Any of you who are disappointed that the Ponte Vecchio is no longer gracing the backdrop of this blog have Deborah to blame for that. All of you who are pleased at this development can thank her. All of you who have not noticed, well, pay attention.
You can all register your thanks, complaints, or indifference with Deborah at Coco Chocolates, in Toronto. I recommend doing so in person, that way you can get some of her chocolate, which is the best in the city in my opinion, or perhaps pick up some ice cream, which is delicious, even on a chilly day in March, if I do say so myself.
And I do. It was delicious, and there's still some left in the freezer that'll I'll probably snack on as a reward for actually getting my ass back to this blog.
If you gather from that that I am now in Toronto then you are correct. I've been home just over a week, and in that time I've had the distinct pleasure of discovering how disbelief and cognitive dissonance manifest itself upon the face of many of my friends. I've also, having come down with a severe case of jetlag and a headcold, been floating around in somewhat of a surreal state, no doubt making an ass of myself.
Why should home be any different from the rest of the world.
Things have been moving at quite the clip since getting home, and I realized I really needed to get back to writing in the blog, lest it fade away and you all think that I took up a job as a lady-boy in Bangkok or something. I mean, there's nothing saying that that isn't actually the case and that the above is an entire ruse so that no one judges me for what might be considered a peculiar course correction in careers...
Right, perhaps this entry needs a bit of a course diretion.
Hoi An.
How did the sailor greet the HL7 specialist?
Few of you will get that. For those of who do, I apologize.
This is the Aussie bar in Hoi An where Muffin, Big Balls, Evil Bastard, Wallaby, Wallaby Jr (later Clippy), and Crusher (later Party Phil), all came into being.
And this is a rice field.
Do you notice any differences? Do you, like I do, wonder what sorts of nicknames we might have come up with for one another had they been born from this tranquil bicycle ride around the outskirts of Hoi An, as opposed to a place that runs metal shutters across it's doors at curfew, but keeps serving you until you don't know any better inside?
Big Balls might have been Sweet Pea.
Crusher may have been Farmer (it did anyway)
Evil Bastard might have been Miss Congeniality
But Muffin, I don't see how that one would have changed.
Fishing net.
Ngoc and I hoisted it out of the water which, incidently, weighs a lot.
This chair is perfectly positioned to sit and stare at the buffalo that I introduced you to previously.
Not that I can think of any particular reason that you would want to sit and stare at a buffalo for an extended period. Though I imagine there must be a Youtbe channel for that by now. So yes, why do it live when you can do it from the comfort of your own home, or on the bus, or sitting at the pub. Access to buffalos should not be restrained by geography. Free the buffalo! Free your soul!
Tour de France it was not.
It really was a pleasant ride about the countryside, and honestly, there's not much more I can say about it then that. My notes are pretty sparse, which may or may not be a result of having been riding a bicycle at the time. One little tidbit that I do not require my notes for was the moment when we had all stopped along one of the paths through the fields to look at something or another. We'd dismounted and pulled our bikes as best we could to one side of the path so as not to block traffic (they're actually surprisingly busy places), however this apparently was not sufficient as a lady pedals by and screams "This ain't a parking lot ya know!"
Gotta love ex-pats.
That's Caroline at the dock where the bike ride finished up, and conveniently had a boat at the end of it to bring us and our bikes back down the river.
As you can see, Hoi An is a lovely place, full of colour, friendly people, history, cool old buildings, lovely waterways, energetic markets... all the things that you might be looking for if you were wanting to take pictures. And that's all I know. I mean, I could look up more for you, but really, that's all that's coming to mind right now. I'm sorry. I suck. But truth is, my brain wasn't as engaged in remembering the stuff Ngoc told us about each place as it should have been.
I think my brain actually broke somewhere back in Delhi and still hasn't fully recovered.
The big thing I can tell you about Hoi An has nothing to do with the hundred-year-old eggs you see below.
They're actually only a few weeks old, but they've been in a hole in the ground for all that time, and have fermented, and are pretty much black on the inside I am told, so they get to be century eggs. I didn't try them in Cambodia or Thailand either.
Lanterns.
We visted Hoi An just before Tet, the Lunar New Year. You may recall me writing about how big a deal this is. Well, the people in Hoi An, like the rest of Vietnam I imagine, were all very busy making everything nice and clean and new again. New Year. New Beginning. Makes a good kinda sense.
