Violet times in Ho Chi Minh City

I lived in Vietnam for four years before moving to India so it was great to go back to somewhere I was so familiar with and where I still have a lot of friends.

Sometimes, especially when I'm taking pictures somewhere I know well, I'll choose a colour and seek out things to snap that match it. The process is to have a quick scan about and the first photo worthy thing you see, that's the colour. In HCMC it turned out to be purple. Vietnam loves purple in all it's shades and flavours.

When you think of Vietnam or Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) it's likely that rice fields and conical hats come to mind and there are lots and lots of these:

Right there, keeping her Non La or conical hat on - purple. Now you will find lots of ladies in traditional dress but HCMC is a fast developing city. It's a great mix of new and old, foreign and local influences and like most cities it has a fancy shopping street. The start of this area is marked by the Louis Vuitton store on Le Loi Street. Here we have the Four Legged Lady of Le Loi and a purple dominated LV window:

Part of the tradition in Vietnam in general is the preponderance of public information propaganda posters, another is that everyone rides motorbikes:

If everyone rides motorbikes then you want yours to stand out from the crowd, if only to find it easier in the parking lots and in HCMC you can do that with style. Anything and everything can be personalised and here are two reconditioned Vespas demonstrating that:

Even the airport has purple seats, some people dress to match...

and some to blend in.

As I sit here I've just noticed my toes, I got a pedicure in Saigon, trust me the best pedicures in the world are done in Vietnam. It's purple of course, I don't even like purple!

Anywhere in the world by DHL...

...anywhere else by bus.

Pastures New and Old Stamping Grounds

By July we'll be off taking the same kinds of pictures in a different kind of place and I'm already getting a bit nostalgic and taking pictures of things I see on a regular basis but have stopped really registering.
Hence, The Post Office, The Virgin at Notre Dame, Uncle Ho and a coffee shop;

I still think this is one of the loveliest Post Offices I've been to and the service is great and charges are excellent value for money despite the recent hikes in cost.



This is the famous "crying Madonna" who caused a huge fuss just before I came to Vietnam. She wasn't crying today and hasn't for four years I've been here but the real novelty in this picture is the blue sky which made such a change from the horrible grey candyfloss that has been passing for sky recently.



Now, what I wanted here was a picture of Uncle Ho's statue in front of the Hotel de Ville with the Vietnamese flag snapping away in the breeze. This was one of the grey sky days hence the ridiculously cropped closeup.



Vietnam has adopted the fancy coffee culture with arms open wide. A fancy coffee has at least four components to its name in my rule book. This was an expresso freeze with cream so clearly not as fancy as some. Very good though and the first time I've been back since their rebuild, I noticed that they're hosting live music now, Regina Coffee, Nguyen Du St.

I didn't realise just how many puns I got into the title of this blog until I re-read it, I'm quite proud of myself if a little ashamed.

Santa Time

The streets are full again of children of all ages posing in front of the Tax Centre Christmas displays. This year the photographers are liveried up in Noel 2010 shirts.

Red velvet ropes are set up to help keep people from climbing on the polystyrene displays which have an international theme courtesy of Hitachi.

Most of the Santa Babies have already learned the art of photo posing but you have to start somewhere.

There are new Santa fashions, the halter neck tiered dress...

and more and more fairies.

The decorations are up.

The Santas on sticks have arrived.

The balloons have been modeled

and Mickey and Minnie are available for you in their Military Fighter helicopter.

Merry Christmas from Ho Chi Minh City.

Dancing dragons in the suburbs

As I've mentioned before we live in a pretty quiet part of town, our area is "up and coming" which mostly means there's a lot of building going on but on the 15th of February we had a bit of excitement. The dragons and lions arrived to bring luck to a new house.

Here's my first glimpse of them:

As for the rest of the pictures I'll let them speak for themselves, I'm not informed enough to explain exacly what was going on, suffice to say it was like a mixture of the circus and a dance troupe had landed in our otherwise quiet part of the world.

It took about an hour and a half to complete all the activities then they jumped onto their bus, truck and bikes and headed off leaving the street quiet and deserted again. Until the Karaoke started.

