Crazy Adventures in the Life of a Redhead

I am in India as I write this and it is amazing how both of these countries are in the same geographic region, so night and day dissimilar are they. I only spent about eight days in Japan, but I had the most marvelous time getting to know Japanese culture and most of all hanging out with some amazing friends with whom I became better acquainted through our crossing of paths. Japan was the last stop on the I’m-staying-with-people-I-know portion of my trip. Tokyo I started in Tokyo, which is the financial center and the core of all things modern in Japan. One of my friends said that Tokyo is like New York City and Kyoto, which I later visited, is like Washington D.C. in terms of the activities one can do and the monuments one can see in both cities. I stayed with an amazing American family who is related to the family with whom I stayed in Naperville for nearly two years. I met them over the July 4th weekend 2009 and I told them that I was planning to go to the Philippines then travel ar...

I have to preface this long entry—and yes, it can only be long because so much happened and I want to do it justice—with a story about my “special lane” experience in Guangzhou, Canton, China. Actually, on the way from Ho Chi Minh to Hong Kong, I had to connect in Guanzhou. Flying China Southern is actually quite nice as they have lots of legroom and serve decent meals and coffee—always a nice thing , but the airport is something else, and I mean that in the most negative sense possible. First, they make you go through the rigmarole even when you are only in transit. When I had to layover there on my way from Ho Chi Minh to Hong Kong, I had to wait in immigration deprived of my passport, which had gone into a small, official looking room over to the side. I had no idea what had happened. Finally, a woman came back with my passport and a new stamp—red of course—and a curt “Follow me.” I followed wordlessly to the departures terminal, which was decent albeit a little outdated. Second, th...

I chose this particular alliteration for my second week in Vietnam because I spent a lot of time talking with my friends and with the lovely people I met on my final tour of southern Vietnam to the Mekong Delta. Especially since my final week was slightly marred by the run-in with that motorbike, the Lord God really showed himself faithful in providing extra support and fellowship for me at a time that could have been a little discouraging. Weekend in HCMC I returned from Hue via plane, which was so convenient albeit more expensive than I planned to spend (good thing I am thrifty in other respects: I still maintained my budget!) I met this lovely Australian/Filipina couple in Hoi An who told me that they had seen me in HCMC then in Dalat and finally we met in Hoi An. They were taking the exact same route as I was, including the flight back to HCMC on Saturday. It was a blessing to meet them for a couple of reasons. One, they had some great stories to share and were all around lovely pe...

Why so many alliterations? Because I like them, and these places are so unique that I think I need to underscore the fact that they have captivated me. I mean, in college, I never studied about Asia. I didn’t even really want to go to Asia, but then I came and discovered that there are so many interesting facets to Asian society, or rather to each unique country’s culture. Before I continue explaining my trip, I need to relate a tale I thought would never come to pass in my life as a tourist although all tourists have their stories of shoulda, woulda, couldas. Anyway, I was walking back to my hotel after having taken a nice stroll around one of the night markets that spontaneously forms every night around the Ben Thanh compound—the largest market in HCMC—and I was finishing up the dregs of my delicious Vietnamese iced coffee when a motorbike whizzed past me and literally ripped my purse from my body. I was wearing a purse that slings over the shoulder and rests around your hip, which i...