Goodbye Vietnam - Hello (again) Cambodia

this will possibly be the last update for a couple of weeks as i am not sure which sites i can access when in china (1st-16th july).

following my phone theft in hanoi i pretty much stayed in the local area, working on a new piece for the performance at atk using recordings from argentina, australia, cambodia and vietnam. i did meet with luong hue trinh once more -we attended a pretty awful contemporary dance show at the youth theatre, and then went for some pho cuon (i think that's how you spelll it) and some other kind of noodle that is almost like tofu, deep fried and delicious! a lovely evening - thanks trinh.

and the next day i met with trang nguyen and her friend for lunch - more gorgeous noodles and beef -again no idea what  this dish is called. maybe you guys can help me out here! trang is working with the onion cellar guys who arranged the concerts in hanoi and saigon for me.

so the concert began with me giving a short description of what is i do, and then i began to play, using sound exciters to play sounds from the back of the room as well as a little speaker device i bought in the market in hanoi.this little wonder takes micro sd cards and charges via usb -very handy for moving sounds around a room, and all for less than £10! the response to the show was great,especially as i think 99% of the audience had never been to this kind of show before...and then trinh took me to a little place run by vietnamese once again for some pork and tongue noodle soup.

the next day i caught a flight to saigon, visited the same are emma and i stayed in but found a place for $9 a night which was perfect. the lady running the place warned me of the thieves and prostitutes many times - what kind of a person does she think i am?? in the evening khuong (one of the onion cellar - the other being hung, but he's in london right now..) came to the hotel to take me to meet giang, who i was to perform alongside, at his family's restaurant. i can't even begin to discuss the food here as there was so much and it was all good!

another day of work and then an evening out with khuong once again to visit the venue, la fenetre soleil. we attended a music quiz where two french guys played the intros to songs and the crowd have to shout out the band/artist playing. as you can imagine, it got pretty rowdy, but it was good fun. i even got two right!

and then it was the day of the concert. we arrived around 7 and giang and i set up and briefly soundchecked, and all the while people were coming in, sitting down, chatting, eating... i started to wonder if they would actually stop and listenng to the show. and then it was upon me, khuong introducing me and asking people to be quiet, close the eyes and listen. and it went really well.the beginning wasn't noticed too much, but playing some loud rain sounds and moving the speaker and playing the venue's bell seemed to make people notice and concentrate more. i was definitely the calm before the storm, with giang starting with some abstracted beats and then filling the room with fuzz and feedback- a great set! and once again, we head out to a place no tourist would be likely to go and have some local delicacies like 1000 year old egg on deep fried rice - awesome!

at this point i'd like to thank hung, khuong, dougie at atk, trang, sebastien gesell for playing some great music at atk, giang, john at the word for his article that introduced me to the onion cellar guys, and especially trinh - you all made my last days in vietnam really special.

the day after the show i took the bus (at 9am) back across the border to phnom penh.arriving in the middle of the central market, i was taken by tuk tuk to the hometown hotel, where i am now. great big room with a fridge and aircon (which i have stopped using - maybe i'm used to the heat at last!). i visited the meta house, where i perform tonight, and met with nico who organised the show as well as antonio, a poet who i will be working with tonight... and today has been a lazy-ish day of wandering around, admin and preparations for the concert - wish me luck!

Vietnam through June

the overnight bus to ho chi min/saigon wasn't too gruelling, remembering back, but the reason for this will become clearer as you read on. we had the good fortune of meeting thien on the journey, who gave us a lit of foods to try, places to visit and his email address. and thankfully the bus dropped us really close to the place we were staying. a quick wander around made it clear we were in tourist central, but found a great pho restaurant just on the edge of the area.

during our time in saigon we visited the cu chi tunnels, which the viet cong used to hide from the americans during the war. a very funny guide and some eye opening sights (plus a very claustrophobic visit to one of the tunnels) made the experience very memorable. i also had a wander around alone to visit the modern art gallery, which really isn't very good - sorry saigon - but also watched the sun go down from the bitexco financial tower skydeck- beautiful!

that evening we met with thien, who took us to an area of town where we were the only whiteys to be seen, and had - wait for it - amazing food!! a strange but enjoyable folded omelette with beansprouts and prawns inside, and an even stranger but enjoyable rice flour and fish dish.

the next morning i headed to the mekong delta on a day trip that cost $7 - the tunnels trip was 4! - while emma met with thien again for breakfast. she then headed to da lat to find us a cheap place to stay. so i visited a coconut candy making place, where i also saw  group making rice paper, a riverside village and took a smaller boat up the narrower waterways. oh, i also had my finger shoved into a honeycomb covered with bees - pretty scarey but escaped being stung, and the honey was incredible!

