Kin khao?

I spent about four hours uploading photos today, over a slow connection. So my reward is going to be posting a photo of what I had for lunch!

A perfectly seasoned plate of stir-fried local veggies, tofu, and egg over rice. It was made to order and given to me steaming hot, with ice water in a little aluminium cup to refresh me. And it was just the right amount of chile to make my mouth tingle all over with the delicious flavour, without ever overwhelming the other flavours or starting to hurt. Aroy!

Khao niaow

Sticky rice steams over a charcoal fire in a clay pot. Outside a cafe along the Nam Khan river, Luang Prabang.

O RLY

I love the knowing look in this chick's eye. Photographed in a Hmong village near Luang Prabang, Laos.

Sihn in Laos

Please forgive the obscure pun, which I could not resist. Sihn are Lao-style skirts, the local sarong equivalent. They are basically a large tube of fabric with two sets of hooks, attached on the inside at one hip, and on the outside at the other. They are incredibly practical to wear, given that they are loose enough to give total freedom of movement, but keep you covered as wraparound skirts sometimes fail to do. (Apparently lots of styles of sarong are like this too, though I have mostly seen the kind that you just tie around yourself.) And women in Laos - at least the women I saw in Luang Prabang - wear sihn daily. They are the girls' school uniform, and they are worn by market women and women working in travel agencies and cafes and even in the fields and rivers.

Nothing I've said so far, however, reveals the incredible glory of Lao weaving. Even though many of the sihn around are mass-produced machine fabric, the traditional patterns and colours are marvellous. As for the hand-woven textiles, in ikat (locally mat mii) and supplementary weft...well, words fail.

Suffice it to say that I fell in love with sihn (and don't want to mention how many I acquired in my brief time in Laos), but I am not the only one, as this streetsign shows. Apparently the default human who crosses here wears a sihn and her hair in a bun...

Moment of enlightenment

I read that statues of the reclining Buddha depict him at the moment of his enlightenment. This, the famous reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, is possibly the most beautiful Buddha in all of Thailand - and that is saying something.

When I visited Wat Pho, I was still in that new-to-Thailand state of excitement everytime I saw an orange-robed monk (you do see quite a few of them here, so it wears off a little). So I was especially pleased to see several young monks in their orange robes and their orange shoulder bags, posing in turn for digital camera photos at Buddha's feet! (The surprise wears off at that too, after your thousandth glimpse of a monk on a mobile phone, or of very young boy monks in internet cafes with enormous headphones on.)

As if the giant golden Buddha were not enough, the walls of the temple are also covered in intricate paintings telling legends (jataka? but I thought I saw Ramayana-inspired paintings). And in the wider temple complex there are some beautiful mosaic-covered chedis (stupas), which I didn't see anywhere else.

It's not possible to convey the immensity and loveliness of Wat Pho or of this Buddha in a single photograph - just go, go, go see for yourselves.

Rice fields of Bali

Calling the earth to witness

Buddha is subduing Mara, temptation, illusion, in the old Thai city of Sukhothai.

There are so many distractions while travelling - so much for the senses to take in and discard, so much that is unfamiliar that it overwhelms.

It isn't a bad thing, then, to have so many reminders here of that still point, a way to be alive to the world without being overwhelmed by it.

Not that I'm exactly resisting all earthly temptations, myself...

Hot sunny lazy afternoon

Calls for ice cream!

Here, a Singapore-style ice cream sandwich. When you order it, the vendor pulls out a solid block of ice cream and slices off a fat rectangle, then pats it delicately between two crisp thin wafers much smaller than the frozen sweet.

I ordered yam, and it was a delicate purple, light, icy, not overly sweet, so refreshing with the crunchy bits of wafer a textural relief. The wonder is only that I didn't order a second one.

Things I'll miss

This helpful photo taken inside the "five-star" toilet in the Angkor Thom temple complex, Siem Reap, Cambodia.

You might think of fresh mangoes and tropical sun, but for some reason I started thinking about all the little things that are strange at first, and then quickly after taken for granted. How strange it will be to get back to a place where a shower isn't just a drain in the bathroom floor! Eating with a knife and fork instead of fork and spoon.

My first thought, though, will probably be, "where are all the chickens?"

Banana fritter

They come in lots of shapes, sizes, and seasonings, but banana fritters are a South-East Asian constant. Here, at the lovely market in Vinh Long, in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam.

