You don’t have to go very far to find a Buddhist site of one kind or another in Yangon. While the iconic Shwedagon Paya looks down on the city from its hilltop, at street level there are countless pagodas, monasteries and shrines in various sizes and states of repair. This slightly ramshackle monastery was just across the street from my hotel, and if I was better at keeping notes while I travel, I’d be able to tell you its name.
The title says it all, really. In the interests of balance, picture #3 also features some vegetables.
A few more pictures from the other side of the Red River, taken in Bat Trang ceramic village.
Like most Westerners in Hanoi, I spend the majority of my time on the west side of the Red River, where I live and work and drink coffee and wander about aimlessly. Recently, however, I’ve been driving over Long Bien bridge to explore some of the villages and neighbourhoods on the other side. Life is slower over there. You don’t have to go very far before your surroundings begin to feel more rural than urban.
These pictures were taken in the charmingly unremarkable Tu Dinh neighbourhood, home to a sparse market and an old but well-maintained Catholic church.
The thieves’ market in Hanoi is nowhere near as sinister or unwelcoming as the name suggests. It’s a network of narrow lanes and alleys in Hai Ba Trung district, packed with open-fronted shops and ramshackle market stalls, offering machine parts, car parts, bike parts, wires, cables, chains, locks, springs, pipes, lights, screws, rivets and countless other mysterious (to me, at least) pieces of metal and plastic. It has a reputation for being the place where stolen vehicle parts and electronics turn up – hence the name – but I didn’t experience any aggression or suspicion as I wandered around with my camera, just a bunch of busy people going about their day-to-day business of buying and selling stuff made of metal. As is so often the case in markets in south-east Asia, very similar stalls are tightly clustered together – a row of electricity meter merchants here, a stretch of hub cap vendors there – apparently unconcerned by the close proximity of direct competition. Some of the shops are little more than booths, just a few feet wide, where shopkeepers sit in tiny, cramped, cluttered spaces, surrounded by their wares. Take a wrong turn (or a right turn, or maybe a left) and you end up in the nearby fish and poultry market. If you need new sprockets for your motorbike and a freshly slaughtered chicken for your dinner, this is the neighbourhood to come to.
I hadn’t originally intended to present these pictures in black and white, but I like the contrast between the dark, dirty shadows of the shops and the soft afternoon sunlight filtering through from outside, and I think the black and white treatment brings this out better than colour would.
A slightly random selection of pictures from the last few weeks. No particular story or theme here – just some images of Hanoi that I like.
Some more details from the streets and markets of Hanoi.
You know that you’ve been living in Hanoi for a long time when you don’t notice that there’s a severed pig’s head in a bowl of water by your feet. Wherever you live, it’s easy to take the details for granted, which is partly why I set myself the task this week of photographing some of the colours, shapes, patterns and objects I see all the time in Hanoi. I didn’t get a picture of the pig’s head – it was moving too fast – but the city had plenty of other things to offer.
I was making a concerted effort today to not shoot any portraits. I just about managed it.
Without an H 