Tripping Out Alone

Lunch in Hoi An Markets Awesome Noodles Mmm Weasel Coffee Geoff enjoys a street cafe There is no better place to eat when you are tripping out alone than on the street...Hoi An is just further proof, on my last day in Ho Chi Minh City that most people still call Saigon I was with Geoff and Belinda and they too enjoy the street-cafe life, eating what looks tasty and taking the risk. I have to say so far , so good, Vietnamese street food is the best street food ever.. A local kitchen Chicken with Rice So much to choose from! Eating with others

Around eight I left the comfort of the hill top and took the longest cable car ride in the world back down over rocky cliffs, and from there bargained a ride in a courtesy car to meet Khahn, who rode me and my bags on his motor bike through Da Nang morning traffic to the bus stop where I took a local bus to Hoi An, and another motor bike taxi to the hotel. Tripping out is spontaneous movement, jumping from one thing to the next, heading onwards..looking outwards..What makes it so enjoyable for me? Could it be inspiration from my early years? Scuffy the Tug Boat, my favourite book? Me and Bobby McGee sung by Bobby Gentry? The advertisements on the back of magazines for Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes? ..people, things, moving places...It's not a lack of responsibility or about leaving things behind, or about running away, it is about seeing as much as I can from an ever moving window into lives in other places.. My favourite poem ever since I was small is this one by Robert Louis Steven...

Danang is like Jumeriah Beach, Dubai, five years ago, there are just buildings going up everywhere. From the Hyatt Regency to Le Meridian huge tracts of land along the pristine beach are squared away for development. The Crown Casino is already here, open to foreigners, as gambling is illegal in Vietnam. I want to come back and see what happens, it looks like there will be a huge tourism boom here. I had my tour with Da NangKids, and it was so much fun. Khahn picked me up from the station and took me straight to his friend's place where I left my bags. On his regular little bike we shot off to the beach through the main road traffic and drove out to the Marble Mountains. I had as much fun driving through the traffic of Da Nang as I did discovering the famous pagoda and climbing up one of the marble mountains. It was possibly a little ambitious to get off a train after seventeen hours and straight into a bike tour but nothing prepared me for what was to follow. After our tour Khahn...

The train from Saigon Station to Hanoi left on time, and as I sat down on my narrow berth I began to observe the disadvantages to train travel alone: You increase your chances of stranger danger. If you are with a companion the odds are you will have two, maybe three, sleeping partners, but take that down to only you and you can end up sleeping with four strangers. I don't advocate sleeping with strangers on any occasion but on a Vietnam overnight train it is unavoidable. I would have thought that there was a certain etiquette required but it seems not. The cabin I occupied contained Mr Six Cans of Heineken, Grandpa, Daughter and child. It would have been ok but for a combination of factors that singly may have been coped with but as a group created an intolerable situation that was only overcome through a lesson in true communism. Mr Six Cans took the top bunk and shortly after departure fell into a beery coma from which he emitted foul odor and continual snoring. The fact he wa...

I had the privilege to join in a Saigon social weekend and following an eclectic dinner of Vietnamese and Western dishes, including stuffed snails and soft shelled crabs at Claire's apartment, attended by a couple of Claire's interesting friends we spent a lazy Sunday morning in the apartment watching the rain. Lunch was at The Deck, a lovely riverside cafe, dining room, and taken with more of Claire's stimulating companions. The rain continued to fall , getting heavier and heavier , a perfect Sunday for relaxation and a spot of shopping. Dinner at home was from the Hideaway Cafe in District Three, a tender chicken with mashed potato with a mustard and tarragon sauce. The Hideaway Cafe is worth a visit, opened for about four years it used to be a private home. The reconstruction into a cafe has not taken away from the very loveliness of the building and provides a really excellent insight to the genteel nature of the colonial era architecture..the food is delicious. It'...

Here is a selection of Vietnamese paintings...