Acclimatisation

If I was wondering how much I'd adjusted to the tropical climate (besides thinking that snow seemed an impossibly distant, abstract concept), I got some confirmation last night. I thought to myself that my room seemed a little bit warm. Then I looked at the thermostat and it was 34C!

By the time the fan had got it down to 26C I was happily curled up under the covers...

The playlist: revisited

I've just passed the halfway point in my trip and in honour of this milestone I wanted to revisit my original idea for the blog focus - my travel playlist. To date, I've only written the initial post, but with a few months left I might still manage to get the better part of it in.

The night before I left I managed to put some of the songs up to be listened to, but to my frustration I could only get about half the playlist on there. More frustratingly, it's a skewed half that cuts out nearly everything that wasn't in English (half the list) and even some of the less popular anglo stuff. Furthermore, now that I'm in a different region, I can't actually see what's there and what isn't. So I thought I'd start by posting the entire list all together, then continue with individual posts on the songs as I go.

Without further ado:

1. KYOTO, Polémil Bazar
2. BARCELONE, Jean Leloup
3. GO PLACES, The New Pornographers
4. BRIDGES AND BALLOONS, Joanna Newsom
5. SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?, The Clash
6. DESPIDIDA DE IMMIGRANTE, Cesaria Evora
7. SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW/WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
8. CITY OF THE DAMNED, The Gothic Archies
9. NICOTINE & GRAVY, Beck
10. MY WANDERING DAYS ARE OVER, Belle & Sebastian
11. NANTES, Beirut
12. PARADIS PERDU, Jean Leloup
13. THE LEGIONNAIRE'S LAMENT, The Decemberists
14. TIENS-TOÉ BIEN J'ARRIVE, Diane Dufresne
15. J'ERRE, Dumas
16. THE LADY IS A TRAMP, Ella Fitzgerald
17. READING IN BED, Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton
18. ALL WE HAVE IS NOW, The Flaming Lips
19. JET SET...GO!, The Guild League
20. AMSTERDAM, Jacques Brel
21. JULY, JULY!, The Decemberists
22. VOYAGER, Jean Leloup
23. LA TRAVERSÉE, Les Colocs
24. COME BACK FROM SAN FRANCISCO, The Magnetic Fields
25. GREEN ROCKY ROAD, Kate & Anna McGarrigle
26. CLAM, CRAB, COCKLE, COWRIE, Joanna Newsom
27. PAPA WAS A RODEO, Kelly Hogan & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts
28. SHOREBIRD, Kim Barlow
29. THAT TEENAGE FEELING, Neko Case
30. J'Y SUIS JAMAIS ALLÉ, Yann Tiersen
31. VOILA L'ÉTÉ, Les négresses vertes
32. I'M SO FREE, Lou Reed
33. GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU, The Lucksmiths
34. CALIFORNIA (ALL THE WAY), Luna
35. ALL THE UMBRELLAS IN LONDON, The Magnetic Fields
36. WALKING SONG, Kate & Anna McGarrigle
37. JE SUIS PARTI, Jean Leloup
38. CARRY ME, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
39. DESAPARECIDO, Manu Chao
40. TODAY IS A GOOD DAY, MC Solaar
41. LAND DOWN UNDER, Men at Work
42. MUTINY, I PROMISE YOU, The New Pornographers
43. PAR REVE, Misia
44. RACING LIKE A PRO, The National
45. WORLD IS SPINNING AT 45 RPM, Pizzicato Five
46. THIS TORNADO LOVES YOU, Neko Case
47. MYRIAD HARBOUR, The New Pornographers
48. THE GET GO, New Young Pony Club
49. THERE SHE GOES, MY BEAUTIFUL WORLD, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
50. COLD COLD GROUND, Tom Waits
51. LE VENT NOUS PORTERA, Noir Désir
52. UN HOMME À LA MER, Stéfie Shock
53. FADO DO RETORNO I, Misia
54. VIA CON ME, Paolo Conte
55. CHICAGO, Sufjan Stevens
56. KIMBERLY, Patti Smith
57. ALL AROUND THE WORLD OR THE MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS, Paul Simon
58. WHERE IS MY MIND, The Pixies
59. I'M GONNA BE (500 MILES), The Proclaimers
60. WALK UNAFRAID, R.E.M.
61. LIFE ON MARS?, Seu Jorge
62. GENOVA PER NOI, Paolo Conte
63. WEIRD DIVIDE, The Shins
64. IS IT REALLY SO STRANGE?, The Smiths
65. TOXIC HOLIDAY, Stars
66. LE DÉCOR, Stéfie Shock
67. SEVEN SWANS, Sufjan Stevens
68. ISTANBUL, They Might Be Giants
69. SINGAPORE, Tom Waits
70. ASK, The Smiths,
71. EVOLVER, Veda Hille
72. MON AMOUR TOKYO, Pizzicato Five
73. ISLAND IN THE SUN, Weezer
74. SEVEN NATION ARMY, The White Stripes
75. THE STATE THAT I AM IN, Belle & Sebastian
76. ADVENTURES IN SOLITUDE, The New Pornographers
    

The Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha

Temples in Thailand have tripartite roofs to represent the threefold refuge of the Buddha, the Dharma (teaching) and the Sangha (community of monks).

Some, like this one at Wat Pho in Bangkok, have threefold upon threefold roofs...stunning and quite different from the other temples I had seen.

Fishing and courting

Cambodian folkdance in Siem Reap.

Coffee and frangipani

Here photographed in Cambodia, and everywhere else I've been in South-East Asia.

I'm now in Laos where the flower is proudly emblazoned everywhere as a national symbol - and where the coffee is completely delicious.

Thai temple painting

Thai temples are full of life in so many ways. Not only are they full of worshippers at any time of day (especially around New Year's), but the walls are full of paintings, the paintings full of people dancing, walking, eating, gossiping, fighting, meditating.

Heart of palm

More homecooking in Saigon - fresh heart of palm, with water spinach and rice.

I was already a fan of canned heart of palm, but this was a whole other creature. Much firmer though not tough, a little fibrous, and with a rich, subtly sweet, slightly coconutty taste. Truly delicious.

Now I'm looking forward to trying South American style fresh heart of palm for comparison's sake...someday.

Ca phe sua

Delicious, strong Vietnamese coffee filtering down into the condensed milk below.

Inner Sanctum

The head temple of the Cao Dai sect in Vietnam. They favour eyes, lotuses, and revere Victor Hugo as one of the three great spirits bringing us messages from the world beyond. In Tay Ninh province, Vietnam.

Chinese parsley

Just one of 12 different herbs served to us in a heaping pile with our banh canh breakfast in Tay Ninh province, the western edge of Vietnam. Sitting on an unusual, delicious opaque rice paper wrapper.

Unexpected work opportunities

An impromptu position as simultaneous interpreter of silent-film title cards, from French to English. The subject, a decades-old 8mm film of Laurel and Hardy, projected onto the wall in the front room.

Hu tieu chay

One of our last homecooked meals in Saigon was this delicious vegetarian version of hu tieu, the pho of the South.

Vrrrrooom

Standing still on Saigon's busy streets, everything blurs past you, from yoke-bearing street vendors to the many many motorbikes.

Banh dap muc

Grilled squidlet dips a languid tentacle in the nuoc mam, contemplates making a break for it from its bed of crisp rice cracker and lettuce, at our favourite banh xeo place, tucked in a little alley of Hai Ba Trung, Quan 1, HCMC.

Sawatdee Pii Mai

Happy New Year from Thailand!!

But the incense was actually burning in Hanoi, Vietnam, at the Temple of Literature.

Happy New Year!

Today, New Year's Eve, we went to temple, like good pretend Buddhists. Specifically we went to Wat Phra Sing in Chiang Mai, which is having a full-fledged temple festival for the days around the changing of the year. Around the various temple buildings were stalls selling flowers, candles, and other offerings, and alongside the main temple there was a fair with clothes, knickknacks, and a bunch of food stalls.

Inside the main temple building there were many special types of New Year's blessings on offer. We chose a little banana leaf basket filled with spices, flowers, little bags of water and so on, with a little flag on which to write your New Year's wishes. We followed all the others in carefully inscribing our wishes, then bringing the basket up to place in front of the statues of Buddha where we knelt and prayed. Finally, we went to place the basket on one of the large trays holding the offerings. We weren't sure what the significance of the different trays was, so we went for the one that had a picture of an elephant above it. We didn't miss the essential step of posing for a photo while placing the basket! Then we went to the food fair and snacked on sweet sticky rice grilled in bamboo. All Chiang Mai seems to be gearing up for a huge party, even though the Thai New Year is officially celebrated in April with a big waterfight that we are sorry to be missing.

