I mentioned in my first post about this trip that I had intended to visit Ha Long bay in 2020. My friend and I were going to stay there for a few days and take a boat trip out into the bay but it was scuppered by Covid and the place shut down just before we were due to go […]
One of the highlights of my photography tour was a boat trip on a lake to see how traditional fishing is done. I took hundreds of images, and found it extremely difficult to choose between them and be ruthless enough to discard most, but these are my favourites. The following morning we went out again for sunrise. People row using […]
Here’s a selection of images from a few hours spent photographing the tea pickers in Northern Vietnam. They pretty much ignored us and carried on with their work and weren’t self conscious at all. They must absolutely swelter underneath those face coverings. So young to be working in the fields 🙁 After we’d been photographing for a while we practiced […]
Wandering through a high mountain village one afternoon we descended on foot down a hill and into the clouds, following the sound of childish laughter until we arrived at what looked like the local creche. There are no qualified nursery workers here however, instead 3 or 4 young children were being looked after by a couple of girls who looked […]
Each Sunday morning a market takes place in Muong Hum. We spent 3 hours there and I was fascinated by the tribal people and the transactions taking place. It’s off the tourist trail, so there are no vendors touting souvenirs at visitors and it was very interesting to stand back, observe, and photograph the authenticity of it all. I think […]
Mountains and hills cover around two thirds of Vietnam and our photography tour was to the mountains in the north. The scenery was stunning, the air was a little cooler, and we felt as if we were seeing the ‘real’ Vietnam, instead of the popular tourist spots that can feel rather commercialised. Our focus (pardon the pun) was to be […]
After we had visited the incense village, we drove to another village to see the ancient art of making fish traps. On the way there we stopped at a home where they made rush mats, and below we see them being stencilled and trimmed. I can’t resist an old wall with traditional or old items hanging up. Fish traps are […]
Before our photography tour started, we added on a day trip from Hanoi. The drive time to our first destination was 1.5 hours, and we made a brief stop on the way to photograph a large area full of lotus flowers. One photo that showed the scene just didn’t have any impact, so I chose to concentrate on individual flowers. […]
Hanoi is a crazy busy city! We stayed in Old Town where the streets are narrow, and full of people pulling carts full of various items for sale, restaurants, cafés, spas, hotels, bicycles, scooters, motor bikes, cars, tourist buses, tourists on foot, locals, vegetable sellers, heat, and humidity! It’s almost impossible to walk on the pavements (sidewalks for my American […]
I last visited Vietnam in February 2020, immediately before the World shut down. My best friend from my school days and I had recently turned 60, and we wanted to go on a bit of an adventure to mark the milestone. There were mutterings around the world of a certain virus turning into a pandemic but that wasn’t going to […]
