Before I went to Vietnam, friends who had been there had said that I should go there very soon as it is changing at a very rapid pace. Some other friends who had been to Vietnam about six or eight years ago said that Hanoi was a good place to bicycle around.

Bicycles are definitely a thing of the past and motorcycles are the transportation of choice now. Unfortunately the car is becoming more popular in Hanoi and traffic congestion is a real problem.

Since the road rules seem to be treated as suggestions rather than law and the pedestrian crossings appear to merely function as decoration, crossing the main streets in Hanoi takes some getting used to. After watching how the locals coped with what I thought was utter chaos, I came to the conclusion that one just walks straight out into traffic in the hope that the motorists see you and avoid running you over. It worked for the locals and also surprisingly for my wife and I

Some of the back streets of Hanoi did match my preconceptions (based on travels in South East Asia many years ago).

This is how the trendier areas of Hanoi are now starting to look like as the economy grows and the populace becomes more prosperous.

When I was younger (about 10 years old) and I saw street scene pictures of older buildings in places like Europe, I used wonder why the structures weren’t better maintained. I couldn’t understand why the paint was allowed to flake off or why the rendering over the brickwork wasn’t repaired. I used to think, “Oh they must be too poor”.

When I got a little older (mid teens) I remember thinking to myself that Europe was still recovering from WWII and that perhaps the economies still hadn’t recovered enough for people to fix up their houses. Now that I’m older I find that I like the interesting textures and colours that are formed as a building starts to weather and show it’s age. I’m sure I’m not the only one who likes the patina of age on buildings as there is now an industry that is based on reproducing faux surfaces so that the new can be imbued with a bit more character.

I’ve notice that in first world countries like the US or here in Australia that many people like to surround themselves with earthier textures. Things like coarse hand-woven cloth, terracotta tiles and lime washed or distressed wood. I guess it’s a reaction to the smoother more linear surfaces that one sees in newer cities.

As Sir Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986) once said

“All over the country the latest and most scientific methods of mass-production are being utilised to turn out a stream of old oak beams, leaded window-panes and small discs of bottle glass, all structural devices which our ancestors lost no time in abandoning as soon as an increase in wealth and knowledge enabled them to do so.”

Conversely, I’ve noticed that in places like Morocco or Mexico that the locals are sick to death of hand made objects and want things that are more refined.  A sure way to let a Moroccan merchant know that you are a clueless clown that can be separated from their money easily is to wear anything that smacks of ”home spun”, hand-woven”, “natural dyes” or the like. If one looks at the average Moroccan in the rural areas, one will notice that even the poorest people wear clothing made from finely woven materials. No self respecting Moroccan would be caught dead in what they would feel was coarse badly made clothing. The corollary is that if you wear coarser clothing you must be very poor or stupid.  Since, from a Moroccan perspective, foreigners are rich, any foreigner wearing coarsely woven material must be stupid and doesn’t know what quality is and therefore can be sold any old piece of crap.

I remember once back in the early 80s, when I was first in Mexico, I was standing in line to see a movie. I was just dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and I noticed that all the locals were dressed up in their finest clothing. Obviously going to the movies was a much bigger deal to them than me. It occurred to me that the locals were still trying to reach some kind of “escape velocity” from poverty so they could live the life they saw in movies or on TV. Where as many people in the more developed world are seeking an escape from the “plasticness” of their lives by surrounding themselves with more “natural” textures.

So what’s all this got to do with the picture above?

If you look at the light fitting on your right you will notice that there is a line of lighter coloured material that goes straight down from the base of the obviously new (faux) coach light where the wiring has been put in. This begs the question, why not repair the cement rendering over the exposed brick while you’re covering over the wiring for the light with cement? It would’ve been a small thing to do and it’s not like the cement or the local labour for that matter, are very expensive (in comparison to the light).

I suspect the reason why the brickwork was left uncovered is because San Christobal de las Casas makes a fair bit of it’s income from tourists who come to see the quaint old houses with their “picturesque decay” and the locals with their “hand made and woven” clothes.

I think that most people would recognize this chair

It’s the model 14 Thonet bentwood chair designed by Michael Thonet in 1859. It’s still a very popular design that is still being produced and I’ve seen Thonet chairs all around the world in various cafes and restaurants. It’s a real design icon.

I was in Melbourne two weeks ago and I went to the National Gallery of Victoria where I saw this amazing Thonet bentwood cradle.

Although it doesn’t have the same paired back classic look of the model 14 chair, the cradle is still is a tour de force of bentwood.

Since I will be writing quite a lot about Morocco, and in particular Tarazout in the future, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce some of the “characters” that will be mentioned.

This is a picture of my landlord when I stayed in Tarazout for about a month and a half during Ramadan. He was a small coffee shop owner and his name was Louasin (I not really sure if this is spelled correctly).

