Nothing new to report. Here's a big pagoda.

In Uncharted Lands

This is District 2, which apparently is home to wealthy villas for foreigners. The view across the canal from the Ho Chi Minh Museum is nice--you see the illusion of forest lined streets. So one day I grabbed my binoculars and some water and started peddling.



I remember watching the ferries on the Saigon River last year from the roof of the Majestic Hotel. They lurched frighteningly in the current and I thought "wow, I'm glad I'm not on that thing." Now I know why--the entrance is on the side, and the ferry must spin 360 so we don't have to shuffle our scooters (or us few bikes) around. It's a short ride but fun, worth the 1000d ticket. On the other side it's the usual market sprawl with meats and fruits and who knows what for sale.

Quite suddenly the road gets choppy. On the right you see the unlovely Saigon river with the occasional quaint houseboat moored to a levy with hammock. On the other side--what the hell happened here? It looks like ground zero of some heart-wrenching catastrophe.And here's why. There are big plans in store for District 2. Though it's a lot faster to demolish houses than to build them.


Away from the coast is a beautiful countryside. And still within city limits.

I've seen many new birds here. few compare to this brown throated sunbird who was happy to sit there and preen for me. Birdwatching doesn't get much better than this.

And there's the new highway that will change everything. I find it a little sad, but I can understand the need for radical development. Ho Chi Minh is a thin sprawl, with every block a dozen self-serving villages. So it is great that they are starting to build vertically. They also have an opportunity to plan efficient public transportation. The plans look nice too, with large green spaces. Hopefully the sunbirds, prinias, coucals, yellow bitterns and paddyfield pipits won't have to move too far.

Worst bird call ever

I've been here for about 3 months and I've been haunted by a common bird call. It was a pretty awful bird call--loud, but as if it didn't really care--plaintive, if you will. With the bird 3 feet away and singing at my face, there was no way to locate it. So I'm very happy that finally the bird popped up.

And here it is--a plaintive cuckoo.

Actually, I saw the female earlier at the zoo, but females are very tough to identify.

It's hard to find an authority on Vietnamese birds. There lots of birds but Vietnam has the lowest ecological awareness. I'm trying to work with a limited photographic guide and a denser illustrated guide without range maps. Amazingly, googling Asian bird calls is absolutely fruitless.

I know that my 2 readers are not bird watchers, but I hope this will turn up in a google search so that others won't be confused by the plaintive cuckoo. Here is my rendition of its 2 calls:

Plaintive Cuckoo (UPDATE: Sadly, my rendition was long wiped from the net--maybe it was too good? Hear the actual call HERE.)

I'm considering being the one authority of Vietnam bird calls. It will be a lot of work, but I already have the album cover:

I wish you could see this

Dusk is my favorite time of day. You can see swifts playing Red Baron. With their darting around, perspectives get really funny--it appears that there are different sized swifts. The bats come soon after, much smaller than the swifts, flying like moths. Sometimes the swifts dive at them just for fun, or maybe they're mocking them. Soon the sky is filled with swifts and bats. And then, suddenly, the swifts stop playing and get to work. They woosh in tight figure eights, keeping an exact distance between each other as they decimate hordes of gnats and mosquitos.

You can hear the swifts during the day inside the gables on historic buildings, pagodas and churches. They sound like bats should sound like if only we could hear them.

One night we were lucky to see a Barn Owl on our daily walk by the canal. It perched on a sign right above our heads, swiveled its head around, and with a squeak took off like a huge phosphorescent ghost. There was no way of photographing it but I sure tried.

Last night no such luck. We were run over by drunks. Being run over by motorcycles isn't quite the same as being run over by cars, I'm happy to say.

Banh X

If anyone with a little nest egg is looking to start a new food craze in America, this is for you. Banh xeo is a pancake-type food which folds over shrimp and sprouts, and as if that wasn't enough, you take a piece and wrap it in lettuce with some fresh mint (and some other herbs, many of which are NOT suited to tourists) and dip it in sauce. The one above was handmade by Jenny's mom and is absolutely delicious.

Unfortunately, the original recipe calls for shrimp in the shell, which is a little hard to swallow. There is a large chain of restaurants with a nice bamboo-art motif that offers more fillings, like pork and squid, which breaks tradition in a much needed way. There are so many ways to Americanize it--someone steal this please. Elsewhere on this blog is the ancilliary Apple Snails appetizer, which is yummy but will frighten away all your customers.