Good old-fashioned Buddhist theme park fun.

Warning: Self-indulgent photo extravaganza follows.

Yesterday I had the priviledge of being shown another fabulous side of Saigon by a friend who shares my passion for kitsch.

After a late breakfast we hit grabbed a taxi and headed 30 minutes north of Saigon to the Suoi Tien Park - aka Vietnam's Buddha-themed fun park (this is not a joke!).

Pulling up to the gates I knew we were in for a fun day - but I wouldn't have been able to fathom the level of kitsch fabulousness that awaited me in my wildest dreams.


So, after being dropped off near the giant lucky toad we went up the stairs, paid our 16,000 dong entry fee (just under $1.50 $AUD) ...


... and walked into my idea of heaven.



Two things struck me within minutes of going in - one, my mate and I were the only whiteys there (I think we spotted one later that day but I may have imagined it) and two, this was for real!

So much for real, in fact, that there were groups of monks wandering around as part of their holiday tour to Saigon!



Now by 'real' of course, I mean completely synthetic right down to the rocks - but I am pretty sure that the trees and this (the first time I have seen graffittied fruit actually) were real.


'But enough talking about little details!' I hear you cry - 'what about the really BIG stuff?'

Well - there was a fair bit of that too:


We soon spied a colossal head, a giant shrimp and an equally massive coke bottle in the distance - clearly we had to investigate further.


I feel quite embarassed to admit that I didn't know what awaited me but I really should have guessed - in a Buddhist-themed fun park what else would it be but a giant buddhist and marine-themed waterpark?!


Luckily we had bought our togs (cossies, bathers, swimsuits what have you) with us and were ready to swim and attack the Buddhist hydroslide (can't remember when I last did a hydroslide but god damn it was fun!).



Highlights included the amazing labour-intensive detail that Vietnam specialises in:




...and some really cool signs - 'Medials rvice room' anyone?



After swimming and hyrdrosliding we were ready for the next leg of our Buddhist pilgrimmage - wandering out to find that a full-scale Vietnamese Buddhist Pirate spectacle was underway. This show left Disney or Vegas for dead with dodgy pyrotechnics, giant floating elephants and enough stunts to make an occupational health and safety officer want to commit Hari Kari.



We then wandered a little way, past the nice ticket selling lady sitting in her goat/dragon/bull ticket booth...



... and found ourselves in 'Carni' country - with various stalls and sideshow games set up - but, unlike the dodgy bastards at the Melbourne Show the Vietnamese versions are ridiculously good-humoured and fab! Our mate had a go at one which was incredibly popular - where you put on a silly mask, walk forwards and attempt to hit a bell with a stick - sort of pinata gone Vietnamese. The main idea seems to be that you miss and everyone else laughs at you. After two goes our mate was triumphant - for his troubles he won a very Buddhist can of Red Bull.

And even the sideshow ducks looked great ;-)



It was around this time that I started to realise how bloody massive this park was all round - I think by the time we left after 5 hours we had covered 2/3rds of the park (a very fine excuse for going back!). So we wandered past the giant elephants, up the elephant and lion-lined stairs to the the monkey area where I couldn't resist snapping this cute kid:



And this VERY proper line up of Vietnamese ladies who were preparing to have their photo taken by a park photographer - boy do they look pissed that I snapped them first!



Then we wandered along past these equally Buddhist attractions (an especial favourite was the bridge over the lake where the guys were paying to fish - but they were cheating cos' a guy kept feeding the fish and luring them to the surface!), did the obligatory silly 'photosticker' portrait session and escaped before we started dreaming of buddhist swans.





If you are EVER in Saigon - this place is a must. Check out their website by googling 'Suoi Tien Park' - do it now! ;-)

A new link.

Given that my research focusses on communication about sexual health for young people and, given that I have a seriously warped sense of humour and, given that the Bush administration are a pack of complete twats on the sexual health front with their abstinence-only campaigning and funding (they recently withdrew funding from one of the world's biggest condom social marketers because the organisation refused to sign a pledge "explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking" - the organisation is currently suing them for breach of the first amendment but I doubt it will get very far) - SO given all of that, I couldn't resist this beautiful offering from the wonderful team at the whitehouse.org.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Iron Hymen - 'promoting abstinence-only coolness for girls'.

A little rave for small-scale sustainability.

One of the many things I love about Vietnam is that it is still possible to repair things rather than replace.

In Melbourne if something breaks the consensus is generally that it will be more cost or hassle to repair it than to just get a new one. But here - if it does anything short of completely dying - and sometimes even then - there will always be a dude on the side of the street who can sort it out for you.

Every now and then we get a flat tyre when coming home on the motorbike - but there are countless little one man repair stalls on the side of the road who have a miniscule air compressor and other toolls and who can sort it out for you quick smart. My flatmate, after riding her hired motorbike into the side of our house in a drunken stupor (annihilating a potplant in the process), got the relevant parts replaced and installed for 35,000 dong (just on $3 Australian).

When my sunglasses (essential for keeping the crap out of your eyes when riding) broke the other day I just popped into the sunglasses store who fixed them in 3 seconds flat and then laughed at me when I tried to pay them.

And this week when my one pair of work shoes suffered a catastrophic failure I had the entire heel/sole replaced with something far better quality than what I begun with for 100,000 dong (under $10 Australian). What's more, the shoes have been polished to within an inch of their lives and it was all done in the space of 24 hours...this place rocks!

Of buses, lizards, beaches, bikes and such...

Went up to Mui Ne last weekend - a small beachside town about 4 hours north of Saigon by bus.

My mates and I took the 8pm bus which, 1 hour and 2 buses later, chugged out of Saigon just after 9pm. The highlight of the trip up (apart from the entertaining habit of all vehicles in Vietnam to drive full speed on the wrong side of the road at oncoming traffic in a bizzare game of 'overtaking chicken' - the winner is the biggest vehicle so we survived intact on this occasion) was the nasty truck stop where the bus got some more petrol and I met this lizard who was keeping an eye on me while I braved the charming Vietnamese truck stop toilets.



We got in around 1am and I settled into my authentic Vietnamese (yeah right!) beachside bungalow for the night - couldn't walk the next morning because of the diabolical bed but for $7 a night for a two person room who cares!




