If I Found One,

on the beach,

 would I pick kit up and put it on my hand? probably not, but then I have been watching way too many films like the 1958 The Blob, and the 1988 remake, not to mention the upcoming release of the new 2019 The Blob,

 back to the post,

 theses are pictures of some of the brightly colored sculptural blobs that appear to drip from their installation on shelves, they are the work of Dan Lam, 

 we have featured the artist before on our blog,

 the polyurethane foam and epoxy resin works are covered in thousands of tiny spikes which are applied using a piping bag and acrylic paint, 

 Lam creates time-lapse videos of this application, 

which offer satisfying peeks into her labor-intensive process, Lam has an upcoming solo exhibition at Stephanie Chefas Projects in Portland, Oregon which opens on October 5, and will be the artist-in-residence from October 8 to November 9, 2018 at Teton Art Lab in Jackson, Wyoming, You can see more of Lam’s soft, spike-covered sculptures on her Instagram, and I am still not sure if one washed upon the shore I would pick it up!

If This Style Of Sculpture,

looks familiar,

like this “Delicious Monster” as it is called by the artist Dan Lam,

 it might be because we have featured her work a couple of times before, “Center of Attention”

   Lam, has a substantial following of over 200,000 on Instagram, “Come Together”

She uses her site to integrate her social media presence: a dedicated page in the navigation is filled with colorful behind-the-scenes videos and photos of her studio practice, “Recreational”

“I think the mystery of the materials and how they come together piques the viewer’s curiosity, especially digitally,” Lam explains. “Maybe they spend a little extra time on it—whether that be looking, trying to sneak a touch at a gallery show, or Googling the materials.” “Complexion”

 although Lam’s sculptures are sought after for collectors and gallery shows—including a solo show on view this month at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York City—the artist shares that she is excited by the range of opportunities for artists to share their work, “Getting Soft”

  “In the past few years, I’ve noticed there have been more and more opportunities for visual artists through all kinds of different outlets, from companies hiring artists to do murals inside workspaces to cities funding public art. Fine art seems to be seeping into the mainstream culture. It’s creating a larger space for artists to exist that wasn’t there when I was growing up.” “Undertone”

If you look at our earlier post of the artists, I make mention of them looking like, 'The Blob', “Long Term”

and they still do, imagine walking home late at night and seeing this on the pavement, scary indeed!

With The Introduction,

of layers of crystals and colour-changing thermal paints that further bring the alien works to life,

 the works of Dallas-based artist Dan Lam take on a new look,  

her work is divided roughly in to three forms, squishes,

drips, 

and blobs,

in all shades and colours,

 the pieces appear to ooze from where they rest, growing stalactite-like appendages that drip from the edges of shelves, the pieces are made primarily from polyurethane foam and acrylic paint and are often adorned with spiky appendages,

“My work has always elicited pretty raw reactions from people, my favourite being the desire to touch the object, to make sense of it with another sense because just seeing it doesn’t satiate the curiosity,” Lam shares with Blackbook Gallery. “I like the tension that is created in that moment.” Lam most recently had works on view with Black Book Gallery and Guy Hepner, You can see more of her behind-the-scenes process and studio experiments on Instagram, I am not sure I would want one of these my arm or oozing out of a wall, but they certainly are different.

I Thought I Would Post Another Video,

this one featuring a trip around the world,

 Kien Lam took a year long break to travel the world, taking photographs as he went, and putting them together with music made this fascinating travelogue, he used 6,237 photographs, titled Time is Nothing, it really awakens the travel bug in me, to see the video in full size click here, you can read up on Lam's specific adventures and what he's done since then at his site Where and Wander, so many places I would love to visit.

Keeping To An Everest Theme,

here is an offer of some free money,

all you have to do is to climb Mount Everest and find it, of course it is not real money, the popular Q&A online platform AskFM recently launched its own cryptocurrency, ASKT, and decided to celebrate by hosting an original giveaway, so what better way to drum up new business and recognition than to give money away? so they buried a crypto-wallet with 500,000 tokens in it on Mount Everest and challenged anyone brave enough to go find it, I should say that it is the equivalent of £50,000, the Dublin-based start-up is similar to Quora or Yahoo Answers, and is currently the world’s largest questions and answers platform in the world, so it is a case of ‘finders, keepers’, 

but there are a couple of catches, well if it sounds to good to be true it most probably is, firstly the danger, what the company’s press release fails to mention is that during the decent, one of the two Sherpas accompanying the climbers was left behind, and never made it back down as reported in the Independant, the Sherpa, identified as Lam Babu, did not make it back to camp, secondly the currency, OK it is allegedly worth £50,000 and it may well go up, but here is the thing, to climb Mount Everest is not cheap, have a look at this website where I gleaned these details from,

Commercial operators charge a very wide variety of prices for climbing Mount Everest nowadays but generally speaking a guided trip with bottled oxygen on the south side will cost around $45,000.00 and on the north side will cost about $35,000.00. This is a broad average though. For the south side the price with a Western guiding company can be as much as $90,000 for a standard trip.

these figures assume there will 6 people in the group, and are per person, going it alone is not a wise move, and there is the first decision to be made north or south side? I have to say with the upfront costs of the climb and chances of finding the wallet, seem way to high and way to small, but there it is, money for free, or is it?

and just to tempt you here is the video, now if you have been there before, you might recognise where the helicopter landed, so at least that is a clue!