Miniature HCMC

Tilt shift and time lapse makes a toytown out of Ho Chi Minh City. This has been posted on a few other blogs prior to me finding it but I liked it so much I wanted one of my own,



I don't know who jnvdub is, only that they used a Canon A540 camera and presumably the tilt-shift function in Photoshop that changes the perspective creating this miniature effect. Well done Evil Penquin Productions, I'm in awe.

Extra long load

One of the longest loads yet, I can't help but think that he's cheating a little with that extra wheel on his motorbike offering additional stability.

O'Brien's bar

O'Brien's Factory on Hai Ba Trung has a nice bar and the beer isn't bad either.

Christmas Cheer

As once again Saigon gears up to celebrate all things Santa and Baby Jesus related I find myself hanging outside places making "oooh" sounds and pointing stupidly at things. If I have a camera handy to point stupidly with I'll take a picture.

Last year the May Hotel went all out for a tin foil theme but this year not a scrap of it in sight. A mistake as far as I am concerned but still, they did provide us with a Baby Jesus in a sequined play suit nestled in a huge twinkling star.



Nice.

Kentucky Fried Welcome

KFC on Hai Bai Trung are gearing up for Christmas by making one of their employees dress in a Colonel Saunders outfit and hand out treats to children.



I've never eaten in KFC and oddly even this didn't tempt me in.

Wash Day

Part of the deal we had when hiring our scooter was a monthly service and clean, of course that all ended when we bought our own. Since the scooter lives in the living room at night I don't like it to get too manky so (being lazy as all hell) we found the local bike wash.

You sit on plastic furniture and your bike gets lifted up for a thorough going over. The bike in the picture isn't ours, despite my best attempts I haven't managed to convince Stephen that decals would be a good thing.



Lots of suds and spraying and wiping goes on and the bike leaves gleaming with even the boot box cleaned out. It stays that way for maybe up to five minutes.



Cost 10,000 dong (30p)

Lady with baps out lying on top of a lion.

We moved to a new house recently and our landlord brought us this as an attractive addition to
our living space:

It's going to take quite some time to find the perfect position for it.

Tet Celebrations

Just recovering from the excesses of the Christmas decorations the city fathers have gone all out to provide more lights for Tet. It doesn't have the same kitsch factor that Christmas has but it's worth the extra long power cuts we get on Tuesday to power the lights.Le Loi and Dong Khoi are both fully illuminated but Nguyen Hue is still under construction, it looks like it's going to be a pretty spectacular floral arrangement the entire length of the street. I'll try to get back during the day but we're off to Singapore then Cambodia on Sunday so I might miss it. Meanwhile, here are some pretty pictures of pretty lights.



Le Loi is in the same colour scheme as Christmas but with the seasonal addition of yellow blossoms and full moon balloons. This is the car lane, it's odd to see cars that aren't partially marrooned amongst motorbikes.



A closeup of the aforementioned moon balloons.



The bike lane and the pavement beside it were awash with people on bikes out doing their pre Tet business. We parked up in a school that was being used as an overflow bike park and walked but even that was a bit hairy at times.

Dong Khoi, once called Rue Catanat, is all red lanterns and dangly lights.





What's new year without a sale?

The Caravelle has my favourite lights, the Vietnamese Flag rendered in strings of fairy lights.



Its gearing up to get even more crazy at Tet approaches. In a way it's a pity we'll miss it but for the actual Lunar New Year celebrations most things close down and people spend the time with their families. Anyway, have holidays must travel.

You better watch out

Santa Claus has hit town in a big way.


It's "Dress your child like Santa and take pictures of them in front of the Christmas displays around town month". This is outside the Tax Shopping Centre at the top of Le Loi. Benches are set up and photo opportunities abound to capture your family in front of a seasonal backdrop.


But to some nothing says "Christmas" quite as well as a backdrop of a projected new high rise development.


The developers also seem to be sponsoring the not very realistic log fire inside the shopping centre, also a popular photo spot but you can have enough of a good thing so I haven't posted any here.

Meanwhile other attractions have not been left behind. Gucci does it with stylish blue lights and nodding white reindeer.





And in Dam Sen park the Santas travel in packs.



Or languish forgotten from previous displays.