Shopping

I’m usually quite careful with money.  I’ve had a few years of training recently when I haven’t had much cash to thank for that.  My new job, coupled with a very low cost of living, has meant that now, for the first time for a while I can buy most things that I want.  Most within reason of course.  I still can’t afford an iPhone 4 or an iPad but as I don’t want either of these things I’m not bothered.  ( well I could be tempted by the iPad ).   So it was a surprise to me that on Sunday I had a bit of a splurge. 

There’s a bus from Phu My Hung into town that drops and picks up along Dong Koi Street, right in the heart of the expensive tourist district and I often take it at the weekend.   When you get off the bus there’s always a group of motorbike taxi guys touting for business and various people selling cigarettes and newspapers to the rich foreigners.  Amongst these there is a bunch of fruit sellers with baskets mangos or oranges or melons depending on the season.  I love mangos but they are usually sold green and eaten either soaked in spicy oil or dipped in salt and chilli so I don’t usually buy them.  Along the street there’s a woman who must have realised that Westerners like mangos sweet as she has a basket of them just about on the turn.  They are soft, slightly bruised but if you get them home in one piece and eat them up quickly they are fantastic.  They make for a very messy eating experience, with mango juice dripping everywhere, but a very rewarding one too.  

I’ve become a bit of a regular with the lady who sells the mangos now and always stop to say hello.  She knows that I’m going to buy from her and makes a big show of selecting the ‘best’ ones from her basket.  I always get a free sample and sometimes a free banana too.  For about £2 I came home with five squashy mangos, which are now in my fridge ready to be dissected and eaten over the next few days.  I hope they last until Thursday.

Next to the fruit sellers and motorbike guys there’s a small indoor tourist market.  It’s much less hassle than the main market in the centre of town but sells more or less the same stuff.  It’s has the things that tourists are assumed to want, joke t-shirts, ethnic bags and fancy scarves.  The people there have a photographic memory for faces as I discovered yesterday.  I bought one shirt a few weeks ago and they still remember me and the price I managed to bargain them down to.  So, as I walked past the stall yesterday the woman dragged me in and somehow managed to sell me not one more shirt but three!  For £8 each I now have three silk shirts.  They are large, baggy and very comfortable in the heat and humidity and quite subtle in colour.  The trouble is they don’t all go with my trousers so I may have to go back next weekend for more clothes.  

The concert

Finally after all the waiting it happened.  RMIT’s big move into show business has finally reached it’s peak.  Bob Dylan was appearing in front of a decent sized crowd in the sports field where I work.

I got there early enough to see something of the support act, a woman belting out some jazz apparently influenced by ‘the Vietnamese Bob Dylan’.  Between acts I moved as close to the front as I could and squeezed into a gap left by other people in the crowd heading off for food or drink.  This left me about 6 rows from the front and with a great view.  Where else could I get this close?

Dylan came on wearing a wide brimmed white hat and took up his place behind a small keyboard surrounded by a 5 piece band, 1 drummer and 4 guitarists.  They played for just under two hours running through the vast back catalogue which included ‘A hard Rain’, ‘Highway 61’ and ‘All along the Watch Tower’ to name just a few. It looked like he was enjoying himself and I certainly was.  From time to time he strapped on a guitar and came out to the front of the stage to join the rest of the band and occasionally he rasped into a harmonica.

And still the stupid press reports from China criticised him for submitting a playlist to be authorised by the Ministry of Culture and endlessly repeating the ‘protest song’ narrative.  With a repertoire of over 800 hundred songs how many are in any way political?  10 maybe 15?  No wonder the guy gets fed up with being asked about it.  They are about women, just like almost every other pop song!!

It ended with ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and  ‘Forever Young’, two of my personal favourites with the crowd joining in, shouting out the chorus ‘How does it feel/how does it feel/to be on your own/no direction home/a complete unknown/like a rolling stone/.  Well, to me it felt good all this way from home.

They say he’s lost his voice. They say he won’t engage with the crowd.  They say you can’t recognise the songs.  All true but to be there in the crowd taking part in rock history was a privilege. 

Bob Dylan is coming.

The news has been circulating now for a while.  First it was going to happen and then, later, there was more negative stuff about visas not being issued and that it wasn’t going to happen. Then the university hinted at it and finally a few Fridays ago they put it up on their intranet, so it must be true.  Bob Dylan is coming! Not just to the country where I live, or the town where I live but the actual place where I work!  Tickets finally went on sale last week but I handed over 900,000 dong to the owner of a local bar well in advance just to be sure.  I rushed down there as soon as I heard the news and signed up.  There is no way I’m going to miss this.

