In The neighbourhood

Down our way we don't have very much, no supermarkets or restaurants,bars or bookshops, although we do have a couple of temporary cafes which are good for an iced coffee. But recently I noticed that the area is up and coming. We appear to have a fairly upmarket knockin' shop. I've seen ladies ply their trade, quite discretely, along the National Highway and they need somewhere to take their customers.

For around £1.50 at the current rate of exchange you can get an hour in this local hotel. A bit extortionate for a ten minute stay but it seems popular, it looks like an extension is being built and it IS airconditioned. These types of hotels are also used by couples seeking a bit of privacy together and a more comfortable platform for their activities than a Honda Wave parked under a tree.

Mui Ne

We had a quick weekend break in Mui Ne about five hours from HCMC by bus. The picture above was taken from Coco Beach resort where we didn't stay but did use the facilities. The following picture was taken from the same place.


Why tourists shouldn't wear traditional clothing

We stayed at the Full Moon Beach Resort and liked it. The rooms were quirky and cute, more bijou than luxurious but perfectly charming. The plumbing was a bit musical so if you stay there expect to wake up to other people's water music as it courses down the pipes. Nice staff, perfect positioning and a laid back atmosphere.



The pool is saline and the tiles are very nice, bourgainvillia drops into it from time to time but my photie-ography isn't up to capturing it yet.

The bar closes at 10.30.



There are lots of other places relatively close by where you can drink later.



Or you can time it right and get a bottle of wine as the bar closes and enjoy the sound of the waves a few meters from your table.

The view is stunning. Even at night.



But just in case you think it was all too idyllic .....











...here he is again

Fine

Last night we got caught and had to pay an "occassional road tax" to the tune of 300,000 dong. Inflation huh!



Allegedly we were driving in the car lane, we couldn't prove otherwise and our particular traffic policeman was armed with a hand written notice saying "Police keep moto 20 days". A quick call to our bike hire guy couldn't get us off the hook so we had to pay up. Just a month ago the foreigners road tax was 200,000 if you were unlucky but the price of everything is going up.

No receipt of course but hopefully we won't get caught again too soon.

Saigon Cyclo Challenge

Saturday the 8th of March was the Annual Saigon Cyclo Challenge, a fund raising event for Saigon Childrens Charity held at the Taipai International School. As you'd expect it's a cyclo race sponsored by foreign and local companies with employees taking part.



It's not as easy as it looks and some of the participants take it very seriously. As well as prizes for winning races there's tough competition to win the Best Cheerleader competition. They strutted their stuff in the opening parade.



Stilts were very popular, traditional dress and more modern interpretations were on show.



I didn't see any of them fall.

The bulls shoogled their buttocks:



The cheerleader leader lead the cheering with inexhaustible enthusiasm



The girls from Catwalk dressed like cats



and walked



it was clearly hard on the feet.



Other girls from I don't know where dressed in gold tutus and tails and also walked in inappropriate footwear.



I couldn't work out the significance of the tiger and grass skirt combo



but it was all for charity so I can't be too critical.

I tried and failed to get a good picture of the professional cyclo drivers but they were too fast for me.



A good day and the unseasonal rain stayed off until the last race.

If I've got it right clicking on the title of this post should take you to Saigon Children's Charity site where you can see what it was all in aid of and see much better photographs of the day taken by a man in a pith helmet.

Helmet Chic

Since December 15th 2007 wearing helmets has been compulsory. At first the choices of helmets was fairly limited. This weekend I was at Hard Hat Corner on Le Lai to replace my cracked helmet and was overjoyed to see that fashion has reached the helmet market so quickly.

Prior to the new law people often wore wide brimmed hats to keep the sun off their faces while driving. There's no need to stop that even though you're wearing a helmet. The inventive Vietnamese have come up with a compromise in the form of the Helmet Skirt!

Fashionable and functional with a shiny green bow too.


For the girl seeking a bit of Barbie style.

Not seen one to suit yet?


Something a little more classy?

I was quite taken by the brown plush covered one in the middle, it has a look of the horse riding helmet about it. It was too large though so I had to pass on it.

Something for the gentleman, a lightly themed military helmet.


The goggles are shiny plastic and opaque so only there to fulfill the fashion needs of the wearer.

Or the more rugged helmet skirt for the man about town. Helmet kilt perhaps?



There are other helmet variations I've yet to capture:

The hand painted helmet, the ones with crystals glued to it, the decal salespeople who seem to specialise in Winnie the Pooh decorations for helmets, the helmet with a rigid brim or built in skirt, the giant baseball cap skip, the matching bike and helmet combo with decals in the same theme and the full helmet hat cosy.

Then there are the wearing styles. Helmet with hat underneath and for me, the holy grail, helmet with hat underneath and cone hat on top, seen twice but never when I had a camera with me.

I'll keep searching.

Things I've eaten, or tried to.

I work on the theory that if something is fruit or fruit related it can't be that bad. I've even tried durian which tasted like dairylea cheese and onions to me. It didn't make me gag but I didn't go back for seconds either.

Then I saw these in a supermarket:



It's official, tomato is a fruit, of course, working on that premise so is sweetcorn. I thought I'd give them a try. Clearly I'm not as brave fruitwise as I like to pretend because I bought them two months ago and they've been hiding at the back of the food shelves since then.



I went for the sweetcorn first, it seemed less scary, I've had sweetcorn sprinkled on ice cream before and it wasn't too bad. Tasting notes: strong initial taste of petrol which mellows to rubber with a tang of raw sweetcorn thrown in. Did I finish it? No, I got to the chewing stage and gave up when my gag reflex hit in.

Tomato candy frightened me without tasting it but I forced myself.



