Alice Driver

Writer's Biography

Alice Driver returned from a year of studies at the University of Valladolid in Spain in June of 2006, got married mid-July and left for Vietnam with her husband Isaac on July 29. Isaac and Alice are traveling to Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, New Zealand (Tokelau), Peru and Ecuador as Isaac works and studies with indigenous boat builders (www.savantsofthesea.com). Alice loves languages and has enjoyed learning conversational Vietnamese, Thai and Malay. When she returns to the US next year she will finish her Masters degree in Hispanic Studies at the University of Kentucky. Her first academic article will appear in the Winter 2007 issue of Romance Quarterly and her other articles can be found in Transitions Abroad.

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Featured Travel Stories in Oriental Tales Magazine

Vietnam: More than Food: Shared Conversation, Shared Lives - Story by Alice Driver
- 7th Online Issue

His hands are spotted and old; on the left hand a large wound is covered by a puff of bloody cotton and a piece of clear tape. These are the hands of Do Kha, a 77-year-old bamboo coracle builder who lives on Cam Kim Island in Vietnam. He is small in stature, with a look of frailty about him that disappears when he sits cross-legged on the ground to cut strips of bamboo and begins a new boat. My husband Isaac and I arrive at his house in the morning and greet him with a loud “Chao buoi sang” (“Good morning”). Isaac explains “Toi noi duoc mot it tieng viet” (“We speak a little bit of Vietnamese”). He has a difficulty hearing, so we exchange a few sentences of Vietnamese, but are never sure exactly what has been communicated. His wife, children and grandchildren are on the porch, and neighborhood children roam in and out of the yard.

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China Beach, Vietnam: Early Morning - Story by Alice Driver
- 6th Online Issue

We woke up at 3:45am, walking out into the clear night, stars bewitchingly bright and unhindered by city lights. There were cottony wisps of clouds floating in-between the night sky and land, somehow neither here nor there. The moon was a thin crescent, but brilliant, turning the waves silver as they curled and broke neatly on the beach. Isaac and I sat down facing the water to await the appearance of a fisherman who he had befriended. There were already some men on the beach gathered around a pile of embers glowing red in the night, a pinpoint on the dark beach.

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