The concert will be held in the sports field behind the main teaching buildings. It’s where I pay tennis and where the gym I go to is housed.  Will Dylan use the same changing rooms pre and post concert as I do when I go to the gym?  Will he want to pop into one of my classes and find out how to write university style essays?

The pre-concert publicity finally appeared with posters up around the campus and a free draw of 30 tickets for students.  I visited the field yesterday to watch them build the stage and erect the beer tents.  Yes, there will be food and drink and yes there will be souvenirs but no cameras allowed.  I might try and sneak one in if possible.

They are expecting a small crowd, 6 to 8 thousand, mainly expats as the price starts at £35, a  lot for locals most of whom will never have heard of Dylan or his music.  I’ve just read this report in the Guardian where they had a similar size turnout for Dylan’s first ever concert in China and I’m hoping for something very similar here.  

Supply and Demand

I haven’t blogged for a while because I told myself that nothing interesting was happening but that’s wrong.  Even the most commonplace events, sights or activities have some interest if you look hard enough.  I’ve been busy with work and other things so have let the blog go a bit but recently I’ve been thinking about some of the routines of life that are different from home.  Drinking,  or more accurately, what to drink is one of them. 

I’ve worked my way through a range of drinks from the almost undrinkable to the expensively imported in the search for a reliable alternative to wine.  I like wine but recoil from the bottles of imported French wine as they are ridiculously expensive.  £10 for a rubbish bottle of Van de Paye which would be £4 tops in Sainsbury’s is a rip-off.  The local Dalat wine is thin, weedy and sour, borders on the undrinkable but is cheaper at £2 or so.  Beer is just lager really so it’s yellow, slightly sweet and generally flavourless.  Sapporo, the beer from Japan is the only exception to my general lager rule but still makes me feel uncomfortably full after a few.  For all of those reasons I now drink spirits but which ones?

When it comes to the hard stuff my choice is wide.  At the bottom end of the market there’s Hanoi vodka.  Even as you drink it you can feel it’s bad for you.  I get an almost instant headache followed by a general feeling on unease, like I’ve been poisoned, which I probably have.  Koreans love Soju, a colourless, odourless liquid made from rice which tastes worse than the vodka but doesn’t seem so toxic.  I drink it in emergencies only.  Next up from those two is rum from the Philippines.  This comes in two colours, white and brown, but only one flavour which I would describe as bland but on reflection, and after trying Bacardi, I now realise that’s what white rum tastes like.  For those who are prepared to pay there is no limit to what you can buy but I’m mean and I like value for money.

The other problem I have is supply.  There are a couple of decent sized supermarkets in Phu My Hung and lots of small stores and  there’s a couple of fancy wine shops too for those with deeper pockets but there is no consistency in supply.  For a while now my nearest supermarket only has Hanoi vodka and I’m not drinking that.  They used to have a reliable supply of Philippino rum bit that’s run dry so imagine my pleasure and surprise when I saw a small shop nearby selling it. I was so pleased and surprised that I nearly bought two bottles but instead went for one plus  a probably fake bottle of Gordon’s gin at the knockdown price of £5.

what's in the freezer compartment of your fridge?

Inspired by my luck and the spicy tang of the gin, I wrote this blog entry.  Cheers! 

Tet’s Up

The holiday season is over for another year and I’m back at work.  The university is full of noisy students wondering what they’ve let themselves in for and depressed teachers back after a longish break.  ( Only 3 weeks, most universities would have more but we really work for our living here. )

The roads are full of rush hour motorbikes and that makes my ride home after work a lot more interesting.  I have to be constantly on the alert and practise my 360 degree vision skills if I want to get home in one piece.

Tet, or Vietnamese New Year, is celebrated a bit like we do Christmas.  There’s food, drink, relatives and gift giving. Money in red envelopes is the normal gift so there’s no problem having to take the unwanted present back to the shops the next day.  Instead of Christmas trees people have blossom clad branches, often a whole shrub but, as there is no discernable season here, the branches are stripped of leaves and have bright yellow flowers glued to them.  Yellow seams to be the colour of spring no matter where you live.  And just like Christmas trees, once it’s all over the branches are dumped somewhere and forgotten about. 

I’m back at work for the next 12 week with a new set of students but mercifully there is a short break at the beginning of May when we have a long weekend.  Cambodia gave me a taste for holidaying, relaxing and travelling which has taken a while to shake off.

Cambodia

We are back from our holiday, the girls are back in England and I’m starting to think about my next outing in just over 3 months time.

