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Showing posts from August, 2010

Cockroaches, Motorbikes and a Honey Cocoon

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STATS: Day count=213; theft count=0; rip-off count=1; tourist screw-up count=5; Chris’ photo count=1979; Emma’s photo count=90; touch-typing char/min=238 (woo hoo!); Poi skills mastered since last post: None In this digital photographic age with its instant results and zero- or low-cost developing many people (including myself, wrongly) think of themselves as one short step away from a professional photographer. Recording things on camera has become the norm (as our photo count can testify!) and many times I see people arrive at a scene, take a photograph and immediately move on to the next scene, without stopping to appreciate the vista or event in itself. Often I have to stop myself from doing the same. I need to remember that a photograph should be a memory of a place or event, not a memory of taking a photograph. Seeing the world just through a lens can be very restrictive. The sleeper bus to Nha Trang dropped us off in the middle of the city, in the middle of the evening

I Love the Smell of Palmolive in the Morning

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STATS: Day count=202; theft count=0; rip-off count=1; tourist screw-up count=4; Chris’ photo count=1873; Emma’s photo count=76; touch-typing char/min=234 (still still still trying!); Poi skills mastered since last post: None I bet you’re all wondering what the most pointless job in Saigon is. Well, I can tell you – it’s the task of painting the zebra crossing lines on the road. Useless. It seems that the entire Asian world thinks that all English people are like Del Boy from Only Fools & Horses. Whenever we tell anyone where we are from, the reaction is almost always a smile, followed by “Lovely Jubbly”. Plonkers, the lot of ‘em. We’re now in Vietnam, having taken a boat down the Mekong from Cambodia into the Vietnamese border town of Chau Doc. We had got mixed reports of Vietnam, the worst of which were the descriptions of overcrowded cities, money-grabbing unsmiling people and horrendous travelling conditions. In fact, if you heeded all the warnings of scams, pickpockets, c