I am mystified by the travel paralysis that seems to have gripped so many Americans. It's an odd, dangerous time, or at least it looks that way when I'm glued every night to CNN, but getting out in the world is really no more risky than staying at home. And travel is such a wonderful, therapeutic way to relieve all that news-generated stress. I'm not planning a holiday jaunt to North Korea anytime soon, but I am planning to get away somewhere warm, wonderful, fascinating. Seizing the moment has always served me well, particularly when it came to jetting off with my closest friend and most faithful travel companion-my mother. As an only child growing up in small-town Massachusetts, I was always very close to both of my parents. When I was just out of college, my father died suddenly. As a way of helping us recover from his death, my mother and I decided to use our nest egg to travel the world. We found an astonishingly inexpensive tour company in Boston, International Weekends, and booked our first big trip overseas: 16 days in China with air for only $899. And just like that, a mother-daughter traveling team was born.
There were so many trips available to the most exotic locales. We couldn't resist any of them. Over the next decade-from the early '80s into the early '90s-we traveled to Romania, Guatemala, the Soviet Union, Senegal, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Tahiti, and throughout most of Europe. We never found excuses not to go. It was almost as if we had a premonition that we should not delay.
We were lucky enough to hit every place at just the right moment. We traveled around China when it was first opening up to American tourists in the early '80s. At our first stop, Shanghai, my blond-haired, blue-eyed mother caused quite a sensation. Crowds of locals gathered around her, fascinated by this odd-looking Western woman. They stared, they touched her hair, they were awestruck. This happened throughout China and later in other isolated corners of the world. It was a thrill to be so out of place, to step into worlds not our own, to feel so very foreign.
We went to Romania and the Soviet Union when both were still part of the forbidden empire. Stepping behind the Iron Curtain delivered quite a frisson. Sometimes, unfamiliar with local customs-and restrictions-we'd inadvertently get ourselves into a bit of trouble. Once, in Moscow, a handsome young man asked us to dinner at a local restaurant. When the bill came he paid in local currency and asked if we'd give him our share in dollars, but not there and then-later, on the subway on the way back to our hotel. We passed him the money heading down an escalator, not realizing that we'd just broken the law on exchanging dollars with Russian citizens.
As time progressed we became consummate planners, booking trips with key annual events in mind: tulip season in Holland, the Stars of the White Nights Festival in Leningrad. For several years we spent Christmas and New Year's in Europe, each time splitting the holidays between two different European capitals: Christmas in Prague, New Year's in Budapest, the same for Lisbon and Madrid, for London and Paris. These were some of our most precious moments together, spilling into new raucous streets at the stroke of the New Year. We were even in Prague for its first independent Christmas free of the Soviet grip.
Traveling together elicited some great reactions from both locals and fellow travelers. Everywhere we went people were charmed to encounter a mother and daughter who got along so well, more like best friends than anything else. Local families adopted us along the way, feeding us in their homes, volunteering to show us the sights. And international young men, who must have shaved a few years off my age seeing me with my very young-looking mother, were drawn to me like magnets. I got marriage proposals in Romania, Senegal, and China.
To immortalize our trips together we'd always elicit some passerby to snap our photo in front of key landmarks. We developed them big and hung them in frames in our home gallery: Mom and me in front of the Great Wall; at Red Square; at Ayres Rock; near the Sydney Opera House; at the pyramids in Egypt. Before long the picture gallery was enormous.
These adventures together cemented our relationship and really did turn us into best friends. We were constantly planning for our next trip or reminiscing about our last. We'd cook up some specialty dish we'd discovered halfway around the world, explore wines we'd tasted, and polish off dinners with some newly discovered liquor-Japanese sake or maybe a Polynesian mai tai.
These trips became a big part of our lives, even long after they'd ended. People we met along the way wrote us letters and visited us in New York. I even helped our Romanian tour guide get out from under the wicked Ceausescu regime and immigrate to this country. Mostly everyone knew us as the mother-daughter travelers-"Lilly and Sheri, where are they going next?"
Then, quite suddenly, my mom fell ill and couldn't travel anymore. We eventually found out it was Alzheimer's. We often discussed how lucky it was that we had traveled so much when we still could. In her rooms at the various assisted-living places into which I moved her, I hung the large framed photos from our worldwide adventures-a complete picture gallery featuring decades of memories. These brought her immense pleasure. The photos jogged her memory, which was dimming progressively. On each of my visits, Mom asked me to tell her the stories of where we went and what we did. I'd recount our famous travel tales and she'd marvel that she'd actually been on all those exotic adventures. "Sheri," she'd say, "you mean to tell me we traveled all over the world? I can't believe it!" She died this past summer.
