Russell has left on this summer’s grand art/travel adventure.
He is starting his journey in San Francisco, Oakland, and the Bay area, where he is visiting friends. In a day or so he will head down to southern California to hang with other friends and family. Then, he will board a jet for a very long trip that will take him to Ho Chi Minh City after a brief stop in Taiwan. Once he gets to Vietnam his itinerary will be largely dependent on his whim; he plans on going wherever his artistic muse and natural curiosity may take him. Other likely destinations include Hanoi, Hue, Da Nang, and the Mekong Delta region.
I have no doubt that Russell’s trip will be an enormously enriching experience for him — and I want to make it a positive experience for me, too. I know very little about Vietnam; it is like a forbidden topic or an embarrassing family story that no one wants to think about. It is time to change that, and therefore I plan on doing a bit of research and writing this summer on the country, its people, its culture, and its cities.
