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Just some amazing photos of modern day Ha Noi Vietnam

28 Mar

    ‘Living Hanoi’ Series by Joseph Gobin Delves Into the Capital’s Eccentricities

    Friday, 21 March 2025.

    For many of us, images of rice paddies and conical hats have grown insipid as a consequence of overuse. Yet in the following collection, French photographer Joseph Gobin trains his lens on what’s often unobserved — an artist, caked in plaster, creates a mold of himself just as Gobin forms his own image of the young man; a couple watch a film in the shade of their umbrella, the most intimate of theaters; in a school playground, onlookers appear like film directors while enjoying the subtle tension of a volleyball tournament. 

    As Ansel Adams once said, even in a landscape photo “there are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.” In Gobin’s images, his gaze focuses on endearing or touching aspects of Vietnamese culture with affection, a caring antithesis to the likes of Vietnamese Cursed Image.

    Stripped of visual clichés and taken on an atypical camera, the images gain a tender vitality and quirky appreciation for contemporary Vietnam. Not all were taken in the capital, but all cherish the earnestness of Vietnam. And yes, that includes the swan boats in Vinhomes Riverside. 

    Take a look below:

    A couple watches a laptop video on the street, beneath an umbrella. 

    Butchering a pig while it’s still drooped over a Honda Dream. Also known as “slow-smoking meat.”

    A contemporary artist makes a mold of his body for an upcoming exhibition. 

    Motorbike traffic couples in the French Quarter. 

    Ladies dressed in áo dài stay in the shade. 

    An archetypal Hanoian street ninja with long-sleeved top, sunglasses and mask for camouflage. 

    For these discarded fans, an occasional breeze gently spinning their blades is the only reminder of their former life. 

    Spectators watch a volleyball tournament in Vũ Yên Village in a scene reminiscent of a film set. 

    The worst-ever attempt at hiding a motorbike? Photo taken in Hòa Bình Province. 

    Waiting to catch a train back to Hanoi from Đà Nẵng. 

    A gang of brothers in the far north. 

    Traditional style meets modernism at Pà Cò Market.

    Waiting. 

    Boris Zuliani creating images using 50×50 wet plates between Da Nang and Hoi An. 

    A swan boat lingers beside the grandiloquence of a Vinhomes Riverside villa. 

    A portrait from Gobin’s face mask series. 

    A contemporary dancer poses for a photoshoot. 

    It’s never too late to get fit. 

    Guess who won the most games?

    Contemporary Hanoi in disco hues. 

    Love and peace John

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    The Saigon Connection – A novel by John Arthur Cooper

    26 Mar

    You speak French, Uncle Sam needs people like you! Ludovic Connod wasn’t ready to fall in love, but he did. Corsica and it’s mysteries. France and it’s secret resistance. The Vichy, the Occupied Zone where mother lived in her elegant apartment using her ‘green joy’ to remain in her past. The OSS. The CIA and it’s shady psychotic substance activities. Berlin, it’s grey cold rain and world of deceptions. Saigon, the ‘Paris of the East’, captivating and fascinating, dragging in people who changed the world. Not because they planned to but because they followed their feelings, good and bad. Silvester the dog and Dennis the Donkey! His father would have loved them. But now he’d had enough!

    Available on Amazon Kindle paperback –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B2J26JWG

    E- Format – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B2P9RWXJ

    ‘In My White Room With Black Curtains Near The Station’. (A novel by John Arthur Cooper – bringing together ‘Subject to Status’ and it’s sequel ‘Black Nothing’ and ‘The Ten Bob Notes’ and it’s sequel ‘When Jonny Comes Marching Home.”)

    23 Mar

    E-Format –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08XTRLH39

    Paperback- https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08XTHYW75

    Behind the walls of wealth and privilege, darkness waits. At Luggala, an estate of inherited grandeur, Calypso Fortnum-Guinness drowns her loneliness in whisky and fading memories. Her husband has vanished in a jet that never returned, her lover has taken his own life, and her son is raised not for her love, but for the family’s legacy. Surrounded by scheming relatives and suffocated by expectation, she clings to the past—even as her future slips away. Meanwhile, Joel Leonard Flower, drifting between the shadowy reaches of addiction and the grip of government operatives, fights to keep control of his own identity. Betrayed, manipulated, and used, he finds himself locked inside the corridors of power and rehabilitation, where every choice comes with a price. In My White Room is a haunting tale of love and betrayal, wealth and ruin, addiction and survival. For readers who savor literary fiction steeped in psychological depth, family secrets, and the quiet violence of human frailty, this novel offers a story as intoxicating as it is unforgettable.

