Mũi Né beyond the resorts

Mũi Né is, of course, a fishing village, complete with a seemingly endless supply of basket boats.
I'm guessing they make those boats out of, say, the bamboo shoots that are too tough to eat, and sort of sautée them in fish sauce to make them waterproof...

Some fisherman thoroughly amused by my ngư nghiệp vocabulary!

One more happy fisherman, with a BP shirt on!

This last one is a Cham Tower just outside of Phan Thiet. That is from the Champa Kingdom, the same civilization that built all the towers at the Mỹ Sơn site.

Plodding Fishing Boats and Flying Kite Surfers

There are lots of things that I don't know, and exactly how a kitesurfer actually jumps very high is one of those things. It looked like you get some speed and then sort of hit a wave and pendulum-ize yourself to swing under the center of your kite and then you just hang for a little before Isaac Newton catches up with you. However you do it, it looks like a great deal of fun ... maybe in my next life!

The Sands of Mũi Né

Mũi Né, in southern Vietnam, is where the sand dunes are... Vietnam's sand dune spot.

It is a kind of hot windy spot, as you might expect, which based on the pictures we got there, seems to provoke an unusual amount of frivolity.

Aside from sand dunes, Mũi Né has beach, of course. A quite long strip of very nice beach, which is the attraction of the place, although the actual town of Mũi Né is a couple km away. In any case, the beach is a good thing, that is why we went there!

Hội An - in search of sun

Ca phê, nem cuốn và tờ báo ven sông.

Cousin and tailor friends

These are mì - the noodles bit of mì quảng.

My seafaring cousin

Smack in the middle of frigid winter..

..my cousin came to visit me. Actually, she came to go to the beach, but first she came to Hanoi to get the free mango shake for anybody who visits me here. So we wandered Hanoi for a couple of days, went to Bat Trang pottery village across the river, and saw a water puppet show.

My favorite, the water buffalo. Who could resist such a cute face???

My Tet

The day before Tet, the Lunar New Year, I was drinking coffee as usual and started talking with an Irish guy who was just in town for a few days. We spent the evening walking around town, elbowing through crowds, watching the acrobatics and fireworks shows, and of course at bia hoi. Talking with tourists can be fun for a couple of reasons, you meet fascinating people from all over the world, and you can sound like somebody who actually knows something about Vietnam based on having been here for longer than a week...

Welcoming the New Year of the Rat

And somebody in my house is awfully cagey with all this talk about a rat!

I'm in a squid mood

That is just so you know! And in my squid mood I am having thoughts of posting more pictures of my latest wanderings...

Notes on my post-Christmas Commute

The other day I was talking with a friend about the new helmet law in Vietnam. Although really, the new law is not so worthy a topic. Somewhat higher on the worthiness scale would be the concept of actual enforcement of the law. I'm told that something like 3000 new police were hired specifically to enforce the helmet law. Or perhaps they just hired 3000 old police and provided extra motivation for doing the stuff that police do. But what really happened, that is worth talking about, is that for two whole weeks now the vast majority of people here have been wearing helmets. I would suggest that the law, and even the level of enforcement, have less to do with that change in people's habits than the PR campaign making helmet use, and traffic safety in general, sort of a national fad. After having effectively given up on enforcing a similar law a couple of years ago, I'd say that the apex of Vietnam pc institutions, the propaganda department, has two solid weeks of success on this one! Anyway, we were talking about whether there are any standards regarding exactly how helmet-like the thing on your head has to be in order to pass muster, i.e. the guys with construction hard hats or green army helmets or, say, a sweat-encrusted baseball cap on backwards, do those get you out of a ticket? My best solution was to have the police give any random passing headgear a good wack with their night-stick - if you fall over then you get a ticket, if you keep going then you're home free. After that conversation, I still burst out laughing tonight, in a 5:30 ribs-to-elbows traffic free-for-all, when a policeman who was dutifully blowing away on his whistle to stop traffic one direction and make way for the other direction, upon being completely ignored by one driver, promptly did just that - skillfully administered a good wack on the helmet. After laughing (and checking that my own helmet was well fastened, and making sure I was in the middle of the herd of traffic going my direction - out of reach of any unprovoked wacks) I proceeded thru the intersection with great holiday cheer and best wishes for my favorite cop who is doing his job.

Merry Christmas from Hanoi!

Indeed, maybe I should buy myself a Ford Ranger for Christmas?!? Isn't there something a little more realistic that they can advertise outside the shopping mall?

Oh yes, M&Ms, now that I can relate to. I failed to check, though, if they were genuine Hershey's M&Ms made from PA milk hauled by my former colleagues...

Here is where Santa gets his hot weather clothes. That said, it isn't hot here now, it's actually a wee bit chilly, but something tells me that Santa being from wherever he is from (the BBC says Uzbekistan would be the best location for him but I don't think he takes orders from the BBC) he would not call this weather chilly!

Who is this Bobby?? Somebody tell me, is that like Santa's goofy uncle, who likes purple instead of proper Christmas colors like red and green??

This Santa needs some serious North Beach treatment - how can you be Santa without at least stuffing a pillow under your belt?? I would expect roly-poly to catch on here, everybody is afraid of being too skinny, so shouldn't Santa be even more roly-poly than usual?

This is Santa outside the jazz club, playing the sax quietly under the deafening roar of everybody's motorbike horns. Oh - I got the horn fixed on my motorbike, I can now toot like everybody else. Occasionally that makes me feel better about the traffic, which is really all it does.

My Castle

Well, not exactly "mine" strictly speaking. And "castle" is up for interpretation I guess! So that is my expansive and well-equipped kitchen. Rice, Ramen, Coffee and nước măm. That's it, mostly, I guess that's why I don't cook much!

This scholar guy, or whoever he is, is hanging on my wall above my desk. Question for my Chinese friends - what does that character mean? Does it mean if I study long and hard enough that I will actually be able to speak Vietnamese? Or if I study long and hard enough I will have hair like that dude does? Or both? Maybe it's a subliminal message saying buy this picture it will bring you luck. Who knows. I for one, don't, that's why I asked!