Beyond the usual spring cleaning this included freshly painted buildings, and new lanterns. Lots and lots of new lanterns. Lovely paper lanterns of every colour (okay, not every) everywhere. Made and sold in shops, strung across the streets, along the eaves of buildings. Lanterns everywhere.
But that's not the thing I was going to tell you.
Nor is it about fruit that inspired medieval weaponry designs.
See? Lanterns. They're pretty.
These few are from the next day of wandering around Hoi An that I did with the Martin Family.
Now, why all this time in Hoi An?
Well, it totally deserves that much time and a whole lot more as it's a lovely place with plenty to see and do. That said, we spent two-and-a-half days there because what Hoi An is really well known for is it's tailors. Here's where you go to get your fancy duds. Interesting how duds can mean clothes or munitions that fail to explode.
Did I just suggest there could be exploding clothing? Help me with the punctuation. I think I needed another comma.
Anyway, yes, "dud" can mean clothes, and it can also mean "faulty munitions". The clothes one seems to have come first, so how that reused is beyond me. Perhaps duds were clothes that actually weren't very good and we've just lost that aspect of the word over time.
Ah well, something I can spend lots of time sorting out once I'm back at work next week.
Actually, let's do it now.
It looks like duds meant clothes in the 16th century, and then in the 17th century it meant "old clothes" or "rags". Well, if you'd had the same suit for a hundred years I guess it would be looking rather tatty. But from here I can see how we get to munitions that won't explode. Don't ask why, I just can. Let me know if you have any problem with the leap.
Right, tailors. Looking for some lovely new threads at a fraction of the cost. Come to Hoi An. It's what they do. They do it well, they do it fast, and like I've already said, they do it inexpensively. I don't think it's "Tom's" inexpensively, but it's also bespoke.
No, I didn't get anything made for myself in Hoi An. That's another story.
But, with practically everyone else dudded out, it was time to hop a bus to nearby Da Nang (I always hear Robin Williams singing when I think of Da Nang - the irony of that one sucks) and board the night train to Nha Trang. Which is precisely what we did.
This time without the vodka.
You can all register your thanks, complaints, or indifference with Deborah at Coco Chocolates, in Toronto. I recommend doing so in person, that way you can get some of her chocolate, which is the best in the city in my opinion, or perhaps pick up some ice cream, which is delicious, even on a chilly day in March, if I do say so myself.
And I do. It was delicious, and there's still some left in the freezer that'll I'll probably snack on as a reward for actually getting my ass back to this blog.
If you gather from that that I am now in Toronto then you are correct. I've been home just over a week, and in that time I've had the distinct pleasure of discovering how disbelief and cognitive dissonance manifest itself upon the face of many of my friends. I've also, having come down with a severe case of jetlag and a headcold, been floating around in somewhat of a surreal state, no doubt making an ass of myself.
Why should home be any different from the rest of the world.
Things have been moving at quite the clip since getting home, and I realized I really needed to get back to writing in the blog, lest it fade away and you all think that I took up a job as a lady-boy in Bangkok or something. I mean, there's nothing saying that that isn't actually the case and that the above is an entire ruse so that no one judges me for what might be considered a peculiar course correction in careers...
Right, perhaps this entry needs a bit of a course diretion.
Hoi An.
How did the sailor greet the HL7 specialist?
Few of you will get that. For those of who do, I apologize.
This is the Aussie bar in Hoi An where Muffin, Big Balls, Evil Bastard, Wallaby, Wallaby Jr (later Clippy), and Crusher (later Party Phil), all came into being.
And this is a rice field.
Do you notice any differences? Do you, like I do, wonder what sorts of nicknames we might have come up with for one another had they been born from this tranquil bicycle ride around the outskirts of Hoi An, as opposed to a place that runs metal shutters across it's doors at curfew, but keeps serving you until you don't know any better inside?
Big Balls might have been Sweet Pea.
Crusher may have been Farmer (it did anyway)
Evil Bastard might have been Miss Congeniality
But Muffin, I don't see how that one would have changed.
Fishing net.
Ngoc and I hoisted it out of the water which, incidently, weighs a lot.
This chair is perfectly positioned to sit and stare at the buffalo that I introduced you to previously.
Not that I can think of any particular reason that you would want to sit and stare at a buffalo for an extended period. Though I imagine there must be a Youtbe channel for that by now. So yes, why do it live when you can do it from the comfort of your own home, or on the bus, or sitting at the pub. Access to buffalos should not be restrained by geography. Free the buffalo! Free your soul!
