The Vietnam Experience

In Vietnam, a little pick-me-up morning drink is made out of alcohol and a rather special ingredient: snake blood. And, believe it or not, intrepid traveler Justine Shapiro, the twentysomething hip host of The Vietnam Experience, actually takes a sip (I would have sooner eaten monkey meat on a stick). Based on the Lonely Planet travel guidebook, this outstanding production--one in a series of eight--combines interesting sights (and stories), winning graphics, and a superb soundtrack, as viewers travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi and beyond to a remote village near the Chinese border. Along the journey, Shapiro visits beautifully decorated temples, crawls through a Vietcong underground tunnel, spends the night in a hotel where water and electricity are shut off at 7 p.m. (not a Michelin five-star place, incidentally), and buys a "fake" G.I. lighter from street hawkers. She also rides the Reunification Express (which runs late), fires an AK-47, and visits streets named after their predominant trades--Tin St., Fish St., and the more somber Gravestone St. Unobtrusively squeezed into the narration are the vital statistics about Vietnam's geography, population, religions, history, and culture. Along with Rick Ray's outstanding Raise the Bamboo Curtain: Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma (VL-1/95), this is the best recent Vietnam video we've seen. The Lonely Planet series is inexpensive, very entertaining, and informative. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. The other titles in the series are: The Morocco Experience, The Brazil Experience: North East, The Alaska Experience, Ecuador & The Galapagos Islands Experience, The Indonesia Experience, La Ruta Maya Experience, and The Pacific Islands Experience: Solomon Islands, Vanuatu & Fiji. (R. Pitman)