MotoFoto of the Week

MotoFoto of the Week

A New Feature...

One of the best things about living abroad is all the different things that you see, hear, taste and even sometimes smell, for better or for worse, that you usually wouldn't experience if you were living at home. Here in Hanoi, one of the major differences from home is the transportation. Mopeds. Everywhere. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands of them. Mopeds, or as they are often called here, "Mo-Toe Bi" (say it aloud) are the cities main source of transportation. If you don't have your own, the Xe Om (motorbike taxis) are convienent and cheap, and only slightly dangerous. Motorbikes are used to carry everything from freshly butchered meat, to all five members of a five member family and many things in between.



I'm been riding a little Honda 110 Wave in this traffic for about 2 months now, and everyday I see something else unbelievable on the back of a motorbike. So, I've decided to start a new weekly feature here on HanoiJake. I'm going to try a post a photograph, every week of something unexpected on the back of a motorbike. Now keep in mind, this is no simple task. I usually see these spectaclar feats of motorbikesmanship while I'm actually driving, so I can't always just whip out a camera and start firing away. Lucky for us, I have a phone with a camera in it. (Nokia Plug, send me a better model please, I love Nokia) But, I still can't just bust out the phone and start firing. Although I see locals sending text messages while riding all the time, I'm pretty busy concentrating on the road and the other five thousand motorbikes swerving around me, so the task is still daunting. But, I've managed to get a few good pics so far, so I'll start you off with something pretty tame. And now, without further ado, I bring you..... MotoFoto

MotoFoto of the Week

What We Don't Know, Can't Hurt Us...?

I just got cable this week. It's a pretty interesting package too. I've got 9 channels of quality programming from VietnamTV, about 3 Chinese channels, a few Korean channels, Disney, Discovery, National Geographic, a porn-free version of Cinemax (which I didn't even know exsisted), about eleven football (er, soccer) channels, BBC and CNNWorld, in english.

So, you all can rest assured that I know what's going on in the world. For example, I know that there's gonna be a hoe-down tomorrow in Crawford. When I first saw the story on CNN, they were showing still photos of Jenna and for a second I thought "oh my god!, Jenna Bush has gone missing!", then I turned up the volume. D.C. bloggers are reporting that GW spoke to God and called off all scheduled thunderstorms near Crawford tomorrow.

And I know that Hillary isn't giving up without a fight. I think as a poor white man, I speak for myself when I say I've had enough of those elitists and they're math. But, then again, Hillary and I both finished college.

I also saw the huge press coverage of Russia's Annual Victory Day parade. That report brought on nostalgia for me, because I was at that same exact parade last year. In fact, I attended that parade every year for the last five years. But, I guess this years parade was bigger...

But to CNN's credit, they did actually have one example of solid journalism . I've been watching his reports for the past few days, and I have to say, I thought they were pretty solid. As far as I know, he's the only TV journalist that's been able to get in to Myanmar and broadcast anything. The reports were still very theatrical, that's all news these days, I guess. I think CNN has another guy in Myanmar now, but I'm not sure if he's broadcasting.

This site, based in Thailand, has some eyewitness accounts of Nargis, as well as interesting perspective on the referendum that Myanmar is currently "voting" on. It's also where I got the cartoon from above, the artist is Burmese, and he doesn't seem to pull his punches. Here, in Hanoi, I haven't seen one single report about Myanmar on the local news. It seems that even though we can't see anything, it doesn't make it look any better...

Sorry for the delay...

I feel it's time to explain my consistently inconsistent posting on this blog. If you look back at the post dates, they're usually about ten days apart, with intermittent flurries of several posts in few days. You see, I've been testing a theory about the ten day cool-off period which until my last post had seemed pretty solid. But, my last post was on the 27th of april, I lost access to my blog again immediately after, and still can't access today. I would post more often, but somebody needs to speed up the editorial process.