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    When Jonny Comes Marching Home. A sequel to The Ten Bob Notes

    18 Mar

    E-Format- https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08JB3PX9K

    Paperback –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08JDTNVK5

    It was behind him, he’d got away with it. He’d do it again if he had to. Now he was on the up, out of the street into the skies. Of course Jonny needed some help, they didn’t show you how to use a fish knife or a salad fork at his school, it was more flick knives and fags. Mum wasn’t coping well without dad so he had to make sure she was OK. Then life started getting difficult. Phill got cancer, he confessed and Harry got out of gaol. The Police didn’t want egg on their face so they had to do some digging to cover their backs. Not too much but once you open that bottle, the genie pops out and doesn’t want to go back in. He might have to do it again.

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    The Ten Bob Notes – The best part time dance band in the Black Country —- Just Bostin!

    14 Mar

    E-Format –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00F2956LM

    Paperback – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1730944132

    The Ten Bob Notes by John Arthur Cooper is a novel set in the 1950s, centered around a part-time dance band in the industrial region of Black Country, England. The story follows the lives of the band members, who come from various backgrounds and face personal struggles.

    The band, made up of characters like Frankie, a “Ted” with a penchant for risky dealings, and Syd, a clarinet player mourning his lost soulmate, reflects a spectrum of post-war working-class life. As the band performs old-time dance music, their individual stories unfold, showing how music offers them an escape from the gritty realities of industrial life. There’s a focus on each character’s flaws and aspirations, from Jack’s obsession with his motorbike to Harry’s battle with alcohol.

    The novel explores the way the characters’ lives intertwine with the backdrop of the changing cultural landscape in Britain, marked by the lingering effects of the industrial revolution.

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    Black Nothing! The place you go when there’s nowhere else!

    12 Mar

    Joel is happily living with Janey on her farm in Mid-Wales when his unconventional past careers’ back into his life. His mother is on the verge of death when he’s arrested. Incarceration in prison exposes him to a new level of society, new people and new habits that drastically change his life. His quandary is when, and to whom should he disclose the circumstances of his predicament. He chooses badly and coupled with the untimely intervention of fate, remains in prison. Eventually he’s removed and given an illusion of freedom as Her Majesty’s Government makes him an offer he can’t refuse. His task sees him travel to Nepal and Vietnam. One location leading to the other as dilemmas multiply into a personal morass of conflicting feelings, emotions and necessities.The dry dust of Kathmandu reflected against the soaking humidity of the Mekong Delta. Extreme poverty reflected by wealth and privilege. Bizarre surreal experiences that take him to see sights few people have ever seen. Sadhu’s and burning bodies. High peaks. Snake swallowing drum majors at funeral ceremonies. It was as if death surrounded him. Experiences and new perceptions of life impacted strongly on him. Making his simplistic mission anything but! New people entered his life. All were not what he expected. His return home was hopeful, supported by his ‘payment’ Joel hopes for a conventional life. One more simple task in England and his life could resume its uneventful course. The green bleakness of the Marches comforts him as mundane normal people reappear in his life. The rattle of trains. The lilting Welsh voices ease him back home. Once home he finds again that nothing is simple as he descends into a whirlwind downward spiral triggered by awful events. Joel searches and ponders how anyone who is good can do so many bad things. Is there anyone he can truly rely on?

    Available on Amazon Kindle

    E-Format- https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007Q92ESY

    Paperback-https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1790741319

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    Subject to Status – A book by John Arthur Cooper

    8 Mar

    We all have a Status! Or do we?

