I finally saw In Bruges when it got a limited release here this week. I had no idea it was out and so I was delighted to spot a showing as I was killing time yesterday afternoon.
I was crying with laughter are more than one point. Loved it.
This morning was dull and grey and rainy in Byron Bay. So I went to see The Dark Knight and it was simply fucking awesome.
All the hype around Ledger’s Joker plays out right there on the screen. I don’t know about an Oscar but he most certainly wins “Best Magic Trick Ever”, nothing else even gets a look in.
If it rains tomorrow, I may just have to go again.
Do you remember the first time you had your heart broken? I remember mine. It happened in Dublin in 1999 but like an idiot I didn’t learn from my mistakes and I went back for more and more. There were so many broken promises and so much unfulfilled potential. Years pass by, my heart mends and indeed breaks again a few times along the way and now once again with hope in my heart I go running back into the arms of George Lucas. I wish I could tell you that I’m done, it’s over and I’ll never be caught again. I can’t. I know, I just know as soon as I see a trailer for the Star Wars TV show that I’ll be excited. I just know that when the next Indiana Jones trailer comes along (though of course it’ll be a Shia LaBeouf movie with a two minute cameo by Ford) and they play the music, I know that I’ll be looking forward to seeing it.
Some things you just can’t learn. George Lucas has learnt how to make good trailers, trailers that promise so much (Darth Maul! Duel of the Fates!) and yet delivers so little. I was wary of Indy but the trailer wasn’t bad and the word of mouth wasn’t too bad though to be fair with the V down and the limited net access I hadn’t got much to go on. There were some good moments of course but as soon as you see that first prairie dog, you just know that something is going to go wrong. I gave up at the Tarzan scene. That was when I knew there was no hope for the rest of the movie. I didn’t actually think it could get worse but that George, he’s always got something else for us!
Alright third time is the charm.
Hanoi is a terrifying place.
It’s full of motorbikes. It’s actually full of motorbikes. In many places you cannot walk on the path because it’s covered with parked bikes. You have to walk on the street where you are taking your life in your hands amongst a sea of bikes. I can’t remember a time where I feared for my life more than I did when I want for a walk earlier. It’s astounding.
So country number two. I flew into Hanoi from Bangkok this morning on Nok Air. For all the Ryanair comparisons I’d heard, I have never seen a cleaner more friendly airline. For all I knew from the state of the plane, this morning was it’s first flight off the production line. Not only that but they obviously have given thought to their staffing policies and thoughts that’d be illegal in any place that has any sort of equality laws. So bonus points there. They’d have gotten the extra bonus points if the crew were actually wearing original Star Trek uniforms but the skirts were a tad too long.
So a grand flight and then a taxi into the city centre. I think I got ripped off again but I’m so beyond giving a fuck when it all adds up to pennies. The hotel is lovely. It’s exactly what you expect if you think French colonial Vietnam. I’m sure it’s not authentic but it looks great and while a tad small is very comfortable. So I went for a quick walk and found out that there isn’t actually much to do in Hanoi. I was flicking through a guidebook earlier and I had been struck that most of it’s 10 landmarks to see weren’t actually landmarks so much as things to do. There are, it seems, only about three sights and I’m staying right next to one of them so I did that already today. I’ll go and check out the Mausoleum of course and the “Hanoi Hilton” which is now a museum and I’ll take a wander with the camera but I suspect it’s going to be a quiet couple of days pre-tour. There is an amazing lack of Western brands around here. While BK and McD’s weren’t all over the place in Bangkok there were still a good few of them around, here I haven’t seen a single store name that I know. The only brand that seems to be common is Nokia.
So a late lunch/dinner out and now I’m taking it easy. It’s much cooler here than in Bangkok. To the point of where I might actually want a light jumper if I go for a wander now as I’m planning to. There is a bar across the road which is about the only one I spotted in a couple of hours wandering so I might go take a look in there…though it’s a jazz bar and I’ve never managed to really get into jazz.
