Here and There
Don't forget to visit my exhibition!!!!
Le Pain Quotidien in Surry Hills. Opening Night Tuesday 8th March 6-8pm. If you are in the neighbourhood, please drop by.
The exhibition will be on show from the 8th March to the 27th March and will feature new images from Vietnam and some from my previous exhibition [ my ] 'stralia.
Le Pain Quotidien has great coffee and fabulous food, so if you can't make opening night, pop in any day between 8am - 5pm and treat yourself.
Here and There
The exhibition will be on show from the 8th March to the 27th March and will feature new images from Vietnam and some from my previous exhibition [ my ] 'stralia.
Le Pain Quotidien has great coffee and fabulous food, so if you can't make opening night, pop in any day between 8am - 5pm and treat yourself.
n.b. I will not be providing airfares for any of my interstate or international friends. Sorry. :(
HERE & THERE
An Exhibition
Opening Night – All Welcome
6 – 8pm Tuesday 8th March
Le Pain Quotidien
Click Here for Map & Website
cnr Bourke & Fitzroy St, Surry Hills
Exhibition 8th - 27th March, 2011 – 8am to 5pm daily.
Contact Alison: • 0414 53 6600
www.alisonlyons.com.au
alison@standalone.com.au
Outside the House of Perfect
Just taking a break from the Vietnam photos... Shot this in the Sydney CBD on a Sunday afternoon
Who is this woman?
Who is this woman with rheumy eyes and betel leaf stains on her lips,
her teeth rotting in her ancient sunken mouth?
Was she ever a little child with shiny black hair and innocent eyes?
Did she sing softly to herself as she played in the village?
Did she ever tread lightly, full of hope and expectation?
Was there a time when she was vital, her breasts young and her hips had a sensuous curve?
Did her heart race when she caught a glimpse of a young man’s face
or heard his voice whispering her name?
Did she laugh, did she giggle, did she dream?
Has she ever lain in a night of passion, an urgent young man at her thigh,
lust reflecting in his soft brown eyes?
Did she ever hold a newborn to her breast?
Its small dark eyes glinting up at her with dependence?
And when the war swept through her country with cyclonic force,
did she sling a gun across her back and fight for her freedom?
She has flowed with the ebb and tide of the Thu Bon River and rowed heavily upstream against its current. Taking passengers and produce forwards, backwards, upstream and back, day after month after year. She would have weathered the monsoonal floods of ‘64 and ‘99 and 2009, when the rich people of town hoisted their precious belongings to the top floors of their houses for safety.
At the end of the day does she have a home to go to, a family?
As she squats and counts the notes she has earned, does anyone hand her a warm bowl of broth?
Does the smoke from the wood fire catch and cling in grey of her wiry hair?
Is there a small bed in a small room where she can rest?
Or does she sleep in her little boat, tethered by an old rope to the dock,
with only the familiar sounds of the night for comfort?
Who is this woman with rheumy eyes and betel leaf stains on her lips
and her teeth rotting in her ancient sunken mouth?
Girl... you've gotta carry that weight
he women who go to Bac Ha markets every Sunday, often travel many miles to get there. Some on the back of motorbikes and some walk, often leaving home during the night in order to arrive at the markets early enough to get the bargains.
So the bag this woman is carrying mightn't be completely full, it mightn't be full of rice, she might not have to walk many miles home with it on her
Boat woman of Hoi An
I confess I don’t know much about the boat women of Hoi An, well to be truthful, I know nothing about them, other than what I observe.
I shift my camera from one arm to the other, protecting a niggling shoulder injury as I watch an elderly women row a group of five people across the river. I’m hot, the sun-block is sliding off my arms, and I am looking foward to sitting down on the balcony one of the riverfront restaurants with an icy cold mango juice. The woman must be at least 70, but it is hard to determine what age she actually is, she looks like she is in her nineties, too old to be rowing boats for a living. She picks up another passenger and several large sacks of rice and rows back.
