Product Details

• Actors: Karin Muller
• Directors: Karin Muller
• Writers: Karin Muller
• Producers: Harlan Reiniger, David Fanning
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Wgbh Boston
• VHS Release Date: March 28, 2000
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304794495
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,915 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Chance rules most of Karin Muller's trip to Vietnam. A first-time filmmaker, the 28-year-old set out on a 7-month solo trip to explore the Ho Chi Minh trail with her trusty Hi-8 camera. Yet her plans go awry, often luckily so, as she discovers early on when she learns that the bus she missed by moments crashed, killing most of its passengers. Later, a washed out bridge forces her to abandon her original plans, and she lets much of her trip be determined by the people she meets.

Hitchhiking Vietnam is narrated partially by the letters she wrote home to her mother, but she also shows us "what I didn't tell my mother I was up to." Hitchhiking with soldiers, riding a motorbike, driving a train are just a few of her adventures. This is not a travel guide; rather, it is video memoir, a visual diary of her trip abroad. Thus, while we get plenty of incredible footage of scenery and locals, we are often treated to trite and judgmental narration (about one woman she comments, "She was dying of tuberculosis, but the real evil was the brown paste in her hand: [long dramatic pause] opium"). If you can move beyond this, though, and accept that this is Muller's personal account and opinions, the story and footage are inspiring. She has successfully managed to pack her seven-months into this compact and well-edited hour-long documentary about traveling off the beaten path. --Jenny Brown

Product Description

Have you ever dreamed of escaping it all? Karin Muller did. The 28-year-old former management consultant takes a fascinating solo trek through an enchanted Vietnam far off the tourist map, from the hustling back streets of Saigon and Hanoi to a remote Hmong tribal mountain village few foreigners have ever seen.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hitchhiking Vietnam: Letters from the Trail (VHS), January 11, 2011

By 

Doug - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hitchhiking Vietnam: Letters from the Trail [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I served in RVN in the delta with the US Navy's Helicopter,Attack,Light,Three squadron during the final days of ground combat. Our mission was to cover SEAL operations, Navy river patrol forces, local VN outposts and villages. We lived with and worked closely with local South Vietnamese in training them to defend themselves.

I am always curious at to what happened when we left in Feb. of '72. Karin Muller reports her 1998 adventure in a some what non-political, humorous light as she explores some of the places as we operated in and around the Mekong Delta. She starts her journey there and goes north to Hanoi and places in between, finding parts of the elusive Ho Chi Minh Trail, all in search of the "real" Vietnam. Her work is a clear-sighted, refreshingly human account of her close encounter in a now forbidden land.

This video, along with her book, "Hitchhiking Vietnam", completes the story. A great addition to my historical collection, giving some closure to my time in our turbulent Vietnam era. I recommend her work to any Vietnam vet.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Contemporary Vietnam, December 9, 2000

By 

bernie "xyzzy" (Arlington, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Hitchhiking Vietnam: Letters from the Trail [VHS] (VHS Tape)

With our renewed rapport with Vietnam it would be good to view or review that area if the world.

This is a diary of sorts of a seven-month trip around Vietnam. Not one of those glossy government or fancy travelogues, but a personal trip that was documented with letters. As with any experience there will be differences of opinions as to the environment and people. My Vietnam of the 60's was vastly different from the war movies of the time.
There are some parts that may be gory to some people during food preparation times. Others would be appalled at the wanton destruction of forests and wild life.

I was reading the book after viewing the film with my wife to show her a little bit of what it was when I was there. She immediately said that the villages (especially the huts) seemed surprisingly like the dwellings in the Yucatan.

Even thought this was a well put together documentary, I was disappointed as my time there was mostly in the central highlands Peiku, An Khe, Kontum and there about. And when she went up the coast she missed all the high spots.

The Montagnards she interviews were Mongol invaders; they were not the Montagnards I was aquatinted with. The Montagnards of the central highlands are approximately 14 to 16 separate people that were in the highlands before the people that call themselves Vietnamese invaded from China thousands of years ago. In essence they are to the Vietnamese the equivalent of our native Americans.

The book is one of the rare descriptions of today's Vietnam and worth reading as I was able to be places that I missed on my tour and imagine the rundown state of the country today