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.: