Thursday, February 10, 2005
four tet
Okay, so now Ms Love's birthday is over, things are slowly getting back to normal, though all the shops are still closed in her honour.
The early part of the great day itself passed without incident. We tried visiting a market in the Chinese part of town - closed for Tet New Year celebrations. To my eternal regret, especially as its place on the birthday agenda was at Courtney's request, the same applied to the bobbins sounding Fine Art Museum. In fact almost everything was shut, meaning we had to spend a large portion of the afternoon tramping the streets looking for a restaurant that was simply open, notwithstanding its suitability for the evening part of the birthday celebrations. Joy and rapture followed at the news that a colonial style (and very expensive) French restaurant could just about squeeze us in.
As alluded to earlier, this was the night of Vietnamese New Year. Bless them, 37 days late but who's counting. Upon completion of distinctly unFrench (mashed potato?) but quite tasty meal we joined the thousands in the streets. Fireworks and motorbikes everywhere. And all totally free. We made friends with all the locals and established that fireworks are much the same the world over.
From here followed an overnight trip to the Mekong Delta. Bravely we decided to eschew the tourist bus and take local transport. Gone were air conditioning and 20 year old western birds. In their place were about 20 of us stuffed into one minibus. Still, I did succeed in forcing the driver to turn off the music. I also lectured him at length that if he told us an enforced lunch break was only going to be 10 minutes then he should mean that and not keep us there for near enough 30. Ms Love reckons he didn't understand a word, but take that minibus now and I'm sure you'll find a much more professional level of service.
Mekong Delta? Well, it was very hot and the floating market was closed due to Tet. But managed a lovely walk around the small rivers and canals. And no ESPN in the hotel so Courtney was excused having to wake up at 4.15am and watch AJ making his debut...
The early part of the great day itself passed without incident. We tried visiting a market in the Chinese part of town - closed for Tet New Year celebrations. To my eternal regret, especially as its place on the birthday agenda was at Courtney's request, the same applied to the bobbins sounding Fine Art Museum. In fact almost everything was shut, meaning we had to spend a large portion of the afternoon tramping the streets looking for a restaurant that was simply open, notwithstanding its suitability for the evening part of the birthday celebrations. Joy and rapture followed at the news that a colonial style (and very expensive) French restaurant could just about squeeze us in.
As alluded to earlier, this was the night of Vietnamese New Year. Bless them, 37 days late but who's counting. Upon completion of distinctly unFrench (mashed potato?) but quite tasty meal we joined the thousands in the streets. Fireworks and motorbikes everywhere. And all totally free. We made friends with all the locals and established that fireworks are much the same the world over.
From here followed an overnight trip to the Mekong Delta. Bravely we decided to eschew the tourist bus and take local transport. Gone were air conditioning and 20 year old western birds. In their place were about 20 of us stuffed into one minibus. Still, I did succeed in forcing the driver to turn off the music. I also lectured him at length that if he told us an enforced lunch break was only going to be 10 minutes then he should mean that and not keep us there for near enough 30. Ms Love reckons he didn't understand a word, but take that minibus now and I'm sure you'll find a much more professional level of service.
Mekong Delta? Well, it was very hot and the floating market was closed due to Tet. But managed a lovely walk around the small rivers and canals. And no ESPN in the hotel so Courtney was excused having to wake up at 4.15am and watch AJ making his debut...
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
royal birthday update
imitation is the sincerest form of flatterey so pete and i feel we must take full credit for this genius idea... just kidding!
check out the birthday project that those busy bees in london (i suspect with melissa as their lovely ringleader) have been up to! look here.
our personal favourites are the ones of john and yoko towards the end...
ps. you still have some way to go however before you'll beat the 20 minute firework display the vietnamese put on in my honour!
check out the birthday project that those busy bees in london (i suspect with melissa as their lovely ringleader) have been up to! look here.
our personal favourites are the ones of john and yoko towards the end...
ps. you still have some way to go however before you'll beat the 20 minute firework display the vietnamese put on in my honour!
Monday, February 07, 2005
the happiest birthday (s)...
well, praise the lord indeed. tomorrow is of course the birthday of the only two women in my life - the fine ms love and my, currently website comment crazy, dearest mother.
both on the same day i hear you cry... yes, indeed. makes it easier to remember and all that.
happy birthday to mum. card should be arriving if the indian postal service has got its act together. which is a big if.
and happy birthday to ms love.
in celebration of the great day, longtime devotees of this site will be glad to hear the famous budget has been somewhat relaxed. she was allowed 6 (six) new outfits in bangkok. plus countless hugely expensive western home decorating magazines in addition to the countless ones that marsha kindly posted. and i've even swung it so that the vietnamese new year starts on her birthday with all the locals throwing a huge party in her honour.
is there any more a girl could want?
happy birthday to both.
both on the same day i hear you cry... yes, indeed. makes it easier to remember and all that.
happy birthday to mum. card should be arriving if the indian postal service has got its act together. which is a big if.
and happy birthday to ms love.
in celebration of the great day, longtime devotees of this site will be glad to hear the famous budget has been somewhat relaxed. she was allowed 6 (six) new outfits in bangkok. plus countless hugely expensive western home decorating magazines in addition to the countless ones that marsha kindly posted. and i've even swung it so that the vietnamese new year starts on her birthday with all the locals throwing a huge party in her honour.
is there any more a girl could want?
happy birthday to both.
good morning vietnam
the usual pre-posting conversation goes something like this...
