Back in 1993 the author, Erika Warmbrunn, is living in Seattle and feeling overwhelmed by a sense of failure and hopelessness in her life. She had moved there from New York
City in 1988 in the hope of becoming involved in Seattle's booming
theater scene. She gets no call-backs from her auditions. Fluent in Russian, the only theater-related jobs she can find are as a translator and interpreter. Circumstances converge to rob her of her dream and five years later she finds herself working in a travel book store.
It is at this moment that she decides to escape, to get farther away from everything than she has ever been before. Having already traveled extensively throughout Europe, she has never been to Asia and makes up her mind to go there. She reads as much as she can on the countries in that part of the world and concocts a plan to ride north to south, starting in Mongolia, continuing through China and on into Vietnam.
A lucky break comes in the form of a phone call from a manager who tells her that his theater troupe is planning to go to Vladivostok. He asks if she would like to join them as an interpreter. It's the perfect
opportunity. She gets her visa and
passport in order, buys a bike and begins training. After nearly a month in Vladivostok the troupe heads home and she stays behind to make her way through the southeastern corner of Siberia to cross into Mongolia.
At once she is struck by the quiet, seemingly endless plains and rolling hills. She
feels understandably small, but also vindicated. She is on her way to achieving her goal of escape. Some nights she sleeps under the stars, others she spends in the ger tents of generous and obliging families. When she reaches a small town called Arshaant she is asked to stay and teach English in the local schoolhouse and ends up spending an extra three months there before pushing on to the capital, Ulaanbaatar. Beyond the city is more vastness as she makes her way south and crosses the Chinese border.
In China she feels considerably more intimidated. It is the polar opposite of Mongolia. In the town she visits she is frequently harried by police officials demanding to see her passport but she takes this as a minor inconvenience as she still has opportunity to meet so many kind and accepting
people. Her last few nights in the country are spent camping out in the expanse of tropical forest along China's borders with Southeast Asia.
As an American in Vietnam she feels the weight of history and unfortunately encounters much more hostility than in Mongolia or China. She had expected this but is still unprepared for the level of some peoples' frustration and anger but this doesn't, in turn, illicit anger from her. It only fills her with an abiding sadness throughout her trek southward to Saigon(Ho Chi Minh City). She feels a great sympathy for the children and young people of the country, born into a world torn apart by a savage conflict not too long ago but she eventually comes to understand that the Vietnamese are a strong people. They are survivors.
Erika Warmbrunn's account of her journey is, in a word, beautiful. In flowing, almost poetic or classical style she reveals the green, grassy prairies of Mongolia, the bustle, and the quiet beauty, of China and the lush, deep rain forests that conceal a terrible tragedy and pain in Vietnam. Her words are haunting, vivid, calling to us from back across time.
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