6 Slightly Offbeat Shots from Julian
Tu and I headed up for a country visit today to Julian. Julian is a small town in the mountains that San Diegan’s flock to when it snows or they want Pie. It’s setup like an old western town and there are only one set of public restrooms in the town. And they charge you a quarter to use them. Trust me. They could use more.
Here are 6 slightly offbeat shots are on adventure into an off the beaten path town – Julian.
Strange Skies
I woke up today and the skies looked strange. That look that you see when there is either a fire or a big earthquake. I wasn’t sure why.
There was a small earthquake off the coast later in the day but I am not sure if that was it. What do you think, do you think the skies look strange?
Downtown Chicago
Its a beautiful place. Here is a black and white taken on a particularly cloudy morning. It rained later that day.
Welders
I kept seeing all these guys in Vietnam welding. They had lots of oil and dirt on their clothes and they were using these crude welders to sauter just about everything. I wanted to capture one of these guys with the bright welding light against their grimy dirty clothes. I think I caught it pretty well when I captured this guy.
Back Home
3 hour drive from Vinh Long to Saigon. 3 hour plane ride from Saigon to Taipei. 11 hour plane ride from Taipei to Los Angeles and a 3 hour car ride back to San Diego. 20 hours travel time and about 4 hours of downtime in airports. That’s a 24 hour trip and it sure is tiring but pretty miraculous in this day and age that one minute you can be on one side of the world and one day later on the other side. Pretty amazing.
Well we made it back home to San Diego. The weather is stormy and cold but I don’t mind because I missed the cold weather after sweating pretty much continuously for 2 weeks. It was a great trip visiting Tu’s family, seeing parts of the world that I have never seen before and getting a chance to visit several different very poor orphanages. I have lots of pictures to go through and develop that should give me a couple of weeks of editing time. It’s good to be back home with all the memories of a great trip.
Orphans wow the crowd
Traveling to a Buddhist Orphanage in Saigon we found some very well taken care of orphans that loved putting on a show for the people that came to visit them. This orphanage was well known and in a central part of the big city of Saigon. Other more remote orphanages that we visited were lucky to have 1 or 2 visitors a week. It was great to see these kids have so many visitors but kind of sad that the other orphanages were so poor and the kids so lonely.
Banh Mi
Banh mi which is pronounced pretty much the way it looks (Ban Me) is Vietnamese for bread. But Banh Mi in Vietnam most often means a typical french style baguette which was introduced to Vietnam by the French during the colonial period. There are so many excellent tasting Vietnamese dishes that are very influenced by the French but Banh Mi is by far one of the most original and delicious takes on Vietnamese food that you can find.
In Vietnam, Banh Mi stands are everywhere. Freshly baked crunchy baquettes are filled with freshly grilled pork, beef, chicken and crunchy vegetables. What makes the sandwiches unique is the flavor and the fact that they put hot peppers in the sandwiches. Imagine fresh crusty french bread with grilled meat and crunchy vegetables. It is a classic combination of french food (the baguette) with the Vietnamese twist (cilantro, peppers and fresh marinated carrots and vegetables)
To start with Banh Mi you need to make foot long baguettes. These baguettes were cheap in Vietnam. You could buy one for about 10 cents. You could also buy special recipe Banh Mi which are covered in sesame seeds and a sweet glaze. They were like slightly sweet donuts or sweet bread.
Once the freshly baked bread is prepared then the delicious meets are created. The lady below prepares freshly grilled pork kebabs over an open flame. The ground pork is flavored with Vietnamese spices and then grilled over flame until they are browned and deliciously awesome.
As the flames shoot up and grill the meats the wonderful smell starts to attract hungry people, and other photographers. This Japanese photographer saw what was happening and quickly came over to see what was being grilled.
Banh Mi are completely your own creation. You are presented with a wonderful variety of special and fresh ingredients and you tell the lady what you want on the sandwich. For my sandwich I kept it very simple – just meet a few vegetables.
The Banh Mi Lady whisk off the freshly grilled pork kebab onto the fresh bread. When they finish assembling the sandwich they cut it in half and usually wrap it in paper. This lady wrapped the sandwich in some sort of office paper that had business writing on it. They recycle everything here in Vietnam to save money. I think this sandwich cost about 50 cents. You could probably eat three delicious and nutritious meals a day in Vietnam for about a dollar.
After having one, you will want to have another. Tu headed back to get sandwiches for her family after having ours. The Sandwiches are very light so you can usually eat two of them if you get extra hungry. In San Diego we have great Banh Mi sandwiches. The best place to go is called K Sandwiches and it usually has a line out the door for people coming from all over San Diego. They are attracted by the very cheap price of the sandwiches but also because everything on the sandwiches is fresh and crunchy. You can check out K Sandwiches at http://www.ksandwiches.com/. They come highly recommended by me and everyone else.
Everyone’s an Entrepreneuer
At the end of the day he picks up his shop and carries it home. There are chairs, pots, pans, menus and business signs. He puts it in his front yard. He doesn’t pay rent and probably doesn’t have a business license but that doesn’t stop him. He just goes out and grinds out a living everyday. He probably had a good idea of what he wanted to sell, created a cart and started selling it on the street a few days later. You see almost everyone in Vietnam is an entrepreneur. Most people in the US are worried about getting a good job. Here in Vietnam the economy is so poor that people rely on themselves for the good job. If you ride a bike down the streets of any city or village in Vietnam, you will see that everyone has a business in the front of their house and they live in the back. It’s an inexpensive way to run a business and does not require hardly any capital to start up which is a good thing because credit is very scarce in Vietnam. For example, I have yet to visit any business here that takes a credit card. They just don’t do it. It’s a cash society.