On the other side of the temple was a garden peppered with bilingual sayings on wooden signs. This one seemed especially appropriate for the season.

Happy New Year!

This one's for my sister

Kittehs need to nap in Thailand, too. This one's sleeping between the legs of a large, ominous statue of a gentleman in a frock coat at Wat Pho, Bangkok.

Last ca phe sua da of 2009

The last of many delicious iced coffees in Vietnam - and maybe the best, too. In our host's "secret" favourite cafe in Phu Nhuan district, HCMC.

My Balinese neighbour

Friendly local gecko helps me out with the taboo watermelon accompanying my balcony breakfast.

If only I had had video to show you the titanic head-shaking struggle it went through to break off a piece that filled its little jaw, before the strategic retreat to nom it.

Imperial cuisine

Lotus seed dessert soup in Hue, Vietnam.

Limestone looms

Karst rock formations loom out of the waters of Halong Bay, which we traversed in a sumptuous junk for an afternoon sail.

Fusion Mozaic

Detail of a mozaic depicting the four seasons, from a tomb of an emperor in Hue, Vietnam.

The whole effect was stunning, a large open room with this huge wall to wall mozaic. I especially loved that the rivers were made with bits of smashed blue-and-white Viet crockery.

Strange fruit (vu sua)

One of the many, many delights of exploring Vietnam with Vietnamese people was getting the Fruit Tour of Vietnam. I think I tried ten fruits that were totally new to me, besides luxuriating in some I'd tasted before but never as good as these (though I have to say I think I prefer Hawaiian pineapple.)

Pictured here, vu sua or milk apple (nearly every new fruit I tried in Vietnam was called something apple, except all the ones that grew on some kind of palm).

Everything is edible but the skin and the big black seeds, though the texture changes through the fruit, also depending on ripeness. Some parts were chewy and others soft and jellylike. I found it tasted like a combination of young coconut and lychee, and the opaque milky juice was also delicious.

p.s. Pardon the lack of Viet diacritics - I hate to omit them but it's too complicated to figure out how on a Thai keyboard.

Chalk and cheese

Photo: Banana flower salad, served in a banana flower segment, in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

By now in my travels I've visited five South-east Asian nations, and I can certainly see many threads tying the region together, from the ancient monuments to what I saw dubbed "Hindu-Buddhism", to fried rice and fish sauce. But amidst the commonalities, there are many distinctions as well.

A few days after arriving in Thailand, I laugh at my foolish former self that could ever have confused the sound of Thai and Vietnamese. Even though I hardly know any words of Thai, there is this really evident "Thai-ness" to the sound of it that wouldn't let me mistake it for anything else, although I'm not able to pin it down. (I hear Lao is hardly differentiable from Thai so I'll wait to be tested by that).

Likewise, when I had my first bite of an eggplant salad in Bangkok, the flavours cried out "THAI!", but I'd be hard-pressed to say why. The dressing was clearly composed of lime juice, fish sauce, rau ram, dried shrimp, chile, sugar - all of which could just as easily belong in Vietnam. But in the way they were put together, in the proportions and the cooking technique, there was no doubt where the salad came from.

I'm looking forward to many more such distinctive moments....

I think I'm in love

This naughty little water buffalo is eating corn that was meant for humans! And eating them one whole ear at a mouthful, at that.

But how could you be mad at him when he is so cute and happy? And so calm that I could come right next to him without him stirring at all.

Banh mi

The bread in Vietnam is absolutely delicious. French colonialism brought the baguette to the region, and the locals improved upon it to make it their own, adding some rice flour to the wheat, adjusting the recipe to the local climate.

We ate banh mi for breakfast on many of our Saigon mornings, often with op la! (exclamation mark all mine), a name that makes me happy just to hear it. It means fried egg, and is another legacy from the French 'au plat'.

Our amazing host also taught us the secret Vietnamese way to toast banh mi, when it needs a bit of a lift or just when you want it to be extra crisp. Most Viet homes don't have ovens, since grilling and frying are much more pleasant and practical in the heat and humidity. And even if you had a toaster, you can't really fit a baguette into one, especially the fat round Viet variety.

