just one more

one of my favourite photos from one of my favourite days in our trip to vietnam. dragon on the roof of one of the majestic royal tombs beside the perfume river outside of hue. i promise no more dragons. for now.

accidental zen

i am not a believer in god(s) but sometimes i have a sense of greater powers or forces at work in the world. maybe it is just the magical concept of fate or meaningful coincidence. when i returned home from a trip to vietnam and was looking through the many many photos i took there for the first time on a screen bigger than the tiny one on the back of my digital camera, this was one which instantly became one of my favourites of the trip, it encapsulated so perfectly what the whole vietnam experience had come to mean to me. because the truth of this photo is that it was not carefully taken at all - but rather very carelessly out of the window of a taxi racing through the busy streets of saigon as i tried to capture the image of the clouds - only to truly accidentally and unknowingly, yet with perfect partnership, catch the word 'zen' in the same frame.

year of the dragon

well it was actually year of the monkey, and this wasn't in china. but i was born in the year of the dragon, chinese zodiac calendar wise i mean, so i have always thought they were pretty cool. these very impressive dragon stair-rails (if you could call them that!) were located in one of the six royal tombs up the perfume river from hue, vietnam. 

communist tv

this is a shot i took from a boat cruising through the mekong delta in southern vietnam. i was amazed that people even living in clearly abject poverty had both the money and inclination to buy a tv and some impressive aerials. then our guide informed us that the government installs a tv with a requisite aerial to ensure good reception in every home, and also provides all the programming, to reinforce government messages to the population.