I wonder if she has been rowing boats across this river all her life, if she has a family to support and what has brought her to this point in her life. When it rains here, for weeks on end, does she still row?
The women seem quite intimidating with their wizened leathery skin and stern expressions. They wait at the river’s edge, tethering their boats by resting one bare brown foot on the concrete dock, as they wait for passengers. They work hard ferrying people across, or along, the river.
They are old and they look tired. They’ve lived through the hardships of war. “We” we bombed these people and now, as elderly women, they are still living in hardship. I feel tired just watching them... and sad.
As I raise my camera to photograph one of the women, she stares back down the lens at me expressionless, she doesn’t care about whether I take her photo or not. Another waves me aside, she doesn’t want her photo taken, and I completely understand why.
I approach another boat woman and raise my camera, she kicks her head back and smiles at me. I take her photo and I thank her. She smiles again.
She is now locked in my bag of memories from Hoi An. I look at the photo and it brings back the smell of the river, the sticky humidity of afternoon and the soft sound of the water lapping against the side of the boat.
And today as I post this photo to share with you, I know she will have been rowing across the river many times, and tomorrow she will do the same, and probably every day until she no longer has the strength to do so.
Champa
I've tried really hard to dislike the town of Hoi An... twice. Everyone raves about it, and the rebel in me wants to dislike it out of sheer petulance. It is crowded and touristy... and well, full of tourists. But I guess there is a reason for that. It is charming, its people are charming and if you like eating and shopping, then this is the place to be.
The city of Hoi An possessed the largest harbour in Southeast Asia during the 1st Century and was known as Lâm Ấp Phố (Champa City). Between the seventh and 10th centuries, the Cham (people of Champa) controlled the spice trade in the area, as it was a very successful sea port.
The Artist
On a hot day,
in a dark room,
in a hut,
on an island,
in the river,
not far from Hoi An,
in Vietnam,
sits a man who paints.
An artist.
On a hot day,
in an air-conditioned studio,
of a large building,
in a bustling suburb
of Sydney,
in Australia,
in front of an Apple computer,
sits a designer who photographs.
A time traveller.
Finding Ping
Five years later, Ping has aged. She is 28 now. She is shorter than I remember and her face is fuller. The unmistakable laugh lines still crowd the corners of her eyes. Her fingers are stained an inky green from the indigo dye she uses to make clothing. She now has four children, three boys and a baby girl. She pats her waistline and tells me she is pregnant with her fifth child. And then she laughs.
I had returned to Sapa with a handful of photos I had taken of the Hmong girls on my last visit. I was hoping to reconnect with a couple of the girls. Ping was one of them. Her friend recognised her in one of my photos and sent to the nearby village for her, 7km down in the valley. I felt bad that she had walked all the way up hill... just to see me.
I don’t know whether Ping remembered me. I doubt it. Her face was so familiar to me as I had studied her photo often in the intervening years. Her face lit up when she saw the photos. She looked at them wistfully and it occured to me, she might not even own a photograph of herself.
We had planned on a walking tour to the villages below Sapa, but the fog was thick and appeared to have no plans to abate. And I was worried that all we would see was the mud and not much else. Instead we accept Ping’s offer to take us to the village the following day. I could give some more of my photos to the women there. If it was still foggy, she would accompany us along the road instead of negotiating the paddy fields and muddy paths. And I liked the idea that we could give her some money for her family, instead of paying a tour company.
The Meat Market
We eat breakfast at a local café. All you can eat for $3.00 including Pho (Vietnamese Beef soup), Omelette, pancakes, banana fritters, fresh fruit and small squares of delicate cream filled sponge cake. The coffee is passable.
Ping is waiting for us outside our hotel. She is barely visible in the mist. It is 10am. She assures us that visibility is better in the village below. I ask if we need to bring umbrellas. She looks up into the mist and then back at me. “No.” she says with conviction.
“It will not rain.”
“We will go to the markets first” she says. The produce market in Sapa is all abustle. The aroma of fresh herbs is intoxiating and fortunately the freshly slaughtered meat doesn’t smell at all in the still cool, morning air.
