfect for quickly releasing the air in your tire. There are no sewing machines that I’m aware of at the corner of my alley. There is a sidewalk motorbike mechanic who sits there waiting to fix flat tires all day …

My theory of ill intent is, of course, only a theory. But, having said that, the next day I decided I needed a nice walk for exercise, so I pushed my motorbike with the flat tire out past the sidewalk motorbike guy, who followed me three hundred meters telling me more and more stridently that he could fix my flat tire, really, he could, truly, then I wouldn’t have to walk, really, honestly, that’s what he does, fixes flat tires. I smiled and walked another couple blocks to my regular mechanic. Sadly, he wasn’t there that day, the tea lady on the sidewalk outside his shop wasn’t there either, so I had to get someone else to patch it, and it went flat again right away. Then I got a new tube put in and was swindled by the guys in that shop who knew that no other motorbike shops in the neighborhood were open that late, and seemed very happy to swindle me. Karma like a defective boomerang…

Shortly after that I decided that since I had fixed the engine and could really go now, I should also fix the brakes. Yes they worked before, but the rear brakes seemed to offer about as much resistance as, say, dragging your feet wearing bowling shoes. Upon dropping the back wheel and looking at the brakes, my long-suffering mechanic pointed out that half the thing holding the wheel bearing was, well, gone, somehow. Oops. Thanks to too many sidewalk mechanics banging in new bearings (with less attention to alignment than me pushing the knob on my Bodum) to fix the noise, which wasn’t the bearing to begin with! So I got a whole new wheel. A new shiny bit you can see this time, and the brakes work very well. Beyond that, I can go to the middle of nowhere, clatter-free, and relax without fear of being stuck in the middle of nowhere for longer than I want to be there.

On the farm

2010-03-09T23:52:00.007+07:00

Another Green

2010-03-06T23:43:00.004+07:00

Feet on the Street

2010-03-03T23:30:00.006+07:00

Moving

2010-02-28T23:22:00.005+07:00

For Sale

2010-02-25T13:03:00.004+07:00

Presentation is really everything in retail ... everything belongs in the stacks

New to my Shelf

2010-02-18T21:07:00.003+07:00

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge
Chanrithy Him
A memoir from Cambodia, this story is well written and, as you would expect in a story of genocide, sometimes painful to read. The author grew up in a relatively well-educated family in Phnom Penh, whose life was turned upside-down when the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975. The book is full of dignity and humanity, standing witness to the appalling lack of either from those in power at that time.

Snow on the Moon
Keith Heller
I picked up this book quite randomly at a used bookstore - there is one bookstore in Hanoi with used English books which I found long long ago J . A novel loosely set in a small town in Spain late in World War II, it is written in a style which reminded me of so many English literature ‘classics’ that I’ve read. The impression was strengthened, I think, by the actual book – a high quality paperback that is dog-eared from use and brown from humidity. The story is snowy and mysterious, the strength of a child’s prescient naiveté playing against an adult’s hesitant willingness to be involved.

Catch 22
Joseph Heller
I guess this is one of those classics that I never got to until recently. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and spent a great deal of time laughing while I was reading this book. The story is of a bomber pilot at the end of World War II. The story, however, is in the telling of it. The satire is sharp and irresistible, it’s just been too long since I read something which made me laugh and think at the same time!

The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy
A beautifully woven story of complex characters, Arundhati Roy’s first novel is transfixing in detail and inexorable in tragedy. It is a novel truly deserving all the praise heaped on it. I’m not sure how it happened that I didn’t read it sooner.

Dragon Fighter: One Woman’s Epic Struggle for Peace with China
Rebiya Kadeer
The endless expanse of the Gobi Desert, paradoxically ancient yet fragile and crumbling remains of Silk Road cities, Kashgar’s incredible carpet bazaar, the cool underground streams of Turpan on a sunny afternoon, a blood-stirring drum and fife sidewalk performance by local boys in Urumqi, the friendly welcoming smiles of new acquaintances, long hours on uncharacteristically (for China) empty trains; these are my memories of Xinjiang, western China. Rebiya Kadeer’s memoir recounts her experiences growing up and her life as a mother, entrepreneur, big business owner, government representative and, eventually, prisoner, in Xinjiang, and finally as a Uyghur activist from the other side of the world. It is an inspiring story of fortitude.

China in Africa
Chris Alden
A technical and analytical look at the rapidly growing influence of China in Africa, economic and otherwise, this book is short and full of data. I appreciate the academic approach to this topic; it seems that most of what I come across to read on this theme, from my Western-centric media consumption habit, is in passing, shallow and frequently inflammatory. Alden presents a well-supported overview of China’s impacts on Africa, as well as exploring the various motivations for this natural expansion of influence and the potential ramifications both for Africans and Chinese.

