Illustrious Asia

As I travelled round Vietnam and Cambodia, I started to take an interest in some of the more unusual designs and illustrations we saw on the streets, some of them political slogans, others advertising everything from dentists to body building clubs . Some of the more unique and colourful images are compiled here. I hope these pictures will give you a sense of Asia that you wouldn't necessarily get from photographs of more typical subject matter - such as temples and street scenes. However, in some of these pictures you still get Steve and I beaming typically in the foreground!


This political advertistment was translated for me by a pretty young girl called Trang who worked in a restaurant Steve and I spent some time in (in other words, got hammered in) while we were in Saigon.

Peace, Friendship, Co-operation, Development


Trang's English was not so great so she wasn't able to translate these next two for me.

Political design #1

Political design #2


Wow! This tough guy certainly looks like he works out!

Body building


A familiar sign throughout South East Asia.

Temple


Steve and I spent forty dollars shooting guns in Vietnam - pretty expensive at one dollar a bullet. I shot ten rounds from a M-60 big ass machine gun. Steve favoured an M-16 assault rifle, pump action shotgun and a Colt 45 revolver. We shot at conventional targets (and missed) rather than, as urban myth might suggest, at livestock.

Shooting range



During my last few days in Thailand, the filling I'd got just before I left England started giving me grief, and as I travelled around Laos and Vietnam I lived in terror that it would get so bad that I would be forced to visit a local dentist. I thank my lucky stars I didn't have to visit this dentist, who practiced in a village on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, near The Killing Fields.

Dentist #1

Dentist #2



I don't know the translation for this one, but I guess it's fairly self-explanatory.

School is good


This was sprayed on a wall next to the mosque by the lakeside in Phnom Penh.

Grafitti


While visiting the temples of Ankor in Cambodia, Steve and I sat down to a lunch of our staple chicken fried rice, Coca Cola (Steve) and Sprite (me). We were immediately set upon by a variety of locals, hawking their usual useless wares - postcards, trinkets, tiny statues of Buddha. I wasn't interested, until one of the ladies started showing me her range of unique cigarette packets. One design caught my eye in particular, and I was compelled to buy some.

Cigatette packet front

Cigarette packet back