From mountains to sea

(Hanoi, Vietnam) — Right now I’m hiding out in my hotel room as I escape the heat, motorbikes, aggressive vendors and endless ways to spend money that Hanoi is known for. This is by far my favorite big city in Vietnam, but it’s still better taken in small bites than giant gulps. I was out [...]

Hello, goodbye Hanoi

(Hanoi, Vietnam) — I don’t even know how to begin to explain this place. Hanoi is large, but it’s impossible to tell that as the streets are so tiny and dense with life that it seems impossible that they could go on for miles. I almost think it’s funny now that I found Ho Chi [...]

Children and animals

This post is for my friend and Mountaineer columnist, Paul Viau. Before I left, he joked that I shouldn’t only take pictures of little kids and animals, as that’s kind of my thing at the paper where I work. The funny thing is that I feel even more of a desire to take photos of [...]

At home in Saigon (5 a.m.)

Dear Readers,

I apologize, again, for dropping off the face of the earth after my last post months ago, but I have been in that sweet, comfortable normalcy that comes along with being somewhere that kind of suits you. It’s strange, being in one place for more than a year, and part of me has loved [...]

North Carolina and her girlish charms

(WAYNESVILLE, NC) — The longer I stay in Western North Carolina, the more its beauty tries to seduce me. Its small, country roads bat their eyelashes at me, and those pristine, babbling streams give me a come-hither look. On my ride to work, I see pastures and cornfields and lush mountainsides licked with fog. Constantly, [...]