So instead you toast it on the stovetop - in a pot. Sounds crazy, but it made the most delicious crisp crust with a soft, warm inside, as if it had just come out of the oven.

To make it, you put a large pot over medium-high heat, then put the baguette in on a plate, then put on a tight-fitting lid. You're basically steaming it without water. Apparently leaving it there for 10-15 minutes gives the best results, but even 5 minutes made it really tasty. We are anxious to get home and experiment to see what this method does to other kinds of bread!

Lunch in a leaf

Heat, humidity, strong sun. Prawns from the river, vegetables from the alluvial plain, noodles formed into delicate vermicelli from rice grown in paddies. Lunch in My Tho.

Water Hyacinth

Water hyacinth is just one more of the many edible plants that grow rampant across SEA. We were told that no one bothers to cultivate it, since you can just go pick it for free whenever you want.

We sampled a blossom culled from one of the Nine Dragons (Cuu Long) of the Mekong Delta - a mild taste, but pleasant enough, and the real thing much more beautiful than the photo.

More from the floating market

A customer at Cai Rang heads home, where she'll sell the produce she's picked up wholesale.

The fertile Mekong Delta region is famous all over Vietnam for its richness, for its three annual crops of rice, and for its fruit, the best we tasted.

Floating markets

Photo: A market vendor pulls up to our boat to sell us banana sweets at the Cai Rang market, Can Tho, Vietnam.

Ever since I first read about them I've dreamed of the floating markets of South-East Asia, so finally arriving at one of them was an epoch in the trip!

Indeed it was as bright, colourful, and crowded as we expected, though we arrived toward the end of the market. It is mostly for wholesale, and you can tell the product being sold by the fruit or vegetable tied to the masthead!

We didn't get to completely fulfill my dream, which was to eat noodle soup from a boat (our hosts were dubious about the hygiene), but we did get gorgeous sticky-rice packets wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. The filling was a sweet combination of bean and banana, the latter turning pink from the heat and the whole thing a lovely sticky treat. Ngon!

Trappings of a culinary culture

Photo: Rice paper wrappers on a bed of herbs, My Tho, Vietnam.

Once I was sitting around with some friends and we were joking about our cultural heritages. Mostly my French-Jewish friend and I were commiserating with each other that our ethnicities predisposed us to depression. To lighten the mood, our Vietnamese friend piped up with: "You can tell I'm Vietnamese because I like to wrap things in lettuce and dip them in sauce!"

I'm not sure what, if anything, this says about "the Vietnamese psyche", but these delicious roll-your-own options are certainly characteristic of the cuisine. Everywhere we went in southern Vietnam, anyhow, every meal was accompanied by a vast and generous pile of foliage, with just the right combination of herbs and greens for each dish.

Besides lettuce and mustard greens, we often were given these transparent rice wrappers to contain various foods. So thin and delicate they don't need to be dampened, the papers held together noodles, meats, herbs, and sauce without spilling, yet melted into the mouth. Ngon (delicious)!

Longan

While in Vietnam I got the expert fruit tour, and got to try at least 8 new fruits I had never heard of before.

I'd had longan before, but I'd never seen it on the tree, as here in someone's garden in My Tho, in the Mekong Delta.

Three essential Vietnamese skills

Photo: This auntie, already proficient in all three skills and more, hacks away at a segment of a "water coconut" to accompany a sumptuous lunch in My Tho, Vietnam.

1. The peremptory wave that halts the torrential flow of motorbikes long enough to let you cross the street.

2. The right angle to tip your rice bowl to your mouth in order to scoop the last bits of food in with your chopsticks.

And for the old ladies and those who aspire to be them:

3. The friendly, yet firm slap on the shoulder that punctuates any discussion and especially victory in a little debate. Bonus points for making every conversation sound like an argument when really it's a friendly discussion, and for the proper cackle of Ha! Ha! Ha! when you are proven right about something.

Tamarind crab

After a long hard struggle we managed to escape the same-y food of the guided tour long enough for this delicious seafood lunch in the outskirts of Halong City.

The tamarind crab pictured here wasn't the best crab I'd ever had, its flesh a little stringy, but the tamarind sauce is a brilliant invention, sour, chile-hot, pleasantly sticky, and pairing beautifully with the richness of the crab meat.

Ngon!