Mui Ne is a very cool bit of the world - the absence of pollution and the fact that I could see the sky were definite highlights - but the insane motorbike ride on Saturday was fabulous. We decided to risk life and limb and hire some bikes for the day in order to head out to see the reasonably famous Mui Ne sand dunes. Hiring bikes in Mui Ne is a little different to the standard vehicle hire process - you tell the guy at the hire place you want 3 bikes and then he goes outside and commandeers the bikes of 3 of the xe om (motorbike taxi) guys! I guess it is more lucrative and easier than carting people around all day so it was a 'win-win' situation ;-)

This was the first time I had ridden by myself in Vietnam and also the first time I had ridden anything other than a scooter (which I ride in Melbourne) so the first few minutes were a sort of vertical learning curve with the xe om guys pissing themselves laughing at us - but that is de riguer for Vietnam anyway. Luckily it was a standard Vietnamese motorbike which has gears but no clutch - which made it a little less painful.

The ride (sans helmet and in t-shirt and shorts of course) went pretty smoothly for the first 10 minutes, until a wet season downpour decided to start, which we took as our hint to have a pre-trip drink and get some petrol (the 'petrol station' stand is shown below - you buy it by the pint!).



The rain didn't ease up at all - in fact it just got even more torrential so, intrepid and rather stupid explorers that we are, we decided to buy some ridiculous Vietnamese raincoats and carry on - riding through pelting rain that stung our faces - but which was still hilariously funny for some reason (guess you had to be there). The countryside around Mui Ne is quite stunning: amazing combinations of bright red earth and tropical greens. And for a very short time we were the only people around which hasn't happened since I arrived - with 84 million people here it's not that common an event.

We even met a herd of goats who were crossing the main road - and the family who was with them were pretty damn cool as well - although I scared the crap out of the little boy who must have thought I was some white dripping ogre in a blue rainsheet.





But enough rambling - the short version was that it was a lot of fun to be pootling around under my own steam for a change and to get a slice of something other than bustling city - it is easy to forget how gorgeous Vietnam is when you're in Saigon all the time (not that Saigon's not cool either - but it is more of a chaotic gritty charm than a scenic picturesque one ;-)

Reason # 62 why I love New Zealand.

Because a pizza company ('Hell pizza') can put up this billboard on a main thoroughfare in Auckland and get away with it.



Thanks to Abdul for keeping me in the loop on the NZ front :-)

Makin' love was just for fun.

Anyone who has had the pleasure of hanging out with me for any length of time will know that my anal-retentive tendencies surface on a reasonably regular basis. Two of the ways that these tendencies manifest themselves are via an unhealthy interest in stationery products and a passion for awful english translations.

So, as you can imagine, Vietnam is the source of much pleasure for me in this department - and this finding was a keeper.

This picture is of the cover of a letter pad that I bought from my local Thang Long stationery store (I have no idea what Thang Long means but it gets me to the right place with the xe om motorbike taxi guy).

It is very cute and says 'Happy for you' with a charming teddy bear set against text in the shape of a heart which reads 'To tellthe starsa bovedon't forget' - which I find very meaningful.

But what makes this little puppy REALLY special is that, if you look closely at the watermarked text in the background (circled in the picture for your enlightenment cos' i'm pretty sure it's illegible) - it reads:

'Mak'in love was just for fun'.

Not sure if my partner was too impressed when I sent him a letter on it but it amused me no end!

A little touristing in the Mekong.

One of my oldest school friends from Noo Zulland was visiting from Taiwan with her South African colleague last week (Noo Zullanders are not terribly good at staying in Noo Zulland for long periods of time when they're young so we have odd scenarios like one Kiwi living in Taiwan visiting another Kiwi living in Vietnam) so we hit the tourist trail and went on a day trip to the Mekong Delta area.

We booked in Saigon the night before, handed over the princely sum of $7 US per person for a full day tour with lunch included and got up at sparrow's fart the next morning to board our magical mystery Mekong tour bus. I had done another mekong tour back in February so we picked a slightly different route which begain in another province.

After a couple of hours on a tolerable aircon tour bus we arrived in the charmingly named 'My Tho' province at the starting point for the first of MANY boat rides on the Mekong (we're pretty sure it was 8 in total). This was a short trip that took us round the corner past some very scenic riverside houses and postcard scenes (reproduced below for your viewing pleasure). I suspect we could have walked that leg of the trip but it was terribly pictur-es-Q.







We got decanted from the boat into an even more picturesque fruit and vege market - also shown below - and wandered around taking photos of fruit and engaging in equally silly tourist activities. The red fruit shown here is a dragon fruit - one of the world's most beutiful and crap tasting fruits - the insides look like a dalmation - white with very pretty black seed flecks. My mate reckons their taste is - quote - 'like dirt' :-)





After that it was back to the boat past some very cool floating houses...



...and off to a similar coconut candy 'factory' to the one I visited in February. The main difference was that this one also sold banana 'whiskey' in plastic water bottles for 20,000 dong (just over $1 US, just under $1 AUS and almost exactly $2 NZD). Not a bad drop actually - warming with slight undertones of meths.

Next up was another boat ride to an orchard for lunch - which was when the torrential tropical rain started. It eased off long enough for us to get back to the boat and then it pissed down again - leaving us sheltering in our dinky boat which had had the plastic improvised tarpaulin sides rolled down until it eased enough for us to head to our next destination. It was still raining pretty badly so the sides of the boat stayed down which meant that the boat's captain couldn't see where he was going when sitting down so improvised with some very expert 'foot steering'.



At our next desination we were treated to some traditional vietnamese folk music - the inescapable downside to any tourist trip in Vietnam. Luckily the tables we were sitting at all had some sort of clear alcoholic substance that tasted even more like meths (come to think of it, it may well have been meths!) which kept us sane and quelled the giggles a little.

By this stage we were beginning to get a little boat fatigue - especially as our next stop by boat was a place where we got to go...boating. 20-odd tired tourists were sheparded onto a rickety jetty, loaded into traditional vietnamese canoes, given conical hats and told to look stupid while being paddled up a canal - that said, it was a bloody good laugh and we have some priceless photos (NOT for blog consumption) as a result. For some reason your correspondent managed to get lumped with a paddle as well - pretty sure it should have been me who was being tipped at the end and not the other way around but hey.

And, with one more boat trip back to where we started our watery adventure came to an end. Back to Saigon and dry land creature comforts until the next visitor comes through in a few weeks' time :-)

Oders accepted by email.