“Do you eat Tofu?” Ping asks me. “No” I say, thinking of Stan’s dislike of the tasteless stuff. We are standing in front of the Tofu lady. Pieces of fresh Tofu the size of house bricks are piled on a tray, still warm, wisps of vapor trailing off them and joining the mist that shrouds all of Sapa.
It is then that I realise with horror that Ping is shopping for us, that she is planning to make lunch for us in the village. “We’ve brought our own food.” I stammer, remembering the coconut bread and bananas we’d bought earlier. Ping looks a little crestfallen, but determinedly presses on with her shopping. She buys fresh broccolini and shallots and heads into the meat section of the market. She tells me that she can only afford to buy meat, (usually chicken, sometimes pork), for her family once a week. Normally, they just eat rice and vegetables or clear noodle soup.
She points to a table that has very dark red meat on it, there is a small neat pile of paws and a disturbingly familiar looking head. “Dog.” she says simply. I ask if she eats dog and she tells me she doesn’t like the taste. I tell her that people in Australia think it is wrong to eat dog. She just smiles and shrugs. The dog looks like it has been partially cooked. “They cook it a little to remove the hairs.” she informs me. It is hard to make a judgement call, when the local people are so poor and can barely afford to serve any kind of protein to their families. Sure the dogs are cute, but then so are lambs.
She buys pork and I try and reassure myself that the meat is fresh. It is too late for me to play the vegetarian card, I have already told her I eat meat. The voices in my head start to converse. The paranoid voice protests and leads me to consider the parasites that might be still living in the host. The rational voice tells me that the local restaurants would buy their produce from these markets too. The paranoid voice warms me I’ll get sick. The rational voice says its OK, the food will be cooked and kill all the parasites. I double my resolve to stay vegetarian for the remainder of the holiday and start to seriously regret the Tofu decision.
A walk on the wild side
I have been to Sapa before, so I know that beyond the wall of fog on one
side of the roadway is a lush green terraced valley. On the other the
mountains thick with trees rise above us, invisible. It is still, and damp.
The only sound is our boots scrunching on the road. Ping, like many of the
Hmong girls wears socks with brown plastic sandals. I try to convince myself
that this might be a sensible option in a region that is wet with mud.
Easily washed. The footware is cheap and flimsy. Brought from China by the
truckload. A few of the girls are wearing Wellington boots, which seem more
appropriate. I am wearing my $350 hiking boots and specially designed hiking
socks. I regret not bringing my old leather hiking boots to give to someone in
the village instead of throwing them away. They had a small split in the sole,
but in Vietnam they would be easily repaired. Next time. I tell myself. Next time.
As we walk, strange shapes appear out of the mist. Water buffalo, pigs, a
family of Hmong making their arduous journey up to the town. After an hour
we start to slip out from underneath the mist. The shape of rice terraces
start to form and gradually we start to see the the other side of the
valley.
Ping tells me that since I saw her last she has moved from a house up in the
mountains, down to a better house in the village. She thinks hard and then
tells me she has a new basket now. She had the old one when I saw her 5
years ago. She refers to her basket, like I¹d refer to my car. (Yes I had a
different car 5 years ago and now I have a new one too.) Ping has very few
possessions, and it is a reflection on the value of what she owns that makes
the replacement of a basket noteworthy. I wonder how much a new basket cost
her. But I don¹t think to ask.
We walk slowly, accompanied by a couple of Ping's friends. It is warmer
closer to the village. Ping sheds the "Dolce and Gabbana" jacket she wears
over the top of her traditional dress. I ask her if she had just the one set
of traditional clothes or many. "Many." she says, and she laughs at me like
I am a fool.
Ping's world exists only between the village of Lao Chai and the township of
Sapa. I ask her if she has ever been to Lao Cai, a large town located only
34 km away. She laughs again. No, she tells me, it is too expensive to go
there. She tells me she has a brother who moved to Hanoi to work. "He didn¹t
come home for New Year's" she says wistfully. I look around at the village
and I don¹t have to wonder why.