Although I’m back home I’m too lazy/busy to write a blog entry so pinched this from wikitravel or somewhere like that.  It sums up our holiday pretty well.

Get in

You can get there by plane to Phnom Penh or Siem Reap.  It’s inexpensive and runs frequently, but the bus is cheaper.  It does mean that you arrive late and tired but think of the planet and your bank balance.  You can save a bit of time and money by taking a sleeper bus but these can often be replaced by a regular bus with reclining seats so you don’t actually sleep at all and spend the next day recuperating.  The people in the reclining seat in front of you will try to recline their seat, crushing your knees and make sitting impossible.   If they attempt to do this, brace your legs and defend your space.

Sleep

The Green Garden Home in Siem Reap has a lovely pool.  The Cove Beach has great views but you pay a hefty price for them.  The Chhaya Hotel is a self contained backpacker ghetto and very cheap.

See

The ancient city of Angkor is well worth a few days and is so good they named a beer after it.  The vast Tonle Sap lake and surrounding waterways.  Serendipity Beach, which should be renamed Predictability Beach as every bar sells exactly the same as all the others.

Drink

Angkor beer at any time but especially during happy hour, which usually runs from 5pm to 10pm.  Try to ignore the taste and believe its tag line, “My country, my beer”.  You can also get Mojitos crammed with mint.

Eat

Cheese burgers, a mild creamy curry akin to Thai but different, crunchy salad with a mouth-numbingly volcanic chili dressing and fried eggs every day for breakfast.

Do

Get a massage from trained masseurs who really know what they are doing. The next day your back will feel like it’s had a tough workout.  Swim in a crystal-clear, turquoise-blue, coral-filled tropical sea.  Cycle around and clamber over ancient ruins and marvel at the carvings. Travel by boat through a birdwatchers paradise to Batambang, Cambodia’s second biggest, but quietest, city.

Get

A pedicure on the beach.  A foot massage in a night market.  Various hippy bracelets sold by children everywhere.  Cheap t-shirts that won’t survive the first wash.  Sunburn after swimming too much swimming without sunscreen.

Happy New Year

It's Tet, Vietnam's equivalent of Chinese New Year and  all the indications are that it's best to get away from the transport chaos and inflated hotel prices that come with the holiday period .  I've taken a very long bus ride to Siem Reap in Cambodia this time joined by my daughters Charlotte and Alice.  The bus journey was long, tiring and very, very cold as the driver had the air conditioning turned down to an icy blast for the 15 hours it took us to make the trip. 
Siem Reap and the templates of Ankor are worth the journey and the hotel had a pool.  We had two days looking around Ankor and a day resting in the town. We took a tuk-tuk on the first day and cycled on the second.  It was hot but not too hot and cycling down the shady roads was a pleasure.  You pay a lot for the access but once in you can clamber over everything without anyone stopping you and they are impressive.  The souvenir sellers can be annoying, pushing postcards, guide books and t-shirts at you that you don't want but otherwise it's a very peaceful experience.  The whole area is kept clean by a small army of workers in green uniforms who spend their days sweeping up leaves on the sides of the roads in a vain attempt at  tidying up a tropical forest.  At least some of the $20 a day fee goes into the local economy.

We left Siem Reap by  boat to Battambang crossing the massive Tonle Sap lake and winding through a narrow river to the town.  Eight hours of bird and village life watching along the bank, engine noise and hard wooden seats.  There were scenes of unbelievable poverty along the way where families live in crude wooden shacks and catch the tiny fish that fill the water.  Sadly plastic bags are everywhere marking the high water mark on an otherwise very natural scene.  Perhaps the cleaners of Ankor would be better employed here.

After a long, noisy day we arrived in Battambang and walked the few hundred meters to the hotel area taking pleasure in stretching our legs after sitting so uncomfortably on those narrow benches all day. For a fraction of the price and half the time we could have taken a bus but, as I keep telling the girls, we wouldn't have had the experience.

Battambang is a town for locals with a handful of backpacker hotels and restaurants in contrast to Siem Reap whose sole function is to cater for tourists of all pockets many of them rather deep judging by the number of 'international spas' springing up all over the town.  It's a bit scruffy and dusty but very cheap.  The main street is busy with cars and motorbikes but the side streets are quieter and the restaurant owners are happy to see tourists sitting in their restaurant chairs reading and not buying much throughout the hot afternoons.  We had a ride out into the countryside this morning to a couple of temples on top of small hills with great views of the countryside around them but other wise the day has been lazy, with us not doing much at all.  Tomorrow we leave for Phnom Penh on the 8am bus for a mere 6 hours.