Day Nine,

up for breakfast,

a busy day ahead,

so much to chose from,

a light breakfast today,

well OK a couple of eggs to go with the bacon,

we were soon on the tenders to take us ashore, under the watchful eyes of one of the local boat crew,

leaving the Jahan, 

we soon made it to shore,

to Tan Chau,

a remote, 

but bustling riverside town where huge numbers of fish are farmed for export,

I had to feel sorry for my cyclo driver, he looked, well a bit frail considering he was going to have to heave my 78 or so kilos plus himself and the bike as well into town,

no problems for Diana and her driver, she was off like an unguided missile,

one of the many ladies selling small birds you can buy to release and gain merit,

the towns sign in Vietnamese,

I took a few pictures along the way as we went, this one of a man drying coconuts by the roadside,

a mobile fruit seller,

it is the same here as in Thailand, 

load your produce on a wheeled barrow and walk to town to sell your goods,

we made our way into town,

passing one of the local chandlery stores, 

again similar to Thailand when there is a party a covered area with tables and chairs is placed in the road outside your home,

there were of course many shops selling local handicrafts,

like a snake we weave our way along the way around the village,

here is a new one for us, a motorcycle that is also a stall, the goods on the back seat with a sun/rain umbrella attached to the bike,

we have arrived, 

at the local market,

so it is dismount,

and start to have a look around,

before going into the covered area I noticed this electric bike, made in China,

and a seller with lots of winkles, I have tried these before, although the ones we eat in the UK are from the sea, these are freshwater ones,

I was intrigued by this stall,

selling crabs,

in this bowl just the easy to eat claws,

also outside a number of mobile fresh fruit and vegetable sellers,

inside we went,

as with most markets in the Far East,

many of the items for sale are live, no expensive refrigeration or blocks of ice to pay for,

but naturally dead fish in this section are also available,

the fish section was huge,

but then we are on the Mekong river that has huge resources,

across to the fruit and vegetable section,

water-lily like flowers bundled,

fresh eggs,

I have never seen these before, it looks like they have been kept buried in soot or very dark soil, I have found out that they are fresh eggs when buried, but for how long I do not know,

live chickens,

and ducks are everywhere,

one thing that did surprise me,

was how many cut flowers were for sale,

there were so many varieties on offer,

into the fruit section,

some more water-lily like flowers or I should say stems,

then some fruits I had never seen before,

this one about 9" or so long, but I have been told they are called soursop, in the Philippines,

and these,

a little bigger than a large grapefruit, the insides are used to colour food stuffs like friary cakes, Diana mentioned that they have these in the Philippines but are much smaller,

it is almost an art form in itself,

to see how much you can load onto a motorcycle or tricycle,

we made our way outside, 

where there was the equivalent of a mobile tropical fish store on the pavement,

this chicken is not for eating, it is a fighting cock,

the second half of our group arrives,

by now the top of my head was getting quite sunburnt, so a hat was needed,

the starting price was ₫42,000 dong, ($1.87),

using my finely honed bargaining skills I had picked up in Thailand over the past 30 years the price ended up at ₫42,000, ($1.87), well I tried, I still remember the old saying,' it is better to try and fail, than to fail to try',

moving on, I meet up with Diana,

and made our way with the group past the market,

to the waiting water taxis,

we were off on a little excursion,

passing one of the local cross river ferries,

and sand unloading bays,

and these,

or at least one of them,

is what we are going to visit, a commercial fish farm, rearing fish for the table,

but before we landed this boat caught my attention,

it seemed so low in the water,

that even the slightest wave form another vessel might swamp it,

another vessel with a lot more free board went past,

just as we arrived at the fish farm, each of the pontoons are 10 X 20 metres in size with the nets under them going down 7 meters or so,

our guide Tri gave us a description of how the fish are raised, food for the fish is the main cost, the machine behind him produces fish food from rice husks and fish by-product, it is boiled and mixed for 4 hours, then extruded and dried,

at feeding times, once or twice a day the dried food is placed in this shredder, the conveyor belt then moves the granulated food into the stock pools,

hardly a fish in sight,

until you throw a handful of fish food into the net, then the water almost seems to boil, these are red-tailed tinfoil barbs, (Barbonymus altus, previously Barbus altus), they are easy to grow but not as popular as the fish in the next pontoon as they have many small fine bones,

and here we are in the next pontoon,

again our guide gave a us a talk on these fish,

the ones we are about to see we have eaten many times, they are the Vietnamese catfish, (Pangasius bocourti or sometimes hypophthalmus), sold in Thailand as dory, in other countries as river cobbler, cobbler, striper or panga, locally known here as basa,

so how many fish are in this one pontoon?

