Go on vacation and it is likely you will come home with some special keepsake. A great souvenir should transport you back over and over in time, to the memories made in a location. There is a great expression, “take only memories and leave only footprints”. This statement is perfect in its simplicity, when experiencing a natural area but visiting interesting locations and exploring unique cultures, warrant gathering items which help us to remember. Like many, we came home with treasures to add to our home. Some cost a lot, others cost nothing. Space, weight and budget may dictate what item or items are worthy of our making their way home in our suitcases, so let me tell you about a few of our favorite things to collect.
There are so many keepsakes which cost little to nothing. It will come as no surprise that my number one souvenir will always be my pictures and my written words. My first suggestion for travelers is to take as many photos as possible, while allowing yourself to be fully immersed in your experience. There is a saying, “if you don’t have a picture of it, it never happened”. You can always delete photos which don’t turn out well, but you can not recreate those special moments, which show how you have spent your days and who you shared your time with. My official photo count for this 30+ day adventure is over 10,000 pictures! These days, cell phones make taking pictures easy. You will never regret reliving the memories through your photos and stories.
I will delete many of these images but a few hundred photos will become priceless treasures. These will be added to our digital photo frame at home (our number one treasure in our house), allowing us to relive our experiences over and over, initiating conversations, as we reminisce. Our 4 year old grandson especially enjoys the photos on the frame and often makes up his own stories about our pictures, while telling us he has “been there”. We love fueling his imagination and we hope to inspire his dreams of visiting these exotic locations for himself one day.
Sometimes it is not “what” we collect in our travels that we consider a souvenir, but the stories we gather along the way. Photos become a documentation of how you are spending your time but a photo rarely stands alone without an explanation. Alan and I are always playing the ABC game, so we are often looking for unique activities and adventures to experience. In the past, we have designed ABC adventures around using different modes of transportation, visiting cities and tasting various alcohol laden drinks along the abc trail. We even completed an airport art adventure, using the alphabet as our guide! Our photos often reflect the goofiness we get up to, as we try to document each letter under our selected theme. We are both trying to get better at selfies!
If you think of a camera as a way to capture your story visually your creativity will naturally flow, I am the designated photographer for our family. I still don’t consider myself a great photographer but I am pretty good at documenting our lives. It wasn’t always this way. When I met Alan, he was the one exploring photography but once kids came, I became passionate about capturing them on film, scrapbooking and story telling, which meant I spent more time behind the lens than in front of it. Alan and I are always together, we are a team and most of our photos represent that but I also want my children and grandchildren to have photos of each of us as separate and unique individuals. If you are the photographer, remember to step out from behind the camera occasionally. You are part of the story too!
Exploring Chinese Gardens in Singapore
This brings me to my next souvenir freebie. A journal costs nothing to keep. A few sentences about the things you ate, the people you met, the weather and the experiences you had, will be great memory joggers as you revisit your moments. You can use the notes feature on your phone, an app or good old pen and paper. The most important thing is to write down some details. This is the only way I would ever remember that every student in Hong Kong is required to choose an English name for themselves. This tidbit certainly makes my writing more interesting but it also offers more depth to the photos we take.
Memorabilia is also something easy to acquire. While in Japan, I spent a few minutes learning to write my name in calligraphy. I may frame this work of art but if I don’t, I will always remember how fun it was to learn. On several of our Japanese excursions, we also learned the art of origami folding. We made Mount Fuji and a Samurai helmet. One of our tour guides also gifted us a tiny, folded, origami heron. These are small treasures which were also documented by photos but if I choose to keep the items, they can easily be added to scrapbooks or journals. Another favorite piece of memorabilia was an entry ticket to the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan. It is beautifully written calligraphy which offers a wish for family safety and safe travels. This is worthy of space among my story telling. Currency can also be a form of memorabilia. While in Vietnam, we were millionaires as we carried 9 million Dong, the equivalent to a little less than $350!