Louasin was typical of many Moroccans that I met. A sleazy hypocrite. My guess is that travellers don’t usually get to meet very many of the nicer people in Morocco as they don’t tend to get invited into the local’s homes. Why would they? I imagine that it’s what it’s like for visitors to here in Australia. In Morocco one just tends to meet the street people who prey on foreigners. The whole time I was in Morocco, which was close to three months, I often found myself thinking about what it was like to be a herbivore on the African savannah, away from the protection of the herd on their own, with predators constantly circling looking for any opportunity to make their move.

Nearly every day during the month of Ramadan (when Moslems are not supposed to drink liquids or eat during the day) Louasin used to come over to the house that I was renting from him to either try and sell me hash or just hang out and smoke it himself. Since he smoked hash (which is prohibited to Moslems) I presumed that he wasn’t religious, so I was surprised one day when I offered him some food, while he was smoking dope, he refused it saying that he was a good Moslem who didn’t eat during Ramadan.

One day I came back to my room and Louasin had let himself into my room and was sitting on the bed with a local woman dressed in very tight fitting western clothing. As soon as I walked in he got up and with an embarrassed smirk, introduced me to his “friend” and then left the room without her or any other explanation. So there I was in my room with this strange woman that I couldn’t communicate with.  It was pretty obvious that she was a prostitute and Louasin was her pimp. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, as I tried not to seem rude in rejecting what she had on offer, I walked the woman to the door and sent her away.

On another occasion Louasin was waiting in my room (I don’t think he understood the concept of privacy) with four or five girls who were exceedingly friendly and most desirous of my company. As they would say here in Australia, “they were all over me like a rash”. I’m pretty sure that they had quite the party in mind for me, but their smiling faces with their “come hither eyes” quickly changed to shocked scowls as I asked them to leave. One of them even demanded money from me to pay for her bus fare back to Agadir (a large town about 25kms away). I tried to explain that she should take that issue up with Louasin. I guess I can’t blame Louasin and I didn’t think of him as being a evil person for trying to make some extra money but I found it irritating to hear him crap on every now and again about how he was a good Moslem when he was a dope smoking and dealing pimp.

One of the conclusions that I came to after my stay in Morocco (after many, many attempts) was that friendship for friendship’s sake is a bit of a first world concept. In places like Morocco there aren’t any social welfare safety nets for people and if you are poor and desperate, morality is quickly jettisoned and replaced with expedient ruthlessness. I found that the people I met in Morocco didn’t form relationships without profit in mind. So when a desperate person without much hope or prospects sees what they perceive as a walking bag of money in the form of a foreign tourist they try to make “friends” with that object of plenty. I don’t really blame the Moroccans I met for their rapacity, I just didn’t like being constantly subjected to their deceitful wheedling ways.

My stay in Tarazout was very eventful (not in a good way) and I’ll be writing much more about it in the future.

During our Vietnam trip last year my wife and bought a bronze statue of a Qilin in Hoi An.

Hoi An is an old port town with a large ethnic Chinese population. When I travel I like to buy some local artworks but in Vietnam that was a bit difficult because most of the stuff on offer seems to fall into roughly six categories.

1. Cheap and very nasty. As in real junk.
2. Bland decorative, of the kind one sees in hotel chains (now I know where they buy their stuff).
3. Antiques that if they are real, you can’t take out of the country.
4. Art with real merit but way out of my price range.
5. Bad copies of anything in an art history book.
6. Traditional items for local consumption.

We opted for category six.

The Qilin is a Chinese mythical creature with the head of a dragon and the body of a horse covered in scales and fire. They are considered good omens and the Japanese call them Kirin and the Vietnamese call them Kỳ lân.

Qilins are associated with the arrival of sages and the one we bought has a child holding books, riding on it’s back. Legend has it that the mother of Confucius saw a Qilin before she gave birth to him. Statues such the one above are placed in homes with the hope that a child will grow up to be a great person of learning.

We chose this particular piece because it was far and away the best realized bronze we saw in the two weeks we stayed in Vietnam. I love the stance as it reminds me of how the old Tang Dynasty artists posed their ceramic horses. Of course the statue lacks the svelte and graceful lines of the Tang era and it’s stockiness is more reminiscent of the Ming era. Don’t think for a minute that I think that this statue comes from those times. I know it was made recently in a town, not far from Hoi An called Phuoc Kew (no, I’m not kidding).

The bronze weighs 5.5kg (about 12lbs); stands 28cm (about 11″) high and it is 34cm (about 13″) long.

Each year the “Society for Creative Anachronism” of Riverhaven (Brisbane) holds a Medieval Fayre in Musgrave Park park in South Brisbane.

San Juan de Ulua is an old Spanish fortress that was built in 1565 over Cortez’s 1519 landing spot.  The fort has had a very interesting history as the protector of probably one of the richest ports in the world in the 16th and 17th centuries when the Spanish were plundering Mexico and the English plundered the Spanish in turn.