Wolf Totem
Jiang Rong
This is a truly fascinating novel set in China’s grasslands of Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution. A Chinese student travels to the grasslands to live among the Mongol herdsmen to learn about them and, as usually happens in such cases, to learn about himself. It was written and published in Chinese before being translated, and features a great many philosophical discourses ranging from the respective characteristics of nomadic vs. agricultural societies, the Han Chinese relationship to ethnic minority groups, the impact of development and migration on nature, to, perhaps in the most grandiose interpretation, a general critique of the ‘Chinese character’. It is a very compelling read. While sometimes veering into an overly idealistic view of nomadic life or presenting a simplistically monolithic view of the above-mentioned ‘Chinese character’ (from an outsiders perspective, the diversity of China seems more prominent to me), the fable-like tone of the writing makes it a good read regardless of one’s interpretation.

Winter in Hanoi

2010-02-05T21:22:00.005+07:00

Streetwise, fight-ready!

West Lake - catching shrimp, maybe ??

Faces jockeying for space in a painting shop in the Old Quarter

Nyama Choma Mzuri Sana :)

2010-01-20T15:22:00.001+07:00

Warm Christmas

2010-01-04T23:28:00.015+07:00

Christmas in Saigon is warm. Hot, sometimes, and bustling to the point at which a bustling atmosphere bleeds over into a madhouse atmosphere. It had been almost a year since I was in Ho Chi Minh City, and I had almost forgotten how much time I spent there sitting on my bike or in a taxi, waiting for the endless current of vehicles to dissipate. In any case, aside from a few occasions when I got caught at the wrong place and wrong time, i.e. at the same place as a thousand other people, I successfully got around the city. Downtown streets are festooned with lights and decorations of all sorts. Back alleys, at least in certain neighborhoods close to churches, are also decorated and sprout grotto/manger scenes in random corners and, indeed, sometimes in the middle of the road. The prize for the oddest decoration goes to one here in Hanoi though, a giant 30-foot Christmas tree shaped spiral of Heineken beer bottles. I’ve got nothing in particular against Heineken I guess, but, a Christmas tree made of bottles of beer … I’m still trying to figure that one out!

Aside from reacquainting myself with a few of the street cafes I remember, I also went to a birthday party for the one-year old daughter of a friend of mine. All good fun, and I think that is the first time I’ve eaten ostrich … a good impression! While walking around the mall in search of a birthday present for the one-year old, I was truly amused to see the advertisement in front of a dental clinic, for a “revolutionary beauty treatment”, teeth whitening I believe. It featured giant side-by-side iconic portraits of Che Guevara and Marilyn Monroe. It seems I think about advertisements too much – but as I did not run out and buy cases of Heineken for Christmas or spend any money whitening my teeth to look like Che (?) I guess being amused by them doesn’t let them into my wallet!

The new experience of my trip south was Cần Giờ. I had read something about Cần Giờ and wanted to go there last year while I was living in Saigon, but just never got there. This area recently became a sort of outlying district of Ho Chi Minh City. Incidentally, expanding city boundaries seems to be a national fad, I think it was last year that Hanoi absorbed Ha Tay province, so now you can drive for two hours west of Hanoi into the middle of nothing resembling city, or even village, but you are still in Hanoi… Anyway, Cần Giờ is billed as the “green lung” of Saigon, it consists mostly of mangrove swamp between the city of Saigon and the coast. To get there you go out thru District 7 (what I like to call the Southern California district of Saigon), cross a ferry and keep on going straight. After a bit you get past the remnants of town, and into the mangroves. They are building a pretty significant road out to the coast, so at the moment there are stretches a unbelievably nice road, considering the paucity of traffic on it, and stretches of the old road, which is perfectly adequate as long as you don’t want to go too fast.

The area is of course very flat, but there are several significant channels that you cross over on bridges and you can get a look over the trees. Along the way locals were set up along the road selling dừa nước – the fruit of the nipa palm. In spite of being called DỪA nước (water coconut) in Vietnamese, as far as I can tell it is no relation to coconut. It is apparently the only palm tree that is also considered a mangrove. Truly a pretty weird tree, it has a “trunk” which grows horizontally underground, or under-mud usually. What you actually see are technically just the leaves, bunches of green palm fronds that are big enough you’d consider them trees just by themselves. The fruit is a giant, brown, spiky thing that looks like, shall we say, a pineapple-of-doom… But, you can separate each big brown point into a piece about the size of my dictionary, then you hack at that a bit more and inside the woody hull is something edible. Softer and juicier than coconut meat, it is refreshing but doesn’t have a strong flavor at all. Mostly, I suppose, it was refreshing to get off the motorbike for a bit!

The mangrove trees themselves are also, well, funny to look at. I have travelled I-10 across the Gulf Coast enough times to know what a swamp looks like, but I honestly couldn’t say if those are mangroves! These mangroves, in any case, look like what I suppose most any tree would look like if it were about a meter or two higher. I mean, a meter or two off the ground, the trunk stops and the roots start, and by the time they reach the ground there isn’t anything bigger than a couple inches in diameter, just a lot of them. So you look into a forest of these trees and you can’t see any dirt (or mud or water) or anything underneath, you just see trees coming up out of something resembling the backside of a gigantic shag carpet.

