Midwinter

(Recommended: click on the photo to enlarge)

We're now crawling away from the shortest days to the lightest, and there's just something about the light in this photo that says midwinter.

Visit other worlds.

Snow + Beach + Sunset

Yes, more snow/beach photos. I know I’m probably going a little overboard on this, but I have never seen the beach look so beautiful, and who wants to restrain themselves from sharing something beautiful? (Obviously this is where my inner cynic gets all fluffed up and starts muttering about people who consider faeces and other-bodily-substances-that-will-not-be-mentioned in art to be beautiful, where yes, I do wish they would restrain themselves. Anyways, back to the winter snow beach thing…)

I keep being greedy to look at these photos, and my homily for the week is that, whilst I would still rather live somewhere warmer, and I’m totally not enjoying nearly breaking my neck on the iced over pavement every time I leave the house, winter does have its good points, its beauty.

I’ve appreciated the clear blue skies and sunlight, the stunning sunsets and crisp air, too. I’ve appreciated having some moisture in the air, after last winter in Shijiazhuang where the air was so dry that walking down the street made me feel like it was assaulting me [the air, not the street].

But perhaps what I appreciated most was the moments of stillness, of tranquillity, that I experienced on the beach. Moments to keep safe, and bring out the next time I have to call a bank.

What other wintery worlds are out there?

Toytown Sunset

Does this scene make anyone else feel like they are in a Lego town?

Watch the world's skies with Skywatch Friday.

Downtown Dusk

Get in! I managed to upload a photo finally. Happy days. This is a rare sunset, captured as I came out of the McDonalds on Zhongshan Lu, one of the main roads in the city, and the one that most of the big shopping centres, hotels and nightclubs are on. I have my back to one of the two luxury malls in the city, where China's new rich buy their Rolex, Dior and Chanel.

Check out other skies.

Shizzy sky

We rarely get a decent sunset in Shijiazhuang owing to terrible pollution, although recent weeks have seen unprecedented clear skies so I am trying to remember to take my camera out with me to capture some of the sunsets whilst they last. This, however, is a more typically Shizzy sky. I think the flags are probably left over from the Spring Festival celebrations.

Check out other skies.

Mui Ne

Our next escapade was to at Mui Ne, a coastal resort a few hours north of Saigon. When we arrived I was a bit disappointed with the beach: I had been hoping for the luxurious open expanses of White Beach, but the actual beach was tiny, almost non existent at high tide. Instead, there was a terraced area belonging to the hotel we were staying at that fronted onto the beach.

My disappointment quickly turned to enjoyment though: because we were on private land no one could harass us, and I stretched out on a lounger with a book, occasionally pausing from the addictive Captain Corelli’s Mandolin to stare into the sea. And how could anyone argue with sunsets like this?



The next day we took a tour of some of the interesting local sights. At the harbour, we got talking to one of the local girls who was selling a variety of heinous trinkets. She worked all day to help support her family, then would go to school for two hours at night. She was fourteen. Her English was excellent because she got her education through a sponsor a child programme, and so went to a school that was taught entirely in English. Despite her long days, she was incredibly cheerful and happy.



Our next stop was the Yellow Dunes where you can surf down the dunes. We dutifully paid the incredibly small sum to one of the young boys who worked renting sand surfing boards to tourists and set off to one of the highest dunes. This is the point at which I decide to develop cramp. In both my calves. I half staggered, half hot stepped up the dune, melodramatically collapsing on my knees when I reached the top.

The sand surfing board boy showed us how it was down, tobogganing penguin style down the dune and then effortlessly running back up. When it was my turn to go, I lay on the board and pushed off - and promptly got stuck not even halfway down the dune, with my skirt blown up! Trying to recover a little dignity, after I had pulled my board free of the sand, I tried going down sitting on the board. This was only marginally more successful, until I got wedged again.

At that point I gave up and started the journey back to the top. Never has the clichéd phrase ‘one step forward, two steps back’ been so apt. Every footfall saw me frustratingly slide back to a millimetre in front of where I had just been. Eventually I abandoned all attempts to maintain a shred of poise, and clambered up on my hand and knees. The stunning views made up for the embarrassment though: I had never realised that there was so much contrast in the landscape of Vietnam.

On our last morning I finally got into the swimming pool. I have not been in a swimming pool for thirteen years: the last time was when our high school attempted to teach 30 girls how to swim in a pool that, at the very most, was four or five metres by three, and no more than four foot deep. Since then I’ve only ever swum in the sea. It was very strange to be in water that had no current, smelt like chemicals instead of salt and to have smooth tiles under foot rather than sand and stones. It felt too easy and sterile somehow, like I was cheating.

For other worlds, visit My World Tuesday.

Mekong Delta

rice paddies

On our way to the Mekong Delta we sped past picture postcard Vietnam: lush green paddy fields tended by people wearing traditional conical hats. What a postcard won’t show is the numerous men who stopped their scooters by the side of the road and took a quick whiz on the fields.