'Engrish' has long been an abiding passion of mine - and Vietnam is a goldmine. Today's small pleasure was riding alongside an ambulance with 'AMBULANE' plastered on the side but this week's favourite is the business card that I have posted below - microsoft should really look into this - I think it would be a hit!

...and back to flippant.

The coolest tree in Hanoi... I don't think it's catching.

WTF?!

So I posted up some cutesy photos of the Temple of Literature in Hanoi this afternoon and the visitors to this site went berzerk - 200 in one day! Now I would like to think that my fabulous writing skills, incisive observational humour and all round nice galness have generated this random surge in visitors but I suspect I have inadvertantly pushed a search engine key word button of some description, now I just need to figure out what the magic words were...'hanoi'? 'temple'?, 'literature'? 'the'?...

Of course I will never be able to replicate it - ah well, guess my 15 minutes of fame are up.

Serious artistic endeavour #1.

In order to prove that I am not necessarily 100% flippant and blithe 100% of the time, I will also be posting up some piccys of nice things I see around the place every now and then. The first lot are from Ha Noi which is a seriously funky city, give or take the killer heat.

This series is from the Temple of Literature which is an amazing historic sanctuary in the middle of the city - the oldest university in Vietnam.

No helmet but the sun won't getcha.

This photo of my mate in Hanoi (who would kill me if she knew I had posted it), is another example of the joys of international exploration.

In Oztraylia, Noo Zulland et al, give or take the odd melanoma scare, we are all hell bent on getting tanned. In Vietnam, Japan et al however, quite the reverse is true. The whiter the better.

This is pretty common knowledge, as is the fact that the women here routinely wear elbow length gloves to stop from getting tanned, and that you can buy whitening deodorant (why you would want your armpits to be white is a little beyond me but anyway).

But this contraption, peculiar to Hanoi or so it seems, is a new one on me. It goes over the top of your normal shirt and the sleeves are designed to cover your hands when in 'bike riding position'. The top bit covers your face and the very top bit is a set of straps that conveniently help to keep the hat that you will of course be wearing, firmly strapped to your head while in transit.

How very clever.

Cultural cringe strikes again.

My flatmate has recently joined the 'International Ladies Of Vietnam' club in order to use their english language library (or so she claims).

I don't know much about this group of ex-pat ladies who lunch but got a pretty good impression today when my flatmate brought home a copy of their latest publication.

The English/Vietnamese cookbook with the impeccable title 'Maid Easy Meals' has an even more impressive introduction page which I have included below (please note my spectacular new photo-editing skills as well).

My flatmate assures me they are for real.

This goods is perfect for me!

Why yes, I do want to enjoy a simble and rational lives - and this rubbish bin in my bathroom is clearly the key.

If only I had realised it sooner.

Ex-pat fever strikes your correspondent.

This place (Vietnam) does funny things to you.

As most of you will know I am from Noo Zulland but live in Malbourne, Oxtraylia (which, funnily enough, is actually how the Vietnamese spell Australia!). By extension, I should be a one-eyed rugby fan. Sacrilegiously however, I had only watched one full game of rugby in my life (a live game in the 1990s when Noo Zulland got its arse kicked by the French which was quite funny – although the lone Frenchman in our stand with an airhorn shouting ‘vive le france’ was in danger of being lynched by the end)… until I came here that was.

Somehow, believe it or not, I have managed to find myself watching all 3 of the recent Lions vs. Noo Zulland tour. What’s more…and I hesitate to admit this…I found myself whooping along with the others who were watching as the All Blacks smooshed the Lions into the mud. The fact that Daniel Carter is damn hot in that little All Blacks outfit had nothing to do with it (well, maybe not ‘nothing’ but not ‘all’ of it) either. I always used to wonder what it was about being overseas that got people (especially Canadians for some reason but kiwis are a close second) sewing their flags on their backpacks and generally becoming scruffy ambassadors for their country of origin. I still don’t know what it is but I have obviously acquired a touch of it (living in Oztrailer didn’t seem to trigger it but Vietnam definitely has). The fact that I think rugby is a vile, violent sport played by meatheads seems to have been overtaken by some sort of chest-thumping chick-overseas-knee-jerk patriotism.

What’s more (and I REALLY hesitate to admit this one), I have now watched the first two episodes of desperate housewives (Vietnam is one year behind – the show has just started here)…even going along to our local bar to do so. Now the rugby watching was accidental – I saw the second test because I was hiding from the torrential rain in a café that was playing it (which is kind of weird in itself), but this is conscious desperate housewives watching!

I think I will need to go into some sort of ex-pat detox when I get back ‘home’ to Oztrailer, unless some of the people who know me well decide that this is completely out of character (which it is) and send a rescue squad my way to provide on the spot ‘get a grip girl!’ therapy before then – and if you do decide that, can you bring some plastic tikis, paua necklaces, pavalova, buzzy bee toys, a few bottles of L&P and some pohutakawa pictures with you? ;-)

The smoothie bar.

This is where I ended a number of my evenings while in Hanoi. Not being a huge drinker it was the perfect place to hang out with my beer drinking mates who were sitting on the equally silly little plastic chairs at the 'Bia Hoi' stall next to us.

The very nice smoothie lady would concoct something that tasted great, whizz it in the blender that you can see here (the lights on the whole street dimmed when she plugged it in!) and Voila! Yummy smoothie. Her kids were cute too.

Smoothie lady with her cute kid, blender and aircon unit.

Powerlines next to the smoothie bar

The powerlines directly above the smoothie bar.

Going postal.

So I went to the post office last night after work.

When I was in Hanoi (back in HCMC now) I got some cute stamps carved for my little sisters and I wanted to send them back to Noo Zulland. Until now I have only sent letters and postcards from Vietnam but that has been reasonably straight-forward: hand over lots of money and off it goes to meander its way to its destination, god willing.

Postal services, along with home internet, and nice breakfast cereal (e.g. not a bowl of meat and noodle soup) is one of the few things that is actually expensive in Vietnam – but not intolerably so, providing you don’t go on a posting frenzy.

So I go to my local post office and hand over the envelope with the 2 little stamps in it and cute piccys on the outside. This caused an instant problem. Male civil servant peers at the envelope, feels it, lifts it to the light and shakes it, then says ‘more detail’. To which I replied, with the assistance of sign language, that it was 2 stamps for children. This explanation was clearly not good enough because out came the scissors and the envelope was opened up. Sure enough, inside there were the 2 stamps and a letter for my little sisters. But this was still not enough. Male civil servant goes to consult with female civil servant and much conferring follows. He comes back and says ‘more detail’ again and hands me not one, not two but THREE forms (one of which required the information in duplicate!) to fill out. Cursing under my breath I fill out the forms and hand them back, at which point the official rubber stamp comes out (nothing gets approved, actioned or even considered in Vietnam without an official rubber stamp) and my three documents get stamped and filed nowhere in particular.