Just before getting to the coast you can stop at Monkey Island. It does indeed have monkeys; it is not, however, an island. It has a small museum, with bits of a prehistoric skeleton, a few remnants from the war, and a lot of stuffed and mounted animals. Including a beaver with a hairy tail. Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that beavers WERE beavers because of the slap-happy tail, without that wouldn’t they just be really big, buck-toothed lithping rat-th?? ?? After the museum you pass a “circus” with loud karaoke music coming out of it – I did not have the nerve to go in there so I cannot report what exactly a circus (or karaoke masquerading as a circus) is doing in a mangrove swamp. Monkeys ran around everywhere, eagerly ripping anything shiny or delicious out of the hands of careless visitors, and generally making mayhem. You could actually buy feed for the monkeys, but you had to buy it from the staff there, and then you had to give it to the monkeys really fast unless you wanted to take part in the squawking and brawling that ensued whenever food came into the picture. I had enough fun watching. The crocodile mud-pit seemed well stocked, and there was a truly rancid concrete pit about eight feet long with a giant monitor lizard in it, about 5 feet long I’d say. Apart from those diversions, you can take a boat down a bunch of little swamp alleys to visit an old military site from the war.

After escaping the monkeys with all my possessions intact, it was only a few more kilometers to the coast. The coast here is a bit muddy, not a great beach by any standard, much less by Vietnam standard. But, under thatch-roof shade with a good book and an extraordinarily delicious seafood hotpot, I didn’t much care if the beach was muddy!

So my warm Christmas in Saigon is over, I’m back in Hanoi. To be fair, it’s not THAT cold here but there are no beaches or monkeys, so I’ll settle for the attack cat behind my house and the café next to the lake with baby turtles in it.

Đang giắc mở về con khỉ nhan nhản, béo bổ và buồn ngủ!

The Dike Road on the Red River

2009-12-19T20:00:00.000+07:00

The Bamboo Corner

2009-12-17T14:01:00.011+07:00

Creatures

2009-12-16T13:49:00.005+07:00

This is the guardian of the bamboo forest, who takes his job very seriously and who tailed me the whole way through the place!

Hình thức thực vật

2009-12-14T13:31:00.006+07:00

Les Vestiges de la Forêt

2009-12-12T13:12:00.011+07:00

Núi Ba Vi

2009-12-11T23:47:00.006+07:00

On the Road Again ...

2009-12-10T11:20:00.000+07:00

Xanh Tươi

2009-12-09T11:00:00.002+07:00

The first installment of the way too many photos I took while wandering outside Hanoi last weekend.

Laos - Luang Prabang

2009-11-05T14:04:00.017+07:00

Luang Prabang, the former royal capital of Laos, is located on the Mekong like Vientiane, but in the north of the country.

The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is full of temples.

And it has a large night market, strangely empty when I was there but I assume that it is crowded in high season.

Life on the Mekong:

Laos - Wait, what Wat am I in now ??

2009-11-03T13:47:00.015+07:00

Wat That Luang

Wat smoke-free (do they have incense patches for the Buddha's, I wonder?)

Wat Sisaket

(yes, it's an ancient Vientiane-style Buddhist fan...)

Laos - going places

2009-11-01T13:38:00.009+07:00

Tuktuks as seen from Victory Arch

Laundry service!

The school bus...

Laos - Patuxay Arch

2009-10-30T13:17:00.012+07:00

Laos part 1

2009-10-28T12:45:00.004+07:00

The Mekong River, from the capital Vientiane

The tourist trap - pizza Lao-style!

SAVE WORLD LIFE - why didn't I buy that shirt? Who could resist?

Danang in Typhoon Ketsana

2009-10-21T13:23:00.004+07:00

Finally, I have figured out how to make my new computer act like my old computer, and put together my pictures and video from Danang, yeah, like a month ago...

I Carry Around Too Many Books ...

2009-10-02T19:00:00.000+07:00

The House on Dream Street – Dana Sachs

Stories of an American in Hanoi, from back in the day. “Back in the day” here meaning the 90’s, although similar stories, I have to say, are told by most foreigners who have been here any length of time, about how things were so different “back in the day” when they first arrived here, whenever that was. Anyway, it’s a cool story, for everyone who can’t come visit me and experience the place for yourself (which is, hmm lets see, EVERYBODY, except that one cousin), the least you can do is read a book about it!

Lakota Woman – Mary Crow Dog

Good book, made even more fascinating for me because the author is from Rosebud Reservation, next door to Pine Ridge Reservation where I spent some time "back in the day" :). The kind of things I saw there, and the stories in this book, seem to belong to the ‘rest of the world’ more than to the America that I grew up in. In any case, the book is worth a read, more passionate than articulate, but all the more revealing for that.

Aama in America – Broughton Coburn

The story of an old woman from a Nepali village, travelling in America with a former peace corps volunteer who had become part of her family, so to speak. Shifting plots make the book less than a straight read, but it is full of great quotes, funny and true-to-life both at once.

Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri

Short stories, it’s been awhile since I read short stories. I like them, and I like these. Its polished writing, but you don’t notice that until afterwards J

Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter – Adeline Yen Mah

The subtitle pretty much explains this book. Although I started it expecting the same kind of story that I’ve read a hundred times about growing up in 20^th Century China, I was eventually pulled into the story, and it became a good read. And, in case I hadn’t thought about it recently, which I had, it reminded me of what a phenomenally cool family I have!

