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Yesterday we made our way to Battambang, via a rural route that took us through a village of potters. We visited one home where the potter demonstrated her hand throwing method of making pots. In lieu of a potters wheel she placed the clay on a stool and circled it, tamping it down and smoothing…

The trip from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh was long but comfortable. The Cambodian border crossing was bureaucratic but safe. In Cambodia (Kampuchea) they speak Khmer. The monetary unit is the riel, but they also use $US, with 4,000 riel to the dollar. You can only get $US out of ATMs, but if…

Our last couple of days in Vietnam had me feeling nostalgic about this wonderful country I’d only just scratched the surface of. We spent our next to last day boating and tuk tuking around the islands of the Mekong Delta, whose name conjures up distant war related news stories of my youth. But it also…

I wanted to come here to learn about the country we ravaged 50 years ago. Many Americans chose to defend the Vietnamese against the evils of communism while others protested the horrific violence which victimized them. No matter which camp you were in during the 1960’s and ‘70’s, in the U.S. you knew democracy represented…

Hoi An is a magical little town with pedestrian streets, Japanese and Chinese bridges and temples. The streets are thronging with tourists from every corner of the world. It’s kind of a party town but in a very quiet sort of way. You can wander around and buy trinkets and lanterns, coffee, food and drink,…

We are now in the south, having taken the night train to the pretty town of Hue, which has a decidedly more relaxed atmosphere than Hanoi. Sleeping on the lurching clacking train with 4 of us to a compartment reminded me of my college days. We drank beer and played cards in the dining car…

Turns out this typhoon is a bigger deal than I realized. Our group had to cancel our overnight boat trip at Ha Long Bay, and also a paddle in on the Red River. We spent Monday wading through a 400 year old temple in Ninh Binh. The deluge added to the moody jungle ambience of…

I am traveling with a group that is aptly named Intrepid. My first official tour is with a small group of 9 mostly Australian travelers. Lots of free time built into our itinerary made this company sound like a good alternative to a solo voyage. I’m still getting a bit of flack from friends and…

What is it about getting on a plane alone and going 14 time zones away that takes my breath away? Maybe this is what it feels like to go bungee jumping, I wouldn’t know—but this is how I get my fix. All the dreary “I suffer, therefore I am” feelings of earlier this summer vanish…

In Spanish the way to say “what do you like to do?” literally translates as “to what do you dedicate yourself?” I’m thinking about that in a deeper sense, as though I were floating above church rafters in some liminal state, eavesdropping on my own eulogy. What would people say about me? That I wore…