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!

Mumbai mixture

There's no theme to this post, just a collection of pictures taken recently. I've got over whingeing about grey skies and poor light and decided just to suck it up and take pictures anyway. No more excuses accepted, it's going to be like this for about half the year so I just need to adapt.

Repainting the Taj hotel tower, one little bit at a time.





Family outing Marine Drive, overexposed but I like how the family group are thrown into isolation against the mainly white background.

I was attracted by the vibrant orange, the only good thing about grey light is that bright colours are more eycatching.



This came out a bit softer than I hoped for and I'm quite shy about taking pictures of strangers so I didn't hang about to correct my mistakes. I like his face anyway and that there's a "big balloon" in the background.

Mumbai August

The skies are still grey so the weather is still cool but there have been a few hopeful signs of blue from time to time.

I've been heading into Mumbai proper more often but usually without either a camera or a charged battery. The latter is infinitly more frustrating!

Lots of people suggested a trip to Mohammed Ali street for the Muslim food stalls during Ramadan. It's the first time I got overwhelmed by India but it was mostly fun. we went, I got lost, I got punched in the kidneys by a child, we found our way out, I didn't manage to eat a bloody thing. Next time maybe.

Edinburgh extended stay

A quick week stop off has stretched out further as the work visas are taking longer than anticipated to get processed. No problem, time for more pictures, more oatcakes and more baked tatties and lots of time at the visa processing centre.

Vermin


There's a Spanish tourism promotion this week and appropriately themed buskers.


There are more traditional Scottish buskers


and traditional buskers with twists.

Otherwise I've been out and about getting arty-farty with the new lens.







Fingers crossed for the next pictures coming from India.

Architectural Signage Puzzle

Perhaps someone out there can help me with this. I've seen signage like this since I arrived and have never been able to work out what it means or meant. Any ideas?

Saigon from a distance

A visit to Conic Apartments, KDC gave me an interesting view of the city. The first picture shows the view to the left of the apartments and away from District 1.

Next a more direct view towards the city, I don't expect these fish ponds are going to be around for too much longer.

Finally, towards Phu My Hung and showing the plots already laid out for further developments in Conic.

I tend to forget how flat HCMC is, we don't really want the sea level to rise.

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.