Moving

2009-09-23T17:53:00.000+07:00

Back in Hanoi, I am recuperating / re-orienting after a wonderful summer in a cool climate mixing family and travel (and work, of course). Wonderful, although it was a bit long; I decided this summer that my scheduled absence from Vietnam was somewhat longer than it should have been. I’ll have to keep that in mind the next time around so I don’t forget so much Vietnamese!

I arrived in Hanoi late. Wide awake and with my head still in airplaneland, I watched the rice paddies roll by from the taxi, and then the familiar noise and traffic and heat of Hanoi. Arrived at my hotel and had a surprisingly lucid conversation in Vietnamese, not because I particularly wanted to but rather because the staff remembered me from the last time I stayed there, and they couldn’t just let me go off to bed without first reestablishing my Vietnamese credentials.Anyway, I got to my room eventually and slept like a log, jetlag only gets in the way after a day or two.

After a few days of wandering around the Old Quarter I must have sweated off a few kg’s of my summer of excess, and also came down with the flu. This, my Vietnamese friends tell me, is from drinking too many cold drinks (mango shakes, lemonade, ice coffee, ice coconut…). Myself, I tend to think it had more to do with an overzealous approach to the a/c in my hotel room, where I didn’t have to pay the power bill, and perhaps a persistent taste for street food. Either way, coughing, being feverish, and following my [large foreign] runny nose around isn’t any fun, and it being 95 degrees and humid doesn’t make it any better. But, I’m better now, mostly, so enough about that.

I am also back in Vietnamese class J. One of the things I love about Vietnamese class is that it always always makes me feel stupid at least once every class. I think that must be a good thing, in a place where the ability to say “Hi, I’d like an ice coffee” with a good accent inevitably leads to someone saying Wow your Vietnamese is SO good… Anyway, I’m back in a class with the same teacher I had last spring, which is great. The class currently consists of two Korean students, a Japanese student, a Taiwanese student, and me. And since most of the class is discussion, I learn more about those places than I ever really expected to, in Vietnamese class! My teacher clearly has great faith in the value of rabbit trails, which I appreciate beyond words. (My appreciation is especially beyond Vietnamese words, which I couldn’t remember even if what I was trying to say wasn’t beyond them.)

While I very much like that hotel I was staying in, I have now found a place to rent, of the non-hotel variety. My hotel room was 4^th floor, natural light from windows on three sides, balcony overlooking an old pagoda with trees, all inside the Old Quarter, with cafes, bia hoi’s and longan fruit all within like a minute’s walk. My ‘house’ is on the first floor with two views, one of a yellow wall across the alley from me, and the other of Grandma’s kitchen/laundry room, which is the courtyard behind my house. One of the prime attributes of my house is that I can walk to class. I had forgotten how convenient that is, how nice it is not to have to drive to get where you are going. Another attribute is that it is dead quiet. Seriously, I think this is the only place I have ever lived in Hanoi where I lie in bed and don’t hear traffic noises all the time. Instead, I hear a small cat yowling with a surprising amount of vigour, for an animal so small. That, and not much else!

I came upon this house thanks to an agent, who, after I saw a couple typical one-room-full-of-amenities-for-foreign-teachers sort of places, found this place for me. More space, fewer amenities. Although I am not complaining about the amenities, after all, the landlady who lives up the alley brings me papaya all the time. I don’t know, do I look thin or sickly? I don’t think so!Anyway, I really like my house. Concrete painted yellow, wooden shutters on the windows, a ramp to roll my motorbike inside my kitchen, and, oh yeah, a kitchen!! Someday soon I will be motivated to buy a rice cooker and actually do something in that kitchen other than make tea and eat papaya.

In the meantime I am back in my place here. ‘My place’ here seems to be a place of constant flux, which I am largely accustomed to, actually. It is also a place with good bánh khúc, and ốc luộc, and sinh tố mãng cầu, and sushi, and mực xao tởi, and, well, you get the idea. Indeed, I think I should go find one of those things now!

Mấy ngày tháng 8 đi cùng với gia đình

2009-09-06T20:45:00.028+07:00

Xe đạp đôi - chú điểu khiện, cháu đạp :)

Thịt dê và rau tươi nương - ngon chết!

Chơi nhạc dân gian

Chương trình đào tạo nhịp điệu cho cháu gái

Mẹ dạy con

Con dạy em

Các đan ông từ Bắc

Mội người vưa nghỉ vưa đi

Nâng cầu vòng sắt

Nhiêu tiếng đồng hồ ngôi trong xe

Các mặt tười, tương lái của gia đình

Columbia River Gorge

2009-08-12T10:42:00.000+07:00

My lovely trip to Portland was, indeed, centered in Portland - with music and coffee and comaraderie and a free couch to sleep on, how could it be otherwise? But, my pictures seem to be completely from my excursions outside Portland. Not that Portland wasn't photogenic, rather that I had enough other stuff to do I guess. Anyway, here some photos heading up the Columbia River Gorge.