The Village of Lao Chai
Ping's house is a wooden hut. The central room is devoid of furniture. The
floor is concrete. In one corner on a tiny shelf is a small colour TV
perched on top of a DVD player and one speaker. There is woman nursing a
baby watching TV. I wonder what programmes come zooming into this village
from around the world. The village is medieval, what I am seeing on the TV
looks like SciFi by comparison. I wonder how Ping and her family make sense
of it.
The TV is switched off in deference to us. The woman, a neighbour, leaves.
Someone brings me a tiny stool to sit on. It is about six inches high and
the size of a paperback book. I look at it and wonder how I am going to
lower myself down that far... with dignity.
A group of children crowd around us. One of them I immediately identify as
Ping's ...he's the naughty one. He looks a little like her and is brimming with
mischief. Ping appears with the ubiquitous blue plastic chairs, two of them.
I think she has borrowed them from a neighbour. It seems that most of
Vietnam park their bottoms on chairs designed for pre-schoolers.
Above us, on either side, are lofts filled with rice sacks and piles of corn
cobs. In the adjacent room is a tiny wooden bed. And beyond that the
kitchen. Dirt floor with a firepit, over which sit a steaming wok. Ping's
husband is crouched nearby. He acknowledges us briefly. But he doesn't speak
English and seems shy.
We watch the kids play. Two of them are playing marbles. They have only
three marbles and a couple of small ball bearings. They play with skill and
precision. One of the boys rolls a steel socket along the ground, like a
small ball. Beyond, one of the village boys plays with a pair of home-made
stilts, while his friends wait to have a turn. These are the kind of toys my
father would have played with 80 years ago. The children seem happy with
their simple pleasures.
There is a barracade made out of bamboo blocking the entrance to Ping's
little front yard. I ask if is to keep her baby from wandering off into the
village. "No." she says. "It's to keep the pigs out." She laughs again.
Lunch for Three
We are restless and eager to continue on. The walk to the village had taken
longer than we expected and already the mist had caught up with us in the
valley. Ping has disappeared into the kitchen and is cooking. She hasn't
indicated what is happening, so I don't know if she is cooking for her
family or for us. I ask if we can move on soon. (We are feeling out of place
in her home.) She looks a little panicked. "I have cooked for you." she says.
I try to keep my face neutral. "What about your family?" I ask. "They have
already eaten" she replies.
I don¹t think they have. I saw how much pork she bought at the markets and
it is consistent with the amount sizzling in the wok. "We will eat
together." she says. I know I have no choice.
A small oil-stained wooden table is produced. And Ping serves our lunch on
three brightly coloured plastic plates. Her 10 year old son, serves us rice
from an electric rice cooker, that I notice for the first time in the corner
of an adjacent room. The rice cooker is stained white with starch where the
rice has has bubbled over many times before. The food smells delicous. I eat
the potatoes cooked with garlic, the broccolini and the rice, but I am sworn
off eating the pork. Stan eats some of the pork, and feeds some to the dog
when Ping isn't watching, a la Sienfield. A hen and a couple of chicks wander
into the room and are shooed away by the children. Ping's baby girl sits on the
tiny stool while her brother attempts to feed her. She is wearing only a jumper
and pair of sandals. Her bottom is bare. The dog licks the table top when no-one
but me is looking.
Ping notes that we don't eat much. I hope I haven't offended her. I would rather she
gave the pork to her family. On the wall opposite where I am sitting is a corkboard.
The photos I gave Ping yesterday are pinned to it. Ping's wedding photo is there too.
I make a note to photograph it before I leave. Then promptly forget. Later I try to
remember what else was pinned to board, but I can't.
There is a poster of the Virgin Mary on the back wall of the hut. Behind Ping's house is
a functioning Catholic church. A legacy of the French occupation.