 In later years the fort was used as a prison and now it’s an almost hidden tourist attraction in the middle of container cranes and port facilities. 

Back in 2005, my wife and I went to Canada (I used to live there) to visit family and friends. We flew into Calgary after seeing my parents in Hamilton Ontario and hired a car to drive to Vancouver to see a couple of old friends (John and Ed). I wanted drive from Calgary to Vancouver to show my wife what I think is some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.

The Icefields Parkway heads north 240 kms (about 140 miles) from Lake Louise to Jasper in Alberta Canada. Without a doubt the parkway is one of the most spectacularly beautiful drives I’ve ever be on. The beauty is almost a hazard to safe driving as it’s hard to concentrate on the road when the scenery is so stunning.

 I found myself constantly craning my neck at odd angles just to see higher up on the mountains. We decided we had to stop fairly often (which wasn’t a problem as we weren’t in a hurry) and get out of the car to enjoy the view.

About 40kms north of Lake Louise is the surreal turquoise Peyto lake that looks so fake in photographs that hardly anyone will believe that a natural lake could so be such a vivid colour.

The only other lake that I’ve seen that is even more colourful is Moraine Lake (also in Alberta).

As my wife and I travelled further north we saw a bunch of cars parked by the side of the road and people were getting out of their cars to take photos, so we stopped to see what was so interesting.  About 20 meters (about 60 feet) from the roadside was an elk lying down in the scrub.

I was amazed at how close it let people get to it. Only my concern for my safety stopped me from getting closer than I did. Elks are big and I knew there would be no contest between me and it, if it freaked out and I was in the way.

We only travelled a total of about 135kms north on the Icefields Parkway because we only wanted to go as far as the Columbia Icefields. We were heading to Vancouver later, which is in the opposite direction. The icefields are over 200sq kms of ice cap that has glaciers all around it’s perimeter.

 What’s really amazing is how far, in the last 120 years, the glaciers have receded. The foot of the glacier used to be at the point where the photo above was taken.

For years, the developed western world has been pumping a consumerist message into the rest of the world.  Trouble is that the rest of the world now wants the first world life style that is so costly in terms of the earth’s resources and pollution.

Malaysia is a classic case in point, as it’s economy grows and the standard of living rises, it’s population aspires to live the dream sold to them by the west.

The first image (above) is of the billboards making up the facade of the building housing Mc Donald’s in Bukit Bintang (the very centre of Kuala Lumpur). On the surface things look fairly normal to a western eye but directly behind the Mc Donald’s is a mass of air-conditioners.

As the developing countries get more affluent, they too, just like the developed west, will want to be more comfortable, and I think we all know where that’s going to end when consumption of energy and resources doubles or even triples.

I’ve always thought it was extremely hypocritical that the west has been trying to tell the rest of the world not to pollute when we are the worst offenders. To add insult to injury, we keep on glamorising consumption.

I made this delicious Coconut cream meringue pie recipe for a dinner at Tim and Em’s. The picture below shows another friend, Doug with Em.

I enjoy cooking for those two because they really love food. Doug just has a healthy appetite and Em loves cooking and appreciates the effort I go to.
 
Be warned though, this is not a pie for those wishing to eat healthily or loose weight. I don’t eat this sort of thing more than once a year and I only ever make it for special occasions.
 
Graham cracker* crust Recipe
 
*In Australia Graham crackers aren’t readily available and they can be substituted with Granita biscuits. I used to live in the States so I’m familiar with what Graham crackers taste like and Granita biscuits are a very close match.

Ingredients

1-2/3 cups graham crackers, ground (5-1/3 ounces)
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter or margarine

Method

Melt butter or margarine then combine all ingredients, mixing well. Firmly press crumb mixture evenly over bottom and sides of a 23cm (9”) pie plate.
 
I use a pie plate that has a removable bottom, which makes it very easy to remove the finished pie.

Bake at 180 degrees C (about 350 degrees F) for 10 minutes.
 
Coconut Cream filling recipe

Ingredients

150 g white sugar
50 g all-purpose flour
1 g salt (about a fifth of a tsp)
250ml milk
250ml coconut cream
3 eggs
35 g butter
1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract
1/2 tsp coconut flavoring
100 g flaked or shredded coconut

Meringue Recipe
 
Ingredients

10 g cornstarch
45 ml cold water
180 ml boiling water
8 ml vanilla extract
4-1/2 egg whites
110 g white sugar
2 g salt
 
Method

Blend cornstarch and cold water in a saucepan. Add boiling water, and cook until thick and clear. Cool completely.

Beat egg whites till foamy. Gradually beat in sugar, beating until stiff and glossy. Add salt and vanilla, and slowly beat in cold cornstarch mixture. Beat quickly for several minutes. Spread meringue on filled, cooled pie.
 
Bake at 180 degrees C (about 350 degrees F) for 10 minutes.