Multnomah Falls

Bridge of the Gods - Cascade Locks

Mosier section

Oregon Coast Road Trip

2009-08-11T09:57:00.001+07:00

Lến cái hồ sâu trên đỉnh núi lửa

2009-08-10T08:09:00.000+07:00

Xe Đạp Trẻ Xanh!

2009-07-06T20:47:00.006+07:00

On the subject of bicycles, check this out:

The bamboo bicycle! I like this idea so much I would actually consider buying one, they are supposedly going to start making them in Cambodia - I guess I could ride it from there back home to Vietnam! Anyway, check it out here.

An Ambitious Yet Responsible American Pioneer

2009-06-26T09:23:00.004+07:00

Advertising is one of the things that really cracks me up here. Working all night and buying a lot of coffee and junk food seems to be what I've been up to lately. I wonder who decided that the cup of coffee to go from a gas station is a great place for customer ego inflation? I'm a pioneer of recycling because I bought an outrageously overpriced cup of coffee !?! Perhaps I should introduce this kind of flattery to the coffee shop around the corner from my room in Hanoi, I don't think their customers realize that they are pioneers of recycling, for using cups that get washed and reused, wow, what a concept. Or that their beverages are extremely hot, now that is good to know. Or, indeed, that their cups make a statement about them - although perhaps that statement does not start with "Hey, look at me," perhaps it starts with "We only have one size of drink here (reasonable) and you picked it, congratulations !"

Làm chợ ở nhà tổ tiên

2009-06-05T04:14:00.015+07:00

Đạp xe qua quê hương vào rừng

2009-05-01T11:59:00.009+07:00

Watching and Reading

2009-04-28T11:26:00.002+07:00

Reading the recent news stories about Sri Lanka, I was reminded of a film I saw not too long ago, The Forsaken Land (directed by Vimukthi Jarasundara). Although it is set in the context of the military conflict in Sri Lanka, the dominant impression I had of the film was of silence. I really liked that about it, the silence and the simplicity with which the characters are presented laid bare their common humanity, something too often lacking in movies from war-torn places.

Another film which gets a few stars from me is Couscous, the story of a North African immigrant family in the south of France. Humorous and honest – those two things always go far!

And from my reading list Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama was a good read. In part, I think, because there was no particularly presidential tone about the writing – it was written before the whole running for president thing came up. It is more simply the discovery and coming to terms with a unique family history, or perhaps it is not so unique a history, in any case it’s a good story and, you know, it’s always good to know at least a little something about the president!

The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux is a classic old-school travel memoir, about taking the train from Boston to Patagonia, the southern tip of South America. I enjoyed it, as I have most everything I’ve read from Paul Theroux. Although it is quite old (aside from being old-school!), there are a great many things about travel that don’t change that much between places and decades!

Noah Adams, of NPR ‘fame’, wrote a book called Piano Lessons, on the experience of, well, taking piano lessons. Well written and a quick read, it somehow still failed to inspire me to go out and buy a piano… Perhaps that has more to do with the relative immobility of your average piano compared to, say, me, not to mention the price. I guess pianos are just like that!

Finally, back to Vietnam, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is the personal diary of Dr. Dang Thuy Tram, a young woman from Hanoi who was head of a medical unit for the North Vietnamese Army during the war, until she was killed. This book was kind of an instant sensation when it was first published in Vietnamese, presumably because it is a strictly personal story from the war period, a perspective probably not often used when young Vietnamese learn about the war. Again, this book is a personal diary, not a history of the war, and, to the extent that you can glean broad themes from a diary, it says more about the human spirit than it does about war.

Moving Days

2009-04-24T04:49:00.014+07:00

My stuff collection

Vưa nhạc cụ vưa thùng giặt áo

trúng xổ số

Happy Feet

My mascot

Echoes

2009-04-08T22:37:00.002+07:00

A few months without nem chua or ca phê sữa đá, a few months of blog posts without labels like "safari" or "Tay Ninh". That is what is coming up here. I'm in the Hanoi airport, listening to occasional announcements, thinking about all the people who called me up the last few days to say goodbye and happy trails, and the people who (hopefully ... hint hint) will be waiting for me at the airport when I arrive back in the states. Echoes from both ends, both worlds, both pieces of my life which, I always realize this sitting in the airport, seem so far apart. I guess that is part of why I like it here, when I go home everything is fresh. Nostalgic and strangely unchanged, usually, but I appreciate it all more after having been away. Family and friends and law-abiding traffic and camping and road trips ... coming up soon!

Ngày Xưa

2009-03-27T20:42:00.002+07:00

I was just reading an article about Kashgar which was reminding me of my brief time there. So I put up some pictures and comments from back in the day, to see them click here.

