By Pia De Girolamo

In September 2023, I traveled to Vietnam and stayed in Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An, and Saigon. I took lots of iPhone photos, many of which I took with an eye to doing watercolors, sketches, and paintings. I kept a travel sketchbook. The following is a travelogue recounting some of my observations and art. It includes my watercolors and sketches from the sketchbook and subsequent acrylic paintings made in the studio after I returned home.

Conical hats: I hadn’t realized how ubiquitous the conical hat (“Non la”) would be. It’s understandable though — the hat is perfectly engineered to shade from the sun and to keep off the rain. It is made from natural plentiful plant material. These cleaning ladies were both wearing conical hats and you will see them appear in subsequent sketches and paintings.

The bicycle: Though it has mainly been supplanted by the motor scooter in Hanoi there are still plenty of bicycles. In Saigon, there are many more cars and also more motorcycles in addition to scooters.

Tropical fruit was plentiful. This is a watercolor of the dragonfruit that was placed in our hotel room as a welcome snack. There were all different types of bananas, mangoes, papaya, mangosteen, jackfruit, durian and I’m sure I’m forgetting some.

Flowers and flower sellers were everywhere. In Saigon there was a whole flower district, shop after shop selling flowers of every type and color. On the street, flower sellers sold the flowers off the back of their bicycles

Jeep Tour: We went to the countryside outside Hanoi in an old Russian army jeep. Sure, it might have been gimmicky but it was also fun and our guide was lovely. Here my friends are in the jeep going through the streets leading out to the countryside.

The countryside was easily accessible from the city and was very beautiful. This picture encapsulates the new and old that exist side by side in Vietnam, new apartment towers in the distance, looming over a woman weeding her field by hand.

The Red River is the river that runs through Hanoi. This section is outside the city.

The Perfume River (a loose translation of Huong River) runs through Hue. There are various legends as to how it got its name. Some say it is named after the incense an Emperor offered to the gods, others from the aromatic flowers that dropped from its banks into the river and floated downstream.

“Vietnamese ninja” is what one of our guides called them, the women that ride motor scooters swathed in long light hooded coats, some with knockoff designer logos and masks to protect themselves from the fumes and dust of the road and from the sun.

Motor scooters and motorcycles outnumber cars on the roads. They travel in huge packs and initially, it appears chaotic until you realize that they move like schools of fish or murmurations of birds in an orderly manner, no one trying to get ahead of anyone but all traveling mainly at the same speed. Attempting to cross the street at a crosswalk is scary because the scooters don’t stop. Instead, they go around you. Once you commit to crossing you must keep moving; if you stop like a deer in the headlights, you’ll confuse the rider and end up causing an accident.

The friendliness of the people and the wonderful regional dishes were trip highlights. And I would be remiss if I did not mention the Vietnam War. The younger generations are far removed from the trauma, focused on being successful, and very tuned in to global pop culture. The events of the immediate aftermath of the war (the North punishing the South, communism not working, the fall of the USSR that supported them, hunger, and the US trade embargo) mark some of the generation that grew up during that time. They will tell you their very difficult stories. But they are also amazingly resilient, entrepreneurial, and forward-looking. The overall impression I got of Vietnam is of an energetic, resourceful country on the move.

Pia De Girolamo is an accomplished painter living and working in the Greater Philadelphia area whose recent exhibitions featured large-scale paintings based on abstracted mountain landscapes, as well as a series evoking the urban landscapes of Rome and Italy. She has had thirteen solo exhibitions, most recently at the Museo Mastroianni, within the Musei di San Salvatore in Lauro in Rome and at the Cerulean Arts Gallery in Philadelphia. She has also shown extensively in group exhibitions regionally.  De Girolamo has a BA in Art History from Barnard College, Columbia University and an MD degree from the University of Rochester. She lectures on the relationship between art and medicine as well as the connections between art, nature, and health. Her awarded work has been acquired for collections by the Museo Mastroianni, Rome, PNC Bank, Pittsburgh, PA and Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia and has been highlighted in Hollywood feature films. For more information on De Girolamo’s work: piadegirolamo.com