on arriving back to saigon i caught a bus to da lat to meet with emma. my bus was cancelled so i had to wait another hour for the next one, meaning i got to da lat at 2am.thankfully he was waiting for me at the bus station, with all the local homeless people it seemed.we caught a taxi into town, giving a lift to another traveller - eric from seattle.

the hotel we were in hired scooters soo we got one of those bad boys the next day and headed to a mountain range called liangbang, where we hiked up the first part and had lunch in a tiny little cafe/restaurant run by some locals (and i recorded a rope bridge with contact mics), and then on to datanla, one of the waterfalls to the south of da lat. in the evening we met up with larry, a guy from los angeles that emma had travelled with to da lat. we also managed to catch up with eric once again, hiring scooters then next day and visiting various temples and a gorgeous lake,  before getting a bus to danang.

this was a bus journey of around 14 hours, with very little leg room and no space for rucksacks so didn't get much sleep on that one! and when we left the bus, we were supposed to have a shuttle service to our hotel, but the guy took one look at the address and told us to get a taxi! when we did get to the hotel, it was actually rather pleasant, and a stone's throw from a gorgeous - and empty - sandy beach. i'm not a beach person, but it was really nice to go and swim in the warmest sea i have ever been in and sit with a cold beer in the sun.we could only manage a short time however as it was sooo hot. after a siesta we went out around 6 to get some food and the beach was absolutely full of people and scooters everywhere!

escaping danang the next day on a scooter - where we were was practically a building site surrounding the street we were on -we saw the caves and pagodas of the marble mountains which were amazing, nd then to where everyone else seemed to go, hoi an. this is a nicer looking town than where we were staying in danang, but the beach nearby was nowhere near as nice.

catching a bus to hue in the morning meant we were there by lunchtime, so took a wander around the citadel, which was fun as the map we had didn't cover that part of hue! i think itwas in hue that i had my first western food of the trip - burger and fries -  and it was gorgeous! i realise i haven't mentioned the food too much until now - but i think it's because pretty much everything i have had in vietnam has been great, and i'd have a hard time singling out the best meals! one was a fresh grilled fish in danang, in a crazy big outdoor place where all the locals were having family meals or getting drunk!

the following day, the 17th, we hired a scooter once more and visited ming mang tombs. now up until this point i also haven't mentioned how pretty much everyone who offers to help you here then expects some money in return. ladies will show you around a cave or a temple and then hold their handout or just ask for money - and will tell you if it's not enough!on the way to ming mang a lady stopped to help us and then tried to lead us to her village rather than the tomb! it was weird!

and while we were at the tombs we parked up next to a small cafe, so felt we should buy a drink when we returned to the scooter. when asking how much it was we were told a coffee and a sugar cane drink cost 90,000 vnd - $4.50 or £3. seems cheap right? well you normally pay around 20,000 vnd for a coffee so no, not really cheap for here...we then discovered our front tyre had a puncture and so at one point it looked like we would be pushing the scooter 11km back to hue!! thankfully one of the locals stopped and took emma to the nearest village where she waited for me to arrive and we had the tube repaired. phew!

we then decided to go ino the citadel once more for lunch, before catching our bus to hanoi. now remember i said our map didn't cover the citadel? well after eating we tried to head out the way we knew, but couldn't because of a one way system. cutting a long story short, we drove blindly around and around the citadel, trying to find away out even, and eventually asking at 3 gas stations, finally escaping and arriving at our hotel with 15 mutes to spare before the bus arrived!!!

this was another14 hour journey, so we'd booked on a sleeper bus but we found our seats had been taken and the people in them wouldn't move, so we were at the back, right by the engine, and the seats are inclined at an angle with your feet beneath the person in front, and this wasn't big enough to put your feet in! basically one of the most uncomfortable journeys so far - and then we had a further 4hourson an overcrowded minbus to halong bay when we arrived in hanoi.

while in halong bay, which is gorgeous, we stayed on a boat. here we hung out with other tourists and were taken - en masse- to some caves and a floating village, then headed out to drop anchor in amongst the rocks. i won't dwell on negatives regarding this part, but there was once again the feeling that you were being ripped off all the time...

