colour

Somebody complained about colour, or lack thereof. So here we go...


A typical home in the countryside.



I liked how the cows matched the dirt by the road.


The problem with most of my photos I'm realizing is that my bike trip was largely overcast and foggy/smoggy. This made the colour quite flat at times, unless I was indoors.

Next several will most likely be BW again.

Some more black & white

Here's some more tea leaves.


I should crop this to 4x5. Lazy.

Leaving the village

I have an obsession with water towers. Love them in New York, and I love them in Asia. In Vietnam, they're smart and brand everything. If you think about it, it's really smart. The sun heats up the water during the day, so you can take a warm shower at night. All you have to do is pump up water into the tower and you're done!


This photo gives you an idea of how smoggy/foggy it was there.



I love the interiors of buildings in Vietnam. Their open end lets in a lot of light that slowly diffuses into the interiors.

Where my food comes from

In the towns, or more accurately - the clusters of houses with a road passing through it that we ate at, there was no notion of the local market. The produce, the livestock, everything was dragged out onto tables and displayed in the hot sun for sale. It gave the coin, "street food" a legitimacy contrasting the food hawker type of stands that normally come to mind. The meat in particular, festooned with flies and being tenderized by the humid air and multiplying bacteria, was a sharp contrast to the normally hunger inspiring stands I saw in Hong Kong. Still, when in Rome...



Before



After


The meat was chewy, but the broth was hot enough to hopefully have killed any lethal bits still hanging around.

Green tea

Next time you have it shaken with some strange sugary concoction at your local coffee shop, *ahem Starbuck's*, remember that this is probably where it comes from. Not necessarily from Vietnam, but in a field like this.

The workers let me taste a leaf. The strongest green tea I've ever had. Vietnam had some really great tea. They like to brew it strong, but sip it gingerly in small cups.

Soooo behind

Yes, I'm still on the first day of my Vietnam trip earlier this year. Give me time.


We stopped to say hello to the villagers that were following us. This one was hard to focus in such little time. I eventually got quite fast at manual focusing everything through a tilted lens. Not the easiest thing in the world.



We also had to make way for some buffalo.


More to come, I have time this weekend I think...

For smita

There are a LOT more pictures, however, I have been both busy and lazy.

Here is the first hotel we stayed at. If memory serves me correct, the sink and toilet emptied onto the floor and into a drain. Shower? Same place.

The light was amazing inside though.


Loved the color of this fan.



Tea time, with our bus driver.



This is how we all ate. I felt like I was taking pictures of the equivalent of Van Gogh's potato eaters. Yes, this one specifically is for you Smita.