Our first boat trip was along some of the larger rivers:

We stopped for lunch, and afterwards were entertained by traditional Vietnamese singers and musicians. I say entertained, but like with traditional Chinese music, I just found it all a bit too high pitched to be enjoyable. However, our guide explained the historical background to the songs, and this was more interesting, especially as I hadn’t realised how important Confucius was to Vietnam as well as China.

view from the riverbank

After lunch we visited a site that demonstrated traditional Vietnamese crafts of rice wine making, rice paper making and popcorn making. We got to try a sample of the rice wine, which tasted like a very cheap vodka, but is not quite as foul as the Chinese rice wine, baijiu, which burns it way down your oesophagus before wrecking havoc in your stomach. We also got samples of Vietnamese peanut brittle, which was being sold at comically inflated prices.

making rice paper

I wandered off down the riverbank, where I saw these rice papers drying over the chicken coop:

That evening we stayed overnight in a town called Can Tho. Our guide gave us instructions on how to get to the road with lots of tourist friendly restaurants, so after getting settled into our rooms, me, A and K set off to find some chow. We began to realise that we had got lost when we were walking along the riverbank, and instead of restaurants, we were looking at tiny little convenience stores and, on the other side of the river, shanties. I was quite glad we got lost though, as we saw this sunset and accidentally had one of our most memorable Asian meals.

This was at a local place, with an entirely Vietnamese menu, and not only did we not speak a word of the language but we didn’t even have a phrasebook. We wanted chicken, so we flapped our arms to mime a chicken, and then attempted to mime eating bread. At first the waiter clearly thought we’d lost our minds, but then he quickly caught on, and brought us a raw chicken wing from the kitchen to inspect. When we indicated that that was quite acceptable, he disappeared and came back ten minutes later with a basket of amazing chicken wings that had been cooked in a mouth watering lemony garlicky sauce. Then he bought us several baskets of equally good fresh bread. Over a couple of beers we people watched as the place filled up, and said hello to some very cute Vietnamese children.

The next day we started by visiting a floating market. The vendors will put a sample of what they are selling on a large pole, and buyers with sail around the market picking their produce.

After inspecting the market, we took trip on a narrow boat through some of the smaller rivers. This was fascinating as it gave us a chance to glimpse at the lives of the farmers of the Mekong, whose simple subsistence lifestyle is so far removed from my own that I find it hard to believe that it still exists.

Our last stop was at an orchard. We were given a fruit tasting plate to start with and I was delighted that no one else at our table liked mango, as I got to eat almost the entire plate by myself. Then we were escorted through the orchard, and tasted a fruit looks like small oranges but tastes as sour as a lemon. We were introduced to this odd looking fruit: apparently this is a small specimen!

The first day in Macau

I have a slight history in China of getting into cabs driven by complete maniacs. It seems that this extends all the way to Macau. Getting from Macau’s the ferry port to our guesthouse, the taxi driver obviously saw an opportunity to milk a foreigner, as he drove us round in circles pretending not to know where our guesthouse was, and then was surprised when we refuse to pay the whole fare.

I was still feeling stressed from that encounter when I went to check us in the Sanva Guesthouse. Even though I could clearly see my reservation written down in their book, it took ten or fifteen minutes of arguing until the owner, who spoke no English at all, agreed to connect the name written in the passport I was showing her with the same name written down in her book.

Then we saw the rooms. We had chosen Sanva mainly on the recommendation of Lonely Planet, which describes it as “the most charismatic lodging in town”. A piece of advice, if LP uses the term “charismatic” about a play to stay, go somewhere else. The ‘rooms’ were in fact cubicles, portioned by thin plywood ‘walls’ that stopped a good few feet shy of the ceiling: meaning that you could hear everything, no matter how intimate, that might be going on in the other ‘rooms’. The couple that owned the place weren’t very friendly either, and there was a bit of a scene when someone took an orange from a bowl in reception, that was apparently part of a shrine. This was an honest mistake: none of us had seen the whole bowl of oranges as religious offering thing before and thought they were for guests.

Our friends, K and W, came from Hong Kong to spend a day in Macau and met us at the guesthouse. They work in the same school as me and A, but had been travelling separately for a couple of weeks, so it was fun to catch up and swap stories. After a well deserved relaxing lunch, we went out to explore Macau. We started with the ruins of the church of St Paul, a seventh century church that, except for the frontage, was razed by fire in 1835. You can climb up to an observation deck behind the windows, and, like others, I threw a coin onto the lintel of the main window and made a wish.

Sunset climbing up Monte Fort

Then we strolled up to Monte Fort, enjoying the views of the sunset on the way. Owing to pollution and tower blocks, we’re rather starved of sunsets in Shijiazhuang, and getting to see them again was one of the highlights of the holiday. After an amble around the fort, we wandered around the many little side streets in the area, mainly trying out different types of beef jerky and biscuits that were on sale. Quite by accident we stumbled across a small shop down an alley selling absolutely delicious spring rolls and other snacks.

A typical Macanese side street

All this meandering gave me ample time to appreciate what makes Macau unique: the quite exceptional blend of East and West. In some places, like at the church ruins, it would be easy to think that you were in southern Europe, yet just a few metres away will be a quintessentially Chinese alley. Perhaps the best example of this was the main square, Largo de Senado, with its typical European architecture and surprisingly funky striped square, which was dominated by very Chinese New Year decorations.

largo do senado

Macau, is of course, known as China’s Las Vegas, so that evening we visited a random casino. First of all though, we celebrated the Year of the Ox by taking a clambering over the decorative Ox they had outside and getting shouted at by a security guard.

I’m not a massive fan of gambling, so I spent 10 Hong Kong dollars (just under one pound) on a slot machine game that I couldn’t understand to be able to say I’ve gambled in a casino in Macau. We all spent the majority of our time there sitting at the bar, making friends with/terrorising the bar staff, throwing large amounts of complimentary peanuts down our neck and watching the hilarious and terrible dancing of three rather unfit and unhealthy looking scantily clad Caucasian girls that was the sum of the casino’s entertainment.

Macanese biscuits. These were a bit too dry for my taste.