It was sticky hot, no appetite. There were curlicues everywhere, and touts. Now I have to go back but the Government says I should steer clear. Looks as though I will lose my return ticket, oh well. More photos on flickr.

Time flies when you’re getting old. I remember when 10 minutes felt like an eternity. Now two months have gone by in a flash and our new years trip to Bangkok is really a distant memory. Today I took the time to go through the hundreds of photos I took back in December. I feel as though I’m on holidays again, I finished the CELTA (and passed!) and the whole city has shut down for Tet. Strange to be reliving this Thai getaway, because I will be back there next week. So from one new years to another, some photographs.

More photos on flickr.

Happy lunar new year! In Vietnam Tet is a time for family, feasting and taking time off work. The whole country shuts down for the first few days of the new year, but not the eve. Further down the road out of town is an enormous flower market. We didn’t make it all the way there yesterday, it was icy and damp after a few days in the 30s. Cold, perfect Tet weather, if it is cool and drizzly you can eat more, see. Just a few pictures from the street corner, as people buy last minute plants.

Just plants, see everyone stocked up on food previously if Friday at the Fivimart was anything to go by. Queuing behind couples buying cases of Johnny Walker and bags of pistachios, chocolate, boxes of wine. Just like home. Happy New Year.

Oh, more photos here (I finally did that flickr thing).

Photos taken an eternity ago around Truc Bach lake, back when it was cool. Today was in the 30s, blue sky divine if only I didn’t yearn for winter and an end to tet traffic madness. Tomorrow I’ll leave the lane, promise.

Hanoi is full of amazing old dilapidated tiling. I took these pictures around xmas-time then life got in the way. The tiles in these pictures are like my CELTA classmates, mismatched and disheveled, our course will be finished in two days. I have been taught so much, but there is also this feeling of stepping into line, doing all the right things so all the right boxes get ticked. The cracks are starting to show.