Let’s explore some of our inexpensive keepsakes, these were all conscious purchases. My first rule for myself when collecting keepsakes is that a souvenir can’t take up space in a junk drawer, only to be donated to charity in a couple of years…you know the kinds of trinkets I mean. With so much mass produced “stuff”, we have to be selective about what to give space and weight to in our luggage.
The first is the simple postcard. I try to write as many as possible while on our adventures. Hand written notes to friends and family are quickly becoming a lost art. Getting up to 30 cards written and in the mail, when you only have a single day in a country, is an adventure in itself and content for a different blog post. The adventures which have been created around first finding a postcard, writing them, then getting stamps and finding a mail box are story worthy. I mailed a card from each city we visited to our 7 year old granddaughters, first grade class, so they could follow our adventures. The teacher turned these into a lesson by having each child draw a photo from their favorite location and tell us what they had learned. This by far became my favorite keepsake…like I said, it’s the stories which are the real meaning of keepsakes and I can only imagine how wonderful it will be for our granddaughters classmates to get these tiny works of art and their own stories back at their graduation. I also take time to write postcards to myself. Since I know the post person is sure to read it, I usually try to put something funny on the back, regarding our adventures. So far she has never commented but I like to imagine the joy she gets when she realizes I am really talking to her. When I get home, I attach my postcards to a ring which gives me a mini diary of the things we have done. The best thing about postcards is that many areas are restricted for photos but often there is a postcard from a professional and the pictures are always better than anything I could take. Besides, if I lose my pictures, these are great backups. Sometimes I will buy a postcard as mini pieces of art. Framed, these can be quite beautiful.
Cruisers are notorious collectors of magnets. They are a small and inexpensive item, which generally decorate the cabin doors and sadly they are often stolen from said doors. We collect magnets in a different way. Instead of gathering magnets from each location, I have personal magnets made for each of our cruises. These tiny wooden ships represent the ship we sailed on, the dates and locations we traveled to. I keep them on the magnetic walls of our cabin when we sail and on display in our home when we are there. I never realized how much joy a tiny collection could bring. Every time I pass the ships, I am reminded how fortunate we have been to be able to travel and I am filled with gratitude at the opportunity.
I have also always collected Christmas ornaments from the places we visit. Now that the kids have left home, our tree has become travel themed. This is another of those adventures worthy of its own story, especially in countries which don’t celebrate the Christian holiday. It has become quite the experience to find a meaningful and tiny item which can be repurposed as an ornament. Ornaments do not need to be typically Christmas themed to earn a spot on our tree! On this trip I repurposed a bookmark from Taiwan to become an ornament. I chose a Kokeshi doll which represents friendship or love from Japan and I also bought a tiny Daruma figure which is a Japanese good luck charm, to help us realize our dearest wish.
Cosmetics, toiletries, creams, lotions, soaps etc are other small items which can easily be tucked in a corner of luggage. Of course I had to pick up these tiny containers of Tiger Balm, while in Singapore.
This brings me to our next category of keepsakes which are slightly more expensive and bulky. The first is home decor. Alan and I are really not collectors of anything specific. We are also seriously trying to downsize, so Alan’s first question anytime I want to add something large is always, “where are you going to put it”? Our home decorhas always had a global influence but most of the pieces came through the now defunct Pier One store and have never really meant anything. Our current travel adventures are now taking us to the exotic places we have only dreamed of discovering, giving us opportunities to gather really unique and meaningful items, the kind we want to talk about.
On long trips, we must also pace our spending. On this journey, we would be visiting 7 countries and many interesting cities, each with their own cultural specialties. I had to decide if I wanted one really unique piece from Asia, or different items from each country. My first keepsake was acquired at the beginning of our journey, in Chinatown, located in Singapore. This was our first destination. My treasure was a beautiful vase,inside a vase. It is hand painted from the inside, using tiny brushes. It was expensive, heavy and was going to require hand carrying home. It was going to be awkward, as it was very fragile and could only be taken in hand luggage but it was something I just had to have. The artist is no longer alive, so these pieces are fairly difficult to find. I decided if this was the only piece I ended up bringing back, it would be a wonderful addition to our home. Fortunately I didn’t blow all of our souvenir budget!
