Jet Lag, and a Day in Hoi An

Welcome to Daylight Savings Time, AKA Jetlag City. Population: you and everyone you know except Saskatchewan. Yes, dear Saskatchewites, this is the one day of the year I envy you. Smile smugly, as you get your normal hours of sleep while the rest of the world wonders where they misplaced an hour.

I've managed to avoid polluting your social media feeds with my stench for 3 weeks, so I guess it's time to post a few photos. Allow me to transport you to beautiful Hoi An, a charming and character filled city in central Vietnam. We only had time for a short day trip here, but I enjoyed every minute of it, and would highly recommend a visit should you ever be in the country.


At night, colourful lanterns adorn the beautiful shopfronts in the old historic quarter.








Hoi An is known for its abundance of custom tailors.














The bridge printed on the 20,000 VND note is here as well.






This Banh Mi (Vietnamese Subs) shop was lined up out the block, but was well worth the wait.

Saigon Street Shots

Yesterday marked the end of Lunar New Year celebrations, capped off with what Chinese people call 元宵佳節 (essentially, Chinese Valentine's Day). To celebrate the near alignment of east and west Valentine's Days, Anita and I are going to hunt out some unique hot chocolate concoctions as part of YYC Hot Chocolate Fest today. But before we head out, I just wanted to share a few more of my sad attempts at street photography while wandering around Cholon and Saigon last month. The hustle and bustle of everyday life at street level in Vietnam in unlike anything else, and if you are looking for a new experience in travel and culture shock, look no further.

Assorted Scenes From 'Nam

Welcome to season 9 of my very own little corner of the inter webs! I returned from a short trip to Vietnam recently, but haven't had the energy or time to sort through most of the photos, so this set will seem incredibly random, which I will agree is an accurate descriptor.

My trip was awesome despite 1) stepping in a pile of dogshit with my white as snow Adidas sneakers the day after I arrived, and 2) people assuming Anita and I were having some kind of marital problems (because apparently there is no possible alternate explanation for why we wouldn't have gone together).

The trip's main purpose was to attend my uncle's wedding (pictured below), but also encompassed eating too much food and drinking too much beer (I gained 8lbs in my first 8 days there), taking tons of street photos, watching beautiful sunsets, impromptu bottle flip contests, exploring many local markets, and otherwise just hanging out with my relatives. Good times.




Sunset on the beaches of Phu Quoc Island.






Drinking beer the Vietnamese way: warm, with a chunk of ice in it.


Drinking beer the proper way: draft, craft, and cold on tap.


Who knew there was such a selection of interesting craft bia (beer) in Ho Chi Minh?


Because OF COURSE seahorses are for making liquor... right?


Street shooting - a mobile vendor hawks Baos (steamed buns) off the back of his moped.


I can never get enough of the sights and sensory overload of local fish markets.




Thai Ice Cream rolls.


This has to be one of my favourite photos, EVER. My mom (far left) looks like she's having so much fun!

The Fall of Saigon - A Personal Connection

Forty years ago today, the Viet Cong tanks rolled into Saigon, and the South fell to the Communist forces of North Vietnam while the US military evacuated the last of their troops, ending the Vietnam War. For my family, like hundreds of thousands of others, this would eventually lead to a mass exodus of Vietnamese and Chinese ex-pats who would become refugees known as the Boat People, fleeing their homeland with little more than the clothes on their backs. Only after numerous attempts to elicit the story in various fragments from my family members who lived through this period, have I finally come to fully grasp what a harrowing experience this was.

While our story is fascinating, frustrating, and heartbreaking all at once, it is too long to retell here. Just know that the very fact that we are friends or acquaintances or colleagues, or however it is you ended up here reading this often ridiculous blog of mine, we owe to those very tanks crashing through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh city)... had the South not fallen on April 30, 1975, my family wouldn't have fled, and who knows where (or if) I would even have been born.


April 30,1975 - Tank 843, the first to smash through the gates of the Presidential Palace, effectively signalling the end of South Vietnam. (This isn't my photo, obviously - I shot a picture of this photo in an exhibit)


The restored Tank 843, now on display at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh city.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about those final few days of South Vietnam, I would highly suggest watching the documentary Last Days in Vietnam. It's gripping and suspenseful, despite you already knowing the outcome, while telling the very tragic and human stories of those who so desperately wanted to escape.

And for you Canadian readers, you should check out this CBC article about Canada's coverage of the events in those final days. Interestingly, Mike Duffy (the now disgraced Senator) was one of the last Canadian reporters on the ground before the South's fall.

The Street Hawkers of Ho Chi Minh

Street photography (from wikipedia: photography that features the human condition within public places...) is a genre I enjoy shooting, despite being absolute crap at it. There's something about timing your shot to capture a fleeting and candid moment of life, and these scenes become particularly interesting for me when they document a way of life that is so utterly different than our experiences back home.

Here are a handful of shots taken while we were in Ho Chi Minh (and one from Mui Ne), Vietnam, of the various vendors and hawkers at street level.