Cambodia trip

At this time of year I am usually to be found leading a school trip to Nha Trang. I had a change of scenery this year and led a trip to Cambodia instead.

Angkor Wat is still there.



Spiders are still considered delicious snacks.



The monkeys of Angkor still swim when they get the opportunity.



And you still have to watch out for your ice cream.

Dress Up Day

It's the annual book week and students dress as their favourite characters or books, so do teachers.



It can make teaching a bit distracting.



Not a normal school day.

Old Advertising, Saigon

On Tran Hung Dao one hotel has been knocked down to be replaced with another one. In the process old wall advertisements have been revealed for the first time in who knows how many decades. I like the juxtaposition of the old adverts with the new and that there are no power lines getting in the way.

Cat Time

It's The Year of the Cat, rabbit elsewhere but cats rule in Vietnam! Nguyen Hue in District 1 is turned into Flower Street for a week and there are always representations of appropriate animals. Here are a few of them:

Yes, it is a dog.

So why do we have the Year of the Cat while the rest of the world hop along happily in the Year of the Rabbit. One theory goes thus: "The Chinese word for rabbit is 'mao', which sounds like 'meo' in Vietnamese, where it means cat. As the sound of the word changed, so did its meaning,". You can read the full article here .

I'll finish with one set of animals which seem to bridge the gap between cats and rabbits quite well.

Happy Meo Year

Tet Flower Market

My annual wander around a Tet flower market;

Flowers are a very big deal. Also a very big deal is making fruit and plants into something they're not like a Dragon Fruit Fruit Dragon.

More pictures from Flower Street with Cats being heavily featured very soon.

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.

Traffic light behaviour

Just another picture of the amazing layering that takes place before your average Vietnamese girl can risk going onto her scooter.

This one also depicts the "sunny day traffic light strategy" - wait for the lights to change in the nearest patch of shade which might be some distance away and will be popular. On dull days or at nights it's full steam ahead to get as close to the lights as possible

Vincom Centre, Mall life reaches Saigon

The new mega-flash mall has opened complete with an Armani Caffe and a Jimmy Choo. It's all very impressive down Dong Khoi these days.

Stepping inside is like being transported to Singapore but there are significantly low numbers of shopping bags being carried around. On my last two visits the most popular activity was from groups posing for photographs outside shops. There's shopping going on, I'm sure, but not on a Singaporean scale. On the other hand, La Senza had completely sold out of medium sized knickers so some are doing well.

Not such great mall news from Phu My Hung where the wedding cake styled Paragon mall closed with little or no warning. It's always been a bit of a ghost mall in there. Completely unsubstantiated rumour which is likely to be entirely wrong, has it that Parkson will be moving in. I'll keep you posted.

Holland Village Saigon

Holland Village came to Saigon, an exhibition of all things Dutch. They set up in the park near the Ben Thanh roundabout. I took a wander through during the day when the finishing touches were being made.

Bitexco Tower with Windmill in front, an odd juxtaposition.



The finishing touches being put to the lighting rig, as always not a hard hat or harness in sight.

Red Saigon

It's been a while since I posted. Here's the Red Saigon version of the Blue Singapore shots I did a while back. I have some time on my hands now so more posting should follow.