Vietnam, 31 Jan 2007 --

As I mentioned a few days ago, I decided to use my Saigon city map and the extensive bus network to explore some of the more out of the way corners of Saigon.  Though this definitely isn’t a method of city exploration guaranteed to yeild many (or any) good pictures, I did have a few pretty unique experiences, and get some good shots along the way.

Gia Dinh Park:  This park in the north west of Saigon shows up as really big on the map, and seemed to bump right up against a street with a major bus running down it.  When I hopped off the number 3 bus expecting to see green everywhere, I was surprised to find nothing but traffic and endless one story shops.  After walking 15-20 minutes down the street I was starting to despair that urban growth had swallowed the park whole.  Then, I started to notice the tops of trees poking out from behind the shops on the far side of the street.  I still couldn’t find any way in, though, and had to walk the entire long block to get around to the other side.

The people in the neighborhood were great, though, and were actually asking me to take their pictures.  This was a real change from the Cholon (Chinatown) neighborhood, where I got a surprising number of shaken heads in response to the preemptive gesture I usually make with my camera to imply the question ‘Can I take your picture?”

Once I found the park, though, it ended up being worth the effort.  The park was big, full of dragonflies, and was the best landscaped of any I’ve seen in town.  This would be a great place to escape the tourists, touts, and motorbikes for a quiet afternoon of reading.  I don’t know the cause of the very recent landscaping makeover, but I suspect it had something to do with the many APEC 2006 billboards in the area.

I spent the rest of my afternoon making my way back to familiar territory.  On the way, I found a park with assorted brightly colored dinosaur statues, was approached by a gigling Vietnamese high-school girl who had obviously been dared by her (also giggling) group of about 20 friends to have her picture taken with me, and found an out of the way museum garden full of comunist propaganda and relics of North Vietnamese tanks.  All in all, a day well spent.

I’m headed to Singapore tomorrow afternoon, and I’m definitely looking forward to the change of scenery!

Vietnam, 28 Jan 2007 --

 As of 3:30 am four days ago, I’m flying solo in Asia.  Cara took off for the airport, got most of her frequent flyer upgrades to business class, and is now back home in Milwaukee working on her graduate degree.  Traveling solo will definitely be a lot different, and I imagine without anyone to talk to out of sheer boredom/lonelyness I’ll be spending a lot more time photographing.

On the photography note, thanks to crazy cheap fares on Tiger Airways (apparently the 2006 Low Cost Airline of the Year, woohoo!) I’m able to swing through Singapore for a few days ‘on the way’ to China for only $65 US more than it would have cost me to get there via northern Vietnam.  The purpose of this brief visit is so I can attend a two day photojournalism workshop with the Objectifs Center for Photography that I found out about last time we passed through Singapore.  I’m hoping the workshop will give me some new ideas…I’ve been feeling a little stale lately.

I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of having an extra 6 days to kill in Saigon before my flight left for Singapore, and my plan was originally to head for the Mekong Delta or Dalat soon as possible.  Then, I found out about a photography contest Perceptive Travel is hosting in connection with Lonely Planet’s new series of Citiescape Guides.  The 10 cities featured are Mumbai, Delhi, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon, Tokyo, Sydney, Kathmandu, Singapore, or Bejing. 

Seeing Saigon on that list with such impressive neighbors made me think I must be missing something here, so I decided to dig deeper.  I sat down with my map of greater Saigon, and circled a bunch of areas that looked interesting, obscure, or out of the way.  So far my targets have included:  little unlabled temple symbols, markets not mentioned in the travel guide, and streets that just don’t seem to line up with the rest.  Over the last few days, I’ve been making use of Saigon’s excellent bus network (man, these fancy green buses go everywhere!) to visit some of these spots with good results. 

Incidentally bus maps areavailable free at the Benh Tanh bus station, but it’s gotta be the best kept secret in town.  I’d been looking for one for a few days when I stopped to look at the map mounted under the glass on this guy’s desk at the bus station.  He wordlessly unlocked his desk drawer, pulled out a map, handed it to me, and went back to eating his lunch.

 So far on my bus-borne adventures, I’ve found some great back alley markets, a lake surrounded by tree-shaded coffee shops, and, as far as I could tell, a wedding theme park.  That last one was a big, nicely landscaped park area with several large buildings.  Each building was pre-decorated for a large wedding reception in a different color scheme complete with plastic flowers, centerpieces, and fancy chair covers.  I think they just leave the decorations up full time, and clean between weddings.  Strange.

I don’t have any of the photographs uploaded from my exploration of Saigon yet, but I do have almost a month’s worth of stuff from Lao and Northern Vietham:

Pictures from Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang, Ponsavanh, Sam Nuea, Vieng Xai…basically all of Lao that we saw that wasn’t Don Det.:

Hanoi, Vietnam:

Hue, Vietnam:

Mui Ne, Vietnam:

Saigon, Vietnam:

Vietnam, 13 Jan 2007 --

…I think these were the only words the consular officer at the Chinese embassy in Hanoi spoke to me yesterday as he accepted my carefully completed application for a multiple entry, 90 day visa.  This, on top of the fact there’s a standard $25 “cause you’re American” fee, makes me think that my government and the Chinese government don’t exactly see eye to eye.  Oh well, people tell me visa extensions are easy to come by in China…I hope this is as true for citizens of the ever popular US of A.

In other news, it’s been a while since I posted anything.  This is largely due to the lack of internet access as Cara and I worked our way from Luang Prabang to the remote Lao/Vietnam border crossing at Na Meo over the course of 8 days.  Highlights included:

• Vieng Xai:  a tiny, beautiful, unspoiled town in the northeast of Lao.  The Pathet Lao (Free Lao) led the war against the Americans from caves there from about 1964 to 1975.  3 USD gets you a private tour (there appear to be about 4 tourists in town at any given time, so anything other than a private tour is pretty much impossible) from a well informed member of the local historical preservation society.  Vieng Xai has the same giant limestone karsts (geology nerds…care to comment?  What is a karst?) we saw in Vang Vieng…but without tourists, without touts, and most notably completely without bars playing endless Friends reruns on DVD.

• The Plain of Jars at Ponsavanh:  It’s pretty much what it sounds like:  hundreds of mysterious stone jars (some as heavy as 1 ton) spread over several plains.  Weird.  12 USD gets you a not so private tour by a not so informed guide.  No one has any proof of what the jars were for, but the leading speculation is that they were burial urns.  Lao legend says they were used by giants to drink Lao whiskey…I prefer the latter.  I didn’t learn much from our guide, but I did pick up the Lao proverb:  The old water buffalo likes to eat the young rice. Which poetically states the fact that older gentlemen prefer the company of much, much younger women.  Classic.

• Bus rides on windy mountain roads:  We took a lot of these.  Lao women don’t handle motion sickness well for some reason, and are often seen vomiting out the windows or into the provided (but undersized) plastic baggies.  You’d think the ample air circulation when riding in the back of a pickup truck would at least reduce this problem…but sadly, you’d be incorrect.

When we reached Na Meo, we were lucky enough to find 7 other westerners going to Hanoi, so we pooled resources and chartered a minibus for a really good price.  It’s strange to be in Hanoi after so many tiny towns and villages, and it’s definitely refreshing to have unlimited options (or any options for that matter) when choosing where to eat our meals.

As Cara mentioned, the food here is definitely diverse.  Last night, for example, we ordered ‘Stewed Bird with Mushrooms’ (this is specifically not chicken mind you, but equally un-specifically anything else) and which turned out to be a brown stew containing mushrooms and such familiar bird parts as legs, ribs, claws, and one tiny head.  Not bad, not bad at all.