P: you know it's your turn to do the posting
C: i haven't got anything good to write
P: yes you have, you've got these tunnels...
what do i have to write this time? i was planning on doing another 'pete gets grumpy' expose, since i know that's what my target audience likes - but i think i'll save that bit until the end - and cover the educational stuff first.
here we are in vietnam. characteristics of the place seem to be that every family uses a scooter instead of a car (even the taxis are motorbikes); people wear hats and face masks all day; and as we've arrived 3 days before the celebration of the lunar new year the city is full of flowers, ballons and such like.
of course, you can't go anywhere without tripping over something related to the war, and the reunification palace and war museum were rife with references to the colonialist french and the imperialist americans. unsurprisingly the vietnamese present history a wee bit differently than we are used to (and perhaps justifiably so). there is, however, a fine line between thought-provoking and gratuitous. I felt that the 2 headed feotus in the war museum and the kalashnikov you can shoot for a dollar at the viet cong caves crossed this line (and frankly were in poor taste). but perhaps when a war has been captured so graphically in the media from the beginning it deserves an equally shocking commemoration too.
anyway, let me step down off my platform and tell you about pete (which is more entertaining anyway).
we set off this morning to the cu chi tunnels (where the viet cong hid out for most of the war). in doing so we broke one of our cardinal rules (never go with large tour groups) and as a result i had to listen to pete engage in his favourite large tour group activity - bitching all day....
'i can't see in the hole', 'look at that man videoing the tree', 'this is so contrived' - you get the picture. in their defence the tunnels were still authentic enough to give me a close brush with claustrophia and our guide was a genuine ex-soldier. at first i thought of the shouty, facial-tick variety - but he turned out to be quite normal. his talks were for the most part entertaining... except for the 17th time we heard the 'american's have such big bums joke' - apparently a key contributor as to why they lost the war.
there is a silver lining to every cloud, and pete cottoned on by the end of the morning that travelling with a large group means having more ladies to ogle. somehow he was tranformed to benny hill on the bus home, when he advised the 2 20 year-old swedish girls sat next to us not to take their tops off (long story). matt you would have been proud - sorry we didn't manage to get photos!
i had my best laugh, however at the very end of the day, (at pete's expense as usual) when he stopped mid-rant to say 'help, i can't remember what i was complaining about'. priceless.
ps. sorry about the title, i know it's unbearably naff.
P: you know it's your turn to do the posting
C: i haven't got anything good to write
P: yes you have, you've got these tunnels...
what do i have to write this time? i was planning on doing another 'pete gets grumpy' expose, since i know that's what my target audience likes - but i think i'll save that bit until the end - and cover the educational stuff first.
here we are in vietnam. characteristics of the place seem to be that every family uses a scooter instead of a car (even the taxis are motorbikes); people wear hats and face masks all day; and as we've arrived 3 days before the celebration of the lunar new year the city is full of flowers, ballons and such like.
of course, you can't go anywhere without tripping over something related to the war, and the reunification palace and war museum were rife with references to the colonialist french and the imperialist americans. unsurprisingly the vietnamese present history a wee bit differently than we are used to (and perhaps justifiably so). there is, however, a fine line between thought-provoking and gratuitous. I felt that the 2 headed feotus in the war museum and the kalashnikov you can shoot for a dollar at the viet cong caves crossed this line (and frankly were in poor taste). but perhaps when a war has been captured so graphically in the media from the beginning it deserves an equally shocking commemoration too.
anyway, let me step down off my platform and tell you about pete (which is more entertaining anyway).
we set off this morning to the cu chi tunnels (where the viet cong hid out for most of the war). in doing so we broke one of our cardinal rules (never go with large tour groups) and as a result i had to listen to pete engage in his favourite large tour group activity - bitching all day....
'i can't see in the hole', 'look at that man videoing the tree', 'this is so contrived' - you get the picture. in their defence the tunnels were still authentic enough to give me a close brush with claustrophia and our guide was a genuine ex-soldier. at first i thought of the shouty, facial-tick variety - but he turned out to be quite normal. his talks were for the most part entertaining... except for the 17th time we heard the 'american's have such big bums joke' - apparently a key contributor as to why they lost the war.
there is a silver lining to every cloud, and pete cottoned on by the end of the morning that travelling with a large group means having more ladies to ogle. somehow he was tranformed to benny hill on the bus home, when he advised the 2 20 year-old swedish girls sat next to us not to take their tops off (long story). matt you would have been proud - sorry we didn't manage to get photos!
i had my best laugh, however at the very end of the day, (at pete's expense as usual) when he stopped mid-rant to say 'help, i can't remember what i was complaining about'. priceless.
ps. sorry about the title, i know it's unbearably naff.