THEN, a cardboard box appears from nowhere and I am told to put the stamps and perfectly functional envelope into the box, which then gets mummified in official Vietnam-post-office-brand Sellotape. And then I get to write the address and name on the box…the box with the envelope containing the name and address on it might I add.

And then I forked out a small fortune to pay for this now substantial size box and off it went…I hope.

I came home and had a good whinge to my housemates who listened to my story and congratulated me on getting off lightly! Apparently 3 forms is the bare minimum and usually there are several more counters and people involved. My first mistake, it seems, was sealing the envelope before it had been peered in - but on the other count, getting it posted, I appear to have done unusually well because officially it seems, no foreigners are allowed to post parcels anywhere other than the central post office (the same place I waited in line half an hour for the other day to pick up a parcel). So, at least in a small way, I beat the system today.

But, for those family and friends out there who are reading – if you love me, please don’t send any parcels – the less I have to do with the postal system the better!


P.S. Can I recommend that people check out the latest offering from www.rathergood.com (the link is on the right) - 'looking for my leopard' is a keeper!

Jesus would be stoked.

A little piccy of some t-shirts I spotted while in Hanoi. Not sure who would be more flattered to be side to side.

A change of scene (warning: long and random rant follows).

Well, yesterday at the ungodly hour of 4.30am I raised myself from my bed (it doesn't rhyme with 'raised from the dead' for nothing!), staggered out to the alleyway outside my house just after 5am and was greeted by my xe om (motorbike taxi) guy (who I had communicated with the night before via a note written by my flatmate) and his wife who was keeping him company in her jimmy jams (this is the same woman who runs the drink stall outside our house and the same woman who tried to kill me the other morning when Mr Xe Om was late and she sat me down on her dinky plastic chairs which make you feel like Gulliver with your knees around your ears and gave me the strongest goddamn iced coffee in the world to drink before I could protest...until this point in my life I had drunk maybe half a cup of coffee in total - so I was a VERY energetic bunny at university that day!).

But I digress.

So, Mr Xe Om and I head across town to the airport in order to catch my 6.30am flight to Hanoi. I do not normally exist at 5am so it was a real eye-opener for me crossing town at this time of day. Saigon, which is normally a very pleasant shade of manic, was blissfully quiet and there were very few bikes on the roads. Now that's not to say that the Vietnamese - who are notoriously early risers - weren't up and about at that time of day, it's just that they weren't working yet. This is also a novelty for me - you hardly ever see a Vietnamese person who is not working in some way shape or form.

So what they were doing, in their masses, was exercising vigorously, often in pairs but also by themselves. Most of the ones I saw were walking purposefully in what seemed to be the standard Vietnamese exercise uniform - black for women and baggy white t-shirt or singlet and white shorts for guys...not sure if this is some sort of socialist throwback but it was remarkably consistent!

But again I digress.

So now I am in the capital - Ha Noi. I am always amazed at how quickly you click into the ex-pat circuit in Vietnam - when I arrived in Saigon I was on the town with flatmates within 4 hours of touching down - and it took less than a day here to be invited to a pool party (not really my style to be honest but hey what the hell) this Saturday. It also doesn't take long to realise just how small the ex-pat circuit is - you only need to go to a few events before you start bumping into the same people. I guess that's part of the problem with a small ex-pat population in a ridiculously hot and communist country - drinking and socialising in aircon comfort are the main entertainment options! I have also had the pleasure of catching up with a Vietnamese friend who has been taking me around and showing me the joys of Vietnamese street cuisine (it is nice not to be randomly pointing at Vietnamese words on a menu and hoping for the best!).

Yesterday was also the first time that I have gotten within spitting distance of an organisation that I have always aspired to work for/with/around - the UN system. I attended a UNDP meeting (some might say 'gatecrashed' but 'attended' sounds more legit ;-) I even have a now-empty bottle of UNDP-branded water as a souvenir!

It was an interesting experience to say the least. As boring as I expected in some places, pleasantly less so in others and my first encounter/minor run-in with career bureaucrats was a bit disconcerting even though it was not in the least surprising.

Went to another one today, sucker for punishment that I am which was also pretty cool but I am definitely leaning in the direction of working with/around rather than 'for' as a preferred option! Providing of course, that someone wants me to work for them one day!

And now, it is just gone midnight and I am using up the hotel's free internet connection like there's no tomorrow. It has also just occured to me that I don't think I have ever actually said why I am here in Vietnam (I guess I just assume that the only people who ever read this are immediate family and friends but the stat counter info suggests otherwise every now and then). I am here doing a project that is part of my Masters thesis - which focusses on online communication about sexual health with young Vietnamese). In response to the standard questions that follow, the answers are 'no, i don't speak Vietnamese but it is irrelevant in the context of this project', 'no there was no easily explainable reason why I chose Vietnam' and 'yes, I am ridiculously over-ambitious trying to pull this off in a communist country with spectacular censorship but I'm giving it a shot anyway'. More questions, comments and criticisms are always welcomed.

The working title of my thesis (minus the mindnumbingly boring bit that follows as all thesis titles must) is "Let's talk (discreetly) about sex".

Comments and hassling are warmly accepted.

So tomorrow, I get to go and talk to more people, while wearing business clothes in 38-odd degree heat and travelling on the back of a motorbike. Then on Saturday I am going to go and visit 'Uncle Ho' in his mausoleum where he has been 'sleeping' since 1968...and maybe go to a pool party...

Music crosses all national boundaries...

This last week I have had a number of 'cross-cultural experiences' that have all involved music of some description. Funnily enough, none of the music was Vietnamese.

On Monday, I was invited to attend a 4th July celebration at the international guest house where some researchers from an American university were staying. 4th July is not really my scene at all but the people there were useful contacts so I went along. In one of those surreal Vietnam moments earlier in the day I had gone past the 'Lucky 17 saloon' bar which had a huge banner outside inviting people to come and 'celebrate America's independence'...it is interesting that one of the few points of commonality for America and Vietnam is that they were both once colonised countries...amazing how short term memory loss causes so many problems in this world.

