The morning light creeps softly across the ancient wooden facades of Hoi An's Old Town. From my perch on a second-floor balcony in an otherwise empty coffee shop, I watch Tran Phu Street slowly come to life. Shopkeepers sweep their storefronts, food carts roll to their regular corners, and bikes breeze through the normally bustling streets that are, at 7am, peacefully quiet. My brush pen moves across the page, not merely recording what I see, but capturing how it feels to witness a place awakening.

Sketches as conversation starters

"What are you making?" A small voice startled me as I sketched the red wooden bridge leading to Ngoc Son Temple on Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi. On the bench beside me, a seven-ish-year-old boy had sat down with his father and was watching my every pen stroke. He introduced himself as Tom, and for the next forty minutes, as I rendered the bridge, temple, and trees, we exchanged questions and answers while his father silently smiled, proud of his sociable son.

"Which Vietnamese foods have you tried? Have you tried bun cha? You have to taste egg coffee!" he insisted, counting Vietnamese specialties on his fingers. "My favorite food is chocolate," he confided with a smirk, "And I love Dragon Ball. But where are you from?" leading us to the Netherlands and Tom's love of windmills, tulips, and bicycles. He was especially keen to know the color of my bike back home — a very important detail.

After Tom came a coy older student, who seemed more content observing than talking. Whenever locals would stop to spectate, sometimes calling their families over for front-row seats to the show, he'd translate the kind comments with a wink to say: "Well done."

What began as a solitary spot on a bench transformed into a series of interactions that no tour could have provided. This happens regularly when I sketch in public spaces — drawing becomes a bridge between worlds, inviting connections that transcend language and cultural differences.

Seeing what others miss

As dusk settled over a still lagoon on Cat Ba Island, the scene before me was slowly swathed in darkness. While I hastily sketched in the dying light, true-to-life details were joined by dreamed-up counterparts, half plucked from memory and half based on shapes now barely visible beneath the night sky. Sketching allows for this blend of observation and imagination — a personal interpretation that often transcends reality. 

Two artists could sit side-by-side while drawing the same scene, and yet the results will always be different. Such is the beauty of subjectivity when it comes to sketching our experiences.

In Munduk, Bali, I spent a while drawing a lightning-scarred tree while seeking shelter from a sudden storm in a mountainside cafe. As the clouds quickly rolled through the valley, revealing the scene for seconds at a time, the rhythm of the downpour drumming on the tin roof became a soundtrack to my sketching, and somehow that sound made its way into the drawing — not literally, of course, but in the energy of the lines that formed the fork-shaped tree and the shifting landscape behind it.

Time slows down

The greatest gift of sketching while traveling is how it alters my relationship with time — it forces me to slow down and tune into my surroundings more acutely, truly observing the details that define the scene before me. 

On an uninhabited island near Coron in the Philippines, I sat for nearly two hours — rum-spiked coconut cocktail close at hand — drawing the intricate roots of sun-bleached trees that grew right by the water's edge. Waves lapped gently at the shore, occasionally reaching my feet, but I barely noticed as I lost myself in the complexity of what I was seeing.

In those hours, I experienced more of that island than it initially appeared to offer. I noticed how the light changed, how the tide gradually rose, and how the waves brought pebbles and broken corals to shore only to take them back again. A couple of other boats came and went, but in staying longer to sketch on that sandy, palm-fringed paradise, I learned more about its character than the click of a camera could capture.

The truest souvenirs

My sketchbooks have become my most treasured souvenirs — more than simple records of what I saw, they are reminders of how it felt to be present in those moments. They capture not just the architecture of Hoi An or the landscapes of Ninh Binh, but the conversations, the weather, the smells, and the emotions that accompanied my encounters with these places.

The next time you travel, consider bringing along a small sketchbook and something to draw with. You don't need any artistic skill — only the willingness to sit patiently, observe deeply, and connect with your surroundings through the simple act of sketching. You might find that you make memorable connections with people you would have otherwise just passed by, get a real sense of a place without life’s distractions, and remember the smallest details of your journey much more vividly.