My Pink Slip

2009-03-17T23:57:00.000+07:00

I sat on the front step for awhile, waiting for the guys from the moving company to show up. My neighborhood in Saigon is so quiet. Interesting, because everybody says that HCM is so much noisier and busier than Hanoi, yet living in a small alley there I’m always somehow startled to see that, while in the morning there are a handful of coffee and breakfast soup stalls on the alley corners, in the afternoon the place is dead quiet. Good spot for me! Anyway, the guys from the train station came and we had the prerequisite conversation going: Hi, are you the guy moving to Hanoi? Why are you speaking Vietnamese? Where are you from? How long have you been here? How old are you? Do you have a wife? Why not? After exhausting that topic we are back to the subject at hand: Why do you have such an old motorbike? Is this all the things you are moving? After we were officially acquainted, he filled out a form saying something like “Blue Honda, old, many scratches, one helmet, one box of cotton”. Giving me a crumpled carbon copy of that form, my pink slip, he drove off, precariously balancing the large, fragile cardboard box full of books and clothes (passing for cotton) on the back of my motorbike. I put my pink slip in my pocket and hoped it wouldn’t rain before he got to the train station.

Upon arrival in Hanoi, I moved into my next room and went about enjoying the cool weather. The cool weather was, incidentally, accompanied by rain and humidity of the type that leaves the question ‘Is it raining?’ superfluous, as the same amount of water is floating around in the air regardless of whether or not it is raining. Three days of enjoying this left me with a nasty cold from which I am still recovering. My room is serving me well I guess – it has art and some character, which is nice although that doesn’t quite make up for the utter lack of sunlight and fresh air.

After two days I went to the Hanoi train station bearing my carefully preserved pink slip. Upon presenting it at the office there, I sat and waited awhile. And engaged in a few more of those prerequisite conversations… I guess I was a little early. They sent me across the tracks to the little shack where all the working guys were having tea, and those guys sent me to a rickety green rail car off in a corner where a guy with a green hat was lounging across a couple crates smoking a cigarette. He looked at me, a little annoyed, and pointed over to the passenger cars. I explained that I was picking up my motorbike and a box sent from Ho Chi Minh City, and he took my pink slip and wandered aimlessly around the inside of the rail car, full of boxes and crates of all sizes, kicking one here and there and reading numbers. After heaving my box out the railcar window he found my motorbike, completely wrapped up in bubble-wrap and box tape. I gave him $31.46, and walked outside the station and bought a plastic bottle full of gas to drive home on - they had drained the tank. My cardboard box, somewhat rounder than before but still in one piece, balanced nicely on the back. The bike apparently didn’t mind the slow train ride, and I got rid of my pink slip.

The Road Home

2009-03-15T23:59:00.004+07:00

A short video of the labrynth of alleys one passes thru on the way from the real road to Ong Noel in my room.

Cao Dai Temple

2009-03-10T12:00:00.001+07:00

Weekend on the Road

2009-03-08T12:00:00.001+07:00

Hopping on my motorbike and going somewhere else always sounds like fun to me, so last weekend I went to Tay Ninh Province, north of Ho Chi Minh City sticking up into Cambodia. One thing I never learned to like about Saigon is that it takes like an hour of driving through traffic, in most any direction, before you get somewhere that looks like countryside, where you can breathe the air and hear things other than traffic and karaoke joints. In any case, after awhile you get out of the city and the driving gets more fun.

Probably the most famous place in Tay Ninh, with a firm position on the tourist routes from Saigon, is the Cao Dai temple. I am no expert on Cao Dai, but clearly somewhere in the code is something like “Thou shalt paint everything hot pink, baby blue and sweet corn yellow.” The temple is a riotous presentation of color, dragons, and all-seeing eyes. Apart from the visually arresting aspects of the temple, the music they played during prayers was fascinating. The religion is syncretic, the three main saints are the founder Ngo Van Chieu, along with Sun Yat-Sen (Chinese nationalist leader) and Victor Hugo (French author).

Nui Ba Den is a classic Asian mountain destination experience. I was remembering the first mountain that I climbed in China – the crowds of people, the squawking bullhorn-toting tour guides, the concrete steps going all the way up the mountain, bare flourescent bulbs hanging everywhere, the rickety cable-car option, the trail lined with plastic chairs and ramshackle shelters selling drinks, snacks, incense, palm-reading, knick-knacks and the omnipresent coconut carved into a monkey. Nui Ba Den was not so crowded. It was, however, raining and getting dark so I neglected to go to the actual top of the mountain. Shh, don’t tell anyone!

Khu du lich Long Dien Son, nearby, provided a bunch of animal statues, a lake with paddle boats, and a good cup of coffee. The road home was nice, came by Hồ Dầu Tiếng where you can get a nice hammock for buying a glass of sugar cane juice, went past a lot of rubber forests which always fascinate me, and eventually made it safely back to HCM through the hour of traffic to my house!

Concrete Fish to Rubber Forests

2009-03-05T21:13:00.010+07:00

The Lotus

2009-03-05T20:55:00.006+07:00

Châu Phi Books

2009-02-14T04:15:00.001+07:00

Truly the most comprehensive book on Africa I've ever read, The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence by Martin Meredith, takes you through post-colonial African history in detail. It covers pretty much the whole continent. The unique thing about the book is its structure. It does not follow a single country or even a region, chronologically going through history. Instead it follows a sort of thematic structure, simultaneously looking at different places where similar or related events happened. While this can make the book confusing if you set it aside for a couple weeks and then jump back into it, it is also a real strength in helping the reader see historical events in their contemporary context. This is particularly important in a place where state boundaries are frequently arbitrary, not accurately reflecting geographic features or ethnic groupings. So I liked the book a lot, but it took me a couple months to slog through it!

