March 2008
39 posts
waking up in Ninh Binh. renting a bicycle ($1) to visit Tam Coc today and tomorrow I’ll spend the night in a stilt house in Cuc Phuong park
on the local bus to Ninh Binh (a couple hours south of Hanoi). price is almost half that of a local bus in Ottawa.
watching prawns do summersaults
at the friday market on Cat Ba Island, was leaving today but must wait for my laundry to dry as there are no dryers on the island. no prob
returning to Cat Ba Island after a long day of sea kayaking and rock climbing in Halong Bay (beautiful). Exhausted.
floating restaurant.
Helped catch my freshly grilled fish dinner on Cat Ba island in a floating restaurant. Very satisfied
standing in front of our bus (tiannemen square style) as la chica takes her time in the washroom and the driver is not especially friendly.
bus+boat to Cat Ba Island with a friendly chica espagnola
watching an incredibly big+old+green bonsai tree being strapped to a ratty old motorbike in an alleyway. Clash.
plotting for Cat Ba Island with SloPony
staying the night at a soviet-era government hotel. rooms are built to enormous scale to make you feel small/powerless but better for it.
packing the land cruiser in Cao Bang.
Winding through foggy mountain paths. Chewing sugarcane. Waving at schoolchildren. Admiring exotic vegetation & ridiculous vistas. CAO BANG.
leaving Ha Giang for Kao Bang. just passed a road sign which read Good Luck To You.
is the team’s microcredit expert in Ha Giang.
… Enjoying grilled squid and eel in glass noodles with a papaya juice.
walked around the corner to Quan An Ngan, countless little food vendors surround an old french building in typical pealing pale yellow p …
Hanoi’s drizzle today is almost indistinguishable from a heavy fog.
Hoan Kiem Lake. Men in hardhats are fishing for some unknown edible with very improvised nets.
nhung trai xoai nay… spent the morning conversing with the bunkmate, Sam, (via phrasebook!) now napping, passing by endless rice paddies.
on a train speeding along the Vietnamese coast up to Hanoi. There’s a heavy morning fog where I am now, all in all it is kinda beautiful.
starting to work on Cheese rations: one out of eight smiling cows. Not going to have enough bread to last. Hopefully I can provision more.
This train is flying up Vietnam. I awake in Nha Trang, where my english-speaking plastics-manufacturer friend gets off. 12hrs so far so good
“Compare this with the 17.5 percent of adults who currently engage in what the...”
– Laid-Back Labor, by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt in the nytimes freakonomics blog
'I fell in love with a female assassin' →
There comes a point in every new relationship when your girlfriend wants to share a secret. Usually it’s to do with sex […] But what happens if your new girlfriend has a much darker and more sinister secret than having slept around a bit?
nostrich via Kottke
Is IKEA giving Danes the doormat treatment? →
aatw:
stumblng:
Emotions against IKEA are running high in Denmark, where researchers claim the wildly popular Swedish home furnishings company only names cheap doormats and wall-to-wall carpeting after Danish towns, reserving Swedish names for its more expensive furniture.
A boycott’s been spoken of.
Even more serious, Danes are suggesting that one of their country’s light beers should be...
Watchjoelaz:
Cibelle - Green Grass
Brazillian singer Cibelle covers Tom Waits. I love this.
Microtrends vs Macrotrends: Why Obama is Winning →
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, supported by Mark Penn, who literally wrote the book on microtrends, has worked fastidiously to slice the American electorate into narrowly defined subgroups and garner their patronage. Unfortunately, Barack Obama burst onto the scene and grabbed the support of wide swaths of the nation, sweeping over Clinton’s micro-strategy. Small movements are critical,...
“if Cadman Plaza really wants to get serious about supporting its writers, it has...”
“It would be swell if it were otherwise — if there were some sort of unified...”
– I Write in Brooklyn. Get Over It.
went rock climbing.
Luckily didn’t need my buck-a-day insurance, good to have regardless.
… thinking about how much more dangerous the ride home will probably be.