The Mellow Mekong Delta

Offering nourishment to the passengers...
Cooking Ban Xeo - at a bus stop - the best kind!

I found many graves to be in people's back yards and flower gardens....
Death is not shunned here like it is in the West. Ancestors are honoured. 
Boys with toys - learning to slay dragons.
The little ones had everything - down to the drum and the weapons of dragon-slay!
A delightful alternative to the video-playing of the western kids....

Some kind of veggie drying all over the road.
The uber-casual bride.....
two Khmer ladies walking the boardwalk back and forth - theirs is the closeness one gets after decades of friendship.

Along the Mekong


Evening thoughts

Spiral inscents int he temple - huge red cones of musk and amber....


Washing cucumbers in Mekong - lettus floating away...

Mekong has a lot of lettuce floating down....

A tree has come.


Hats are good for more than the sun - they second as fans on a bus.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
Vinh Long - a sleepy Mekong island town....mellow as can be.

This is one of the truly few parts of Vietnam that enjoys a
Jack-Johnson kind of pace. Yes, almost stoned. With the climate to
match. It's delightful and the people have some of the brightest
smiles I've seen. The relief here is to be seen as a human being vs. a
walking white wallet [WWW, apparently, is an acronym for more than the
cyber maze].
I've had some of the best Ban Xeo here in all of Vietnam - lotus roots
inside an egg pancake hand-combined with some garden greens
[innevitably - mint included] and wrapped in either rice paper or just
a piece of lettuce for an on-the-spot spring roll to be dipped in some
fish sauce concoction. REALLY yummy!
Most of the folks in this area are Khmer in origin, as the territory
used to belong to Cambodia [and, thus, the Khmer empire earlier]. One
can feel a drastic shift in the vibe - especially after the Saigon
chaos.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
05/24/2013 Tonsai Beach, Thailand Home, Sweet Home!  Photo credit:  www.lederhosening.com I come out onto my patio and see a root of a banyan tree wiggle. Wait. That's no root. That's an iguana camouflaging as one – humbly looking for breakfast. A big one. Craggy karst rocks pierce the horizon in Pandora-esque starkness. The sky is crochet with a white-to-lilac cumulus nimbus, the temperature gently hovering around the “just perfect” mark. A hammock rocks gently under a leafy tree in the winds of the Andaman, as the milky-turquoise steamy waves sing a hymn to this paradise. In that hammock no more than a few metres from the shore, lays a blond girl clad in diaphanous raw silk holding a furry black cat. She is me. Azure butterflies sprinkle themselves like oversized confetti throughout the jungle. The bull frogs vibrate the jungle with moans that would put most peacocks in heat to shame. The cicadas cast their hypnotic spell over the fecund forest on the s...
Read more

My Jjimjilbanging Seoul

Image
01.28.2013 Seoul, South Korea My Jjimjilbanging Seoul Korea is a busy place. The work hours are long and vacations are short for most locals. A 12 hour work day is customary. A five-day a year vacation – a norm. The kids are not exempt from this working frenzy – an average child attends 4 after-school academies, making “Johnny a dull boy.” Yet, no complaint is to be heard. Neither from an adult nor from a child. To a question “How do you do it?” a frequent response is “oh, it's just my job...” while the kids just shrug their shoulders as if it hasn't even occurred for them to question this state of affairs. Truly, a a curious way of acceptance. However, I believe, there is one “escape hatch” that helps Koreans brave the freezing winters and intense working conditions in this tiny, densely-populated country. The Jjimjilbangs, a Korean spin on the Roman Baths, and Oncheon – jjimjilbangs built on the natural hot springs, of which there are over 400 in Korea. If...
Read more

True Colours of Utah

Image
11.29.2012 Crystallizing Utah Utah is many things....and amazing fall colours are its hallmark. Bear Creek canyon near Mt. Nebo, UT, was my daily "stomping ground" for a few months. The trails there are steep, the air - fresh, and the colours - breathtaking. See for yourself! Ascending Mt. Nebo Our heroic Cat has multiplied yet again. Behold - left to right - Charcoal, Peach, Felty, Tigra. Our furry "Utah fruit" two months later.
Read more