Anyway, went to the US 4th July celebration and found myself in cross-cultural hell. Country and western music was blaring and the students were teaching their Vietnamese room-mates how to line dance! I sensibly hid and cringed from afar. After that, the kitchen staff, who had been slaving away all day brought out home-made hamburgers.....'yum'.

So that was Monday then on Wednesday I was wandering towards my local net cafe when the sound of a brass band playing drew my attention. A few doors up one of the shops had been converted into a funeral parlour for a traditional Vietnamese funeral which involves everyone wearing white pyjamas and headbands for a few days and hanging out with the coffin (not a very PC description but am short on time) I guess in a similar way to a Maori tangi minus the pyjamas. Anyway, the music was coming from a naval-uniformed brass band, complete with saxaphone, that was playing very upbeat jazz tunes while standing around the coffin. After 2 songs they stopped and wandered off down the road - not quite sure how it works but it was interesting to watch anyway.

And then today I went to watch the fabulously named Yale Whiffenpoofs - apparently one of the oldest, most prestigious male a capella vocal groups from Yale University in the USA. They are at the halfway point of a 20 country world tour that the group does every year. Despite the name they were bloody marvellous and would have kicked the arse of any American idol contestant any day but it was more than a little strange to be watching them do-wop-ing in a hotel in the middle of Saigon.

And now, I am chilling out (well, sweating - but that's not unusual) in my local net cafe and bopping along to old Michael Jackson - every day is a little treat to guess what fab music will be playing!

Over and out :-)

The iceman saweth.

This photo, taken from my balcony yesterday morning, is of the guy who supplies to all the cafes/street stalls etc in our area.

He stores the ice on the road under a tarp about 50m from our house. At this stage the ice is in massive blocks (about the length of a motorbike for comparison's sake) which he loads on to his motorbike truck (pictured) and drives up to the ice-cutting table saw (I even just googled to figure out what it was - not a bandsaw like I thought - let it never be said that I don't do my research!).

He loads each massive block onto the saw and cuts it into progressively smaller blocks, until it looks like the little ones that are falling off the end into the ice bucket below the table saw (double click on the photo to enlarge it, then squint and you can see it!).

The aim of the game is to do this at 7am on a Sunday morning (ice waits for no man!) and wake me up with the sound of ice being put through a table saw - similar to 10 million fingernails being scratched down a blackboard.

Then he delivers it to the internet cafe that gives me iced tea...

What, only 4?!

Time for a few motorbike piccys to illustrate what I am talking about. These were taken in the space of 2 minutes standing on a street corner in District 1 so they're not unusual by any stretch. Will endeavour to get some of the more 'unique' ones over the next while.

Side saddle.

Wet toilet paper anyone?

Cruising in style. The low-tech equivalent of delivery trucks.

Snigger.

Not sure what's funnier. The name of this icecream shop or the fact that I then went in and had icecream there!

Scootin' in the rain.

The things you see being carried on motorbikes in Vietnam are worth a blog by themselves - at some point I will risk life and limb and camera to attempt to capture a few for you, my loyal readers ;-)

But today, I will just recount this evening's 'commute' back from uni. The trip takes about 30 minutes and is too much fun to be called a commute. Tonight it was pissing down as I walked out to my Xe Om man who lives next door to me and who picks me up at night. This was the first time I have hit the rain at commuting time but I wasn't fazed cos' I was armed with my trusty Vietnamese raincoat.

Vietnamese raincoats kick ass. Picture a wafer-thin opaque plastic sheet with a hood with a cardboard insert that gives you a dinky visor. There are popper buttons down the side which you can use to create arms and sides. The overall look, when in full regalia, is similar to the Abu-Ghirab-man-on-a-box electrocution look - but much more fun. The sides, however, are very rarely done up cos' the raincoat is hardly ever used by just one person. It mostly functions as a sort of wearable 2-3 person tent. We went past a school today on the way home and saw parents lined up on bikes at the school gate, waiting to usher their kids under the raincoat and head home. One dad had 3 little person-shaped lumps under his! Quite cool to see a elongated and lumpy person riding home and guess at how many people are under there.

Other tramspotting highlights today included the Mum and Dad who were heading home, with a 5-year-old-ish girl slumped asleep over the handlebars. I know some people can sleep anywhere but that's impressive.

The final example of Vietnamese ingenuity spotted tonight was the 2-person raincoat - the rainsheet with 2 head holes in which presumably is designed especially for bikes (or for 3-legged races in the rain). I assume they need to disengage before getting off the bike at their destination but you never know.

Can't even escape my geeky transport fetish on the other side of the world!

Sexy like a mofo!

Been at the place I am studying at for 3 days now and things are going ripper beaut. I have managed to settle on a price to get here with my regular xe om motorbike guy that is only twice the going rate (and still a bargain for me). What's more, I have been given the sexiest 'motorbike helmet' (read 'crappy bicycle helmet') in the world for my daily trip.

WHAT'S MORE: it's branded! That's right, I am now the proud owner of a helmet bearing the logo of the most expensive university in the country...y'know I considered a neon light saying 'mug me on my motorbike' stuck to my back but I thought this was more subtle.

Speaking of muggings, the nurse I live with works at one of the international medical centres in the city ('Gastro and bike accidents r us') and says that since the government has recently begun to crack down on unlicensed workers in the city (coming in from the countryside) the number of motorbike muggings has gone up exponentially. Their clinic is getting at least one case a week of someone who has been injured while being mugged as a passenger on a motorbike or while walking on the side of the road within grabbing range of a bike. The rule of thumb as a tourist used to be that you wore any handbags/shoulder bags across your chest so it couldn't be grabbed off - now you should be wearing them on one shoulder so they can! Even if it is across your chest they will have a go at grabbing - potentially pulling you off the bike at the same time. Even more fun are the crew that nick your bag/cellphone/sunglasses etc and then shove a stick in your spokes to stop you from giving chase....neato.

As for me, I wear a backpack on both shoulders and am more interested in staying on the bike that using a phone while doing so (the doctor flatmate had her phone nicked that way)...I know I am tempting fate but fingers crossed I am slightly reducing the prospect of visiting my housemate at her clinic.

Mr Bond, your transport has arrived.