Ping's baby
This is Ping's baby girl. PIng must have been overjoyed to have a daughter, after having three sons. She tells me that her boys are naughty... especially the youngest one. I asked her if they can speak English too. Her command of English is very good. "No." She replied. "They do not want to learn." I told her she should try and teach them, tourism is very important the region and if her children can speak English they will have an advantage and a greater opportunity to obtain work within the hospitality industry. I guess they will learn the same way she did. "From the tourists."
Ping is now pregnant with her fifth child. I hope for her sake it is a girl. Because the girls work hard and support their mothers, and can earn good money from making handicrafts. She tells me the boys just run off into the fields and play.
Her children attend primary school in the village, where they are taught in "Vietnamese." At home they speak the "Hmong" language. The different minority groups all speak a different dialect to each other and converse with each other in Vietnamese or English.
The nearest high school is in Sapa. where the Hmong children are integrated with Vietnamese children. I asked her if they commute all the way up to Sapa, and she told me that they live in the town. Ping told me how this works, but I didn't really understand her explanation. I can't imagine that the government subsidises accommodation for the minority group children to attend high school. And I would have thought the Hmong families too poor to support their children living away from home. Many of the children do not attend high school as they are more valuable to their families as workers. Some of the older Hmong girls run their own guided tours of the village in competition with the tour companies. The girls are overall smart, hardworking and entrepreneurial.
I asked Ping if she speaks other languages apart from Hmong, Vietnamese and English. She told me that she can speak a little French and Italian, but mostly they converse with the tourists in English. She said that the English speaking tourists, predominantly the Australians, are friendlier than some of the other nationalities and therefore the Hmong girls learn the their language more easily. The Hmong boys do not interact with the tourists very much as they are not involved in selling, consequently there are fewer of them that speak English.
Ping's baby's name is "De" (a surprisingly very short sound, the sound we teach babies when they learn the letter d.)
Meet Ping
This is the photo I took of Ping when I first met her five years ago.
My last memory of her was her standing outside the English Pub in Sapa. It was evening, my last evening in Sapa and the mist was descending on us as we stood there. The light was fading. My friends had disappeared inside to the promise of cheap cocktails and warm company. It was getting dark and damp and cold. Ping stood before me with quiet composure and pleaded with her eyes for me to buy just one more thing.
I didn’t want to buy any more things, I had bought more bags and embroidery and blankets than I wanted already. I had bought things I had “pinky promised” to buy. I had bought things out of good grace, out of guilt and out of charity. I had even bought something that had turned my arm green as the dye seeped out of it. The cries from the Hmong girls still ring in my ears. “Why you buy from her, and you no buy from me”. (The last "me" was always protracted, pronouced "Meeeeee".) There was humour in their voices and a friendly rivalry existed between them. But in reality they were all trying to make a little money, fair trade, to support their families. And I know the prettier and pushier girls would sell more. The ones who spoke English more clearly, who flirted and teased and joked with the tourists.
Ping had a sweet serenity about her, there was no hard sell. We stood there eye to eye. The power all mine, how can I not buy just one more bag? Embroidered by her in her small hut high in the mountains above the village of Lao Chai. It cost me a few dollars, less than I would spend on drinks when I joined my friends inside the warmth of the cheery pub.
I saw a small packet of medication in her bag as she put the money away. “It is for my baby” she said “my baby is sick”. I had no reason not to believe her. I asked her how old she was. “Twenty-three” she told me. I thought of my daughter back at home, only a couple of years younger than Ping, attending university, in charge of her own destiny, the world at her feet.
I couldn’t reconcile the two images in my head.
Motorbike Check List
Now let me see... what do I need before I take my life in my hands and join the manic throng of Saigon traffic?
Helmet_______________check
Face Mask––––––––––––check
Designer Sunglasses____check
Long Evening Gloves____check
Sleeveless Jacket_______check
Cut-off Jeans__________check
Erm... there is something else...
Don’t tell me... don’t tell me...
I’ve painted my toenails...
Now I remember...
Gold Slip-on Stilettoes_____check.
