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Tym Blogs Too!

The random web scribblings of a person with too many thoughts and too little time

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

In the middle of the night

I stopped work at 3:40 am and was clearing up when I realised I'd forgotten to wash the French press after making coffee earlier this evening (at 10 pm, to be precise). So it was that in the middle of the doggone night, I'm pouring and scooping used coffee grounds onto the flower bed in the living room balcony. If anyone had seen me, I'm not sure what they would have made of it.

From the living room balcony, I can see the traffic on the newish overpass that connects the port in West Coast with the one in Keppel, and let me tell you, there's a surprising number of trucks hauling containers around at this hour.

Tomorrow I must cut another 1,000 words from my Lonely Planet text --- and then I'm done.

(I think.)

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posted by Tym at 3:45 AM

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Friday, January 02, 2009

The Top Gear take on Vietnam

I finished writing the first draft of my Lonely Planet text last night, so it was a good time to watch the Top Gear: Vietnam Special, which turned out to be an excellent episode of travel TV and made me want to hop on the back of a motorcycle in Vietnam again.

Big welcome to Phong Nha

But let me tell you: never mind the show's premise that they weren't travelling fast enough to meet the 8-day deadline to reach the finishing line at Halong Bay. The real reason they took a train from Hue to Hanoi is because there is nothing very interesting between Hue and Hanoi. I should know, I'm writing an entire chapter on that region.

I'm not a huge fan of Top Gear like, say, G-man, but this was a good episode. Also a great PR exercise for Vietnam. I fully imagine that legions of fans are going to show up in Halong Bay looking for Ba Hang Bar and in Hoi An to make zoot suits.

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posted by Tym at 10:47 AM

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Thursday, January 01, 2009

Do the right thing

As a former teacher, I'm going to say this is the kind of student I would be proud to have: "Posing as a Bidder, Utah Student Disrupts Government Auction of 150,000 Acres of Wilderness for Oil & Gas Drilling" (via GOOD).

Excerpt:
While many environmental groups launched campaigns to oppose the sale of the land, one student in Salt Lake City attempted to block the sale by disrupting the auction itself. Twenty-seven-year-old Tim DeChristopher posed as a potential bidder and bid hundreds of thousands of dollars on parcels of the land, driving up prices and winning some 22,000 acres for himself, without any intention of paying for them.

The Bureau of Land Management must now wait over a month before it can auction off these properties, but by then the bureau will no longer be run by the Bush administration.
Nicely done!

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posted by Tym at 10:59 PM

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Happy new year to you

Happy birthday and a happy new year

When New Year's Eve is also a friend's birthday, and the birthday barbecue has to clear out from the barbecue pit at 11:15 pm (condominium regulations), and the party makes it to another location just ten minutes before midnight ---

Well, what happened was that some of us had birthday cake before 11:15 pm, sans birthday song. Then we all had champagne at midnight (clink!). Then the birthday boy had a birthday song after midnight (when it was no longer actually his birthday) with a birthday cake that was already one quarter gone.

As Stellou would say: something lah.

I hope 2009 goes better than the cutting of my thumb on barbecue tongs presages.

posted by Tym at 2:20 PM

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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

A different kind of phone accessory

Very stylish, I know

Just for posterity, I thought I ought to show off my stylish N95. It's been wearing that Handyplast/Band-aid for close to a month now.

I've dropped the phone enough times that the battery cover won't stay on anymore, so in Vietnam I slapped on a piece of masking tape as an interim measure. That eventually lost its adhesive qualities, plus it was leaving some sticky residue on the phone, so I switched to this more elegant solution.

I thought I would have a new phone by now, but the one I want hasn't been on sale since I got back, so the N95 will have to do for a while longer.

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posted by Tym at 1:16 PM

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Sunday, December 28, 2008

On the tourist trail, then off again

Pose in front of the emperor's tomb

I've been plugging away at the writing since I got through the unexpected move and banged through Hue, Danang, Hoi An, Kon Tum, Pleiku and Buon Ma Thuot in about a week. If that sounds like a lot, it is: Hue, Danang and Hoi An comprise about half my total word count, while writing about Kon Tum, Pleiku and Buon Ma Thuot takes some diplomatic finesse because of how murky things are in the highlands (the social-political relations, not the air or the views, which are great).

Here's some of what I can't squeeze into the book about each town:

Hue (pronounced 'hway' or 'way', not 'hue' or 'huey') was where I first started to overdose on cultural sights. There's only so many imperial whatsits you can look at in a day before the ironic voice in my head withers in fatigue. I've never been one to diligently work through all the royal doodads that any culture puts on display (that's why I spent most of my time at Versailles lounging in the royal gardens rather than meditating on the royal fripperies), but now that the job called for it ... Well, I sucked it up and did it.

I don't like to play favourites, but I will say that of all the imperial tombs I liked the crazy Khai Dinh construction best, mostly because it seemed the least traditionally Vietnamese after all the others I'd seen. Also, I saw it around lunchtime, which is why its blazing blackness is forever seared into my memory.