    A fictional novel set against the backgrounds of life on the lower deck of British aircraft carrier in the 1960’s and the emerging new age eco minded pot smoking hippy culture. The galvanizing catalyst is the UK defense establishment. At that time, ruthlessly creating people with no recorded identity to carry out their bidding. Deliberately targeting the vulnerable vacuum of the ‘flower power’ era. Ambitious ruthless patriotic ‘Civil Servants’ eagerly exceed the boundaries of state involvement. Using the police and the Criminal Justice System as a tool of coercion they create expendable people. Persons with no recorded identity who could be threatened and forced to carry out illegal government tasks under the shadow of their own unnoticed disappearance should they refuse. Leonard Flower Welham a young sailor drawn by the glamour and adventure of the Fleet Air Arm. Roaring powerful dangerous flying machines. Alien and foreign places and cultures. Grey unstoppable warships that policed the world’s oceans and offered a safe home. A voyage of discovery as he changed from a boy to a man. In the mid-sixties he is drafted to join HMS Bulwark. The ship is undergoing a refit in Plymouth dockyard. He is confronted with its sheer magnitude and majestic presence. Climbing aboard up the steep gangway he enters a special world of smells, sensations, sights, sounds and the beginning of the trip of his life. Joel. Born in a damp Yurt in a green wet valley in Mid-Wales to a thin depressed hippy eternally searching for her own happiness. Her low self-esteem restricting her to abusive relationships leading to her coerced insemination and a boy child. He was to grow to be the only thing of true value in her life. Joel spends his happy free childhood unfettered by the expectations of school and conventional society. Accepting his alternative life as nothing unusual he is taught by his own curiosity and associations with people who knew the answers to his questions and who could teach him what he needed to know. The lives of the two young men come together. Life becomes familiar and normal. Friendships develop, fun is shared and enjoyed. The eastern world is paraded before them to be dipped into and experienced whilst having the safety of a floating ‘England’ to run back to. All this time Joel cannot escape the lurking incredible officialdom. Their awful instruction and the dislike for himself and his own weak compliance.

    Available on Amazon Kindle in E-format https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004JHYMOU

    And Paperback –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1790739144

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    Phew! Just in time for Christmas!

    4 Dec

    Phew! Just in time for Christmas!
    “The Garage”
    It was no man’s land. A place where rural England dripped quietly into the welcoming soft green folds of Wales. A place where community and authority were symbiotic in achieving the tranquil times of life. Births, deaths, marriages, love affairs, defeats and victories came and went with the reliable seasons. Peace was only shattered by intruders, outsiders who didn’t understand how things worked and Irish Travellers who fully understood how things worked. Boring into society like a maggot, sucking out nutrition before moving on, giving nothing back. The Doyle family were regular maggots, knocking for Antiques, selling dodgy three piece suites, resurfacing drives that didn’t need it and repairing roofs that weren’t broken, leaving bewildered old people, old furniture and the smell of toilets behind them wherever they went. Their culture was closed, no one moved outside it.
    Prendergast Price ran the old garage in the centre of the village. He fixed everything for everyone, for a bit of cash of course. His nephew Jerome was the local Bobby, between them they oiled the wheels of Evenchurch and it’s surrounds. Jerome wasn’t married but he might as well have been, Damsel was the only woman he would ever love and she existed in another world. They tried to pair him up, marry him off all the time but he was a lost cause. Uncle Pren became a Magistrate, a Justice of the Peace, a pillar of Society but they killed his dogs Andy and Flo. He didn’t like that.

    Available on Amazon Kindle
    Paperback https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DP7LT7GC
    E-Format https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DP4X24MV

    SaigonSighs – 112 “Here in my Car ” Gary Numan 1979 “I feel safest of all, I can lock all my doors.

    3 Nov

    Back in Time to the 1990s, When Vintage Renault Goélette Roamed Vietnam

    Thursday, 24 October 2024. Written by Saigoneer.

    A sturdy, stately vehicle roamed Vietnam’s city streets and rural roads not too long ago.

    Originally designed in the late 1940s and re-branded as the Renault Goélette in 1959, this durable model of light van was conceived with the support of the French Ministry of Industrial Production for various transport purposes following World War 2.

    The French Renault motor company was founded in 1899 and closely supported France’s many military exploits over the years including colonial expansions. Not surprisingly, many of the vehicles found their way to Vietnam, where they found new civilian use following reunification. As these photos featured on RedsVN and taken from Flickr user Ian Lynas reveal, people found them to be particularly useful for moving citizens and goods on regular routes. 

