A month in Vietnam

Part 1

I was 41 when I decided to go to Vietnam on my own for one month. I had just quit my 6-figure job and had been working pretty much non-stop since I graduated from university. The longest trip I had ever taken, alone or with anyone, was 2 weeks. My life was a golden cage. I was held hostage by my and society’s definition of success and need for financial security. I had dreamed for years of taking 6 months off to go travelling, but never had the guts to quit my job and lead that life of adventure one only reads about in Outside magazine. Well, it was now or never. I Google-d ‘safest country for female solo traveler’ and Vietnam popped up. So I packed everything I thought I’d need into one backpack, and booked a flight on miles to Vietnam via Hong Kong.

My journey, however, didn’t start well. After two frazzled days in busy Hong Kong trying to explore every inch of the city in a mere two days I arrived in Hanoi feeling exhausted. After checking into the world’s smallest hotel room (lesson learned, always say you are two when booking a room!), I decided to go explore the city. Unable to walk on the sidewalk because every inch was taken up by a parked scooter, I tried to walk on the tiny spaces between the road and the sidewalk, amidst trash and compost and along mice too running for their lives, trying to avert the swarms of honking scooters everywhere. I had spent the first 18 years of my life dying to leave the third world country where I grew up only to end up in one that made my native country look civilized. So I decided to take a tour of the city on a tuk tuk, if you cant beat them join them, so to speak. We peddled in between cars and scooters and miraculously arrived unharmed at several ill-kept temples. It was cold and rainy in Hanoi and hadn’t packed enough clothes in my backpack, so after my unimpressive city tour I went shopping (silk scarves and pants almost cheered me up). I went back to my microsized hotel room after dining alone in a little restaurant full of couples and wondered what the hell I was doing here. I cried myself to sleep. The next morning I woke up panicking when a pain on the side of my abdomen wouldn’t go away so I took a taxi to some random hospital and checked myself into the ER. It turns out I had an enlarged colon from eating too much fried Chinese food. I told myself that I had to pull it together – it was only Day 2 and I still had over 3 weeks to go.

Thankfully I had booked a 3-day trip to Halong Bay the following day. As I boarded a beautiful old luxury wooden ‘junk boat’, I knew beauty could be found in Vietnam, even amidst the poverty and remnants of ill-kept bomb-blasted temples. I spent a wonderful two days sea kayaking in the rain around towering limestone islands, chatting and dining with a lovely Australian middle- aged couple who invited me to join their table after watching me eat alone the first night. They told me all about their struggles raising their now 20-year old autistic son, her battle with depression and obesity for twenty years, her husband’s nervous breakdown and battles with a bullying boss, his constant feelings of worry and anxiety and all the sleeping pills he used to take. It all sounded too familiar. Their honesty and openness was both heart wrenching and endearing. My first Vietnam friends were Chris and Vivian.

Part 2

After Halong Bay I went back to Hanoi to catch the overnight train to the northern mountain district of Sapa, famous for it’s terraced rice paddies and beautiful verdant scenery. The sleeper train was 1930s luxury and I excitedly thought ‘I didn’t make a mistake by booking 5 sleeper trains from the northernmost point Vietnam to the very South!’ I spent the first day in Sapa with the world’s most adorable trekking guide – a young girl who reminded me of the young girl I always wanted to be – honest and fearless (we painted our hands indigo dye and swore to always be indigo friends), and with a beautiful Malaysian family of 6 who I shared all my meals with and who welcomed me with no reservations.

After a night in a comfortable lodge I did a 2-day easy trek in the mountains walking along rice paddies, crossing dilapidated wooden bridges, and visiting tiny Vietnamese villages filled with adorable, colorful children. I did this with a harmonious Spanish couple in their mid-30s who sold everything they owned to travel the world. A year ago I would have thought they were nuts, now I found them inspiring. I asked them ‘what’s your secret to always being together and not fighting?’ She said ‘We compromise. If one of us wants to do something the other one does it unless there is a real physical or psychological impediment’. It seemed like a simple yet wonderful concept. Sadly I never learned their names. That night we slept on the floor in a villager’s wooden, windowless house, called a ‘homestay’. I must say despite it being rather uncomfortable, it was the best night’s sleep I’d had since I started my trip.

Part 3

After Sapa I headed back down to Hanoi in a shitty train with a heavy snorer in my sleeper cabin (what happened to 19030s luxury?) mentally prepared for the filth and chaos. After walking around Hanoi in a sleepy daze the following morning, I got a pedicure, popped in to see a Chinese medicine doctor, who told me I had live cancer, decided to ignore him and went out for a street-food, before catching my third sleeper train to Hue, this time an arduous 17-hour journey in what seemed like 3rd class. I had some Vietnamese guy across from me snoring so I threw my pillow at him. He shouted at me in Vietnamese and kept snoring, and I lost my pillow.

I arrived in Hue in fairly good form despite the complete lack of sleep and took a private 1-day boat tour down the Perfume River. Hue is a very historical city, classed a world heritage site, because it is where most Vietnamese kings took residence and are buried. My guide, a young, emaciated Vietnamese woman, took me to several temples and then for lunch at a simple, local restaurant where she ordered enough food for 5 people – the food was delicious and beautiful and I wondered where she was putting all that food. She ate so much she ended up throwing up all her food behind one of the temples an hour later.

