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 »
A good friend once commented, and I dare say others have thought it, that a man visiting South East Asia alone is likely as not driven by the desire to get laid with no strings attached. (Steve: you clearly haven’t … Read More »
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 »
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 »
Another hard day’s riding in the Central Highlands. I’ve clocked more than a hundred miles – no small thing on these roads – in the area north west of Kom Tum, epicentre of Vietnam’s coffee operation, now the biggest in … Read More »
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 »
One of the first sights I registered on arriving a few days ago in Hoi Anh was a low, attractive building. It stands close to the river and old town, fronted by a leafy courtyard, and is clearly institutional; a … Read More »