Have you ever dreamed of escaping it all—chucking the job, hopping a plane, and setting off on an uncharted adventure in a timeless, exotic land?

Karin Muller did. Smuggling a Hi-8 camera and brandishing dauntless curiosity, the 28-year-old former management consultant took a seven-month solo trek through an enchanted Vietnam far off the tourist map—from the hustling backstreets of Saigon and Hanoi to a remote Hmong mountain tribal village few foreigners have ever seen. Welcomed into villagers’ homes (and handing them her camera to help tell the tale), the novice filmmaker offers a rare look at Vietnamese culture: working verdant rice paddies on the Mekong, eating crawly mud critters, amusing children with her own odd rituals (leg-shaving in the local river!), even letting a “savage” Zao family treat her when she falls ill—with a fermented rice whiskey said to “take you to a secret paradise.” Most touchingly, Karin finds a way to leave her own mark as well—rescuing an endangered gibbon and leopard kittens from an appalling animal market (where they would be sold as medicine) and releasing them to a wildlife sanctuary.

Join Karin on a unique, 3,000-mile odyssey—from hiking the Ho Chi Minh trail (watch out for unexploded bombs) to hauling along Highway 1 on a cranky motorbike (dubbed “The Beast”) to persuading a pair of engineers to let her drive the Unification train—just minutes after they’ve barely avoided a head-on collision. “It’s not about getting there, it’s about the journey,” the intrepid traveler insists. “And the people you meet along the way.”