Carpe Diem -- YA Travel Novel

A friend told me about a book called Carpe Diem. It's a young adult novel, she said, about traveling in Asia.

Since she's a reader whose opinion I respect, I decided to take her advice and seek out this book written by Autumn Cornwell.

In it, a sixteen year-old girl named Vassar gets kidnapped to Southeast Asia. Well, she's not really kidnapped. But to her, it feels like it.

Her artist grandmother insists that Vassar get out of the country and away from her high-expectation parents for a summer. The grandma fears Vassar is in danger of becoming an over-focused planner with no ability to adapt to life's changes.

And of course, if you've been there, then you know that there is no better way to break someone of their love of planning than to take them on a backpacking trip through Southeast Asia.

I actually really liked the book. It didn't matter to me at all that the main character was a 16 year old kid. I identified with her journey, the places she was seeing and the feelings she was experiencing.

If you know a middle school/high school girl looking for a book, I say hand her a copy of Carpe Diem. And even if you're an adult -- so what? It's still worth a read!

Dragon House -- Americans in Vietnam

I go back and forth between whether I'm a fiction or a nonfiction reader. Currently, it seems, I'm all about the fiction. Maybe that's because it's summer and I'm looking to lose myself in a story.

This past month I read an advance copy of a book called Dragon House.

It's released this month (September) but I've had a copy for several weeks now. I got it from the author, John Shors, who I met via email back in June. I read another one of his novels, Beside a Burning Sea, which has a haiku-theme, and reviewed it for my haiku blog. Then I sent him an email requesting a haiku interview.

He agreed and you can read the result at Haiku By Two.

But the interviewed opened a line of communication and as it turns out, we're both travelers. He told me about his newest book, Dragon House, which is set in Vietnam, after finding out I had traveled there, too. Before you know it, he was sending me an advance copy.

I liked the book and was able to picture the Saigon setting so clearly. The basic plot is that two Americans go to Saigon to open a home for Vietnamese street children.

There are some twists, of course. What would a novel be without some complications along the way? And a love story, too, because everyone likes a little romance.

What I found most interesting about the book was the way in which the author was able to turn his travel experiences into a novel. At the end, in the acknowledgements, he talks about a street child he met on one of his travels who inspired one of the characters in the book.

I, too, have a pocket full of stories about street kids I've encountered in my global wanderings.

It all got me thinking about how writers mine their own experiences to craft other tales -- and about how I might do the same...

Bananas in Cambodia

After digging around in my Cambodia pictures last week, I came across this one -- baby bananas!

I was obviously enamored with them because I took several shots that all pretty much look the same.

And why not? Bananas just don't grow in my neck of the woods and no matter how many times I have seen them growing in another country, I'm still thrilled at each encounter.

Minnesota or Cambodia?

After our visit to the Wat Munisota, I was so intrigued with the architecture of the temple that I dug up my pictures from Cambodia to compare the images.

What do you think...Minnesota or Cambodia?

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B.


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D.

Cambodian Temple in Minnesota

It was big news a couple summers back -- a Cambodian temple opened in Minnesota.

The newspaper was full of pictures from the temple-opening ceremony, and after looking the over, Hubby and I decided we needed to check the place out. The images looked so similar to things we had seen while traveling in Cambodia ourselves.

And then...well, time passed. Somehow we never found the time to drive out and visit it.

Well, we made the time. We took a mini road trip to visit the Wat Munisota, which is about an hour drive from our home and just south of the Twin Cities.

But once you make it all the way out there, you feel like you're in the country -- the country side and an actual other county.

Our map took us down a dirt road and passed several corn and soy bean fields to get there. The temple is seriously out in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by green.

As soon as we pulled into the temple entrance we were greeted by a bald-headed monk in saffron robes painting light posts.

We wondered at the name ... was "Wat Munisota" supposed to be "Wat Minnesota"?

The temple was open to the public and full of ornate gold-painted Buddhas, vases of flowers and strings of glimmering beads. The life of the Buddha was retold in colorful paintings all the way around the worship hall.

We weren't the only "tourists" there either. A few other city folk had made the drive as well--a couple moms trying to give their elementary kids a cultural experience.

Besides them, the one monk we saw out at the main entrance, and a couple of landscapers who were working on a retaining wall, the place was pretty quiet.

It was really neat to see, though, and we were glad we'd made the time to go and check it out.