Tour de France it was not.
It really was a pleasant ride about the countryside, and honestly, there's not much more I can say about it then that. My notes are pretty sparse, which may or may not be a result of having been riding a bicycle at the time. One little tidbit that I do not require my notes for was the moment when we had all stopped along one of the paths through the fields to look at something or another. We'd dismounted and pulled our bikes as best we could to one side of the path so as not to block traffic (they're actually surprisingly busy places), however this apparently was not sufficient as a lady pedals by and screams "This ain't a parking lot ya know!"
Gotta love ex-pats.
That's Caroline at the dock where the bike ride finished up, and conveniently had a boat at the end of it to bring us and our bikes back down the river.
I so so so so so so so, ever so wanted that fisherman to unfurl his net and cast it out over the water so that I could capture that classic pic for myself. And I'm sure he eventually did do precisely that. Just not with me around. They wouldn't let me stop the boat.
Back in Hoi An the next day Wendy and I, both being people who enjoyed taking pictures, and having been discussing different shots for a few days now, decided to do a bit of a photo walk-about for an afternoon. What you're about to suffer through is a result of that demonic pact.
As you can see, Hoi An is a lovely place, full of colour, friendly people, history, cool old buildings, lovely waterways, energetic markets... all the things that you might be looking for if you were wanting to take pictures. And that's all I know. I mean, I could look up more for you, but really, that's all that's coming to mind right now. I'm sorry. I suck. But truth is, my brain wasn't as engaged in remembering the stuff Ngoc told us about each place as it should have been.
I think my brain actually broke somewhere back in Delhi and still hasn't fully recovered.
The big thing I can tell you about Hoi An has nothing to do with the hundred-year-old eggs you see below.
They're actually only a few weeks old, but they've been in a hole in the ground for all that time, and have fermented, and are pretty much black on the inside I am told, so they get to be century eggs. I didn't try them in Cambodia or Thailand either.
Lanterns.
We visted Hoi An just before Tet, the Lunar New Year. You may recall me writing about how big a deal this is. Well, the people in Hoi An, like the rest of Vietnam I imagine, were all very busy making everything nice and clean and new again. New Year. New Beginning. Makes a good kinda sense.
Beyond the usual spring cleaning this included freshly painted buildings, and new lanterns. Lots and lots of new lanterns. Lovely paper lanterns of every colour (okay, not every) everywhere. Made and sold in shops, strung across the streets, along the eaves of buildings. Lanterns everywhere.
But that's not the thing I was going to tell you.
Nor is it about fruit that inspired medieval weaponry designs.
Nor is it about this talented young man producing these lovely paintings, one of which Wendy purchased.
See? Lanterns. They're pretty.
These few are from the next day of wandering around Hoi An that I did with the Martin Family.
Now, why all this time in Hoi An?
Well, it totally deserves that much time and a whole lot more as it's a lovely place with plenty to see and do. That said, we spent two-and-a-half days there because what Hoi An is really well known for is it's tailors. Here's where you go to get your fancy duds. Interesting how duds can mean clothes or munitions that fail to explode.
Did I just suggest there could be exploding clothing? Help me with the punctuation. I think I needed another comma.
Anyway, yes, "dud" can mean clothes, and it can also mean "faulty munitions". The clothes one seems to have come first, so how that reused is beyond me. Perhaps duds were clothes that actually weren't very good and we've just lost that aspect of the word over time.
Ah well, something I can spend lots of time sorting out once I'm back at work next week.
Actually, let's do it now.
It looks like duds meant clothes in the 16th century, and then in the 17th century it meant "old clothes" or "rags". Well, if you'd had the same suit for a hundred years I guess it would be looking rather tatty. But from here I can see how we get to munitions that won't explode. Don't ask why, I just can. Let me know if you have any problem with the leap.
Right, tailors. Looking for some lovely new threads at a fraction of the cost. Come to Hoi An. It's what they do. They do it well, they do it fast, and like I've already said, they do it inexpensively. I don't think it's "Tom's" inexpensively, but it's also bespoke.
No, I didn't get anything made for myself in Hoi An. That's another story.
But, with practically everyone else dudded out, it was time to hop a bus to nearby Da Nang (I always hear Robin Williams singing when I think of Da Nang - the irony of that one sucks) and board the night train to Nha Trang. Which is precisely what we did.
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