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Niki Collins-Queen

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Member Since: Before 2003

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Books by
Niki Collins-Queen



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by Niki Collins-Queen


 
Blogs by Niki Collins-Queen

Vietnam: A Vagabond Travel Guide
8/23/2010 10:36:13 AM


Several years as a U. S. management consultant convinced Karin Muller she did not want to be a part of Wall Streets world of inflated salaries, empty lives and inevitable ulcers. Instead of consolidating her career and padding her 401 (k) Karin, at age twenty-nine, became a vagabond travel author, filmmaker and photographer. “Hitchhiking Vietnam: A Woman's Solo Journey in an Elusive Land” is a fascinating account of Karin's seven-month biking and hiking odessey in the mid 90s from the Mekong Delta to China's border in search of villages and people untouched by the commercial influences of the West. She lived in the homes and planted rice with farmers, saved a number of wild animals from the thriving black market trade, and endured numerous physical discomforts and arrests.
Karin's curiosity, daring and poetic descriptions of her adventures are stunning. I could picture her Saigon driver as he hurled his cyclo into three streams of traffic where life seemed measured in inches. Laughing gaily as he surged toward the next giddy brush with death.
While Karin was traveling on a local bus to Saigon she heard the ratton bag hanging from the seat in front of her take a deep breath and begin to crow. It was answered by a series of identical bags scattered throughout the the bus. She drifted off to sleep listening to the volleys of rough throated roosters with her head resting on a strange man's shoulder. I also loved Karin's description of an outdoor toilet at one of the homes she stayed in. It was a knee-deep packing crate on stilts over a fishpond. When she climbed up the wobbly plank, the mirror smooth water suddenly began to churn and boil with expectant fish.
Karin's letters to her Mom are also charming and insightful. It was Karin's mother that had taught her curiosity and passed on her restless spirit. Karin later realized that she had not come to Vietnam to fulfill her mother's dream but her own. She would carry on, not in her mother's name but in her own.
I could not put the book down.
Karin has written two other books “Inca Road: A Woman's Journey into an Ancient Empire” and “Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa” and simultaneously produced television documentaries for PBS, MSNBC Explorer and the National Geographic's global channel. She also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines for a couple of years in the late 80s.


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Books by
Niki Collins-Queen



See all Books
by Niki Collins-Queen