The time to travel with your loved ones is now. Not later. Now. Life is short. It may be risky to wait. Travel now.
Northern Vietnam
Just ask last year's nearly 3 million international visitors: Vietnam is hardly a best-kept secret. And the traffic is increasing. Since they were introduced in December, United Airlines' direct flights to Ho Chi Minh City -- the first American flights to the country from the U.S. since 1975 -- have been virtually sold out. Vietnam Airlines plans on jumping aboard with direct flights of its own later this year. Feel like you missed your window? Don't worry. Getting off the beaten path is remarkably easy in Vietnam. Most visitors stick to the two poles of this narrow, 1,000-mile-long land: Hanoi in the north and Ho Chi Minh City in the south. National airlines offer dirt-cheap, two-hour flights between the two cities. But travel by train is still the more affordable option and allows for detours along the way. At least a quarter of all Vietnam tourists make Hoi An one of those stops. An 80,000-person port town on the Thu Bon river, Hoi An has seen its popularity surge since UNESCO -- the cultural preservation arm of the U.N. -- designated its Ancient Town a World Heritage site in 1999 for, among other things, its elegant 18th-century architecture. But Hoi An is still worth a visit, not only for its prolific seamstresses who can custom-make a silk dress in a matter of hours, but also for its proximity to two places under most travelers' radars: My Son Sanctuary and Bach Ma National Park. My Son Sanctuary In a lush valley below Cat's Tooth Mountain, My Son was once the royal burial and temple grounds for the Champa Kingdom, one of Vietnam's earliest major civilizations, which existed between the 2nd and 15th centuries. The Vietcong used the site as a base during the war, and American bombs destroyed many of the more than 70 Hindu-inspired monuments, though President Nixon finally declared them off-limits, partly at the urging of a Cham art expert. Bomb craters still punctuate the monument grounds, and land mines lurk beneath the surrounding jungle. (Signs provide plenty of warning about where the area becomes potentially unsafe.) Reminiscent of a mini-Angkor Wat, My Son is best enjoyed when you can wander the crumbling brick altars and temples in solitude. So go at off times. Tour buses are there from around 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.; you can and should avoid the crowds by hiring a driver for an early-morning or late-afternoon trip (it's open from 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.). The ride costs about $20, and your driver will wait for you. Two hours at the site should do it. Also a UNESCO World Heritage site, My Son has seen a bump in tourism; a newly paved road, which cut the three-hour drive from Hoi An in half, is making it more accessible. Several international organizations, including Global Heritage Fund, have recently backed restoration projects, painstakingly reassembling the bombed-out monuments and planning for increased on-site security. But while those projects make My Son friendlier to visitors, the feeling now is still that of stumbling Indiana Jones-style onto an archaeological find. Bach Ma National Park Even more remote, Bach Ma National Park, 56 miles north of Hoi An, is Vietnam at its best -- untamed jungles, leafy valleys, views of sparkling beaches. The two-hour drive from Hoi An over the Hai Van Pass is easily the country's most beautiful. Then from Bach Ma's entrance, a tight 10-mile paved road snakes almost to the top of the park's 4,800-foot summit, with wild side trails (some requiring the use of overhanging vines to help you haul yourself over large logs) leading to waterfalls. You can hire a jeep to shuttle you up the park's main road, but the four-to-five-hour hike allows you to take time with the views. The temperature drops about 40 degrees as you climb; pack a hat, a rain jacket (the park is Vietnam's wettest spot), and lots of bottled water. High-ranking French officials built stately vacation villas along the road in the 1930s. Although most are now in ruins, the park service renovated a few near the entrance and summit after Bach Ma was designated a national park in 1991. They're now spare but comfortable inns, with wood floors, shutters, and verandas; an on-site caretaker serves basic Vietnamese meals. Beyond the update of these villas, not much else has changed at Bach Ma. For that, in part, you can thank conservationists, who have fought to preserve the park's biodiversity -- including tigers and over 1,400 plant species -- and a remarkable serenity. Northern Vietnam Transportation Vietnam Airlines 415/677-0888 Vietnam Railways vr.com.vn, Hanoi to Danang from $26 Lodging Cua Dai Hotel Hoi An, 011-84/510-862-231, elephantguide.com/cuadai, from $12 National Park Guesthouse Bach Ma, 011-84/54-871-330, bachma.vnn.vn, rooms from $6.50, dinner for two from $5.50 Morin-Bach Ma Bach Ma, 011-84/54-871-199, rooms from $20,dinner for two $10 Resources My Son globalheritage fund.org, tickets $3 Bach Ma 011-84/54-871-330, bachma.vnn.vn, tickets $1
