Tagged: children

A Rainy Season Odyssey

The start of the monsoon season in Vietnam’s northern highlands is a beautiful thing. The rivers turn turbid and golden, rapids smearing the surface like...

Babysitting, Hmong Style

It’s not easy being a woman in the Hmong tribal minority of northern Vietnam. Or a girl, for that matter. This little girl is six,...

Putting the Graphic into Ethnographic

As you can probably tell from the picture the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnography in Hanoi offers infinitely more fun than the rather cumbersome title would...

Joss sticks (incense sticks) ageing in a factory, North Vietnam.

Making Incense, Vietnam

Incense is part of daily life in Vietnam. Joss sticks are offered at the altars which grace every business and almost every home, sold by...

motorbike cylinder with frangipani flower.

Madam, Your Husband…

“Madam,” said the chap on the scooter, eyeing the motorbike erratically parked some distance from the wrong hire shop (and, indeed, the pavement) with a...

Junk moored on beach of Monkey Island, near Halong Bay, Vietnam

Round Halong Bay by Junk

Halong Bay, North Vietnam, is one of the most dramatic seascapes the planet has to offer. Five hundred million years in the making, twenty million...

The Red Queen

The Red Queen

It’s the weekend on Cat Ba island, not to mention the Vietnamese summer, which means there’s a vibe on the beach I can best characterize...

Zac, dad and bike at the end of the road, Cat Ba island, Halong Bay, Vietnam

Easy Riders

We’ve been exploring Cat Ba island, which splatters like a Rorschach blot off the northern coast of Vietnam, trailing 300-odd islets in its wake. It’s...