The highlight though was not the beautiful temples but my stay at the world’s poshest homestay run by a French-Vietnamese couple whose proceeds supported the orphanage next door, which they also ran. I never thought of myself as having motherly instinct, but I felt a lump in my throat and tears welled up in my eyes when seeing all these adorable Vietnamese children running around this tiny house waiting for dinner to be served. A few little girls just wanted to hang out with me, ask me questions, but mostly, just wanted to hold my hand. When I left the next morning one little girl who I spent all morning with (she was fascinated with my new iPhone and loved my Nemo screen saver) followed me all the way to the main road (breaking orphanage rules). She wanted to walk with our fingers interlocked and when I finally said goodbye she did not only want a big hug but a big kiss on the lips. I’ve never felt such sorrow leaving someone I hardly knew. My first thought in the taxi on the way to the station was ‘you must get a job so you can come back and adopt this girl’. Now I know what Angelina felt like.

Part 4

After Hue I took a 3-hour train ride to Hoi An, perhaps Vietnam’s most beautiful and picturesque city. I had so much looked forward to getting there because it was the first place where I would spend 3 consecutive nights in the same hotel room. I went posh, getting a 3-star boutique hotel, which would certainly get 5 stars anywhere else in the developed world. The staff was lovely and friendly and magically, they had their own spa. Here I met up and spent two days with Greg, an American solo traveller I had met briefly in Sapa who was also heading south like me. We had a good laugh together, went to see dead corals in Cham island, and did two sunset cruises on these wide, flattish wooden canoes usually rowed by women where I lit a zillion colorful paper candles and made wishes for everyone (you’re granted one wish per candle).

Strolling the streets of beautiful Hoi An, I went souvenir shopping in wonderful little boutiques and colorful street markets, ate street food by the river, drank cocktails in quaint, windowless bars; for the first time truly enjoying myself in Vietnam. Greg went on to trek the world’s largest cave (just discovered here in Vietnam a few years ago). Filled with envy I said goodbye and spent the next day cycling in the outskirts of Hoi An and accidentally ended up in the world’s most beautiful remote beach, I kept seeing these round straw fishing boats wondering how does one steer a round boat? I sat on the beach and wrote in my journal for hours. I can only think of 2 or 3 days in my life when I’d felt this happy. I was singing to myself as I walked up and down this beach glad there was no one there because I really did feel like a crazy woman. Then that night I met Jesus….

Part 5

Most people who have never travelled alone fear doing it in great part because they’re scared of being lonely. I never had this fear because I’m kind of a loner anyway and quite enjoy my own company; being around other people often exhausts me, I find listening to people who talk incessantly rather tiring. So when I met Jesus the third night in Hoi An (not Christ but Serrano, a handsome young Spaniard) who warned me instantly that he’s hyperactive and likes to talk I thought of jumping into the river. But Jesus is one of those people you can’t help but like, because they’re truly brilliant and full of passion for life.

We took a group tour together to the temples of My Son with the world’s most ridiculous tour guide (he looked like Jackie Chan in a cheap suit), and decided to call us the Elephant team so we wouldn’t get lost. So during the entire tour at this bomb-blasted but beautiful heritage site in 100-degree heat he kept shouting ‘follow me Elephant team!’. We could barely understand anything he was saying, his English was so bad. But we could understand all the dirty little jokes he kept making about the penis-looking structure close to one temple. He said it was small, I blurted ‘it’s Vietnamese size!’ He didn’t get it. Anyway, we had a blast and decided to have dinner together that night.

After dinner I went back to my hotel room to find out I’d been dumped on Whatsapp. Even though I was officially single when I left Geneva, I had a little fling with my Dutch diving instructor a month prior when in the Maldives getting my first dive certification and we had planned to see each other again when I got back from Vietnam. It turns out he’d changed his mind and instead of calling me to break things off resorted to an app to break off our little fling. I spent the whole night on the sleeper train to Nha Trang crying (this time all three male Vietnamese cabin mates were quiet as mice). That’s life for you, utter happiness one day, total heartbreak the next.

God has a way of keeping us on our toes and forcing us to constantly reinvent our dreams (our silly dream was to open a dive shop in Australia and live like beach bums). Jesus was very supportive and kept telling me ‘smile and the world will smile back!’ So here I am in the last days of my journey enjoying a few wonderful, relaxing days in one of the most beautiful beach resorts I’ve ever been to, in the coastal town of Nha Trang, feeling truly blessed and glad I came here, glad I went through some rough times because it’s what makes the wonderful things seem so much sweeter, and besides, that’s what life is all about, letting go of the anger (bad bosses, ex-boyfriends), so we can make space for something better.

On this trip I learned to become mindful of the present (thanks to a little mindfulness book I read on the beach), learned to savor my morning coffee without playing on my phone, to enjoy every bite of my dinner without feeling awkward by eating alone, to sit still and just observe, to embrace the fear, the sadness and yes sometimes the loneliness, as all being part of a bigger plan. I feel grateful for the beautiful, inspiring people I met on this trip. I also ended up getting my advanced diver certification, which two years on has allowed me to dive in some truly amazing places. I ended up seeing Jesus again in Saigon, we visited the War Museum together, and I went on to visit the Cu Chi tunnels on my own – embracing my fear as a claustrophic and entering the tiniest of tunnels. This trip was the first of many trips that followed, over two years, to some wonderful destinations. But Vietnam will always hold a special place in my heart, because it was my first, true solo adventure.