The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari is a personal memoir of the experiences of a Darfur native working as a translator and guide for journalists and aid workers. I loved the storytelling tone of this book, his voice is consistently respectful and often humourous, even in the face of the atrocities happening in his homeland. It is this kind of story that gives a human perspective to the news articles. And speaking of news articles, the events in Darfur are of course on-going, and in something new under International Law, the ICC has just issued an arrest warrent against Sudan's current President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Clearly that will not solve the problem, indeed it may complicate the solving of the problem, but at least it adds some personal responsibility into the equation. Anyway, the book is a great read, like three days, no slogging required!

2009-02-14T02:42:00.004+07:00

2009-02-14T01:25:00.005+07:00

Reflections on Kenya, from Vietnam

2009-02-10T20:35:00.001+07:00

Being in Kenya during President Obama’s inauguration was fascinating. Living in Vietnam, I am at times surprised by how much people here know about and follow US politics. At the same time, however, Vietnamese are perhaps uniquely qualified by their history to understand that whatever changes occur in current US politics will probably not impact their lives here today in any immediate or dramatic fashion. By contrast, Kenyans appear to be universally exuberant about the fact that Barack Obama, whose father’s village is someplace in the Kenyan countryside where they don’t have power at night (or at least not on inauguration night), is now US President. I probably saw advertisements for more Obama inauguration parties in Kenya than I have ever even heard of inauguration parties anywhere for all the other presidents that I remember being elected! His face shows up in random product advertisements and congratulatory cakes, and his name is plastered across more than a few Nairobi matatus. I was down at the coast on inauguration day, and should have fond memories of the event. Mostly because I was lazing in the swimming pool looking up through the coconut trees at the stars, meanwhile the hotel was projecting the festivities on a big outdoor screen to entertain the guests, in lieu of Masai Dancers.

One of the amusing things about going to Kenya was doing it from Vietnam. Picture me with any random person in Vietnam:

“I am going to visit my sister and her family next week.”
“Oh that’s nice.”
“They live in Africa.”
Puzzled look at me to double check my skin color
“Where?”
“Africa, I'll meet them in Kenya.”
Pause
“In Africa?”
“Yes, Kenya.”
Pause until end of conversation.

Then after I get to Kenya I keep trying to explain to people where I live, usually ending up saying ‘next to China.’ Everybody knows where China is, it’s where cheap motorbikes come from. Incidentally, they sell the same brands of Chinese motorbikes in Nairobi supermarkets that we have here in Vietnam. Upon leaving Kenya, one of the security guys at the Nairobi airport, who was very friendly, paid me some undeserved respect when I mentioned that I was going ‘home’ to Vietnam. He looked at me soberly, shook my hand firmly and said, “You’re a brave man, going to a place like that.” Obviously Hollywood has done a good job commemorating Vietnam - the war, which perhaps makes better selling movies than Vietnam the country!

In case anyone is confused, let me just say that my life here is pretty relaxed. I drink a lot of good coffee, read a lot of books, go to the beach fairly frequently and have rarely worked very hard. That to say, whether or not I happen to be a “brave man” has no bearing on my capacity to live in Vietnam!

Me Staying in One Place

2009-02-05T15:49:00.003+07:00

Having returned from Kenya and been back in Ho Chi Minh City for a good four days now, I've been sort of reading the paper and, you know, thinking about going somewhere else... I mean really, shouldn't I take advantage of my current lack of work and make it an opportunity to go somewhere? It is a worn bit of logic that has taken me many places, I guess.

Given that state of mind, I was reading an article about Laos. Incidentally, about Bill Lair, who was the subject of a quite good book which I read long, long ago, called Shooting at the Moon: The Story of America's Clandestine War in Laos. Which was reminding me, not of war history and all that, but of the very fun time I had in Laos when I was there. So on that note, let me just announce to everybody that I'm still in Ho Chi Minh and I haven't gone anywhere else.

Yet.

A film I want to see: Pray the Devil Back to Hell. A documentary from Liberia under Charles Taylor. I won't say anything more about it cause that is really all I know. Just thought I'd say I want to see it, so if anybody has a chance to see it, do that and let me know if it's worth buying!

And speaking of films, just before I left for Kenya I saw a Vietnamese film that is truly worth seeing, Owl and the Sparrow. It is a bit sappy at times, the final scene leaves you in a saccharine haze obscuring the authenticity developed through the film, but that last scene stands out precisely because the rest of the film is so well done. The colors are vibrant, the filming is close and intimate. Which is a nice way of saying that it effectively captures the way life is in the middle of Saigon, claustrophobic and frenetic while, at the same time, strangely placid. Check it out!

