After the success of our French experiences, we thought we’d follow up with a journey deeper into the cosmopolitan heart of Saigon through Japanese pizza.
Author: holly
Saigon
We’ve now been in Saigon for almost 24 hours, and the word “ordeal” springs to mind. As Sim said, when you take your life in your hands walking down the street, it’s hard to be relaxed. On the other hand, $4 Maitais go some way to easing the tension (though we later learned we could have got them for about half that at our hotel). We felt pretty good about the pho we had for 40,000 dong (about $2), but I suspect we could get it cheaper once we get our arm in.
The Longest Journey
*Disclaimer: at the time of writing this review, I have not finished reading this book, and may never do so.
E M Forster wrote Where Angels Fear to Tread at the age of twenty-six. I read it aged twenty-seven, and keenly did I feel the stinging rebuke of having squandered my young life. This, the follow-up, written when Forster was twenty-eight, has been restorative of my self-esteem to say the least.
Continue reading The Longest Journey
Green Hills of Africa
Mr Hemingway and I have a strange relationship, and I can only attribute it to the fact that the experience of reading a Hemingway book is, for me, unlike the experience of reading any other book.
For starters, a Hemingway narrative has a very particular rhythm which is not the rhythm of other narratives. To put it baldly, it starts off boring, or at least I find it boring. And it stays boring for a while. On top of that, the book starts in the middle of the narrative and doesn’t explain who some or all of the characters are, or their relationships, or where they are, or what they’re supposed to be doing.
Dracula
Warning: this post contains spoilers. By spoilers, I mean it contains information about the contents of the book I am about to review. Just how you’re meant to review a book without doing that is not exactly clear to me.
This is the first of what I hope will be at least three book reviews to be posted on this blog. There were no criteria applied in the selection of the book; I saw the First Tuesday special on monsters, in which this book was mentioned, thought, “I haven’t read that”, and bought it at the Co-op for the bargain price of $9.05.
Going Home
The end draws ever nearer, and soon we will depart from these fair shores. But in the spirit of completeness, to bring this blog full circle (subject to any closing remarks Sim may wish to add), I will now publish my list of:
Things I’m Looking Forward to Coming Home to, and Things I’ll Be Sorry to Leave Behind
Kyoto II: Return to Kyoto
I do not know, dear reader, whether you have yet investigated the Go! channel via your digital tuner. If, like me, you’ve turned it on during the day just to see, you’ll know that it plays repeats of The Nanny for the edification of bored housewives.
Well, that’s pretty much how it feels to be here in Nagoya: it seems to be entirely populated by women (and indeed men) with improbable shoes and enormous teased hair. Being our last full day in Japan, we had a lot of shopping to finalise before making the trip back, and we thought Nagoya would be perfect, being a shopper’s paradise.
The Circle of Life
Since we’re on holidays in a country that doesn’t wake up until lunch, we figured, why not get up at 4am and see what’s going on then?
Well, for starters, the nearby okonomiyaki establishment known as the “Big Pig” was still open, so that’s good to know for future reference. Not much else seemed to be happening though, so we thought we’d go down to Tsukiji and see where the action was.
Food
Today has been a bit of a nothing day: we travelled from Kanazawa to Tokyo on a weekend preceding a series of public holidays, so the whole country is travelling and we had to have a couple of tries before we could find a train with seats available (thanks to Sim who managed to figure out how to tell on the Japanese website whether the trains were booked out or not). Most of the day was spent on trains, so we haven’t really done much at either end. Accordingly, I thought that instead of describing the day, I’d take the opportunity to discuss a subject very close to my heart.
Kanazawa
Here we are in Kanazawa, city of traditional crafts. Haven’t seen any of those yet (except in passing). Perhaps upon the morrow.
Our vision in coming here was to have a few days between Kyoto and Tokyo when we didn’t have too much to do and could relax a bit. It certainly was nice sleeping in this morning, after all the running around in Kyoto.