This is country number two on my itinerary. Just for context before this year, I had been to Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, USA, Canada and Japan. So with Egypt, this is my third for the year with lots more to follow. When I’m done, I’ll have been to over 30 countries which while it might sound like a small number, well it isn’t really and I think it’s pretty awesome.
There appears to be no wifi around here, secure or otherwise. Also a noticeable lack of internet cafe’s which were two a penny in Bangkok. I guess as it’s not a central hub it doesn’t get as many tourists as Thailand and so doesn’t need to cater to ‘em. I did notice a place I had marked down to try lunch in tomorrow had a sign up for free wi-fi for customers. It seems close by so I might just check that one out tomorrow or so. There isn’t even an option to plugin somewhere in the hotel which I am a little surprised by. Then again, I haven’t got a clue about the telecoms infrastructure in Vietnam!
In other news, well I’m pretty tired. I got almost no sleep last night for a number of reasons. Next time that I even suggest I’m looking forward to packing my bag I’m going to shoot myself. I think that a quick local wander and then an early night might be called for. Then tomorrow i can get up and get out with camera. See how all of that goes. At one end of the bar they have two exceptionally attractive young ladies playing what I assume is some traditional music. I’m sat at the other end of the bar as I didn’t really want to be sat here typing away while they were playing but this end has the TV which has just switched over from something local to Army of Darkness. The mind boggles.
Oh speaking of the mind boggling. Sit down, I have amazing news. Now are you sat down? Good. MTV Asia actually plays music! I know, I could barely believe it either. It reminds me of the good old days where the most non music you got on MTV was Bevis and Butthead and The Real World.
Somewhat related to that I think my most successful first date ever was to UCI in Coolock to see South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. Scoff as you may (and probably should) but it’s still a funny movie to this day. I laughed so hard and well I guess that if you spend the first couple of hours of a date with tears of laughter streaming down your face then the next few can’t really be bad. And, in fairness, they weren’t That was a good night. I can’t remember how long we went out for after that, it was a little while I think. Now was that out in 98 or 99? Hmm.
Anyway what got me thinking of that was Bevis and Butthead of course. The Halloween episode from sometime in the 90’s where I believe we see the debut of Cornholio cracked me up so much. I recall being on the floor of the playroom (now renamed as the TV room by my youngest sister) in hysterics. It still makes me smile to think about it. Ah those were the days though I don’t think I would want to watch it again…
Oh yes. I meant to do this before I left but I wasn’t very organised. So if you wish, please send me your postal address to one of my gmail accounts and I’ll send a postcard or trinket or something along those lines sometime over the next 12 months….maybe. I have some ready to go already, I just need to find a post box. I do know where the post office is so that’s on the list to check out tomorrow.
I’m reconsidering that walk already. The idea of another beer and then a lot of sleep is becoming more and more appealing. Just means that I need to get a proper breakfast in the morning and make up for a couple of missed meals in the past day and a bit.
Ooooh here is something that I wanted to ask the internet rather urgently this evening. How wide-spread is French here? Most menu’s and tourist signs so far have been in Vietnamese, English and French and I don’t know if French is widespread among the people living and working here. If it is, then I could at least feel like I was making a small effort. It’d make me feel better! I think I’ll be in Vietnam for another three weeks touring around so I should be well able to get my spoken French back enough to work through anything I could need. It’s already flooding back just from reading a menu earlier. Quite the opposite with my Irish which at this point is non-existent. I was trying to type out a basic phrase in an email earlier today and I couldn’t for the life of me think how to start spelling it. I suspect I mangled it but sure oh well.
Yeah actually that walk is now out. Back to my room and a little bit of music and a few more pages of my book and then sleep glorious sleep. So much for great adventuring huh?
