I'm finally done with the bike tour pics. Here are some landscapes I snapped driving out from Sapa and towards Ha Long Bay.
Bye Bye rice patties. I loved the island of trees in the middle.
Civilization creeps into the landscape.
Made it!
Constant staring by the locals aside, lunch was enjoyable, as was the really strong tea afterwards.
The aftermath
The strongest tea you'll ever have.
Oh, what's this? A scooter? Tag! ;) Snapped this from the van on our way out.
On our last day we made our way back down from elevation. Slowly a lot more greenery emerged and it became more and more humid. We actually passed through what looked like a tropical jungle at one point. Here are some captures.
Our trip down.
This one was for Jane.
What better way to finish off the ride?
Most of Vietnam, although beautiful, is green. The rest is brown. So when I have the chance to take a picture of something that is not one of those two colours they seem a lot more special than they'd normally be.
This image has all the colors of Vietnam.
This was the best Vietnamese sweetened coffee I had. The red tables were we sat were so vibrant against everything else.
I loved the colours that the Vietnamese people painted their houses with. It seems like they too became fed up with the brown and green.
Whenever I visit a new place, I always feel like I learn a lot by visiting whatever local market the city has to offer. If they don't have one, that tells me a lot too.
"Honey, could you pick up some baby chickens, and some frogs tonight on the way home?"
I was astounded at how deeply vibrant red pigs blood was. It's almost fluorescent!
More goodness. I just realized that I'm eating carnitas as I post this image.
Tag, photohogger, you're it.
Our guide one afternoon told us that we were going to be able to have tea in a traditional Vietnamese house. She poured us tea.
Then she poured us moonshine. I think I used to clean my paintbrushes with that very same potent liquid.
I love taking pictures of kitchens. This one, despite its setting was very tidy.
Our gracious host.
Bad news: That bottle was filthy dirty.
Good news: Nothing that touched the moonshine could have survived.
She gave us this pillow she made, which was very kind of her. The only downside being I now had to lug this across Asia.
Chicken. It's what's for dinner.
Vietnam certainly made me rethink my idea of a landscape. Although so much of it is beautiful, so much of it is also the same. It makes you need to try harder to capture something worth capturing. For the most part, that meant trying to relate the land to the people around it.
I liked how the popular trains have become well worn through rain and footsteps.
A particularly large rice paddy.
A typical home at the bottom of a large valley.
I decided a couple days ago that if were ever to open a Vietnamese joint, I would construct it the same way they do in the countryside. Two parallel concrete slabs, open in the front, with a kitchen in the rear. Basically, what you get is a giant softbox that trickles light through. Sure it would be a little dark in the back, but at least you'd be able to admire the wonderfully lit people infront of you.
Still life in Vietnam.
Beverage of choice with lunch.
Soft box action.
Another bike. I'm going to have a bike war with foodhogger.
Another fan. I've decided that along with bikes, I'm becoming a fan of older fans.
The only better way to see Vietnam is to walk it. I figured this out passing numerous pedestrians on my bike. As much as biking through the countryside is better than driving through it. I imagine I would have had a lot more time to think about the photos I was taking if I were walking. Also, I'd have the chance to climb mountains, hills, or other interesting formations.
It reminds me of that guy who walked across China. Or at least tried to.
Here are some pics taken from a moving bike.
I like the way this image could have been taken now, or 50 years ago.
Really wanted to hike this formation. The view would have been amazing.
The popular girls.
More B+W?
Here's a village that I passed through while biking. They were one of the more exuberant ones.
I think we caught rush hour.
Future thugs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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