back to hanoi for a couple of lazy days before emma sets off home - and when she let i headed to atk where i will be performing on sunday evening, meeting dougie who runs the place,and trinh, a local musician whose music i am listening to right now on soundcloud - very nice! a couple of beers and some sticky rice wine and i was ready for bed, so headed back to the hotel. as i neared the place three girls rode by on a scooter, then stopped and two got off to offer me a few favours for money - i think you know what i mean. now i am still polite even when telling hookers to leave me alone, but did not realise as one was talking, the other had found a front pocket in my bag and stolen my phone!!

thankfully it was an old one i was traveling withso my current one didn'tget swiped, but of course i then had to report the theft to orange and get the sim card blocked - at 1am - after beer and sticky rice wine. all done though, and even found i have stored all my contacts on my current phone's memory card so although annoying, not a great loss...

The last two weeks in Australia - part 2

realising i have much more to tell, i have split this post in 2.

managing to get back to castlemaine in the early hours of the morning on saturday 26th may allowed me to do some much needed laundry in the morning,and then go and set up the installation ready to run from 2pm. although the show ran for 4 hours, i only received a couple of visitors that day, but the ones who made it stayed and enjoyed it. eamon also came on the saturday to have a listen and try out some ideas for the performance on the sunday. on the way back to the house i was staying in we stopped in to selvi's curries to get a take away, tried some of the food before buying, and then were invited to eat in the restaurant, which was a huge room with an open fire that was very welcome... for anyone visiting castlemaine, try it out!

the next morning we all met up at the icu at 11am to set up the sound system and sound check for the performance, which was scheduled for 5pm, then packed way as much as we could to run the installation from 2-4pm. this time i had quite a few visitors, and most then stayed for the performances. i started off, with a precomposed piece using various tones and drones captured in the space,and then used various objects, moving around and within the audience. i was then joined by lizzie pogson, who performed with a combination of sounds from the local area and japan. a very pleasant, nicely paced set. next up was tarab, creating vibrations through a plate attached to a wire mesh that makes up one side of the space,and then taking a signal from the mesh using contact mics and playing that back into the room. again nicely paced and a good use of space. tarab was then joined by jacques soddell for the short overlap crossover characteristic of 'active crossover' performances, which worked really well, with jacques playing what was arguably the most musical set of the evening and closing the event perfectly. thanks once again to eamon, lizzie and jacques, as well as the guys of punctum for their support and hosting the event.

over the next few days i was kindly hosted by eamon, emily and helki in melbourne, which gave me a chance to catch up with friends teresa lane, simon hampson and sophie trebilcock, as well as get some tattoo work done by kat scarlet (http://katscarlettattoo.blogspot.com/), reworking one old and one new piece, and then creating a new one for me in return for a food hamper when i'm back in the uk!! i also managed to finally get my second japanese encephalitis vaccine injection and my visa to visit china in july. itall cametogether nicely at the end of my trip, and it was great to see everyone and spend time.

then on the 2nd june i flew to bangkok airport, where i waited for around 11 hours for my friend emma to arrive, then we had to wait a further 6 hours to fly to phnom pen, cambodia. once there we were taken to a nice hotel on the riverside. we spent 2 nights in phnom penh, visiting the killing fields on the first day and arranging our visas to visit vietnam, and explored a little of the city. as many people will be expecting, here comes the food bit - fish amok is awesome in cambodia, as is lok lak. and as with most places, the best food is in the cafes and restaurants that the locals eat in!

from phnom penh we got a bus to siem reap, where we are now. on the first day we visited the main temples, took it easy yesterday,and then did a couple of the remaining ones today. i also recorded the dawn chorus at angkor wat today which was great - i even managed to escape the surprisingly big crowd of people, all of whom had gone to see the sunrise, which because of cloud was not so impressive... then we traveled further out to banteay srey, visiting ta prohm afterwards - this was the best for me, with the trees and the temple becoming as one in places. many tourist groups and a huge restoration centre made it difficult to get around but we managed.

so now we wait until 12am when we get a bus overnight to ho chi min city in vietnam. more later!

