The Ho Chi Minh Trail
All lies and jest; still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. Paul Simon: The Boxer This is nothing so daring as an attempt at summary; just my quirky take on what the Ho Chi … Read More »
All lies and jest; still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. Paul Simon: The Boxer This is nothing so daring as an attempt at summary; just my quirky take on what the Ho Chi … Read More »
The road to a good time is paved with good intentions. I’m pissed. Again. May Allah strike me down, I’d every intention today of settling in a quite coffee house, cool and airy, to pass a few hours perusing my … Read More »
My mission takes me deep into the covered market. I pass though its outer quadrangular layer of dried fish – pungent but not unpleasantly so – and lethal ironmongery, into the penumbral heart where more banal items are sold by … Read More »
On a bicycle with “up yours Germaine!” emblazoned on its belly, it could not look more incongruous. Insinuating its all-things-considered remarkably graceful path across the tarmac to my feet, the eighteen inch Mekong Catfish dodges tyre and sandaled foot alike … Read More »
I see friends shaking hands, saying ‘how do you do?’ They’re really saying, ‘I love you’. I don’t suppose I’ll live to be a thousand but it’s scarcely less likely that, if I did, I’d see anything more beautiful than … Read More »
In my highly acclaimed Motorbiking I – written last year, also from Vietnam – I told of fishing boats and traffic chaos, towering Buddhas and downing beers, curving alleyways and writhing sea snakes. I’ll return to snakes another time; this … Read More »
Not every email this trip will be on the war. I’ll write a good few of the kind l’ve been sending for years to convey some of the colour of where I am and what befalls. But my infatuation with … Read More »
An hour by air to the north west of Ho Chi Minh City gets you to Pleiku (“play-koo”) in the coffee growing Central Highlands. Untouristed and unloved, it has to be a contender for ugliest city in Vietnam. Razed by … Read More »
photo essay here
Bosom buddy Pete has lived forty years in Barcelona but in all my many visits I’ve never been able to to make decent pictures of the place. I’m pretty clueless at photographing architecture but will keep at it so watch … Read More »