Harrison and I brought lots of love from Kansas. We came bearing the gifts from the Christmas gift exchange (swap style) we do over FaceTime every year!
Our flight over ended up being about 37 hours and our flight home will be about 35. That doesn’t leave as many days of Spring Break left as we’d like, but we’ll take what we can get!
We sailed through customs at the Vietnamese airport thanks to a step by step guide of where to turn texted to us by Traverse, allowing us to beat all the big lines and get through faster than most. Then we were greeted by smiling faces and flowers at the airport. What a treat.
Our whole trip was a whirlwind. Almost immediately after leaving the airport, we found ourselves on a rickshaw tour around Old Town Hanoi. The most notable thing as you ride around the city is the amount of traffic that never seems to stop, almost all mopeds. It’s just a continuous flow in all directions. There’s storefronts and stalls on every corner.
Then we got our first taste of Vietnamese Food with a walking tour of Old Town Hanoi. Windy was our guide. She walked us to five different places across the city and taught us all about local food & customs. While the food was good, again, the traffic was more notable. Traffic never stops, so crossing the street was quite the experience. She told us to be like sticky rice. Every time we would cross the street, we would all huddle together and just walk forward. It was a complete leap of faith that the cars were going to make space for us as we went, but they did.
We went on to take a 7 hour moped tour around the city, where we got to meet locals, see markets, an urban farming community, and Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum, spend a couple days seeing Halong Bay, and biking around a small Vietnamese town learning about planting rice, fishing, and how to make a broom.
We saw so much of Vietnam in such a short time. Ultimately though, what struck me most was the people. If I had to capture all of Vietnam in one word, it would be resilient. One of the most beautiful people we met was a 72 year old woman who makes and sells brooms for a living. She has 7 children, all grown, only one can afford to send her pictures to hang in her small two bedroom house. I learned later that her husband is dying of cancer. And yet, she laughed and was joyously present with us, teaching us how to weave rice plants into brooms. Her beauty and strength were radiant.
As H and I take off. Head back to Kansas (bringing love from Vietnam). I’m grateful for the time to be present with my family. Mom, sister, and aunt are some of my favorite roles in life. I’m grateful that we stick together… like sticky rice.