The last two weeks in Australia - part 1

so it seems from the last post that i had not played the show in sydney by the end of it, so i'll start there... i invited kate carr to join me in the performance, so we played in the same style as the active crossover events, with kate starting, playing a solo set of nice musical parts combined with field recordings. i then joined her for a short collaborative section where both of us were unsure who was playing what(!) and then i continued solo. after playing a laptop set combining recordings from the trip so far, i then proceeded too move around the room grinding two pieces of concrete together that i had obtained from some workmen outside of serial space. the grinding sound combined nicely with some metallic tones i left playing and worked well in the room. we had a nice appreciative crowd and the guys of the now now who organised the show were great. and of course it was a pleasure working and hanging out with kate.

heading back to melbourne the next day, i managed to catch up with anthea varigos, who also goes under the name 'chopin's lovechild' and who i have many mutual friends with, as she used to live in bristol. very nice to meet her after all this time as well as her fella and housemate, then had to run to the airport, fly into melbourne (to an airport waaay out of town called avalon), get a very expensive bus back to southern cross station, get a train to castlemaine that was delayed for over an hour because of an attempted suicide on the line, meet jacques soddell at castlemaine train station, take his speakers and connectors to the icu and then try and relax in preparation for setting up the installation over the next few days. thanks once again to jacques for the loan of all the equipment.

for the whole of the week i was in the icu space composing with my recordings and combining them with the compositions supplied by my 3 collaborators (lizzie pogson, jacques soddell and tarab/eamon sprod), working out speaker placement (6 active speakers), and also using my sound exciters once again to play sounds through resonant objects. it was great to have the time to get it all working without too much pressure. during that week i was also fortunate enough to have (a gorgeous african) dinner in melbourne with eamon, camilla hannan and lawrence english, who was in town for a couple of days.

also during that week i met rex hardjadibrata, a sound artist and musician who has recently moved to castlemaine, and it turned out lives really close to where i was staying. i had a most pleasant evening with him and his wife katey - thanks for dinner guys, and the records - haven't listened to the vinyl but the cd is great!
and then the following night i was invited to bendigo to have dinner with jacques and his wife fran. again a very lovely evening and once again thank you! during my short tour of bendigo when jacques picked me up, we even saw kangaroos in a field close to his house - my first of the trip...


i ran the active listening workshop on the sunday, which was attended by a few folk but went pretty well - unfortunately the weather was a little cold so the blindfolded walk had to be a little shorter than i would have liked. then once again to eamon and emily's as i had to leave early for perth the next day.


part of my trip to australia was always going to be a drive through the outback in a campervan, seeing as much as i could and recording along the way. and friends had advised to visit the west coast as the landscape is very different there. i had 3 days before i had to be in perth again to perform, so drove up north to a town called geralton, and then headed inland for around 60km to a small town called mullewa. i had to then stop as i was really low on fuel, and it was dark - having been told my insurance was invalid if i had an accident driving in darkness i thought it best to stop! it's funny to think of it now but every single scarey movie i'd seen came to mind while trying to get to sleep in the middle of nowhere. and another thought that crossed my mind was that someone might see the camper and come and shake it as a joke to scare me!

thankfully i wasn't bothered by psychopaths or pranksters in the night. i did wake up just after dawn, got some fuel and then headed south east, trying to get to baladjie nature reserve, but having to stop close to the nearby town of warralakin, as i also was told not to drive on uncovered roads. this evening i managed to record the dusk chorus, with one bird even landing right in front of me and singing it's little heart out! a great moment. upuntil that point, i had only managed to record some sand blowing across a dune (which was nice btw) and some of the infamous western australian wire fences.


on the wednesday i had to head west as i had a performance scheduled at spectrum in perth, organised by cat hope. the evening went well, with an improvising trio playing first, all from different spaces in the gallery (the drummer was in the kitchen), then dr. nigel helyer presented some of his works, and i finished up, playing a 4 channel piece, and once again worked with the space,rattling and grinding some shells i had picked up on my travels during the previous 2 days. after the show i was taken into perth proper for chinese food and then stayed at cat's place the night - thanks for all cat!


after hanging out with cat's partner carlos in the morning i hit the road going south. this part of western australia seems to be more populated, and cultivated, so it took a while to get completely away from civilisation, but i got there in the end, sleeping in the greater kingston national park. here i got some nice recordings of kangaroos jumping around in the woods - lovely.


the friday was spent heading back to the airport to drop off the camper and fly back to melbourne. the plan was to get the last train back to castlemaine, which left southern cross at 23:45, however the combination of the plane taking off and landing half an hour later than scheduled, and then the luggage taking around 15 minutes longer than normal to arrive meant it looked like i would miss that train. speaking to the bus driver who was heading to southern cross from the airport, he suggested i take a taxi to one of the stops closer to the airport and catch the train from there. a tense taxi ride, with a driver who did not know where the station was, and neither did the satnav, we got there with 5 minues to spare... so i did manage to get back to castlemaine that night- or rather the next morning, so i could be there to start up the installation and greet any visitors to it.


to be continued...