Clothing can also be a wonderful souvenir . Our next destination was Thailand. I had already made up my mind that I was coming home with a pair of elephant pants, because I hadn’t brought any home the last time we were there and I had always regretted it. Elephant clothing is likely mass produced for tourists. Business was certainly brisk in the shop where I picked mine up. Any male or female trying to enter the Grand Palace in shorts, dresses above the knee etc, were required to purchase a pair… guaranteed sales! Colors and patterns are so varied, there is no limit to the combinations available. There were dresses, short sets and shirts with elephant prints, but by far the elephant pants, with their billowing legs and elasticated ankles are the hot commodity. It was humorous trying to find a pair of Asian sized pants, to fit a 6ft 6in man from our tour group. Stories are what keepsakes are all about and as I wear the breezy pants in our 90 degree days, I am instantly transported back to the joy I experienced in this wonderful country and the many friends we made while traveling and yes, we saw the elephants!
By the time we hit Vietnam, I was reminding myself to look for smallish items, since we were already close to our weight limit. Jewelry tucks in nicely in almost any suitcase. At a specialized craft market, I found a pretty, hand crafted, pearl necklace to bring home.
Lately we have also been looking for local art to bring home. Vietnam was a smorgasbord of opportunities. We opted for three art pieces from this country. Each item represents a craft style, unique to the areas we visited. Lacquerware is a real specialty in Ho Chi Minh city . As shells and paint are meticulously laid between seven layers of lacquer, it can take months to complete a single picture. We chose a small picture of two birds (we called them lovebirds) to commemorate our trip. Our second item came from the craft village in Na Trang. Sand art is not unique to Vietnam, but I have never seen two photos created at the same time, on opposite sides of an acrylic block! In Hoi An, I picked up a wooden carving of a dragon. The local artist sat among his carving tools in a tiny shop no bigger than a shed. He wrapped my purchase in a Vietnamese newspaper which could have been a collectible in itself. In Hong Kong I found two special gallery shops as the Stanley Market. The first was a tiny shop filled with beautiful stamps carved from stone. I chose a foo dog. These mythical lions represent power, prosperity and protection. Within a half hour, the stamp master had engraved my name and personal Chinese “chop” into the bottom of my stone. This treasure is an art piece in itself, but also a nod to my writing, as I begin to put my own “stamp” on things. From another quiet gallery, tucked way at the back of the Stanley market we found a shop selling unique pressed paper art and framed artifacts. This is how I ended up with an antique silver phoenix hair comb, encased in a shadowbox frame. With the single word, “happiness”. It seemed indicative of all which we experienced on this journey. The Chinese phoenix, or Fenghuang, set atop the haircomb, was often given to symbolize a happy marriage.
Artists at work
Antique phoenix haircomb Chinese “chop” with my name
As we reached our final country of Japan, I was really beginning to worry about space and weight in our suitcases. We had now purchased several fragile items. What I had most hoped to represent with my keepsakes was the customs and culture of each country. When we sailed down the Yoshina River, through the Iya Valley, we saw these colorful, fish shaped windsocks being flown across the Oboke Gorge. Families fly them in a celebration held on May 5th, to represent family and wish for their children to grow up strong, brave and healthy, just like the determined carp, swimming upstream. These are called koinobori, or carp streamers. They have a permanent display at the gorge. I loved what they represent and knew that they would soon decorate my own dock, at home. These were the last items packed into our suitcase.
Every room in my home is quietly telling the stories about our lives. Our stories have changed from our frugal beginnings as newlyweds, to parents, to grandparents and now to world traveling retirees. The items we collect are a reflection of us. Items don’t have to be branded, or expensive to earn a position in our home. They don’t have to be particularly significant to anyone but us. The word souvenir comes from the French verb “souvenir” which means to remember.
