A Weekend in Ben Tre (part 2)
Ben Tre woman I met coming over a little bridge, Fujifilm Provia 100F
I had convinced myself I was going to wake up at 6:30am and start shooting if the weather was nice, and do some exercise if it wasn’t. I did, in fact wake up in time, stagger to my door, and look out at the grey, hazy morning sky. That’s as far as I got. I happily got back in bed, vaguely hoping for better weather later in the day, and distinctly hoping for my headache to go away. Happy New Year, indeed.
Thankfully the weather and my pulsing head both improved, at least marginally, and around 10:30am our guide took us on a long walk over to another island so we could check out an old house. Read more »
A Weekend in Ben Tre (part 1)
Window on the Vinh Hue police station, shot on Fujifilm Velvia 100F
New Year’s is not my favorite holiday. It never has been. In my experience, New Year’s Eve seems to be this holiday where every idiot under the sun figures they have an excuse to go out and be loud, drunk and obnoxious in celebration of what is really just an arbitrary date which no longer even correlates to the lunar cycle, thanks to the Gregorian calendar. I don’t usually make special plans for NYE, and this year was no exception. I was at home alone, and went to bed about 5 minutes after midnight. Whoopee, it’s 2010, goodnight.
About a week before the auspicious date of January 1 arrived, however, my friend Adam invited me to go down to the Mekhong Delta for a few days with him and a group of his friends. I hadn’t been out of the city in months, and the quiet and fresh air were sounding really, really nice, so I decided to take a couple of extra days off of work and head down there with them. Thank God! Read more »
Destination: Dalat (Part 2)
A procession of people coming to pay their respects to King Hung Vuong
Saturday morning I woke up just before dawn. The bed in my hotel room was right next to the window, so why I’ll was still laying there I leaned over and pulled the curtains aside to take a peek outside. Thank God, I wasn’t disappointed in what I saw. Clear blue skies, with strands of thin, wispy clouds, illuminated bright pink in the early morning light. My friend was already getting dressed to go outside and shoot some stuff down at Xuan Huong Lake. Read more »
Destination: Dalat (Part 1)
The view from above Dalat - when the weather is nice
So, another weekend, another trip. Saturday was the anniversary of the death of King Hung Vuong in Vietnam, and it’s a public holiday here. Several years ago I took a short trip to Dalat on the same occasion, but at the time I had no clue it was a special day at all, and basically through dumb luck I stumbled upon a large festival commemorating the event at a set of 3 pagodas located on a hill above Prenn waterfall, about 10 kilometers outside of the town. Read more »
The Cao Dai Holy See
Main temple of the Cao Dai sect in Tay Ninh, Vietnam
Sunday morning, 5am… the alarm on my phone goes off. I usually have an almost uncontrollable urge to destroy my cell phone when this happens. When I was a kid I would spend summers at my grandparents’ house in Ohio. My grandfather, a navy man in his time, used to sing this song early in the morning, often before the sun came up: “Oh how I hate to get up in the morning! Oh, how I hate to get out of bed! One day I’ll find that dirty pup, the one that wakes the bugler up, and spend the rest of my days in bed”. Read more »
Rubber 101
Rubber Trees near Cambodia in Binh Phuoc Province, Vietnam
Have you ever wondered how rubber is made? No? You haven’t? Well, I never really wondered about it much either until I realized that rubber plantations look really beautiful and are a great place to take photos.
Weekend on the HCM Trail
The reservoir formed by the local hydro-elecric dam
After being back in Saigon for a couple of weeks without a single free day, it was time for a trip out of the city! I called in to work, canceled the entire weekend and Monday morning, and a good photographer friend and I decided to head out towards the northwest corner of Binh Phuoc province, along a stretch of what was once an authentic part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
My Hanoi Curse
From one of my first attempts at a decent trip to Hanoi
I think maybe Hanoi hates me. Which is regrettable, because I certainly don’t hate Hanoi. The people don’t seem to hate me so much (at least not all of them), but the environment, the place itself is holding a grudge against me for some reason, and I haven’t figured out why yet.
I say this because I’ve taken four separate trips to Hanoi in the last 3 years, each time with the intention of doing lots of photography. Now, it hasn’t been a complete wash, I always get a few good shots while I’m there, but nonetheless, it’s pretty much guaranteed that when I go to Hanoi, either the weather will suck, I will get some terrible illness, or, most likely, both.