    A Renault Goélette parked at the bus station in Huế in 1996.

    In France, the Renault Goélette were officially replaced by an alternate line of larger light trucks in May 1965. They remained in use in southern Vietnam well into the 1990s however. You are very unlikely to catch sight of one here today, but they remain popular amongst a niche group of global collectors.

    A really nice 1950’s Peugeot

    Have a peek at the dependable transports captured in 1996 below:

    Painted white and red, this Renault Goélette cruises along the Đà Nẵng–Vĩnh Điện route.

    A man watches this one pass on the Đà Nẵng–Hội An route. 

    A really nice VW Kharman Ghia

    The model seems noticeably out of place compared to the other larger buses used at the time. 

    The strong, flat roof made it ideal for stacking personal goods, products, and commercial goods.

    A secret Camaro SS

    Depending on the specific version, the Renault Goélettes could run on gas or oil.

    Some of the regular routes offered pretty stunning scenes of the countryside.

    As the open doors and windows of this loaded van reveal, they were not air-conditioned.

    When you really wanted a LandRover but the bank manager / computer says NO!

    [Top image features a van used for a route running in from Huế

    Soon, when Mr. Musk (AKA Emperor Ming) and his A.I. powered humanoid Robots take over our world we wont be allowed to drive, clutches and gears will be consigned to history and using petrol will be considered an anti-social act! We need Flash Gordon!

    Love and peace John.

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    SaigonSighs – 111. “The ordinary things apply- as time goes by” 1942 film Casablanca. – Dooley Wilson. How will history look upon our stewardship of our planet as our time goes by? Some lovely black and white photos of life in simpler times. (Not necessarily better times).

    20 Oct

    The famous Cassini Probe shot of Earth – our home – taken from Saturn’s rings.

    The Hustle and Bustle of Hanoi Streets in the 1950s

    Chaotic streets and bustling markets, Hanoi in the 1950s was not much different than it is now.

    Sure there were less cars and motorbikes back then, and the air quality was probably much better. But these black and white photos show that the spirit of the capital is very much the same. Through these photos, one can almost hear the cacophony of life on the streets and feel that familiar sense of being lost in the crowd.

    let’s visit the past, strolling by the Old Quarters and meeting the vendors at Đồng Xuân market through these photos below.

    Vendors on Đồng Xuân.

    Đồng Xuân Market.

    Why such beauty in this place?

    Tràng Tiền Street.

    Tràng Tiền, Hàng Bài, Hàng Khay intersection.

    Basket weavers.

    More basket weavers.

    For your woodenware needs.

    and I don’t have a wooden heart

    Blankets for when it’s cold.

    Pottery shops.

    Offerings for the ancestors.

    This is still a very ‘alive’ tradition in Vietnam. There is no ‘official’ religion but unofficially it’s a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism and ancestor worship. Every Tet holiday family graves are cleaned, painted and offerings of flowers and food placed.

    Pots and pans.

    The iconic cone hat.

    It’s called a Non La.

    Phở vendor.

    Pho – pronounced phurr, is probably the most popular street food in Vietnam. Currently it will cost between 1.50 to 2.00 UKP’s and a bowl will keep you going all-day. It comprises of noodles and thinly sliced morsels of beef along with herbs and vegetable leaves all in a hot broth made from boiling beef bones. Delicious!

    Learning to sew.

    Trung Liệt Pagoda.

    Street food.

    On the left looks like ‘Binh Bao’ a white rice based soft dough containing minced and herb infused pork and often a quail egg.

    Metalware shop.facebook sharing button

    Humanity seems to be on the cusp of massive and frighteningly quick changes mainly due to A. I. Humanoid robots doing boring dangerous work, driving a car will become a thing of the past. Personalised treatment for cancer. Changes to your baby’s DNA to remove potential diseases. Teachers will disappear, information instantly available, languages instantly translated, Cash will go, and maybe in a hundred years from now we may need permission from an authority to die! But hey, at the moment we’re ok! we can still fire bullets, aim bombs, send very fast missiles and kill people. I’ve forgotten why! Maybe it’s because rich people with lots of shares in Arms Manufacturing Companies can get richer! Yes that must be it!

    Love and peace, john

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