So I got to Saigon, did a manic 2 hour 'settling in' period and then went out for the night with my ridiculously enthusiastic housemates who are serious ex-pat party bunnies. The house, as it stands this week, has 2 kiwis, 2 aussies, 1 irishman and a canadian....oh, and the live-in vietnamese house-keeper (I will burn in hell for that at some point in the future ;-).

That was Friday night, and Saturday morning was more food shopping/nerd-essentials-getting (SIM card, keyboard and headphones for mac). I also attempted to get a modem cable (try miming THAT!) which I did accomplish ('how long you want?' 'errrr, 4metres?', 'oi, 4 metres!' and the dude out the back makes me a cable!) but, in true Vietnamese style, it didn't actually fit the hole in the wall. So, using that very minor excuse for avoiding going back to dial-up hell, I have opted to stick with the ADSL net cafe 2 minutes walk from my room that is fully loaded with voip, webcam etc (and free iced tea when you arrive!) for a grand total of 3000 Vn dong per hour...and yes, that IS 20 Australian cents!

So, on Saturday afternoon it was determined that I had spent enough time settling in and was sent off to get tickets for myself, 2 flatmates and a friend of theirs to head to Vung Tau - the nearest 'seaside resort' town to Ho Chi Minh City.

Succeeded in doing that (100,000 dong for Vietnamese nationals, 150,000 for foreigners thank you) and we left last night for a whirlwind visit to the housewarming party of the previous tenant of my room who is now teaching english and living like a king in Vung Tau.

Transport was down the Saigon river on this fantastic Soviet-era hydrofoil which looked like something out of a 70s Bond film on the outside, and like my nana's living room on the inside...(paisley anyone?)


You got onboard by crossing 3 of them that were lined up next to each other at the dock - the top space on all top of them was conveniently occupied with wet clothing that was presumably drying.






There were also some very cool rubbish bins ('Winner! Waste Bin. Happiness to Everybody')...



...and emergency procedure signs (yay for emergencies!)




Got there, had dinner and 'hit the town' - as much as is possible in a country that closes by decree at midnight.

Went to the 'Ollywood' nightclub, tried not to look at the crusty old white guys with their by-the-hour Vietnamese companions and was serenaded with the techno dance remix of 'Happy Birthday' - no shit.

Woke up this morning and James the medical intern from Florida had acquired a spectacularly swollen lip from an insect bite (we assume)overnight - so he and I headed back a little early, in the direction of decent medical centres (well, one).

We hailed a taxi to the Saigon ferry and our driver, hearing the word 'Saigon' only, started driving us on a 3 hour road trip to Saigon...we put that to an end pretty sharply when we realised but not before being ripped off a few thousand dong.

Got to the ferry and the 11am was inexplicably cancelled so we went to the restaurant across the road ('captive tourists r us') and got some brunch. Mine arrived with a good 60cm-long Vietnamese hair wrapped so tightly through it that I literally had to unravel it. Was sitting there contemplating a little extra fibre and, to my amazement, another local diner had seen it, hailed a waitress and sent her to us. Within seconds my food had disappeared and the woman manager was flagellating herself and replacing it - I was seriously impressed. Yes OK, the hair wasn't a great look to start, but I didn't expect such an impressive response - customer service orgs in Ostraylia could learn something from that!

So, back in Saigon and guess I should be getting ready for work tomorrow - let the chaos begin!

My interim pad

First things first, this is the interim 'chateau Mad Hatter Saigon' where I will be hanging out and pretending to write a thesis in airconditioned bliss for the next few months. (I would have made the aircon unit more prominent if it was possible!). And yes, the geckos are complimentary :-)

And now, for something completely tangential dearest beloved.

Am sitting and sweating in a net cafe in the seaside resort town of vung tau which I will blog about when I get back to airconditioned saigon civilisation, along with the other exploits of the last 48 hours.

But in the interim, I though I'd post up this cute little semi-nigerian email scam fresh in the inbox this morning - the story on this one is especially nice!


FROM
FATTH KONE
ADDRESS/ AVE 11 RUE 45
ABIDJAN COTE D IVOIRE
Dearest Beloved

Base on your profile i am happy to request for your assistance
and also to go into business partnership with you, i believe
that you will not betaryed my trust which i am going to lay on
you.

I am FATTH KONE,20years old and the only daughter of my late
parents MR.and MRS ROSE KONE.My father was a highly reputable
busnness magnet-(a cocoa merchant)who operated in the capital of
Ivory coast during his days. It is sad to say that he passed away
mysteriously in France during one of his business trips abroad
year 12th.Febuary 2004.Though his sudden death was linked or
rather suspected to have been masterminded by an uncle of his who
travelled with him at that time. But God knows the truth! My
mother died when I was just 4 years old, and since then my father
took me so special. Before his death on Febuary 12 2004 he called
the secretary who accompanied him to the hospital and told him
that he has the sum of Ten Million United State Dollars.(USD$10
000 000) left in a security company in a mettalic trunk box, but
the security company didn't know the content because it was
registered as family valuables personal for security reasons. I
am just 20years old and a university undergraduate and really
don't know what to do. This is because I have suffered a lot of
set backs as a result of incessant political crisis here in Ivory
coast. The death of my father actually brought sorrow to my life.
Sir,I am in a sincere desire of your humble assistance in this
regards.Your suggestions and ideas will be highly regarded. Now
permit me to ask these few questions:-

1. Can I completely trust you?
2. What percentage of the total amount in question will be good
for you? Consider this and get back to me as soon as possible.


Thank you so much.
My sincere regards,

FATTH KONE

Hmmm...

Well I am sitting in Bangkok airport at the sardine-like internet cafe after a relatively good flight. Even though i didn't get time to get any of my mum's magic travelling drugs (8 hours sleep and a mouth that tastes like tinfoil thank you very much) I still slept for about 6 hours which is a miracle for me! Must have been seriously knackered - probably because of the departure schedule from hell last night.

I came home from saying goodbye to some mates about 4.30pm yesterday and wandered upstairs to find that Jack the deceptively charming sausage dawg had discovered the 4 blocks of very expensive chocolate that one of my vietnamese mates had asked me to take to her parents. By 'discovered', I mean, opened up my bag, located the plastic bag containing them, dragged it out from under other luggage and annihilated it. The spare room looked like a chocolate bomb had gone off - tinfoil, chocolate crumbs and wrapping were strewn everywhere. He had only managed to eat 2 of the blocks (not great given that choccy is poisonous for dogs in the first place) but had put little proprietary 'Jack was here' chomp marks on the other two. So, at 4.45pm I was to be seen on my scooter desperately heading out to find replacements. Lucikly, after 3 supermarkets, I had replaced them and came back to finish packing and chill out.

