December 31st, 2008 Scott
Home at last! Our 10 day adventure to Vietnam and Cambodia is over but not forgotten. We saw amazing sights & culture during our visit and I will post a series of blog entries about specific parts of the trip as I find the time and energy. As they say though, a picture is worth a thousand words and I’ve pulled out the first 170 or so pictures that caught my eye of the approximately 4500 that I took on the trip to display on the website here. These are the pictures I’ve chosen for their artistic merit. I’ve got several others marked for inclusion into the blog as documentary photos at a future date. I’ve not done any work to these shots yet, so many of them will improve with some working of the levels, sharpening, cropping, straigtening, etc. For now though, they should give you some insight into the sights of Vietnam and Cambodia.
Please enjoy…(click here to get to the gallery)
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December 30th, 2008 Scott
Some snapshots (click each one for a larger view)…
The Dead Fish Tower (A funky Phnon Penh restaurant)
"Thuy"; a Vietnamese friend of Gina's has the same name
A Communist statue
Night street scene in Hanoi
The pond outside our hotel in Mai Chau, North Vietnam
Another view of Mai Chau
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December 23rd, 2008 Scott
Yesterday, we visited a Mong village in the mountains of Northern Vietnam. It is a very, very poor village high in the mountains. We brought an assortment of candy, toothbrushes, pencils, markers, and tee shirts to give out as gifts to the local school children.
I can not begin to convey the utter poverty of the village with words. I will post photos when I can upon my return to Okinawa. Suffice to say that no where in America is there such a low level of poverty, but at the same time contentment with the life.
We entered one of the local’s homes. It was a low thatched roof building with poles and and a dirt floor. The kitchen was in a separate room and consisted of a fire stone in the corner and a large pot on top. She washed and cleaned outside in the mud. The father of the house used to be a high ranking enlisted soldier in the Communist Army. We saw his picture in uniform on the wall, and yet he was living in a dirt floor hut. They had an outhouse and a well.
All the homes were like this. The smallest children there were covered in dirt and mud. At the same time though, there was a ‘shopping’ district of huts where you could buy meat and goods, but also Nokia Cell phones. The hut we visited (dirt floors and no water) had electricity and a satellite dish with one small TV in the main room.
Then we visited the school. Earlier in the day we had visited a school that looked luxurious by comparison. Neither school had any electricity in the classrooms. They did have a chalkboard and a desk for each student. There was nothing else in the space but the natural light coming through the openings in the walls. I don’t call them ‘windows’ because there was no glass, just shutters. The school in the Mong village was a boarding school. The students there were brought from remote (even poorer) villages that had no schools. The students live there and go to school two months at a time and then visit their families for about two weeks. The rooms had concrete floors, but everything outside was mud. The outhouses were worse than the most primitive outhouse you’ve ever seen and this was their daily use facility. No showers of any kind.
The administrators let us give out our gifts to the students, but wanted us to give them to the teachers to distribute later. Hoa, our host and guide, indicated that this would not do because he knew that the teachers would simply keep the gifts for themselves. I was very uncomfortable as I watched Hoa negotiate for us to be able to distribute directly to the students. It was very tense for a time. After distributing the gifts, Hoa then told the students that these were their Christmas gifts from us so that they knew to not let the teachers try to take them away under false pretenses. As you’ll see in the photos, the smiles from each student as they received their gift were amazing. Even more amazing was how each student would continue to study quietly on their work while the gifts were being handed out. They were diligent in not being distracted by our presence until it was appropriate to react. These were very disciplined children working under the most extreme of circumstances to get an education.
Last year, the teacher’s union in my building grieved the administration because they moved the school clock back five minutes to make it ‘on time’. The union felt that this was an unfair change to the working conditions in the building.
Sometimes it’s healthy for us to receive a reality check in our lives to recognize how well off we are in our society. I really doubt that the teachers in that village concern themselves about something like a five minute change in the school’s clocks (if it had any!) when it is more of a concern to know if your students have eaten, have warm clothes, and have pencil & paper to use for learning. Everything else beyond those essentials becomes an optional luxury.
Merry Christmas Eve everyone.
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December 22nd, 2008 Scott
Good morning! I finally have a proper computer to do a blog entry, so I can type normally. The iPhone is cool in that I can update the blog from it, but that keyboard is not very good for writing long posts (I also noticed several typos this morning that I didn’t notice before).
This morning we woke up to the most amazing views. We got here in the dark after an insane five hour bus ride from Ha Noi. The roads here are insanely dangerous because everyone does whatever they want to when driving.
Today though, we woke up in the midst of a misty mountain valley and calm country atmosphere. I got up at 5:30 to set up for some good early morning shooting in the rice paddies around the hotel. As the sun came up people starting riding their bikes by on their way to work and school. It was amazing.
Today we are riding to a couple of villages on bicycles and then spending the night here again before leaving tomorrow for Ha Nang Bay.
Til next time.
BTW, I’m getting tons of pictures so far. I’ve taken about 1000 shots and it looks like about 3-7 of them might be good ones. I’ll have to see when I get home.
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December 21st, 2008 Scott
I guess they thin he is a jazzer…
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December 21st, 2008 Scott
Today, we went to the Me Kong Delta. We rode a water taxi to Unicorn Island where we were bombarded by homemade goods utilizing coconut, pineapple, and honey. I also tried some awful banana wine. However, the fastenating part of the day was the two hour bus ride there out of Saigon. The roads are a mess because of disrepair nut also because lawlessness regarding driving laws. It was a fascinating ride.
I took about 500 shots today and in review on the Epson p-3000, I see great potential in 5 – 7 shots. That’s not too bad if they pan out. Umnortunately, I can’t upload them to the blog. I’ll try to remember to get some blog shots on the iPhone tomorrow.
Until then take a look at this propaganda poster I saw at lunch.
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December 20th, 2008 Scott
After a long day of flights to Taipai and then to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), I’m relaxing in my hotel room after a great dinner. 10 million people live in this city and they own 4 million mopeds. I’ll post pics later, but suffice to say that there is very good reason they don’t let foreigners drive here. The mopeds rule the road and they do so in whatever way is most convenient.
I’m writing this ok my iPhone, so it’ll be a short entry tonight.
Checkout the cigs in Taiwan. Is that a warning or a feature?
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December 19th, 2008 Scott
I finished the last holiday season gig today at Bechtel Elementary School and I’m off to Vietnam and Cambodia for vacation for 10 days. I’ve been so slammed with the commitments of being a music teacher in December that I haven’t even had a chance to think about the upcoming trip. We had the usual assortment of pep band basketball gigs, plus a couple of jazz band gigs for Christmas Tree lighting ceremonies, then I helped a student jazz combo perform at the general’s house (twice). In the midst of all this, the choir department staged a Madrigal Dinner for three nights and I had students involved with that (the King’s Brass) and I ran the sound.
It’s been a busy month of gigging.
I intend to take A LOT of photos in Vietnam and at Ankgor Wat in Cambodia. I don’t know if I’ll have much Internet access while I’m gone, but I will do updates if I can while there.
Merry Christmas everybody! I hear the weather in most places back there is pretty intense. I don’t really miss the snow much yet. It’s 55 – 75 degrees here everyday.
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