the trick to counting them is to speed count, you count the eyes and dived by 2, and the answer is? 120,000 fish in this one pontoon, the fish are sold when they reach 1 to 1.5 kilos, the fish will grow up to nearly 45 kilos, but after 1.5 kilos the fat content in the fish goes up too much, so it is then the fish are readied for the International and local markets, the brood stock fish are spawned 3 times a year, so there is a steady production of filleted fish,

back to the boat for lunch,

a beautifully crated melon,

today's special pasta,

plus a selection of salads,

including a beetroot based one, it seems that beetroot is becoming a favourite as we have seen it featured in a few cooking programs on television that we have both watched,

Diana looking at the heated trays,

I made my choice,

now which cake for dessert?

we made our way down stream,

passing many,

loaded sand barges going in both directions,

they seem so low in the water,

but up and down river they go 24 - 7, but I have a feeling that the blue part of this barge was a latter add-on to increase the load,

one of the many sand/gravel docks that are dotted along the river,

whilst Diana catches a few ZZZZZZs,

I carried on taking pictures,

of various industries,

along the riverside,

as we made our way,

to our next stop,

the village My An Hung,

it is a village that primarily grows vegetables,

we make our way carefully around the edge of the field,

as we leave the Jahan,

and walk past a banana plantation,

our guide explains that this is a two crop operation, Chinese cabbage is the main crop, but between the plants a second crop of peppers is grown, it has been found that these two plants do not have a detrimental effect on each other when it comes to growing them,

we are going to meet the Lam family, but first an introduction to village life,

a water closet,

and a demonstration of how to use the WC,

we were greeted with a selection of locally produced fruits being laid out for latter,

we were invited to look around the house,

to see how the family lived,

inside we were introduced to some of the family,

who were going to sing and play for us,

the first instrument is a single string, the notes are played by using a handle to tighten or loosen the string,

next a guitar with a vocal accompaniment,

our guide thanked the home owners for us,

then outside for a walk,

we passed these two ladies planting seeds,

the seeds were minute chrysanthemum seeds,

each seed individually planted, back breaking work,

a locally made watering can made from a use cooking oil tin,

we were all fascinated by the planting,

each seed planted it its own container of a round leaf in the soil,

then to the bridge,

that the locals use every day, but first a word of caution,

the hand rail is for show only, the plank in the middle section bounced up and down alarmingly when a small child ran across it, and where exactly were the 4 WCs we saw earlier?

this was as far as I wobbled, it was way too high and shaky for me,

much to the amusement of the locals on the other side,

and the flower girls,

making our way back to the house,

I noticed this little chap,

a type of ladybird I think,

then the fresh fruit tasting,

the one that everyone wanted to try as it was so well known, the durian,

so it was eyes down and tuck in,

I wandered off and found a long necked turtle,

I am sure it was looking at me,

then a show began, this is only the second time this young lady has performed in public,

we gathered round,


 to watch,

a dazzling show,

of balance,

skill,

and dexterity,

as she went through her moves,

using her fan to aid in making stylised kung-fu moves,

a great show,

then it was the turn of some of the local lads,

for the dragon dance,

to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals the show began,

the masked figure,

being chased by the dragoon,

the youngsters put on a terrific show,

as they leapt from table to table,

sometimes looking like they might miss the table,

which brought cries from us all,

caught in mid air, so close to disaster,

but it all ended well,

with the masked figure being chased around the show area,

one last time,

the noise of drums and cymbals,

had brought some of the other villagers out to look at the show,

we made our way back to the Jahan, just before the rain started,

and moved into midstream,

low clouds looked ominous,

but it was not a problem on board, after a shower and a change of clothes the storm covers were down in the bar area, 

so cocktails,

for two,

even though the storm covers were down it was a little blowy inside,

after drinks we were downstairs to the dinning room,

where we had a few choices to make,

I had made mine!

I really could not decide on the main course, they all looked so nice, but I went for the beef as did Diana,

Diana's dessert,

we went back to our cabin after the meal,

and found we had been left two chocolates,

what a nice touch,

we sat on the balcony playing cribbage until it was time for bed.