This be Danang


Danang was great because it was a regular non-touristy city and every expat I met there loved it for being a regular non-touristy city. It's always been panned in previous editions of the guidebook, but I give it a big thumb's up. When you can walk for blocks without a single person trying to hawk you a postcard, conical hat or xe om ride, that's a precious thing.

Also it had excellent Vietnamese food. I'm not crazy about the local noodle speciality mi quang, so I went marginally upmarket and hit all these neat little Vietnamese restaurants instead. Writing the Danang restaurant section was hard last weekend when I was stuck at the laptop without a hearty meal within reach.

Lights for sale

Hoi An I didn't like when I first met it. Too quaint, too much like a movie set and too many damn tourists. After Danang --- when locals would do a double-take at seeing me pass them on the street and I wouldn't see another foreign face for hours unless I popped into Bread of Life or Bamboo 2 Bar --- Hoi An seemed like some purgatorial outpost wherein I'd been cast to test my patience with relentless street sellers --- "Hey you! Come here!" --- and bellyaching tourists.

Then I met some really lovely people. Then I heard some really lovely stories (personal ones, that don't get disclosed here or in the guidebook). Then I figured out that "Hey you!" is a direct translation of the Vietnamese term for addressing a stranger (the way in English you would say "Excuse me"). Then I lingered in Hoi An longer than I'd planned to --- also because Yan Wei joined me and hey, who am I to deny her a few days of Hoi An magic (especially since we spent most of our time out of town)?

I'd go back to Hoi An in a heartbeat now, mostly to hang out and eat lots of fabulous food (Morning Glory, Mango Rooms and Casa Verde, I'm lookin' at you). But not cao lau. I don't care if it is Hoi An's pride and joy, it just doesn't do it for me.

Kon Tum Village rong house

Kon Tum, then, which was very dusty and very poor. These are towns in Vietnam that you visit not for food or nightlife or ancient relics, but because they've got exotic minority (read: marginalised) villages in the area. These are places where you smile at the kids but keep them at a distance because how on earth can anyone do enough to help them all. I felt growly inside when we saw a packed tour bus leaving a "popular" orphanage and later a foreign couple dropped in on the orphanage's nursery with their guide to cuddle some poor babies (though I was a drop-in too, even if I did forbear from the cuddling).

I still feel growly. Ask me about it some time.

Reach for the sky

Pleiku was like the older sibling of Kon Tum, with slightly better but not necessarily trendier clothes. We found a cool cafe to hang out in and Yan Wei picked up a fan (the kind that wants to practise her English with us) at the market, which led to an earnest but awkward hour spent in that same cafe.

Buon Ma Thuot (pronounced 'boon me tote') had no good restaurants. All our sightseeing outside the town was great, but when we got back and had to scrounge up dinner --- well, let's just say that 'scrounge' is appropriate because there really wasn't much to pick from, even including street food options. You know a town is lacking in dining options when even our well-informed tour guide couldn't recommend us a place.

I knew a suspension bridge would be involved

I'm skimming over the details, of course, but I have to conserve my strength for tomorrow's writing. One more major town to write about, then I switch into editing and cutting-text-to-meet-the-word-count mode. I hope I've set aside enough time for that.

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posted by Tym at 10:52 PM

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Saturday, December 27, 2008

Why I like A Small Orange

(Besides their cool name, that is.)

Because within 3 hours of me emailing them on Saturday morning Singapore time/Boxing Day night American time, they had upgraded my hosting package status exactly as I requested (pro-rating the bigger package for the remaining month till I renew the annual subscription for this site), so that I can publish my blog without errors again.

I had to upgrade my package because this domain has somehow hit its disk quota of 75 MB, even though I barely store any large image files on it. The next size up is 400 MB; I think that'll hold me for a while.

Yay for A Small Orange (and Lucian, who introduced me to it)!

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posted by Tym at 1:23 PM

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Friday, December 26, 2008

What I did when I wasn't writing

On Christmas Eve, I walked through a light spray of rain, not enough to be a drizzle, palpable enough to feel like a dusting of snow, the kind that leaves your hair damp but not wet. At the first party, courtesy of ampulets' family, we politely raided her mother's wine collection after dinner and clinked glasses to the fact that we've been friends for 18 years (my bad, I said 16 that night). At the second party, courtesy of beeker's family, the conversation turned inexplicably to ghost stories some time after 1 am, which is a little weird for Christmas Eve.

On Christmas, the food from The Garden Slug was a big hit, as was my uncle's homemade roast beef. Packrat and Ondine got my grandfather a digital photo frame, which is so cool I want one. I did, however, get some very cool Breadou (thanks, Darren & Mel).

Today, I resumed work. Well, technically, I did, but really the writing muscle was so torpid from yesterday's tryptophan exposure, I felt like it was moving at the rate of one word forward, two words backspaced. So now I find myself two days behind schedule, with my final deadline exactly two weeks away.

Tomorrow better be more productive.

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posted by Tym at 11:36 PM

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