on the outskirts of town.

Today is saying goodbye. Dinners and coffee in the suffocating heat, preparation for the weather at my first destination.

The pressure is mounting, I feel as though there is more than I can handle overflowing the edges of my plate and it isn’t delicious. But my heart lifted when I saw this moth chilling out on my parent’s wedding photo. Why this is in my sister’s house, I don’t know.

So sad to say goodbye to my crockery (see it here), but not forever I remind myself under my breath, not forever.

Wednesday, lunchtime.

I fear that forgoing the expensive allure of the bookstore (and the short hours of the library) forced me into the habit of not reading. I still read, a few pages before sleep, on lazy summer holidays, but I no longer devoured.

That all changed when I re-discovered the sister library. A book swap over lunchtime coffees.  Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer are the authors of enthralling books,  and they’re married (to each other). A fairytale.

The propaganda posters and billboards in Vietnam are amazing. In the first part of my trip I posted some photos of the posters we came across in Hanoi, but those in Ho Chi Minh City were so eye-catching I thought the deserved their own post. I love how some are soviet style blocky, while others are modernised. I love the use of visual cues and great graphic design to tell a story, so that the idea gets through, even to blockheaded westerners with no Vietnamese.

This one may be an advertisement, but it is sponsored by a government organisation that tries to make roads safer.