Bill Murray's Blog, page 36
May 17, 2019
Frog’s Eye View
Frog at the beach near Danang, Vietnam.
Mostly daily photos on Earthphotos.com at Around the World, Slowly.
May 15, 2019
Pictures from the Road: Vietnamese Food
Street Food. Quitting time.
Rice bags.
Frog’s good. It’s the bones.
Because when I think Texas, I think chicken.
These (mostly) daily photos from a slow trip around the world are collecting on Earthphotos.com. See the archive page Around the World, Slowly.
May 7, 2019
Don’t Try This at Home
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Here are window washers working on the building from yesterday’s post, the Vinhomes Central Park Landmark 81 tower.
These (mostly) daily photos from a slow trip around the world are collecting on Earthphotos.com. See the archive page Around the World, Slowly.
Exploring the North
I wrote a book a few years ago about travels in the north. This is not about the book, but rather to recommend this video about Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad, who dedicated part of their lives to show that Leif Erikson beat Christopher Columbus to North America.
In this photo, a recreation of the Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada, a result of the Ingstad’s work:
Here is the video:
May 6, 2019
Ho Chi Minh City Builds Straight Up
The most notable part of the HCMC waterfront the first time we visited was the Saigon Floating Hotel, towed up from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to accommodate an influx of foreign investors. In the first part of the 1990s, after a really tough economic period in the 80s, it was time for Vietnam to attract some foreign money, and investors needed a place to stay.
Interesting in retrospect, at the same time, investment firms were hanging their shingles on the doors of venerable old former Communist hotel rooms in the bigger eastern European cities, there being a dearth of international-standard places to stay in both regions.
The floating hotel was built in Singapore, lived in Queensland before HCMC, and was billed as the world’s first floating hotel in this feature from Australian TV:
“Regulatory issues” closed down the floating hotel’s stay in HCMC and it moved on to North Korea. Time moved on, too, and by 2010 the Bitexco Tower opened a few blocks off the river, with 68 floors and just what any up and coming city needed, a helipad, shown here, center (the one with the helipad).
Now comes the Landmark 81 Tower, a brand new mixed use tower with associated high rises, comprising offices, a hotel, condos, a shopping mall, as of yesterday an empty ice-skating rink:
Week before last, on 28 April, they grand opened the 79th-81st floor observation deck. We went up for a look yesterday. Here is the view from the top:
At 461.15 meters tall and 81 stories tall, it’s currently the tallest completed building in Southeast Asia and 14th tallest in the world. Here is a pretty fawning history.
These (mostly) daily photos from a slow trip around the world are collecting on Earthphotos.com. See the archive page Around the World, Slowly.
May 5, 2019
Photos from the Stans
This kind of stuff is great: Two Italian photographers, Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego, documented Soviet-era buildings in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
May 4, 2019
Photo a Day, Mostly
Not expecting much? Get yerself a Fizzler.
These (mostly) daily photos from a slow trip around the world are collecting on Earthphotos.com. This one from Cholon, Saigon, Vietnam. See the archive page Around the World, Slowly.
May 3, 2019
Quotes: On Leadership
“Boris Johnson is facing widespread criticism after claiming to have voted Conservative in the local elections despite living in an area where they were not taking place.”
You could make this stuff up, but who would think to?
April 30, 2019
New Column at 3 Quarks Daily
My monthly column at 3 Quarks Daily went up yesterday. Please have a look. It’s about leaving Appalachia, our home for the last twenty years. Comments there are most gracious:
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April 29, 2019
Reunification Day
Big, festive holiday in this country today, marking the fall of the Saigon government.
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North Vietnamese tanks rolled through the gates of the Presidential Palace on this date in 1975. Here is a calendar page from that day, as displayed in the museum of the Presidential Palace, now the Reunification Palace, here in Ho Chi Minh City.
These (mostly) daily photos from a slow trip around the world are collecting on Earthphotos.com. See the archive page Around the World, Slowly.
