Rice and Rock Concerts

As the numbers on the distance marker on the Dukes Highway to Adelaide tumbles the reality of my departure is slowly absorbed. That and the fabulous little countdown widget on my mac which indicates hours rather than days till I get on Qantas flight QF97 to Hong Kong.

I’ve been working as a professional editorial photographer for a relatively short time; five years, but in that time I’ve had an exhilarating career, covering The Ashes cricket, AFL Grand Finals, PGA Golf, Federal Elections, ATP Tennis, music festivals, motor racing, Asian Champions League football, and countless press conferences and photo-ops for agencies and newspapers. And Adelaide has been good to me, so why leave it behind to pursue opportunities in Asia and Europe? Newspapers and traditional media have been suffering from budget cuts, closures and redundancies long before ‘Global Financial Crisis’ had been coined (by someone with the wit and creativity as the sub-editor who insists any political scandal be a gate.) Adelaide will always be a one-newspaper town, with Rupert’s Advertiser dominating the market, and with major events disappearing from Adelaide (ATP Tennis, PGA Golf etc) and major restrictions being placed on the remaining sports events by the organisers mean the news agencies (quite rightly) are vetoing the coverage (AFL, Cricket Australia etc.) All in all it seems like the perfect time to be testing the water overseas while Australia sorts itself out.

I hope that by taking myself out of my comfort zone and challenging myself in a new environment my photography will develop further. I’ll be in China for the next couple of months before heading to Vietnam, KL, onto London and then Europe. At this stage the first stop in Europe will be Budapest in Hungary to cover the fantastic Sziget Festival for Getty Images & WireImage. I’ll do my best to keep this up-to-date, but I am guessing that the internet in some rural areas will be lacking. A big thanks to everyone who has supported me in endeavors in Australia at Getty, AFP, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, AAP, Slattery Media, News Limited, Inside Sport and others.

Cheers, Jamie

Have you ever wondered how english songs end up in the charts in non-english speaking countries? We spent an hour or so at a bar in Saigon called 'Acoustic'; a pretty plush live music venue. Until covers of Jon Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams came on we were entertained by local Vietnamese music that was actually pretty good.

Today was one of those days tourists need when they have travelled for a few weeks - sleep in, grab a late breakfast, shop, shop, shop, grab lunch, shop, shop, hotel for shower, beer, meet shannon, beer, meet shannon's new girlfriend, have dinner with shannon, steve, lizzie, quan, and jenny, then go to aforementioned bar. To anyone trying to contact me by mobile I apologise - whilst in Asia my phone bill became due and from lack of net meant it was late by 7 days, and 3 Mobile in their wisdom has cut me off. So, to 3 Mobile, reconnect me seeing as my bill is paid! Quite possibly the most average service I have seen from a telco in a longtime.

We fly back tomorrow night and while we've loved every minute of our trip it will be nice to be home and not living out of a pack and moving every couple of days. A retrospective and a 'culinary journey' update is due shortly. See you all soon.

Three Suits, Four Dresses, Five Skirts, Four Jackets, Three Coats, Thirty Six Shirts, and Six Pairs of Shoes; Hoi An of course!

There is more to Hoi An than their tailors, but we certainly ensured that we had plenty of time to get everything made that we wanted. We arrived in Saigon last night from Hoi An, and I'm about to head down the street for some pho so I'll update some pix now, and do some writing this afternoon, but this means the blog is almost back up-to-date.[gallery]

I think we forgot to be tourists in Hanoi. Whilst we rolled our eyes when Shannon sent us a message telling us we were going to spend Saturday in Hanoi at the Aussie Big Day Out, once we were there we loved it. More of a trade fair than a rock concert, it was hosted by Auscham, and was a place for the Australian/Vietnamese business communities to come together and watch the Dream Team AFL Match (which was a crock concept, and result,) eat hotdogs, and drink a lot of beer.

We were pretty novel as three tourists rather than expats, but Lizzie spoke to economists, Steve chatted to importers about wine, and I kept busy speaking with media and NGO's. By the end of the night we all agreed that after a fortnight of non-stop travel it was good to have a day off from thinking.

Lizzie and I caught a cyclo and went to see Ho Chi Minh lying in state in his Mausoleum, and though I found the concept slightly weird, to see the complex and the regalia attached to it was fantastic. That was seriously about it for Hanoi; bought some DVDs, ate KFC, yes, KFC (none of us woke up 100% after the BDO), and then caught a lift with Shannon to the airport in his Australian Embassy Landcruiser, complete with Chauffeur.

Note to anyone flying Vietnam Airlines from Hanoi - pay the $10 'fee' and relax in the Business Class Lounge. We did, and ate and drank far more than it cost us to enter. There will be no receipt issued though, and we're pretty sure it didn't go in the till!

I'll update with a few happy snaps from the weekend later today.

I don't know if it was the nine hour train trip from Sapa, the 4am arrival, the five hours in a hotel in Hanoi, or the 2 hour train trip to Ninh Binh, but it didn't get off to a great start.

Lonely Planet and few other sources had talked up Ninh Binh, 97 km south of Hanoi, as a place to see the real Vietnam. Rice fields, farms and pushbikes, but having taken the train through the mountains to Sapa we'd seen it all and more. The city is sleepy and whilst that is a characteristic that shouldn't be considered undesirable, it's perhaps something we were looking for in a small town rather than a big, loud city.

Lizzie wanted a hairwash and cut, and Steve and I were well due for a shave, so we found a 'salon' around the corner. Steve went first, and at the halfway mark I decided to stick with the beard. This left Lizzie nervous as to what was in store for her, but she escaped fairly unscathed with clean, and slightly shorter hair. Not at all confident that we weren't at a motorbike repair shop rather than a hair salon.

Ninh Binh does hold the record for our cheapest meal in Asia - 57,000 dong for a bowl of duck pho and a bottle of coke for the three of us; AU$1.20 Each! The next day we rented motorbikes and paid for a guide so we zoomed off chasing our man into rural Vietnam. To its credit Ninh Binh did have some amazing scenery that we would have greatly appreciated had we not just been in the North West Mountains. A climb up thousands of stairs and we had a great view over the rice fields and limestone stacks, and if there was ever a place for a coke machine it was a the top, but alas, just a strategically placed pagoda.

Once we were on the motorbikes we found the journey far more fun than the destinations - Tam Coc near Ninh Binh is on a river where we paid to be rowed in a boat through the limestone stacks, but it was too hot, and suffered from day-trip package tourists from Hanoi venturing down and ruining the serenity.

The road-toll in Vietnam is horrific, on average 36 people die per day, and given their population is just four times Australia's they're clearly doing something wrong. We rode motorbikes through tunnels under construction, on roads inches from rollers and graders, and at one stage on a huge concrete storm-water drain on a 45 degree angle. We loved every minute of it and with a decent motorbike and a GPS I could be very tempted to go on a moto odyssey through Asia.

We went to a National Park on the next day which consisted of a 6km walk. The Vietnamese are not big users of trundle wheels though, and it was more like 10km, and our guide, nor map mentioned it was up and down a mountain. The park has a monkey sanctuary that made the long trip worth it; endangered species are bred in captivity, and reintroduced to the wild. Dozens of zoo's from around the world have donated funds and expertise, and it was good to see the Adelaide Zoo was a contributer.

Before we knew it and we were on the train back to Hanoi, where we were meeting Shannon for the Australian Chamber of Commerce's Big Day Out. To be continued![gallery]