On the menu

Wake up the chef!! Time to eat!

Little ones

Big ones

"Nice squiddy squiddy" slimy ones

Grilled ones

Ones with sharp ends

And the corn guy, aha, something easy to eat. Notice the car radio on this guy's cart, blasting Christmas carols for blocks...

Vietnamese fighting fish

Tamarind, mmmm

Lichee, rambutan, or maybe the other way around I can never remember

And the 'that hits the spot' coconut of the day!

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...