Airport survival skills

I'm pretty good at sleeping on the go but I aspire to this level of sleeping skill. 

A member of the ground staff at Surabaya International Airport catches a quick nap and still manages to look pretty professional while doing so.

Splash

I went to a swim meet this weekend in my role as my workplace's Official -Unofficial photographer.   It's an easy role to fall into, first you take your camera with you because you think it will be fun, then you share your pictures and before you know it the responsibility to capture all sorts of events has fallen to you.  It keeps me on my toes and hopefully helps my photography improve.

 

If nothing else I now have a huge free storage capacity on dropbox through sharing the images.

New International Airport, Danang

I left Vietnam and moved to India a year ago, it was time to go back and see the old place while I could still get in and out on my multiple entry visa. First stop off was Hoi An. There's been a long standing programme to upgrade airports in Vietnam and Danang which serves Hoi An has also been built anew. Before it was what can be best described as a shed, quite a large shed but a shed nonetheless. The picture below is actually Vientien airport in Laos which was a good bit nicer than Danang but you get the picture.

It's actually a very nice airport now, comfortable seating a surprisingly good public address system which is pretty unusual in any airport, places to eat and drink and clean toilets. People management and security are quick and efficient. There's not a lot more you can ask for in an airport.

There are some surprises though, it has a bar. An actual beer selling bar! If you haven't travelled through Vietnamese provincial airports you won't understand how surprising that was to me. I didn't have a drink but if I'd wanted to ...

You can eat too, Big Bowl Noodle do a nice range of noodles in big bowls, surprisingly good airport fodder. Red Star coffee make a mean cafe sua da or any other coffee that takes your fancy, there's plenty of fresh fruit available. It's my firm belief that Vietnamese people are incapable of travelling anywhere without a big bag of fruit. A shock to my system after a year away though was this ...

I knew they were already in Saigon International airport but to see Burger King happily sitting in the middle of Danang domestics was a bit of a shock. Vietnam is still holding out against McDonald's and Starbucks but it can only be a matter of time.

It was good to see that not everything had changed.

This knock-me-down-and-I'll-stand-up-again doll has been on sale at the airport for at least five years. I know it's the same one because of the smudge of dirt on its face. At 1,100,000 Vietnamese Dong (over 50 usd) it's likely to stay unsold. I'd be quite sad to see it go after all this time.

Five Years Ago Yesterday

I noticed that my flickr account turned five years old yesterday, I had just posted the image above which I thought could be much better, I was considering taking it down again when I realised that, completely insignificantly, it was the last picture I posted before I was aware of the date. Caught up with concept that anniversaries matter I went for a wander through my photo's.

Way back then me and the man had taken the plunge and found ourselves jobs in Vietnam. The flickr account was one of the ways of documenting the "international experience', as is this blog. The name on both is a combination of our initials with an extraneous "s". We were both meant to contribute, that didn't happen but he does occassionally point out spelling mistakes.

The flickr account has pictures of leaving Scotland, sorting out the house for renting, arriving in Vietnam and getting settled. Trips and holidays all over Asia and a brief visit back to the homeland before our current incarnation in Mumbai. It documents my favourite places and views, my obsessions and interests of the time and it makes for nostialgic viewing. I'm working on improving my photography and getting more selective about what I post, hence my prickliness over the "significance" of the photo above. But if the last upload was so bad, how would I feel about the first one?

I was well chuffed! My very first upload to my flickr account was a shot of two buildings in Singapore which, when viewed from a certain angle, look like a great big c*ck!

Pure class.

Fast Food Saigon Style

Sure, the streets are full of vendors selling all manner of tasty Vietnamese treats but the fast food chains are making steady inroads too.

KFC franchises are probably the most numerous.

Jollibee, the Philippines contender for the burger crown is well established. At least their happy bee mascot isn't as creepy as the clown used by McDonald's.

At the higher end of the market Illy cafes have sprung up jostling with Gloria Jeans, Highlands Coffee and, more recently, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to capture cafe high society.

I wonder if we'll ever get a Greggs ?

Happy Birthday Blog

I realised it has been more than two years since I started this, we had a lovely meal at the refinery, not to celebrate the blog, that momentous event passed entirely unnoticed until after the meal but it's a good tenuous link to food pictures.

The Refinery is a nice space, we ate in the courtyard where there are lots of fans and cool shade. The building used to be an opium factory hence the name and the use of poppies as a logo.

Good food, who could find fault with heart shaped cous cous and pak choi that stands to attention? The mashed potato was also heart shaped but my dining companion had already delved into it by the time I whipped my camera out.