Before we start I just want to say that I know it’s been a while. A lot of things happened and my life was very stressful for a while. (Nothing bad but still. STRESS) I will post that story soon, this timw for real!

And now unto the actual story I want to tell today:

Just chillin‘

The week after Halong Bay was very calm. The first two or three days I was tired and out of “poeple points” ( I can never really tell if I’m supposed to be introverted or extroverted but this … thing makes a good case for the former. Sometimes I just can’t with people).

This meant that I spent some chill days sleeping in and just tutoring the kids (You know, the thing I’m supposed to do in exchange for free board and lodging?) and babysitting the resident todler.

(Sidenote: I started this journey without any knowledge on how to deal with humans this tiny (about 1 year old) and now I can just pick one up and walk around with it. And that is without having a heartattack over somehow going to breaking this tiny life.

You know what thats called? Progress.

Be proud of me !!! )

Anyways, nothing particularly exciting happened in the next few days, except that it immediatly started raining whenever I decided to take a walk, so I didn’t even get to see that much of the surrounding area.

(Also the temperature and humidity were still very high, so it’s not like I was particularly sad to have an excuse to not exercise.)

This weekend I spent with my host family and, because the world knows no merci, they had a bunch of friends and their kids over.

To be fair, it turned out to be really nice but hearing “we are going to have friends over in a bit, could you entertain their kids?” when you just came by to get breakfast, is really not what you want.

The children were a fun mix of super invested in my opinions and dead set on avoiding me, with my own two gremlins turning into antisocial blobs that refused to do or say anything.

I ended up telling stories to two little girls whose english was really good, while they drew what I was taking about. I got called “teacher” and everything. It was cute.

After an impromptu piano concert from one of the kids, and another one almost drowning in the pool (exagerated), it was finally time for lunch. On the menu was Korean style Vietnamese BBQ (or maybe the other way around), which boiled down to ” a bunch of shared meat dishes you can wrap in leaves”. Also pickeled greens.

My favourite dish by far was a whole chicken baked in a ball of sticky rice. According to one of the guests, it’s name translates to “chicken without escape” and it is supperior for that reason alone. Not that it doesn’t taste good, but the name really takes the cake.

Speaking of the guests, they were lovely. They seemed delighted to have someone to impress with their English skills and international background, as a lot of the parents had studied in Europe (I was duly impressed).

They also seemed under the impression that either all Europeans or all workawayers are vegan/vegetarian? I have never been asked this many times in a row, if I was ok with eating meat. And everyone was surprised when I said yes?!

Anyways. Once lunch was over I felt kinda tired. It is surprisingly exhausting keeping up with company, if the people around you mostly use a language you don’t know.

So I curled up in my room before enyone could ask me to babysit again.

Week 3

On monday I decided I had to do something interesting to take advantage of being in these foreign lands. And apparently the universe was smiling upon me that day, as my host was not only driving into the city propper the very next day, but she would also pick me up in an area of Hanoi I hadn’t been in before.

So the next morning we left bright and early and the first thing I hear, once we drop of the twins at school, is that my buddies from the Halong trip were planning to skip countries the very next week.

Now usually this wouldn’t be that noteworthy and isn’t really unusual for workaway volunteers.

However, these two had just said they were going to stay until at least the end of October. And so my lovely host (who also functions as a mediator between volunteers and management at the kindergarden Shay and Kalen were working at) had arranged some classes for them to teach, so they could have something to do. I felt a bit wierd about that.

Great way to start the day, let me tell you.

And it just kept going!

Phan suggested that I visit the Ethnology Museum, since it was very close to our meet-up spot (she was planning to visit her mother in law after work). So I took a Grab Bike there.

However it turns out that the museum is actually closed on mondays, because we can’t have nice things. So I decided to just walk around until I found breakfast.

I ended up in a random alley and asked a girl sweaping there “Bahn Mi?”