Wikileaks Rally
We called by the Free Julian Assange Rally outside the Sydney Town Hall the other day. There was something for everyone, including a woman with kooky sunglasses blowing bubbles across the crowd. I read that there were 500 people there, but when we turned up not long after the official starting time, there would have been barely 100 people there. The police looked bored and most of the placards were really promoting other political causes. I really don't think Australians care enough to rally about most things. We are pretty isolated geographically from the rest of the world... and hey its summer time, there are plenty of other outdoor activities to keep us amused.
Cooking Mice
We were nearly at the Cu Chi Tunnels when our driver stopped at a small roadside market. He knew we liked to photograph things, and I was please that he took the opportunity to stop. He was also quite attentive as we crossed the road, making quite sure there was no traffic coming in either direction before he allowed me to cross.
The market consisted of half a dozen people selling their wares on a narrow strip of dirt between the road and adjacent field. There was the usual pile of bananas, sweet potatoes and other fruit and veg. A green plastic bucket filled with a writhing mass of eels. The women were friendly, smiling, holding up their babies to be photographed. The only man was working hard at doing nothing as he lounged in a hammock. The woman all laughed when they saw me taking his photo.
I had seen enough, and was just about to turn back, when the driver said “Cooking mice.”, and pointed to a wire cage at the end of the “market”. I turned to Stan... “Did he say ‘Cooking mice’?” Stan nodded.
On closer inspection, most of the “Cooking mice”, looked more like cooking rats. I bent in close enough to take a photo or two and then quickly retreated to the comparative safety of the backseat of the Merc. I comforted myself with the knowledge, that I knew the words for beef, chicken and pork in Vietnamese and that I mostly eat vegetarian food when I travel.
From Wikipedia...
Paddy mouse meat - barbecued, braised, stir or deep fried - is a rare dish that can be found in many Vietnamese rural areas or even high-end city restaurants.
QVB
The Queen Victoria Building, or QVB, is a late nineteenth century building by the architect George McRae in the central business district of Sydney, Australia. The Romanesque Revival building is 190 metres long by 30 wide, and fills a city block, bounded by George, Market, York and Druitt Streets. Designed as a shopping centre, it was later used for a variety of other purposes until its restoration and return to its original use in the late twentieth century.
The original building included coffee shops, showrooms and a concert hall. It provided a business environment for tradesmen such as tailors, mercers, hairdressers, and florists. The concert hall was later changed to a municipal library and the building was partitioned into small offices for Sydney City Council. The building steadily deteriorated and in 1959 was threatened with demolition. It was restored between 1984 and 1986 by Ipoh Ltd at a cost of $86 million, under the terms of a 99-year lease from the City Council and now contains mostly upmarket boutiques and "brand-name" shops.
Photo taken with Multiple Flash.
Sorry folks... just taking a short break from the Vietnam photos. We shot this yesterday outside a cafe in Surry Hills in Sydney (Le Pain Quotidien - my favourite cafe). Couldn't resist this group of passing Flash Enthusiasts on their way to a "Convention"
X-box
My Blackberry Is Not Working!
To check out more things on bikes click here: Bikes of Burden
A stack of sacks
The Motorbike in Vietnam is more that just a humble form of transport. It is equivalent to the family car in other countries, with families of four or sometimes more perched on top. Things I have seen being transported on a motorbike in Vietnam include:
A large mirror.
A wardrobe.
A refrigerator.
Pigs.
Chickens.
A family of 5 people.
25 feet of plastic pipe.
A huge bunch of helium filled balloons.
Carcasses of meat.
A canvas painting.
Sacks of rice.
Sacks of concrete.
Flower arrangements.
Bonsai Trees.
Crates of Beer.
A large electrical cooling fan. (making the whole contraption look like a hovercraft)
Massive tower of toilet rolls.
and a girl riding pillion holding an umbrella over her boyfriend’s head.
Motorbikes fill up most of the roadways and footpaths. On the footpaths people sit on their bikes. Eat on their bikes and socialize on their bikes. Sometimes they even sleep on their bikes.