Kitchen Guard Snake (left of pic, in cage). Faces his reward.
Vietnam continues to impress. I went down to the Mekong Delta on a tour and saw some tropical madness.
It’s actually an industrial area. Anything that can be an industry, is.
It’s actually an industrial area. Anything that can be an industry, is.
I had lunch with a large snake sitting behind me. The snake was going to be highly industrious for the group who live on Phoenix island in the Delta. He was going to be, in this order.
1) Tourist photographic draw card when draped on unsuspecting passer-by
2) Kitchen vermin deterrent
3) A belt
1) Tourist photographic draw card when draped on unsuspecting passer-by
2) Kitchen vermin deterrent
3) A belt
and
4) Lunch
I saw a backyard industry to dwarf most. A guy with standard one-room-dirt-floor shack, with three hulking dredging-barges about 120 feet each, in his backyard. He was putting the final welding touches on them and judging by the tide marks on the walls of his shack, was going to wait for a change in the river level to float them off to his customers. This will be a particular nightmare to my sister. Giant ships already in his own backyard, Span. Not even having to come down the street!
Our little thrown together tour group had another member in it, who guaranteed we were going to be the butt of jokes for the whole day. Hamun was a representative wrestler from Iran. My, how the Vietnamese enjoyed loading him and me into tiny boats, miniscule plastic seats and donkey-drawn carts. Donkeys apparently like being lifted into the air by their harness, judging by all the leg waving and noise. Not many people know that.
I have travelled on the Highway Number 1. This is the road that the Top Gear scallywags used for their Vietnam adventure challenge. I have also seen a trillion of the model boats, paintings, statues and bad suits that they bought each other as ‘presents’. In a classically Asian tilt-of-the-hat to tragedy, you can pick up a hundred different versions of the Titanic, if you want to take home a tribute to grisly failure.
I mentioned at the start that Vietnam continues to impress - as in, it leaves an impression. I will be taking home a particularly grisly one of my own. On the way back to Saigon from the Delta, we came across a fresh accident scene. A semi-trailer carrying a shipping container had run over a man on a pedal powered tricycle. The bike was pulverised and he was mashed into the road, the axels and the wheels. There was a growing mob only slightly smaller than the blood lake. Unsurprising as it is awful, it’s apparently pretty commonplace. I told a Japanese colleague who’s been here for a while about it, and he said,
“Yes, whenever I go to play golf, I make sure I go to sleep in the car so I don’t have to see those things.”
4) Lunch
I saw a backyard industry to dwarf most. A guy with standard one-room-dirt-floor shack, with three hulking dredging-barges about 120 feet each, in his backyard. He was putting the final welding touches on them and judging by the tide marks on the walls of his shack, was going to wait for a change in the river level to float them off to his customers. This will be a particular nightmare to my sister. Giant ships already in his own backyard, Span. Not even having to come down the street!
Our little thrown together tour group had another member in it, who guaranteed we were going to be the butt of jokes for the whole day. Hamun was a representative wrestler from Iran. My, how the Vietnamese enjoyed loading him and me into tiny boats, miniscule plastic seats and donkey-drawn carts. Donkeys apparently like being lifted into the air by their harness, judging by all the leg waving and noise. Not many people know that.
I have travelled on the Highway Number 1. This is the road that the Top Gear scallywags used for their Vietnam adventure challenge. I have also seen a trillion of the model boats, paintings, statues and bad suits that they bought each other as ‘presents’. In a classically Asian tilt-of-the-hat to tragedy, you can pick up a hundred different versions of the Titanic, if you want to take home a tribute to grisly failure.
I mentioned at the start that Vietnam continues to impress - as in, it leaves an impression. I will be taking home a particularly grisly one of my own. On the way back to Saigon from the Delta, we came across a fresh accident scene. A semi-trailer carrying a shipping container had run over a man on a pedal powered tricycle. The bike was pulverised and he was mashed into the road, the axels and the wheels. There was a growing mob only slightly smaller than the blood lake. Unsurprising as it is awful, it’s apparently pretty commonplace. I told a Japanese colleague who’s been here for a while about it, and he said,
“Yes, whenever I go to play golf, I make sure I go to sleep in the car so I don’t have to see those things.”
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