Exactly three weeks have passed since the girls (my daughters and my nieces) and I made the journey back from Vietnam. It feels like a dream, those days walking through Saigon and feeling the energy of the city. The beach city of Nha Trang is my new favorite spot, and I’ve been to many wonderful places in the country.
One of the things I noticed about the trip was that I didn’t have much time alone, and yet I was not torn between solitude or not solitude. I relished the hours spent with my family. We traveled together well. We shared a similar sense of adventure.
I would love to share in this blog post a story or two about our trip, but I’m in the middle of writing a print publication essay about exactly that. So I’m at a loss of what to say. Unfortunately, I need to save all my best words for the essay.
I can share this screen shot below from the last essay of mine that was published, this in SAGE, a monthly magazine for women that appears as part of the Albuquerque Journal. It came out while we were in Vietnam, which was fun timing since the writing happened to be about one of my previous trips to the country. You might recognize the photo from one of my previous blog posts. It was especially cool that three of my photos got published along with my writing.
The country has become as much a muse for my writing as my art. That’s a recent shift. I wonder, when I sit down and think about it, how many essays about my travels there I have in me. Maybe quite a few.
Let there be Pampering, by Roma Arellano, screen shot from SAGE, The Albuquerque Journal, July 2010, © 2010 by The Albuquerque Journal.
I can’t wait for the SAGE essay!
It sounds like it was a wonderful time, that lovely balance between solitude and intimacy (and fun times)!
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Dearest yb,
Though my ancestors are from Vietnam, I’ve never been there. One of these days I plan to go there and see Vietnam for myself! Thank you for sharing your adventures there with all of us here on redRavine. For me personally, it gives me a chance to live through your photos and imagine what Vietnam is like miles and miles away! I relish it very much (guilty pleasure!). Awesome and beautiful photos. I can understand why Vietnam has become your Muse. For me, Vietnam is also the same thing for me as it appears every once in a while in my poetry. I equate Vietnam to Odysseus’ Ithaca.
I too agree with Carolyn. It looks like you had a wonderful time and I think despite being with your family, you did find a sense of solitude within yourself perhaps without realizing it! In these photos in particular, they captured a sense of solitude and discovery. I’d always wanted to go parasailing!! Maybe one of these days, I will!
I can’t wait to read your essay in Sage! That’s really exciting! Congratulations!
yb, again, thank you sincerely for letting me enjoy a piece of Vietnam. Like a squirrel, I’m storing away these lovely photos in my mind, and I will too write about Vietnam someday when I’m there!
Blessings!
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Looking forward to the next Sage article. What fun you had in Vietnam!
http://loisletshearit.wordpress.com/
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wow great pictures
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Thanks all.
A~Lotus, your response is so poetic, it’s touching. Do you still speak Vietnamese? And know how to cook Vietnamese dishes? I’m just curious. I would love to learn the language. It seems such a difficult one to learn.
I do hope you get to go there someday. It is a beautiful country with kind and open people.
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BTW, I was not going to do parasailing myself, as I have a fear of heights, but after seeing my daughters and nieces out there, I decided to do it too. I wish I would have done it with the boats that our hotel arranged, as my girls did. Instead I did it on a stop after snorkeling, and the time in the air was less than half as long as what the hotel arranged. But the short time up there was still so amazing.
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yb, great photos of your time in Vietnam. And congrats on the published piece. One of my fave photos you’ve taken while there is the top photo in the screen shot. There is a peacefulness to it. I’m not likely to visit there in my lifetime so it’s good to see the country through your eyes. It seems like this visit with your family was rich and full. Something all of you will remember the rest of your lives.
I’m drawn to the photo of the sea turtles. I forget they live there. And the sandpainting. The faces of the people. I’m always amazed at how different places speak to different people. I was just up in the northern part of Minnesota, a place that speaks to me. Along with the mountains of Montana, the prairie of North Dakota, even though I have not spent much time there. On my drives through ND to get to MT, I would always pause to take it all in. When I travel there with Liz now, it takes on new significance because her roots are there.
My trips to Georgia, the South, are etched in my memory now. Going back as an adult has opened my eyes to childhood experiences. All these places have been muse to me. And more. Place is important to identity. Do you think places draw us to them? I sometimes get that feeling.
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That’s wonderful news! I just read a travel article about Vietnam in the NYT, so it must be a destination people want to know about. Especially after the unfortunate history we have with the Vietnamese. Sounds like you’re a part of the healing.
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Thanks for the comment, christine. I do believe that Vietnam is a pretty popular destination these days for Americans, although maybe not as much as places still like Italy or Turkey, for example. For one thing, it is costly to get to Vietnam. Tickets run sometimes twice as much as tickets to Europe. And the distance is especially challenging.
In fact, I see far more Australian tourists and other Asian tourists than I do Americans. I wonder if that will change over time. Most of the Americans I do see strike me as being younger and sort of the backpacker type travelers. I mean, there are all types of course, but based on my observations, it’s still not getting the more mainstream type tourists. But surely that changes more each year.
QM, yes, I do think places draw us to them. Absolutely. I describe it as feeling kinship to places and the people who live there. Maybe the kinship stems from a literal kinship, having relatives that go back centuries. Other times it’s something else, something less tangible. Like Vietnam for me.
BTW, when do you think you’ll next take a trip to ND with Liz? I bet you have one soon in your future. The timing strikes me as ripe.
Thanks for the feedback on the photos. I love the sandpainting one, too. And the sea turtles, they were such gentle giants. I have one shot of one with a stark white small shark swimming underneath it. The small white sharks must be host fish to the turtles, because they are often underneath them. This particular shot caught the light of the shark perfectly. I might add it in a comment later on if I can find it among my growing number of iPhone photos (of which I do a lousy — i.e., nonexistent — job of sorting and organizing).
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yb, so glad you posted the whole slideshow. It would be too limiting to choose any fewer images. This is gorgeous, I love them all – the bikini sunbather, the towels, the sand sculptor, all very special. I love that you use the iphone uploads, it is so efficient. Just wanted to say hi, sorry I have been a silent lurker. We were in Florida the past 10 days, and saw giant sea turtles crawl up the beach from the Atlantic and lay eggs in the dunes. The whole area is a turtle conservation refuge, for loggerhead, green turtles and others. Wonderful, and how synchronous we are with the turtles…kinda funny too. Best wishes with your publication project, that is great. You have wonderful stories and, as Lotus says, you are vicariously exploring the wonders of Vietnam for all of us.
Love ;>)
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[…] Vietnam As Destination, Vietnam As Muse […]
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[…] job changed around the same time, too. I landed an assignment that took me back and forth to Vietnam. I bought myself a slew of different colored inking pens and began using the long trips back and […]
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