Sacred monkey forest

It's not easy being a parent of twins, whether you're a human or a monkey. I saw the mommy monkey desperately hanging onto each twin by the tail as they tried to dash in different directions with all their strength. When one escaped, the daddy monkey jumped in to prevent disaster, and the little family snuggled together for awhile, oblivious to the giant tourists standing right next to them.

In the Sacred Monkey Forest, Ubud, Bali.

Going to the Mausoleum

Pictured: NOT the mausoleum, but a view of an Angkorian temple.

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum was an interesting rock and hard place in our tour of Vietnam.

It wasn't on our itinerary, in fact had been carefully kept off our itinerary, yet the very stubborn tour guide we were landed with in Hanoi was very insistent that we should go. We tried to be diplomatic and eventually pled exhaustion and the need for a late start that morning. And then after all that discussion, he brought us to the site anyhow and made us stand and take pictures while he told us things about the complicated embalming process that keeps the founding father's body intact (against his own express wishes). I am sure you will all be relieved to hear that the technology is being transferred from Russia to Vietnam so that he will no longer have to fly to Moscow for maintenance each year as in the past, but can instead be cared for at home. Embalming is a rather strange thing.

Going to the mausoleum used to have a different connotation though - apparently it used to be a commonly used expression for going to the loo. But one has to be careful about using it that way now, we were told.

As for us, we've evolved our own. Apparently the little kids growing up with my friend's mother used to use a decrepit governor's mansion for a loo while they were busy playing, and the expression stuck. "Going to the governor's mansion" has rather a nicer ring to it than going to see a man about a horse, at least.

An chay

Photo: hu tieu chay at a food stall in Can Tho, Vietnam.

I'm a bit fascinated by what I've seen of Vietnamese attitudes to vegetarianism.

On one hand, Vietnam is a historically Buddhist country with a very strong culinary tradition of vegetarian cooking. On the other hand, it can be really hard to find examples of the vegetarian food, as restaurants tend to be very fishy and meaty.

From what I gather, while monks and some few laypeople are strict vegans (eschewing even onion and garlic - imagine Viet food with no fried onion, let alone nuoc mam!), most Viet Buddhists happily eat all manner of living creatures. But it's quite common to fast (eat vegan) on the 1st and 15th of the lunar calendar, so every homecook knows how to prepare a wealth of traditional vegetarian dishes. Otherwise, your best bet is to find one of the vegetarian eateries - they aren't as common as you'd hope, but once you find one you can eat pretty much anything in the huge Vietnamese repertoire in a tasty vegan version.

I've been lucky enough to be staying in a Saigon home and eating homecooking for nearly half my time in the country, including quite a few veggie dishes. One night recently, an auntie prepared vegetarian bun rieu for us. The original version is a spicy tomato and oniony crab soup with rice vermicelli. Soy replaces the crab, and we got to observe the traditional way it's prepared. First you soak soybeans for a long time until they're soft, then rub their skins off. They're pureed and strained into two grades, creamy and frothy (the whey-like part). The latter is curdled (using tamarind as the curdling agent!) to make this really nice light grainy tofu that elegantly replaces the chewy crab floating at the top of the bowl.

The auntie who made the soup has actually been eating vegan for a few months for religious reasons, but despite turning out plenty of food for the visiting fish-and-chip-ocrite, she is surprisingly ununderstanding about my breed of vegetarianism. She told my friend that I should "practice" eating meat! I found this contrast surprising and amusing, but in the end it makes sense. Vegetarianism in Vietnam is traditionally a matter of religion, not taste, and when times are hard, you have to eat what you can get!

In Vietnam, what you get is liable to be delicious.

Compliment of the day

Said the tout who snagged us for her riverboat tour of the Mekong Delta, of me:

"She has a very gentle smile, just like a Vietnamese girl."

A village on stilts

Houses on stilts in the flood plain around Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia.

Cambodian folk dance

Feet in a Cambodian folk dance.

Cambodian breakfast

Sadly blurry, but a delicious part of the buffet at our fancy hotel in Siem Reap.

Cold rice vermicelli, coconut curry, fresh cucumber, peanuts, banana flower, beansprouts and herbs.

Ricefields of Bali

Rice cultivation in the town of Ubud (Pengosekan). I did yoga at a studio that overlooked these fields.

Congee

More highlights of the breakfast buffet in Siem Reap.