Knowledge tells us that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom prevents us from putting it into fruit salad.
-Miles Kington
This Korean delicacy was sticky and gummy on the outside, I'm not sure if that's deliberate or caused by the amount of time it's hung around in the apartment. Taste? Half an hour later and a glass of water with lemon juice and my mouth still tastes disgusting. It's sweet of course but the oddest thing about it is that it really tastes of tomato, it should, it proudly boasts Tomato powder as an ingredient. It tasted powerfully of slightly metalic tomato doused in sugar syrup. I can't fully explain how revolting I found this. Did I finish it, no, I barely got the sticky stuff off the outside before I was heading for the bin. They're a tough bunch the Koreans. I'm going to test it out on colleagues today.

Official food bravey rating: Wuss

Cambodia, light tourism

Following the rather serious last post I felt the need to return to what this is all about; pictures of things I like.

Here's an elephant. Who doesn't like elephants? This one works at a local park taking people for short rides, some time after 3pm she has a wander down the main riverside road stopping off for snacks.



The first time I saw her I made two assumptions, first that her mahout was getting money from people for posing with the elephant for pictures, he wasn't, he just wandered along beside her. Second I guessed she was getting fruit trimmings, wrong again, she got nicely arranged trays of fresh fruit including whole sliced pineapples. She looks in very good condition, it can't be too bad a life.

A tree decorated for Valentine's Day from the kind people at Coca Cola. I love you, may your teeth rot.





This dog knows it looks silly.



It looked even more long suffering the day before in a pink frilly blouse.

Barber Surgeon



The face mask, while adding a nice hygienic touch, was necessary, this is a very busy road just over the wall from the local crematorium.

An ox cart hauling pottery kitchen goods, a nice touch of the countryside in the city.



Meaty snacks:



I'm guessing cockroach but to my shame I didn't try them, a Cambodian girl told me that spiders tasted better anyway and they didn't have any on this stall.

Cambodia, Phnom Penh, Dark Tourism

We bussed down to Phnom Penh on what felt like the bumpiest bus in the world but it took less than five hours so it wasn't too bad.

Siem Reap had been very laid back and easy to like, Phnom Penh is more abrasive and certainly wears it's seedier side closer to the surface. There are lots of beggars and children selling things on the street, I know some people find this difficult to cope with. I formulated a coping mechanism where I gave money to people with disabilities because there's no social security to speak of and avoided giving money to children. I, perhaps wrongly, believe that giving children money keeps them on the streets and saw some of the organisation of begging and hawking with older children and adults "taking care" of the money. Someone had advised me to offer food to children which seemed like a good cop out position for me to adopt.

However, seedy and impoverished as it is, it's fun place to be, people are generally very good natured and saying "No" with a smile worked most of the time.

It's impossible to visit Cambodia without facing up to the atrocities of the Pol Pot era and with that in mind we visited Tuol Sleng or S21 prison. The torture centre where an estimated 17,000 were processed and eventually executed in order to extract confessions or biographies from them proving their position as enemies of the cause. Some of these enemies were children and babies.

It's with no apology that I'm posting these disturbing images and I deliberately avoided some of the more harrowing shots available.

On initial viewing the building is just like so many other schools of the same era, many buildings exactly like this are still in use today. The normality of it is possibly the most shocking aspect.

How to be a good torture victim.


Detailed records were kept and photographs taken of each suspect as they arrived.




These are displayed in two rooms, they make difficult viewing as so many portaits seem to gaze directly into your eyes.



Sngle cells filled the upper floors, tiny and the only furnishing being a chain or a hasp to hold shackles.



I couldn't find anyone who could tell me whether this was scratched on the wall during or after Toul Sleng's use as a torture and genocide centre but it seemed so incongruous I had to include it.

Barbed wire was strung over windows and walkways to stop victims throwing themselves to their deaths, surely a better proposition than remaining alive in this Hell of a place.



In a cage in a corner I saw these concrete busts of Pol Pot, presumably they're displayed in such a manner to limit understandable vandalism.



Visit if you can.

Cambodia, Angkor Wat, Siem Reap

Cambodia was a very interesting destination, we flew in from Singapore cheaper than we could do from HCMC, Vietnam Airlines has the monopoly on flights from here and charge accordingly.

Unfortunately I was a bit unwell during this visit and it showed in the number and quality of photographs I took. There were so many other things I wish I'd captured but I suspect I'll be back at some time.

Meanwhile, some pictures of Angkor Wat which was the reason for going to Siem Reap:

We hired a Tuk Tuk for one and a half days and headed out at about 4pm to get our tickets for the following day, this also gives you access to the temple complex in the evening so the plan was to head to a high spot and see the sunset.



And see the sunset we did along with half the visitor population of Siem Reap it seemed. The steps up are very steep and narrow, I enjoyed watching people negotiate them in heels.

We headed out again early the next morning and started at the Angkor Wat complex. It was fairly quiet at this time of day.



People were going about their everyday business and it felt quite tranquil



Also the resident primates were about.



Although I caught this one in repose they're packed full of attitude and will steal anything they can pry from your grip.

From there we went to Bayon:



The entrance causeway is flanked by these imposing demons, the other side has more benign figures of Buddha but I liked these, they reminded me of a New Zealand tug of war team.

The Bayon complex was my favourite, I enjoyed the massive structures and giant smiles. If I were to go again I'd go first thing in the morning or last thing at night as the light changes.



From here we went to Ta Prohm, the temple complex taken over by the jungle, it was awe inspiring and nicely shaded in the heat of the day.



As always there are more pictures on the flickr account if you're not satiated yet but fewer than normal as my lack of photographic skills were horribly exposed on this visit.

It's very busy, there are touts and hawkers everywhere, it's hell on the knees climbing the steep steps but despite all this if you're in this part of the world it would be a sin to miss out on it.