bay of the descending dragon
Archive for February 2009
25 February 2009
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18 February 2009
In the citadel
In honor of Tet, Hanoi's imperial citadel either opened it's doors (or possibly it keeps its doors open all year round and just didn't charge people to enter, or possibly changed absolutely none of its visitor policies and just put up a special Tet sign with Chuc Mung Nam Moi! written on it in big yellow letters; we couldn't tell and no one seemed to know for sure). At any rate, not being ones to miss an opportunity (of any kind, apparently), we investigated to find a clutter of abandonded buildings, some empty museum cases, an empty lot, and some scraggly trees. And lots of peeling yellow paint, which I had a nice time taking photos of, so not all was lost. Good to know.
07 February 2009
Cai Be sunset
06 February 2009
Cai Be riverfront
My neurotic compulsion to turn everything into a narrative has been battling my even more neurotic aversion to posting haphazard photos that don't go together or that I don't think are particularly interesting, so I'm going to let the day-by-day retelling of the bike trip fall by the wayside and just post photos as I sort through them (in case you noticed, or care about that sort of thing. Hi, Maggie and Lenora and the other three people that read this!). At any rate, skipping ahead a few days, this is from the one town we visited that wasn't in any guidebook, and which was, by far, my favorite place in terms of scenery.
05 February 2009
Mekong Delta Biketrip, Day Four: Tet Dragon!
Although we constantly heard drum music, we didn't see as many Tet festivities as we might have had we stayed put. Fortunatelly, we bumped into these guys after breakfast in Tra Vinh, and they followed me up the street dancing after they saw my camera. This may be one of the few photos where the little girl in the red isn't beating the living crap out of the taller boy with her fan.
04 February 2009
Mekong Delta Biketrip, Day Three: Driving to Tra Vinh
03 February 2009
Mekong Delta Biketrip, Day Two: Highway One and a really big bridge to Ben Tre
Inauspicious beginnings: Highway One, which may be my least favorite road in Vietnam, and that includes Hanoi streets known only to me as "Intersection of Doom" and "the Punishment Light."
The coolest thing about this bridge is that Wikipedia doesn't think it exists yet. Not a particularly good picture, but you wouldn't really want to linger on this bridge either.
Fortunately, Ben Tre itself was a nice town, with a busy riverfront and a street market stocked with fresh fruit and Tet decorations.
The Ben Tre market from the opposite riverbank.
This guy saw me taking the above photo, and whistled and waved at us till I took a photo of him from his 2nd story vantage point.
02 February 2009
Mekong Delta Biketrip, Day One: Tet flowers in Saigon
You will now have nightmares for the rest of the Year of the Buffalo.
We started the bike trip in a weirdly subdued Saigon, a few days before the official start of Tet; we didn't do much and actually lost a day, because Iain was sick and I like any excuse to lie in bed all day watching bad horror movies, but there was a huge flower market right next to the backpacker district, selling an apparently endless array of yellow and pink flowers, fruit plants and gigantic buffalos made from what look to be lemons or some weird alien flower bulbs.
01 February 2009
Mekong Delta Biketrip!
A few photos from our six-day motorbike trip through the Mekong Delta. We started from Ho Chi Minh City after picking up our bikes from the train station, and didn't cover a huge amount of ground (which was good, considering the almost constant traffic), but I loved going at such a lazy pace, with lots of stops for photos, iced coffee and fresh coconuts, and the whole route was intensely beautiful. So, many more photos to follow, and more about each place. For now, it's surprisingly nice to be back in Hanoi, where the traffic has died down some since it's insane pre-Tet madness, and where the pho is worlds better (sorry, Mekong pho, but it's true).