My partner was supposed to be coming straight home from a late night at work, picking me up and taking me straight to the airport, which would have been cutting it a little fine but not a problem....providing, of course, that our car was going. At 8.45pm I got a call from him in St Kilda cursing our crappy little car whose starter motor had died at the crucial time.

Sooooooo.....at 8.55pm I was seen getting into a taxi to the airport, about the same time that my partner was catching one from St Kilda to the airport in order to say goodbye in person (NOT a cheap fare - that really is love! :-). We both got there in a timely manner and I promptly hit the trainee-who-follows-every-single-luggage-rule-to-the-goddamn-letter at check-in, and had to go and put some of my overweight hand-luggage (sex text-books anyone?) into my check-in luggage and then queue up again, only to hit the been-here-forever-couldn't-give-a-rat's-arse check in lady who didn't even weigh it!

Ah well, got there in the end and now waiting to head on to Ho Chi Minh City to begin a few months of talking about sex with students and attempting to write something resembling a thesis. Next blog stop: HCMC.

Here I go again...

Going back to Vietnam tonight, this time for 3 months instead of a week - expect more blogs about the joys of being a tubby westerner in an exotic and exciting place :-)

Help me, for I have fallen and I can't get up.

I have probably mentioned in the past that my partner and I have a small sausage dog, formally known as Jack, informally known as 'weasel'.

Jack has us both wrapped around his paw and also works his magic on all visitors to our place (unless you're tall, in which case 'little man syndrome' kicks in and he woofs his head off at you for the first half hour). He even wins over 'non-dog-people', which, until they met, included my partner who swore that I would be getting a dog over his dead body. (Current score: 1 Mad Hatter, 0 the dead body of dog-loving partner).

Anyway, Jack, being designed like a sausage on small runty legs, comes from a long line of silly little dogs that are prone to back problems. We are painfully aware of this but it doesn't stop him from roaring around the house like a looney and leaping on to couches, beds etc at full speed.

He was bounding up the stairs on Sunday night when we heard a serious yelp, resulting in one rather sore looking sausie dog who was still mooching around but a little more tenderly than usual. We did the professional pseudo-vet 'poke bits of dog and see if he yells' technique but couldn't find anything wrong (or any bits that resulting in yelling) so we headed out for the night leaving him to chill out in the house.

Coming back, we decided to take him for a walk, only to have him boycott it by sitting down in the middle of the pavement and refusing to go any further about 100 metres down the road. Anyone who has owned or walked a dog knows that this is not typical dawg behaviour so we took him home and set about fussing over him.

In the time we had been out it looked like his pulled doggy muscle had seized up a bit cos' he wasn't doing stairs well at all. So, in true overly-soppy owner fashion, we decided to carry him upstairs and make a bed for him by our bed for the night (not that we can do anything to help him if he has problems in the night, or that it is any more suitable than his perfectly adequate dawg basket in the laundry downstairs.

Not content with bringing his basket upstairs and putting it by the bed we decided to instead create a little uber-snuggly-bed out of my partner's mum's handmade quilt (which we would hang for if she found out about!) and a towel for a blanket. Jack-the-now-milking-it dachshund thought this was most adequate thank you very much and snuggled up and went to sleep, not before sitting up looking perfectly alright when a liver piece was offered his way.

We began to suspect that he might be healing up rather faster than he was letting on but went to bed and left him to it. At 4am when the supposedly invalided dachshund came flying from a standing start onto our bed and under the covers (as dachshunds are wont to do), we thought that perhaps he might be on the mend....possibly.

Are we pushovers or what?!

Chairs may move suddenly when sitting.

Phew! Thank god officeworks warned Tezza and I about this - there could have been a disaster!

Speaking of rants...

There's nothing that beats a good rant about inconsequential crap - and this guy gets paid to do em'. Jealous deathrays being shot about now.

These things better not come in threes!

OK, having ranted about my poor AWOL lappy (the insurance process for which is only just beginning after the uni insurance dude came back from 6 weeks in Spain learning flamenco guitar (i kid you not)), it is time to do a little rant about the next piece of evil luck to befall me last Friday.

I was scooting to catch up with a mate who was visiting from Noo Zulland on Friday night just after 5pm. Dumb time to be scooting and, I will conceed, dumb of me to take the busiest (but most direct) route at death-to-scooters-o'clock.

I was at the entrance to the Elizabeth Street roundabout of death, waiting to merge, go round and carry on to whence I was headed. Unfortunately the sleep-deprived doctor coming off his shift at the hospital behind me decided that I was going when in fact I was doing nothing of the sort (as much as I would have liked to mow down the cyclist coming towards me on the roundabout I just wasn't in a sufficiently vindictive mood).

So, in his nice shiny Holden, he floored it, as you would when entering a busy roundabout - into my poor little scoots rear end.

Me, being on the scoot, got shunted towards the oncoming roundabout traffic and, in one of those marvellous survival instincts that we occasionally manage, jumped off and dropped the scoot, in order to not become the mowen down.

I turned around, ripped off my helmet and swore at this poor bastard (standing there looking mortified) in a manner that would have left Captain Haddock blushing. He kept apologising and asking if i was ok, at which point it occured to me that yes, my leg did hurt, but closer inspection only revealed what would become the mother of all bruises as opposed to something more to swear about.

I suggested that we get our respective vehicles off the road and calmed down a bit in the process (adrenalin produces most unladylike behaviour!), did the insurance thingo with him and took my rather sorry looking scoot home again.

Then the insurance game began.....

Was very impressed with the lady at the call centre whose first question after I called was 'are you allright'? Ye gods, I thought, they're actually starting to get the hang of this customer service business. I was allocated a case manager, told to get an insurance quote and to fax it through on Monday which i duly did. Tuesday morning I called to ask for 'David' (people who work in insurance companies don't have last names it seems - I wonder if their hiring policy means they can't hire 2 people with the same name, or whether it means that David #2 becomes 'Claudio'?). David was on the phone apparently but the nice call centre people said he'd call back shortly, which of course he didn't.

