Saigon market is the best place to start a tour of the city

The Ben Thanh Market is the best place to begin a tour of Saigon, the capital of the former South Vietnam and currently the largest city in the unified Vietnam.

It’s walking distance from the Pham Ngu Lao area, the haven of backpackers in the city now called Ho Chi Minh.

The market is located in District 1, the city center, where you can find Saigon’s main attractions such as the Fine Arts Museum, Saigon City Hall, Rex Hotel, Saigon Opera House, Notre Dame Cathedral, Post Office and the Reunification Palace.

Ben Thanh is itself a major tourist attraction, and personally I consider it the number one must-see destination in Saigon.

So even if you decide to not go very far away from the market, you can still do a lot of things to have fun.

A suggested activity is to try to cross the street to reach the traffic circle where the Tran Nguyen Han statue is situated.

Major Saigon streets such as Tran Hung Dao and Le Loi meet at the Tran Nguyen Han Statue

I’m telling you, it’s not always easy to be a pedestrian in Saigon, especially in this place where several major thoroughfares converge.  

You can also eat authentic Vietnamese food offered in the market itself.

Food in the market is cheaper than in the restaurants nearby

There are also a few restaurants just outside the market. One such restaurant is Pho 2000, where former US President Bill Clinton is said to have eaten during his Saigon visit.  

From left to right: my mother, my mother's friend and my sister's mother-in-law

And since Ben Thanh is a market, one obvious activity is to do some shopping. The stores inside the market close down at about 6 or 7 PM, to give way to the night market outside.

Ben Thanh night market

Be conscious of your background… be very conscious

Seriously:

Dog ‘refugee’ feels at home in my room

I’m happy that the dog “refugee” that we have in the house right now seems to be enjoying her stay in my room.

I think Ganda already feels at home.

Less than a week ago she was uprooted from her house in Manila suburb Marikina City due to the onslaught of typhoon Ondoy (international name Ketsana).

On her first day in my room, she stayed under the bed most of the time. She only came out to eat, drink and relieve herself.

Now, she wants me to rub her belly!

And she doesn’t seem to mind each time I hold her in my arms.  

Slowly but surely, she’s returning to her old self: a playful, energetic and trusting dog.

A September to remember

I will never forget September 2009, especially its first day and last day.

September 1 – my worst day, ever

September 30 – my best day, so far

That’s all.

Dog displaced by typhoon seeks refuge in my room

Ganda is a Filipino term for beauty

I have a furry, four-legged guest who’s currently staying in my room.

She’s Ganda, the dog of my sister’s parents-in-law, whose house in a Manila suburb was messed up by typhoon Ondoy (international name Ketsana) over the weekend.

The floodwater has receded, but my sister said it could take at least a month to clean up and repaint the house.

That means her parents-in-law, along with their dog, couldn’t live there for at least a month.

People can stay in hotels, but their pets can’t. That’s why Ganda is staying in our house, in my room to be exact.

Memories

I first met Ganda in December last year, when my mother, sister, brother-in-law and his parents had dinner in the Marikina City house to celebrate the birth of Christ.

She was such a carefree dog then. She even played with me, and treated me like I was her long-lost master. And it was our first meeting.

She's camera-shy

Now, she just stays under the bed most of the time.

It seems I’m looking at a different dog.

She has definitely changed a lot since I first saw her nine months ago.

Perhaps the sight of the rising floodwater has terrified her. Or maybe it’s because she misses her masters. Or she’s probably trying to understand what’s happening around her.

Whatever the reasons are, I hope to see the energetic and playful Ganda again.

And I hope that she feels at home in my room.

Typhoon leaves trail of damage in the Philippines

Felled tree and collapsed wall hamper water flow of a creek in Manila suburb Quezon City

Typhoon Ondoy (international name Ketsana) has left the Philippines, but parts of the national capital region and surrounding areas are still reeling from the effects of the weather disturbance, which is said to have brought more rains than hurricane Katrina.

I was not affected by the typhoon because it was my day off when it unleashed its fury on Metropolitan Manila and nearby provinces last Saturday. I didn’t have to leave the house.

In addition, I live in an area in Quezon City that’s not prone to flooding.

Passport of my sister's mother-in-law was soaked in floodwater

Sadly though, the Marikina City home of my brother-in-law’s parents was submerged in water at the time, forcing them to flee.

They sought refuge in his uncle’s two-storey house, also in Marikina City, a suburb of Manila.

The floodwater in their house has now subsided. My sister and her parents-in-law together with their household worker are cleaning up the mess left by the typhoon.

Amid the suffering brought about by the natural disaster, I hope that the Philippines will rise like a Phoenix.

Author of political economy of media book replies to my email

This week I received an unexpected email from Robert W. McChesney, author of the 2008 book “The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas.”

I never thought that a busy scholar like him would take the time to read an email from a total stranger and even reply to it. I felt really honored.

I emailed McChesney to thank him for writing the enlightening and entertaining book. I’ve rediscovered the joy of reading because of it.

Yes, I do read lots of stuff. Every day I read articles from various websites. Sometimes, I also read newspapers and magazines.

But reading a book is a totally different experience. It requires quite a long attention span from an individual.

The focus needed to read a book, and more importantly, understand its contents, has enabled me to engage in self-reflection and find some quiet moments for myself.

Hong Kong skyline is best viewed from the ‘stars’

Currently three out of the 20 tallest buildings in the world are in Hong Kong: Two International Finance Center, Central Plaza and Bank of China Tower.

These structures and more make the former British crown colony’s skyline one of the best in the world, if not the best.

Bruce Lee's star

The view from the Avenue of Stars, along the Victoria Harbor waterfront on Kowloon Peninsula, is particularly spectacular.

Stars

While on Hong Kong’s version of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, visitors can see some of the territory’s most famous tourist attractions: Victoria Peak, Victoria Harbor and of course, the Hong Kong skyline.

I won’t pretend to know all of the people whose names are engraved in the stars on the Avenue of Stars.

Three names stand out though: Bruce Lee, Jet Li and Jackie Chan. Who doesn’t know these martial artists anyway?

The Avenue of Stars is a tourists’ paradise – wherever they look there’s a subject worthy of being photographed.

Touring Kuala Lumpur with the whole family

Malaysian Parliament

My visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia was my first foreign trip with my mother and my sister. And so far, it’s been the only one.

We had another companion, my mother’s friend.

The friend of my mother’s friend (relationships are a little bit tricky sometimes) – a Malaysian citizen – served as our tour guide.

Getting around Kuala Lumpur was easy because we had a local in tow.

The guided tour was great in the sense that we saved time and some dough.

But it deprived me of that exciting “I’m lost” feeling.

For me, the best part of a trip is finding things on my own. 

I enjoy using a map and asking total strangers to locate a certain destination. I consider those activities a part of the learning process.

WordPress and After the Deadline join forces for better blogging

Matt of WordPress has pointed out that last week, WordPress users “published 1.4 million new blog posts, but … only ran the spell checker about 204 thousand times.”

He said there could be two possible explanations: “We’re all perfect writers or that we just forget to run the spell checker.”

Personally I don’t write directly on WordPress. I write first on MS Word and then run the spell checker there, before copying the text and pasting it into WordPress.

But with After the Deadline now on WordPress, I think I would be using the spell checker here more often. I’ve tried it once, and corrected “someone that.” Neat!

I may even use the WordPress spell checker for my non-blog works.