“We rocking it contagious, monkey business outrageous
Just confess, your girl admits that we da sh*t” – Black Eyed Peas, Pump It!
There’s no better way to get over a broken heart than pumping iron. Seriously folks, feeling the burn fills all the criteria for a healing experience. It’s distracting and time consuming, gets the endorphins buzzing [...]
Entries from November 2009
November 23, 2009
Pump it!
November 22, 2009
Making history
They say that history is written by the victors. Well if so, Vietnam has a weird way of sounding their victory. It’s now 34 years after a win that many thought was impossible in the face of America’s superior strength and firepower (bombing them back to the Stone Age and all that). Now 34 years [...]
November 22, 2009
Bạn có nói được tiếng Anh?*
“I’m an alien. I’m a legal alien.” – Sting, Englishman in New York
Periodically the travel press comes up with another statistic that makes one ashamed to be an Englishperson abroad. 97% of all Greeks think that Brits are immoral, drunken animals, for example (who would blame them). Or, 20% of all French chateaux owners [...]
November 22, 2009
The Prisoners
When I was growing up, the hallway outside my bedroom at my dad’s house was dominated by a massive poster of Patrick McGoohan as Number 6 in The Prisoner with the adage in half-foot-high letters: “I am not a number, I am a free man.”
The worst thing about being in any institution is the [...]
November 22, 2009
Snobbery and the Mekong Delta
There are people who travel and there are tourists. The debate of which category a person falls into – dependant on travelling behaviour, length of journey, lifestyle choices – is a long one that has been raging among backpacking communities for decades.
Travellers are generally pretty scathing about tourists, defining themselves as something different. They [...]
November 20, 2009
I’d like to tell you a story…
Once upon a time there was a little girl called Hien. She lived with her mother and father in a country called Vietnam. Now one day her mother and father decided they didn’t want their little girl any more. This was maybe because the little girl was sick, she had a sickness called ‘Hepatitis C’ [...]
November 8, 2009
Saucy!
Hurrah! Have got new job writing reviews for new ‘travel geek’ website Sosauce.com.
November 8, 2009
The Yarkand Manner
While flicking through the book of Saki short stories that my Dad gave me in Laos, I came across one that mocks media whims and fancies, showing a possible danger of travel journalism (read it here: www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/382) Like all Saki’s stories it’s got a delicious bite at the end.
November 8, 2009
Halloween
Pleased to report it’s the same all over the world…people get dressed up, go to parties, get drunk, spill beer on their witch/cat/monster outfits, wake up in November with a hangover. Good times!
November 8, 2009
Taking communion
When I, and three other western orphanage volunteers, were asked to the house of Lan, a Vietnamese woman we work with at the centre, were very flattered. We didn’t know the girl well but she seemed friendly and eager to learn English so we agreed and arrived at her house one Friday evening after work. [...]
