Coming soon.....

Just got back from Vietnam and had an awesome time..

I got a little overexcited about my new 4 gig memory card and so I took over 500 pictures.. which I now regret as I painfully sort through a myriad of rocks, water, and buildings, all of which are completely identical an equally boring. Tonight I am just wading through that task, and then tomorrow I will begin to write about my trip, which is going to be broken up into 4 sections at the least. Halong Bay (1), Hanoi (2), Hoi Anh (3), and Saigon (4)

Just to get this part out of the way for my parents so they can comfort themselves with the thought that I am not just completely rotting my brain drinking with aussies (and americans) that I meet in hostels: Books I have read over the trip: The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Part of Volume II of Les Miserables which I bough instead of Vol I, and The Quiet American.

1 ) The Scarlet Pimpernel by ?? (some Baroness - I can't remember since I exchanged it for another book since I wasn't altogether crazy about it). It was good but a very superficial read with not much character development or believable characters. Other than the interesting historical side of it (set during the French Revolution) I would not recommend it.

2) The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, set in Medieval Paris (1482). I have no fucking idea how disney possibly managed to turn this into a happy ending. They did the exact same thing that they did with The Little Mermaid - managed to turn an amazing but twisted story into a sickly sweet happy ending movie stripping it of any meaning of beauty that hte original had. Back to the book though since I have become sidetracked by my rant- It was amazingly good, so good that I went out and bought Les Miserables (also by Hugo) the next day. I would recommend it to anyone as long as you are not expecting the sanitized PG version.

3) Les Miserables - Victor Hugo, primarily set during the Student Uprising of 1832

In my hurry to buy this in Hue I managed to only buy the second volume so I started on page 500 instead of page 1. So far it seems good, but seeing as I missed the first half and have no idea what is going on I am not really qualified to make this claim. Les Mis is my favorite musical so once I do get my hands on the first volume I will be very excited to see the difference between the Play and reality - one I have already found in the second volume, where Eponine makes her appearance. In the musical she is a pretty young girl, in the book she is old beyond her years, missing teach and with a voice destroyed by smoke and debauchery. Not exactly my romantic image of her.

4) The Quiet American - Grahm Greene. Set in Vietnam during the turnover from French colonial control to American involvement. Amazing book. It was probably made better by the fact that I was in Vietnam while I read it, but even aside from the historical component this book has characters that are disturbing because despite their jaded mindset there is a huge amount of truth behind their message.

Ok there, got that over with in one go so that the people who don't give a shit about lit or have no hope of having enough free time to read a book because of their job from hell don't have to wade through it to get to the good part about vietnam, because in all honesty, Vietnam is the shit and I hope everyone reads this and then goes there, preferably taking me with them.

Bed Time.

Ciao