Kenya Safari - Samburu

2009-02-03T03:33:00.023+07:00

Nairobi to Samburu

This was the view from my porch immediately after I walked in to my room at the Serena Lodge

And these from the game drives in Samburu

This a Beisa Oryx, unique to Samburu Reserve

Gerenuk

Stripes

A cheetah sitting on a termite mound 'reading the menu'

Leopard posing very nicely

The Tale of Lion, Hairball and Buffalo

Buffalo, after all, is truly too ugly to be king, but he is big!

This rhino was at a "safari walk" at Nairobi National Park, not in the wild. And he wasn't very wild either, in fact he was sleeping soundly as far as I could tell.

The Rest...

Overlooking Samburu/Buffalo Springs

January in Kenya with family

2009-02-03T02:51:00.012+07:00

Vietnamese Wildlife

2009-01-31T23:43:00.007+07:00

So as to dispel any notion, based on the upcoming flood of photos of African wildlife, that I have forgotten how much I like Vietnam, here are a few photos of my favorite Vietnamese wild animals!

Aloha from Doha

2008-12-30T08:01:00.002+07:00

I just had to say that ... other than that nothing is happening. My flight here was good - India was lit up like a Christmas tree and Qatar Airways is sang trọng lắm! It is just now hitting me that I am actually going back to Kenya. Cool. That is a good thing! Maybe I will remember my 4 words of Swahili. And if I only forget four words of Vietnamese then I am cool with that.

Chúc Giáng Sinh vui vẻ

2008-12-26T00:20:00.004+07:00

Merry Christmas.

Now that I’ve gotten that merriness out of the way, let me turn to the real business at hand – being grumpy! So how was your Christmas Eve? Mine was sweet. In the morning I packed my stuff to move back to HCMC from a 6 week stint for work in Hanoi. I love going places, I even enjoy moving, but me and packing are like street kids and cops-at-the-end-of-the-month: less contact is better for everybody. After the hour ride to the airport I sat on the floor for an hour or two wondering why Noi Bai couldn’t get enough chairs. In less than two hours the flight takes you from Hanoi, where it really was cold enough to see your breath before you get out of bed in the morning, to Ho Chi Minh City, where you really can start sweating just thinking about putting on a Santa hat. The taxi home was two hours, perhaps a half hour of driving and the remaining time consisted of classic Saigon traffic jam - meditating to Tom and Jerry while my taxi driver, who couldn’t even open the car door for all the motorbikes packed around us, kindly stuck his head out the window to smoke and exchange gossip with the taxi driver in front of us and give dirty looks to the guys who whacked his mirrors with their handlebars to get another two feet forward. After finally arriving home slightly faint with hunger, I headed out for dinner and immediately found myself in another traffic jam (I don’t know why I thought there would only be one of those, the whole city was one massive cardio-motricular arrest). That was a good one, lasted about four hours, and my motorbike does not have Tom and Jerry so I was forced to listen to the impossibly tacky and mutilated Christmas music playing from somewhere. I never did get dinner… It is the true misfortune of Christmas Eve this year that it happened to coincide with Vietnam’s football team’s good fortune, which accounted for a lot of the traffic and the roving bands faux gangsta kids celebrating with bad driving (bad, even for Vietnam!), shouting, and occasionally attacking taxis with Vietnamese flags on bamboo poles, in true unsupervised-13-year-old style. It was a great time. How appropriate that the place where somebody puts on a Christmas show in the park, with lasers and giant Christmas trees and neon and “snow” and ear piercing recordings of medleys mixing the Macarena, a heavy metal version of Silent Night and Santa Clause is Coming, with no more traffic control than normal (which is pretty much none) so the people coming in can’t come and the people going out can’t go, how appropriate that this place is the same place where families suddenly stuck on their motorbikes in a jam so tight you literally cannot walk across the street until 11:30 at night not only don’t have any problem with that, they just decide to make it a party. Buy a hat (which has to be passed over to you through the crowd from the sidewalk saleslady ten feet away), sing a song, send a text message to your friends inviting them out to join the party… Eventually, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, that sort of baseless giddiness rubs off on you. So, Merry Christmas to everyone, here’s wishing you a more suitable situation than a traffic jam in which to celebrate, and a Christmas more worth celebrating than a football game!

Cheers!

Đường Lâm village

2008-12-15T22:08:00.000+07:00

Sapa - trekking, shivering, and gazing at mountains

2008-12-10T20:27:00.001+07:00

Chau Doc, An Giang Province

2008-11-02T01:38:00.013+07:00

Footloose in Central Vietnam

2008-10-15T00:47:00.000+07:00

Old Places, New Photos

2008-10-11T17:19:00.003+07:00

Fishing boats off the coast at Nha Trang.

The memorial at the site of the My Lai massacre in 1968.

The names of the dead.

Rural Quang Ngai Province

Memorial cemetery for North Vietnamese soldiers killed in the Truong Son mountain range.

Outside the museum at Khe Sanh, a major US airfield during the war and site of a lengthy seige in 1968.

Da Krong Bridge, where the new Ho Chi Minh Highway crosses the Ben Hai River near the old DMZ.

Cruising the Perfume River in Hue.

The contemplative path...

Behind Thien Mu Pagoda near Hue.

Imperial tombs outside of Hue.

Tet Trung Thu, the Autumn Festival, in Hoi An.