Myanmar. A country that has been sleeping for a long time wakes up. With cameras in hand we try to capture the unique culture and stunning nature of this beautiful country before it changes irreversibly.

On one hand exploring Myanmar feels like stumbling into a living edition of the National Geographic: elephants leading processions of novice monks through dusty towns, a fruit seller carrying a basket of mangoes on her head: a fulfilment of the oriental fantasies of the West.

On the other- a country embracing its newly won identity rushing headlong into the future to catch up with the rest of the world: traditional Burmese sarongs meet singlets and baseball caps. Cheroot cigars become cigarettes.

The Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians tend the rice and the Lao listen to it grow – said the French colonialists. Needless to say, they didn’t mean it as a complement. And maybe they should have.

Hundred years later, looking at Laos we might find out that there is much to learn from its quiet population. Living unhurriedly, they seem to be living a life full of what we in the Western world struggle to find- balance.

On the one hand: Dao priestesses dancing in temples hidden within cloud covered peaks of Wudang Mountains – the cradle of Daoism and Tai Chi. Beautiful Yunnan, where mysterious Tibetan temples of Shangri-La meet thousand year old ancient villages and blue clad Bai women in the villages surrounding the Erhai Lake.

On the other: Men playing board games in grey hutongs of Beijing and kitchen porters doing the dishes in the grimy back alleys of Hong Kong. Ghost cities of empty buildings ready to accumulate millions of new dwellers. The rise of the new urban middle class.

When in your memories temple incense smoke mixes with pulsing neon lights of Hong Kong’s nightscape you know you’ve been to China.

This film is a collage of our impressions and memories of Vietnam. It doesn’t aspire to be anything more than that. But it would make us happy to know that it made you curious about the country in the same way it makes one happy when a friend finally reads that book or listens to that album you recommended him years ago.

Entering Vietnam by land from Northern Laos our first destination was an unusual one- a border city of small size but great historical importance- Dien Bien Phu. It was here that the Vietnamese defeated the French colonial forces and it was also here more than 60 years later where we understood that ahead of us lies a country whose history stretches way beyond the Vietnam War and that this is also where we need to look to understand it.