Introduction to our trip to Asia

---

A pitifully small number of people have asked me to write a travel blog for the trip we are just starting; Hong Kong, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and Diem Reap, Cambodia. A subset of this pitifully small number of people have in the past indicated that they liked my self-depreciating writing style, my lyric use of language, and my incessant attempts, some successful, many not, at humor. Some of you might see evidence of these attributes in the previous two sentences. For those of you that do not, read no further.

As I am usually an agreeable person, and really, mainly, because I enjoy writing, I’m going to take a shot at satisfying this request. If you’ve read parts of my previous travel blogs, you might be expecting a certain style. There may be a few surprises this time. We’ll have to see where it goes, but I’m a much more confident writer now than I was when I wrote about our trips to India and Africa. Confident writers love to put words on the page. Good writers know how to take them off. Also confident writers tend to try to manipulate the reader, using their supposed enormous skills to bend the reader's thoughts or emotions in one direction or another. Good writers know that it’s better to just tell the story. So readers, forgive this one paragraph only, but going forward, if you see or even smell me falling victim to any of these traits of self-confidence, call me out on it right away. As J.K. Simmons said in “Whiplash”, “The two most dangerous words in the English language are, Good Job.” I love that.

Also, this is a trip for which I am totally unprepared. When the Vietnam War was at its most intense, I was in high school and then had a student deferment until 1974 when the war was in its final throws and then, my draft number was 351. I never served. I know people who served. I have friends who served. I’ve seen “Platoon,” “Full Metal Jacket,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “Good Morning Vietnam.” I’ve read The Things They Carried and I recently saw the PBS documentary, “Last Days in Vietnam,” but it would be incredibly presumptuous to even somewhat imply that I know very much at all about the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. And in college in the early 1970s, the study of History was almost all American and European. Asia got very short shrift. I have also not studied guidebooks. It’s my hope (fantasy?) that these deficits can be turned into something positive, an experience not shaped by my preconceptions.



The next entry will be from Hong Kong.

---

Comments

[Tom Drum]

WOnderful Phrasing
You have style, and know how to use it! Writing is one of your many fortes, and you don't do a "Bad Job" of it either. Have much fun and tremendous experiences on your trip!