To complete a rainy Saturday afternoon Claire joined me to visit the Vietnamese Institute of Traditional Medicine where we took massages from the blind people who are looked after there. Claire was given an air-conditioned room at one end of the colonial era corridor and received an excellent massage while I was shunted along to the other end to a communal room. It was ok to be pushed and pulled as my 'therapist' had no sight at all, she tugged at my clothing indicating it should be removed and then pulled me to the massage table where she began her 'massage'. It wasn't really a massage though, instead she engaged with the 'therapist' in the joining room, and a man who stood outside the curtains in a three way conversation that was highly amusing to them all. Between shrieks of laughter and her own thigh slapping she would deliver me a random squeeze or slap around the head and continue on in a huge variety of tones that got me thinking about the language. ...

I dragged myself from the comfort and luxury of the penthouse to pound the pavements of Chinatown. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, and while a day on the couch with Claire's awesome selection of books, art and music would have been a brilliant way to spend the day the sights and smells of Ho Chi Ming were beckoning, and the thought of a bowl of tasty Pho finally forced me to take the boat ride into the city along the Saigon River. At An Dong Market I found fragrant steaming Pho, and fortified I set about exploring the markets..the Vietnamese sales girls in the market are crazy, they push you, they pull you, they force things on you and when you say they are 'ok' or 'nice but..' they have little pouting fits..It was quite amusing to see how far they would go to push me into something obviously ill fitting..and quite ugly, who makes all this garish fake silk stuff anyway..It was an Imelda Marcus/ Rose Porteus heaven of vile prints on even viler material..I ducked o...

Le Toit Gourmand..le degustation supreme. It seems Gils was a very famous chef in his native land and one day he threw in the towel, he had had enough of hot noisy kitchens and the frenetic, unhealthy life style of being a top chef. He came to Vietnam, where he remarried and started a new family on the edges of Ho Chi Minh City. His love of food remained and six years ago he opened up his home, literally, put some tables into his reception room and the carport and set up his business. He stocks an incredible selection of 180 French wines and presents a menu that is fixed price five to seven courses, the cost is nothing, nothing! The food is out of this world, you do get to choose, he suggests, he recommends and you agree..the wine compliments beautifully and at the end of the meal a bottle of Marc and a selection of home made cheeses are placed on the table. There's only ONE problem, this place is getting popular, and after the review in TIME Magazine, which Gils purports not to ha...

I won't try this at home.... This image conjures up so much thought about the sacredness of intimacy..and worship, I love it.

Fashion shoot outside at the Ho Chi Minh City Museum Prenuptial Photographs inside the museum. The new buildings of Ho Chi Minh City The old buildings of Saigon

I returned to the grey museum today,the Ho Chi Minh City Museum, housed in a lovely colonial era building with wonderful floor tiles. It was being used for two photo shoots. One was a bridal party with a stunningly willowy bride and her portly elderly European partner..I did hope it was for a magazine but I think not, though the other definitely was, a lovely couple, her in a red traditional ai bao, and him in a grey suit posing on a variety of retro vehicles including a vesper and and old car..you could tell it was for a fashion shoot by the way the photographer was rolling all over the ground getting his angles. After wandering through the history of the people I continued on to the Museum of Vietnamese History, museums get the best houses and I tend to think more about the walls and the flooring, the windows and the tiles than the artifacts. There were some pretty impressive ceramics in this museum, and the award to the most astounding display went to the hefty ceramic lingam with ...

Some things seem strange to do alone, others are best suited to the solitary, and while that may give room for much discussion I am really only focused on travel-aloneness right now... These are the things I have discovered are good to do alone: Eat at busy street stalls and point at the things you want, sure it's a bit risky but to be honest I feel less alone than if I were alone in a Starbucks! I have eaten the most interesting food today just by pointing at other peoples food...not all of them appreciated it, maybe they thought I wanted their food... What I got was my own food, but I had to wait until I saw some one else eat it to know what to do with it, and then after eating I had a look at what it was I had eaten..maybe I should have done that first. A plate of leaves arrived with a small bowl of shredded chilli and cabbage in sauce, and then two items' shaped like baby quiches were given to me, they were fried, golden, had what looked like whiskers on them, but once bro...

I know , it's an amazing view isn't it...

There is no facebook access here in Vietnam. I can use the sneaky trick I was taught in Burma but that only allows me to see, not comment..like a one way mirror, I am waving but you can't see me! I think I have enabled comments on this blog, so if you have any do add them.

The inside of the unknown pagoda... "These goldfish will bring you luck!" L'Usine entrance..so very chic. The very gentile post office The People's Committee Hall...