my friend Zoom and I are our 6 week motorbike tour of Vietnam in early 2009

new artwork I made after returning from Southeast Asia

It’s with a happy heart that I announce that the travel blog you thought had died (“7 Months with Carry-on Luggage”) has now been revived! I offer my sincere apologies for leaving you hanging in the beginning of my 6 week motorbike trip throughout Vietnam last winter. During the trip, I traveled fairly long distances each day and encountered daily adventures that frankly left me only time to take notes about my experiences and upload the 500+ photos that I shot each day. In short, motorbiking Vietnam was the highlight of my 7 months in Southeast Asia, but experiencing it as fully as I did left little time or energy I needed to write about that experience.  

I had high hopes of finishing the blog when I returned to the States in March, but life interfered. I spent 1 month nose to the proverbial grindstone in the studio preparing for art shows in Texas. I then spent one month in Texas exhibiting and selling work at those shows. I returned to jump into the whirlwind of wedding showers and ultimately my brother’s wedding in July. And then to keep things from getting dull, I bought a new car followed by a house in Chattanooga, TN … which I hurriedly remodeled and moved into in one month.

my new house in Chattanooga, Tennessee

I would love to tell you that now that all those exciting things are behind me, that I will pick up where I left off in the story (which was just getting to the exciting part!), but instead I’m afraid I’ll only tease you and say that while I WILL finish the story, I’m hoping to publish it in the form of a book. To whet your appetite for it though, here are some of the highlights of my Vietnamese adventure: I was the guest of honor at a local wedding, spent the night in many homes throughout Vietnam (several of them homes of very interesting indigenous people), drank wine with former VC war heros, learned to speak rudimentary Vietnamese, befriended villages of minority people and gave English lessons to one group, got a cooking lesson from some locals, was taught how to row one of those little round boats by a woman who adopted me as her sister, endured almost daily motorbike breakdowns, bribed a police officer … the list goes on.

But at the moment, rather than reliving old adventures, I’m ready to dive into new ones. I have returned to Southeast Asia for 3 months.  I’m starting off in Vietnam for 1 month.  I’m returning to Cambodia for 4 days, hoping to find some of the children who used to live at the dump which I’m told is now closed.  I will then travel to Borneo for 5 days (a new destination) and lastly return to beloved Bali for 6 weeks where I’ll be visiting old friends and laying out photo tours which I’ll start leading in the fall of 2010. I would love to have you enjoy these upcoming adventures with me. So … welcome back to “7 Months with Carry-On Luggage.”