Graceful gestures

5 Mar

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 »

Motorbiking II

3 Mar

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 »

Ethics

26 Mar

March 26. I’m at it again. Sipping my favourite drug – having long since renounced the illegals and, with more difficulty, tobacco – at a pavement cafe in downtown Buon Ma Thuot. A street photo­grapher and caffeine addict does not … Read More »

Coffee blossom

24 Mar

Viets have an earthy, robust humour that reminds me of my native Sheffield. On arrival in Kon Tum I found a hotel that seemed OK and told Slim, the lad on the desk, I wanted a motorbike in the morning. … Read More »

Close encounters of a photographic kind

20 Mar

Kon Tum, Central Highlands, the French-in-Indochina’s answer to the British-in-India’s Oota­c­amund: a hill station where Europeans could take temporary refuge from summer’s heat and white man’s burden, a town awash with handsome colonial architecture said to be the best in … Read More »