Vietnam and Cambodia: Three Decades Later
A Photo-Journal

Samuel Jay Keyser

Click below to view the photo-journal:
High-Speed Connection (T1/Cable)
Medium-Speed Connection (DSL)
Low-Speed Connection (56K Modem)

Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam (click on image to enlarge)

I am not a traveler by nature or inclination. My wife, Nancy Kelly, on the other hand, is a travel addict. I am sure this has something to do with the division of our species into risk takers and risk avoiders. I am four square in the latter camp. Nancy's feet are firmly planted in the former. When we married, I had no idea that "for better or for worse" meant following her to Kenya (twice), Tanzania (twice), Botswana (twice), South Africa (twice), Zimbabwe (twice), Malawi, Zambia, Egypt, Sicily, Turkey, Australia, Tasmania, Indonesia (twice to Bali), New Zealand, Italy, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and, in the coming months, the Marquesas, Tahiti, Easter Island, Morocco, and Papua New Guinea. In retrospect it is better that I didn't know. It would not have affected my decision to marry. It would merely have made it agonizing.

Nancy wants to make each trip last as long as possible. This she accomplishes by taking photographs. On our Vietnam/Cambodia trip, for example, she took 7,200. I took up journal writing as a way of coping with the anxieties travel visits upon me. As Rabbi Israel Bal Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidism, wrote in Keter Shem Tov, "Where a person's thoughts are, that is where he is." It was inevitable that Nancy and I would hit upon the idea of combining her photographs and my journals.

While traveling, we rarely coordinate what we are doing, she with a camera, me with a keyboard – not surprising since our motivations are so different. Even so, our ways of looking at things are remarkably alike. In the end our photo-journals provide the interested readers and viewers with an account of how we cope with our demons, mine the demon of not wanting to be there, Nancy's the demon of never wanting to leave.

Killing Fields Memorial, outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia (click on image to enlarge)

The photo-journal Vietnam and Cambodia: Three Decades Later is a case in point. From September 20 through October 2, 2004, Nancy and I hosted a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. The journey, sponsored by the MIT Alumni Travel Program, started in Hanoi, proceeded to Ho Chi Minh City, with a stop at the incredible Cu Chi Tunnels, and ended with a seven-day boat trip up the Mekong River into Cambodia, Siem Reap, and Angkor Wat. The resultant photo-journal offers a glimpse into the daily life of two nations for whom until 1972 war was simply one more way of life. The beauty of their ancient past, the ferociousness of their recent past, and the vibrancy of their present are here only in part. Still Vietnam and Cambodia may offer a hint of what to expect should your own destinies – welcome or otherwise – take you there.

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