Oooh wait, I see a computer or two at the back of the room. Perhaps there is net access! Will go and check it out in a moment! It would be handy to take a quick scoot on Lonely Planet and grab mail etc for a second and by handy I mean it will keep me going until my real fix…
I guess that’ll just have to be part of the world for the next while. No internet and none of the luxuries it comes with. It’s been alright in the hotels so far, both have had BBC World which despite a whole load of shite repeated over and over gives at least some news headlines on a semi-regular basis. That’ll be another thing gone from the weekend. So is no news good news?
21:02 Hanoi - Vietnam Wednesday March 19
Here is a short list of things which are awesome.
1) There Will Be Blood. In fact, it is hugely beyond awesome. I cannot remember the last time I had a cinematic expierence quite like that. I think I want to see it again this weekend.
2) Lost season 4 episode 5. I swear when they do a Desmond episode they almost, almost make quality of The Wire.
3) The new Iron Man trailer. Until now I did not care. I hoped for an acceptable if hokum superhero movie. Now I think it might actually not just be good but be really really good. Don’t break my heart Jon Favreau!
4) Gone Baby, Gone. I like Dennis Lehane a lot, I really like his Kenzie-Gennaro books so I have been wanting to see this movie for sometime. Due to the McCann case, the movie has been held back in Europe…a nice way to encourage piracy huh? Anyway excellent movie, hugely enjoyable and pretty true to the book. I’m not entirely sold on Affleck and Monaghan but at the least they did okay.
5) Leap years. Yay the 29th of February.
6) Sleeping in a bed…goodnight.
I’ve seen two movies in the past couple of days…it’s been quiet around here. First up was Jumper. I hadn’t intended to go and see this after hearing some poor to moderate reviews from friends but I had managed to get the wrong times for the movie I wanted to see and it was the only thing showing. So having said that, it was better than I expected. It was fun enough but with plot holes the size of Mars throughout. I think it’d probably work a little better as a TV show.
The second movie was Rambo. In a way it was just like Cloverfield, you get exactly what the trailer promises. No more and no less and that was just fine by me. It was stupidly over the top stupid carnage and I enjoyed it for just that. My only complaint was the obvious speeding up of some footage in the final battle scenes but the rest of it was perfect for what it was. Most enjoyable.
So after both movies I decided to walk home from Swords down along the waterfront. It’s a nice enough walk once you get about 10 minutes into it. Of course I was doing it at night so it was dark but with headphones on it was just fine. My soundtrack for the moment is Okkervil River’s The Stage Names. The walk is about 4 1/2 miles so an hour and a little bit door to door. Enough time to get a full rotation of the album in and then another couple of tracks. It’s good for thinking.
And I’ve been thinking about a lot…sometimes too much. I’m rereading the two phonebooks of Dave Sim’s Cerebus and there is a panel where Cerebus threatens to lobotomize his brain for thinking. I’ve had a little bit of that the past couple of nights.
Anyway some stuff I have been thinking about. It struck me in the past week…okay that’s a lie. It struck me while I was drunk on Saturday night. Lets back up a bit here. On Saturday I went to see Ireland play Scotland in the 6 Nations match in Croke Park. We won comfortably which was grand. I went with one of my uncles and his son. So after the match myself and my cousin both having folks to meet for drinks in town figured we may aswell team up to fight crime. Cue 3am in the basement of Hogans. At one point in the evening I had a complete brain to mouth failure (rare as that is!) and was unable to pronounce the word collaborate. I could barely get the “col” out. I gave up and said something else instead (it’s okay, I don’t think anyone noticed) but the next day I realised that I haven’t had any of the problems with loosing words that I was struggling with at the end of last year. So that’s obviously good news but a little bit of reinforcement of my internet diagnosis of stress!
Saturday night ended up fairly late and slightly messy as you may have gathered. I don’t think poor Sarah was quite longing for the days of V comic conversation but I’m sure the thought crossed her mind more than once. The night bus got me home safe in the end but of course this meant that most of Sunday became a write off. Oops.
