Entries from July 2009

July 31, 2009

Jetstar [Weekend] Fare Frenzy

Jetstar seems to be extending this week’s Friday Fare Frenzy through the weekend. The booking window for sale fares usually lasts from 2pm to 5pm every Friday, but yesterday’s JetMail newsletter contained a link to sale fares on six routes good for travel during two periods: September 9 to October 29 and October 30 to [...]

July 19, 2009

Expat Alert: Girl Talk Hits Hanoi

The year is shaping up to be a small step forward for live music in Vietnam. Already we’ve seen acts like Brooklyn-based Ratat, dancehall singer Lexie Lee and Beijing indie band Rebuilding the Rights of Statues swing through Saigon. Now, DJ Greg Gillis, aka Girl Talk will be bringing his signature blend of hundreds-of-samples-strong mixes [...]

July 19, 2009

Motorbiking the Hai Van Pass

 
 
At this point, I don’t exactly have a plan. I am winging it.
Having passed over a horde of substandard Honda Dreams, Citis and Wave Alphas — motorbikes that would almost certainly leave me stranded on the Hai Van Pass if they didn’t break down sooner — there is now parked in front of me a [...]

July 16, 2009

From Buffalo with Love

A few months ago I was rather surprised to receive this link from my sister, Kate DiChristopher, an HR specialist with Marina Maher Communications in New York City. Unbeknownst to me, Kate had become a blogger.
Okay, so she’s not terribly prolific just yet, but her single blog post, an endearing love letter to our hometown [...]

July 12, 2009

Jetstar’s Friday Fare Frenzy

With only one true budget air carrier operating in Vietnam — Jetstar Pacific — there’s not often much to report on. But in June Jetstar initiated its Friday Fare Frenzy promotion, offering customers discounted fares on select flights booked between 2 and 5pm every Friday. 
So three weeks into the promotion, what’s the verdict?
A search on [...]

July 11, 2009

Nordic Food in Vietnam

 
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with a couple of visiting chefs from Sweden during the Equatorial Hotel’s Nordic Week. At the start of the event, I had swung by for a press dinner and left utterly smitten. Executive chef Niclas Wahlstrom of Stockholm’s Den Gyldene Freden and Magnus Johansson, [...]

July 10, 2009

Ed Lessons: Beware Bloggers

It’s been about a year since I joined the editorial staff of AsiaLIFE HCMC, my first post at a real-life, in-your-hands magazine. With the job crunch caused by the recession back home, I think it’s fair to say that if I hadn’t moved to Saigon, my year spent educating myself and trying to break into [...]

July 10, 2009

Saigon in Miniature

A guy named Joe Nafis reached out to me to see if AsiaLIFE HCMC was interested in running something on his recent film project. We get lots of requests for air time, but this one really stood out. 
Employing tilt shift photography (and a lot of patience), Mr. Nafis managed to cobble [...]

July 10, 2009

Update Saigon: 11,500 Hours … and Counting

9000 Hours in Saigon. You may not think it’s much, but as someone who’s chronically unable to title his work, I was pretty proud when I hit on the blog title. Now, sixteen months–approximately 11,500 hours–after moving to Saigon, I’m still here, and looking back, I can only surmise that I somehow tapped into some [...]