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.