Sunday evening saw more drinks in town along with a flying visit to Eddie Rockets and then a settling in the Bank for the rest of the night. Interesting evening for conversation. ‘Twas both very varied and at the same time not so. I had more on that but I don’t now. Hmm.
Alright I’m going to London in the morning and I have to be up earlyish. So I’m going to leave you with this gem from Reginald:
There’s no shame in holding onto grief, as long as you make room for other things, too.
I’m somewhat hungover today. Last night was meant to be a quiet drink with a newly arrived V-ster (not that she’d be too happy to read that!) and it turned out to be lots of quiet drinks and another 1.30am finish in Messer Maguires. Oops. Still a good night out, it seemed to be 80’s night or that’s what the DJ was going for and so there was tons of classic Michael Jackson which is always a good thing. No whiskey this week which was perhaps a bonus.
Another taxi ride home and it was looking good but of course once we got to Malahide there was total cloud cover and no sign of the moon at all. So straight to bed somewhat disappointed, I had camera kit already and I was hoping to get something interesting from it. Oh well, I’ll be in Asia for one later in the year, hopefully I’ll get something then.
Other stuff recently, lets see. Had a pretty good day out on Sunday climbing Bray head and wandering for a bit with Trev. Good fun, it’s been a long time since I was out that way. Best I can recall it would have been with the girlfriend at the same in early 1999. A long long time ago. Not much in the way of photos, it was fairly foggy and a bit overclouded so not much at all. Oh well..again.
Another day headed out to Howth for lunch and some photos with my mother, neither were great. The food in the Wheelhouse seems to have taken a turn for the worse and again the weather wasn’t great, not much light, and so not many photos.
Quiet one today as you may have imagined. I have watched two movies, very different but both enjoyable. The first was Ed Wood which I have been wanting to see for a long time but just didn’t get around to it. The cast is, of course, superb and amazingly Sarah Jessica Parker isn’t annoying. That has to be a first! Second up was 28 Days Later which was good fun and again with a decent cast. Good to see Idris Elba doing something a little high profile.
I finished off the second and third seasons of Oz over the past week. It’s not as good viewing the second time around, the flaws with some of the acting really stand out. I’ll work through the fourth season before I go I think.
Speaking of going, I’m going to London next week. Just for two nights. One night is a party for some more leavers and I want to make that. I also need to get some visas in person so I’ll get them sorted. Hurrah. Then just trying to figure out how I fly out. I’m leaving on the 11th late at night from London and I have drinks on the 8th also in London. So I’m trying to figure out whether to stay on the floor in London with my sister for 9/10 or if it’s worth the 30 odd quid it’d cost to get back to Dublin. Will figure that one out soon.
I’m feeling more and more happy with myself with this trip. Having talked with Trev about it in a good bit of detail, one of my cousins who did similar twice in the past 10 years and then a lot of talk of travel with Sarah last night, I’m just a little more prepped in my head. This is of course a good thing, now I just need to get my bags all ready and I’ll be set. Getting there though.
I may, possibly…or perhaps almost certainly have gone over my budget for the year. It’s not that I’d forgotten but I just hadn’t really taken into account that I’ll have some payments to still be making in London while I’m away for things like storage and the contract that’ll still be on my phone. That’s going to add up to a little over 12 months plus and I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that. Still, will all be fine and having thought about it a little I have come to the consideration of fuck it, it’s all going to be worth it!
I’m way behind on emails and indeed other things like that. It’s one of the downsides of not having a job. One of the first things I’d do every morning was to check email and reply back to people or even send a mail. I haven’t done much of that in the past two months or so and I have such a backlog in my inbox that I just need to sit down and get into but really just haven’t been feeling like it.
So lets see. I dunno what else there is. It’s kinda quiet but at the same time not at the moment. I’m sleeping a lot. There have been nights recently where I’ve had 10-12 hours sleep which is nice.
Oh yeah that new Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles show is pretty good. I’ve enjoyed the first few episodes a good deal.
Now I’m going to fill out some visa paperwork and listen to the glory that is the Spree’s first album.