Wednesday morning: I call and ask for 'David' again to be told that he was still on the phone. I asked if they could confirm whether the insurance quote I had faxed through had been recieved and the dude on the end of the phone asked what number I had sent it to. Turns out the nice lady in the call centre had given me the wrong fax number and that my quote was somewhere in the wrong state. I asked if they could retrieve it and was told, 'no silly, you can't call a fax machine to find out where it is'...Well yes numb-nuts, but I would have hoped you might know where the feck you're wrongly telling poor customers to send their quotes to!

So, insurance call centre monkey asks me to resend the quote, which would involve me going back to uni to do so.

A few minutes later I get a phonecall from the elusive 'David' - he of the long phonecalls and IQ akin to a retarded chimp. David efficiently informed me that he would be booking in an assessor to come and assess my bike. I interrupt and tell him that there is already an insurance quote and that the grand total was less than $600. He says, 'oh well in that case, your excess is $800 so we can't help you' to which i reply (slightly paraphrased) 'no, monkey boy, I was not at fault, the person who was at fault is also insured by you'. He goes 'oh, well in that case, you need to supply their details so we can contact them' to which i reply 'but i fucking did that on Friday night'.

Thus ensues a painful process of me dictating the details of the foreign born doctor to 'David', who promptly repeated it back incorrectly to me about 4 times.

He then informs me that despite me having obtained an insurance quote for a negligible sum, he will be sending out an assessor tomorrow, in true Australian customer service style 'between 8.30am and 5pm'. I ask if the assessor can perhaps call me before he comes but no, apparently this is not an option.

So here I am, waiting for an insurance assessor to come 'between 8.30am and 5pm' and bitching to fill in the time. I leave for 3 months in Vietnam on the 24th (at which point this blog will revert to being a vietnam blog again) and am hoping that this run of shit luck really doesn't come in three. Or if it does, if the universe can just get #3 out of the way so i can carry on with my life!

Not suitable for readers under 36 years of age.

Fucking fuck fuck fuck.

.....

............


..................

Fuck.


........fuckity fuck fuck fuck.


NZ was fabulous, came back to uni on Monday raring to go, got stuck in to it and got heaps of work done.

Tonight, Tuesday, I had to go to a farewell for a staff member at 6pm and play badminton at 8pm. There were 3 postgrads still in the office when i left, putting my beautiful little 12" ibook G4 to sleep for an hour until i came back to pick up my lappy, bag, bike jacket and helmet before scooting to badminton.

Went across the road and had a good time until 7.10pm when I wandered back across the road to uni and up to the locked and darkened office.

"Hmmmm, odd" thinks the Mad Hatter as she enters the postgrad office. "Someone has packed up my laptop and put it somewhere safe, thinking i wouldn't be back. They haven't done that before but it's nice that they care."

"Hmmm, even odder and slightly disconcerting" thinks the Mad Hatter as she scans her desk and opens possible hiding places for her laptop and notices that her schoolbag and the charger are also AWOL.

"Oh fuck" thinks the Mad Hatter, realising that some asshole has decided to use a key (!!!) to get into the locked room, steal her laptop, bag and charger and wander out the back door.

The Mad Hatter proceeds to verbalise this thought loudly for a minute or too - accompanied by slamming of filing cabinet door and kicking of chair.

The Mad Hatter then calls her mate who was the last one out. We have had the 'lock it or lose it' mantra beaten into us so of course she locked the room before leaving to catch the 7.13pm train.

She left the building after 7pm.

I came into the office at 7.15pm.

In 15 minutes some shit [nastier word edited out on recollection that several family members now read this blog!] with a key has stolen my thesis, my emails and my digital life.

Thank god for backups (the last of which was 2 weeks ago - one week of which was holiday and thus not working time) is all i can say.

Anyone on for a little vigilante crime busting?

Actually, I've got my rose-coloured lenses on for both sides of the Tasman.

I thought I might balance out yesterday's one-eyed but very satisfying rant with a little rave about just one of the things that makes Melbourne a bloody marvellous place to live (Noo Zulland will always be 'home' but the fact that I am living by choice in Melbourne speaks for itself). And that is (discussions about appauling immigration policies and latent racism aside for the time being), the fact that Melbourne has so many incrediblly vibrant cultural layers (and if you look at Melbourne's immigration history there are definite 'layers' or 'waves' of immigration over quite distinct time frames) co-existing and even, at times, blending, in a reasonably civil way that makes this city really quite special.

After getting up suitably late in the day today I went for a wander through my home suburb of Flemington to get some bribery bones for the dog who we will be leaving with a house-sitter for a week when we're in Noo Zulland (I doubt that he'll notice we've gone actually but we feel guilty nonetheless).

So I wandered past the Ethiopian restaurant full of taxi drivers mid-shift, past the Vietnamese & Malaysian food hall, past the Chinese doctor's surgery, past the Halal butcher (noting that they are now authorised Australian Camel meat purveyors as well) and into the 'authentic Australian' butchers - established in 1974 by the same Italian bloke who is still running it today. The butchers is before the KFC and McDonalds which are on the same side of the road, and which are also, bizzarely, Halal certified.

I got some extremely nice bones for the dawg and wandered back, past the cool old eccentric lady with the dog that can get dozens of sticks into its mouth by loading them up its leg (our dog often says hello and looks envious), and past a young woman from the Horn of Africa who was clearly on her way to or from Tae Kwon Do lessons (the white Tae Kwon Do outfit that beautifully complemented her headscarf gave it away).

I went to a lecture by Geert Hofstede last week, a 77 year old Dutch cross-cultural research pioneer who looks bloody good for his age and is still touring giving seriously entertaining lectures. This dude produced a piece of research so mind-bogglingly difficult to replicate about 30 years ago that he can still reasonably legitimately rest on his laurels and refer to it in his lectures - something all of us wannabe academics should aspire to!

Anyways, one of the things he reckons is that in an immigrant family, the first generation 'belongs' to their homeland (the place they emigrated from), the second generation is caught in the middle of the two countries and cultures so to speak and the 3rd truly becomes 'Australian' or whatever country they're living in. I think, in general terms, this is probably correct - the mates I know who have been 2nd generation Kiwis or Aussies have definitely struggled at times with their cultural identity and the family pressures that might accompany it.

But it was interesting to see it so fabulously demonstrated in the young woman coming from Tae Kwon Do who was, I'm willing to hazard a guess, either a 2nd generation Australian immigrant, or who immigrated with her first generation parents. Although with her there didn't seem to be any signs of struggle - she was just getting on with being fabulous on a beautiful Saturday morning in my fabulous suburb in my fabulous city :-)