Of course the one time I run into someone who speaks fluent english I embarrass myself. Not only by stumbling over a measily two words of Vietnamese, oh no, that would have been too merciful.

No, the second I realize she’s speaking English to me (I was really not expecting it, ok?) i exclaim “OMG, you actually speak English!”.

Thankfully she thought it was funny, and send me off towards the good sandwitches.

I found a promising looking stand, ordered whatever kind of toppings they recomended/asked me about (ordering literally anything is always an adverture here ) and walked around some more in the search of a good morning drink. I ended up with some sort of milk tea, as well as one of those banana leaf packaged rice pockets (I should really look up their name one of these days).

After succesfully finding something park adjacent, I sat down for breakfast. I was about halfway done when some guy showed up, walked up to what I had assumed was a shrine and started setting stuff on fire.

And it didn’t end there, oh no. Several more people came by to stand in line at the shrine thing, only to walk up when it was their turn and set things on fire. And then they just left!

I did actually ask my host about it and apparently that monday was “the first day of a month in the lunar calender” (still unsure if the specific month was in any way important) and that very religious people use these days to burn fake money. They do this to send their dead relatives money in the afterlife. Like a holy allowance!

Sometimes I really love religion

After that I walked around some more, spent some time at a park with a lake, where a random man just walked in with a cage full of tiny birds, set them all free and then walked back out of the park.

Yeah I have no idea either.

Then Phan postponed our meetup because the baby was asleep and she did not want to deal with a cranky Cherry during the drive back. So I looked up stuff to do on google maps, bought a fresh water melon juice and a steamed bun with whole quaileggs and went to visit another temple.

I almost got kicked out of this one by a nun, because I wasn’t wearing enough clothes (as in I was wearing shorts and a croptop). Thankfully she just laughed me off when I gestured that I didn’t have anything else with me. Or she thought I didn’t understand and decided I wasn’t worth the hassle.

The temple itself was really cool with several buildings and nice courtyards, but I didn’t spend a lot of time there. There was some sort of ceremony going on and I didn’t want to interrupt. I did however light some incence sticks and ask for a blessing and forgiveness for being rude by breaking the dresscode.

It seemed like the thing to do.

Workaway chaos.

By the end of this week my first three weeks in Vietnam would be over (which feels completely unreal) and it was time to change hosts (as I had previously arranged).

I contacted my next host (also situated in Hanoi) and agreed to come to their place on thursday. I also aked the last host I had been planning to go to, how to best get there. He owned a hostel in Ha Giang, which is a few hours north of Hanoi after all. I wanted to figure out the best way to get there.

Sadly, when he answered, it wasn’t to give me travel instructions but to tell me he had completely forgotten about me (rude) and that there was currently no room for another voulteer. Great news.

I’m honestly just glad that I asked then and not like the day before I was meant to go there, so at least I had time to look for another place to stay during my last 3 weeks in Hanoi.

As you can imagine, I spent a LOT of time contacting potential hosts and refreshing my inbox. Sadly it usually takes a few days for people to get back to you on workaway, so I had to exercise my patience.

By thursday I had two potential options for my last few weeks in Vietnam. One from a kindergarden in Hanoi, that asked for my resume and then went silent, and one from a new Homestay south of Ho Chi Mihn City. The later wasn’t actually responding to my “aplication” but rather inviting me out of his own initiative.

So neither of those were ideal.

Thankfully I still had about 2 weeks to figure things out and Phan also promised me a place at her friends Kindergarden, should I not find anyone. I could honestly feel pretty relaxed about the whole thing.

Now, the morning of thursday the 29th of September, Phan told me that her plans had changed and she would be going to the city the next day.

This of course meant, that me going to my next host (a woman named Kitty, who was very helpfull but also very hard to reach via WhatsApp, our main method of communication) would also have to move to the next day, since we were about half an hour by car away from the actual city.

Thankfully she was expecting a call from me, since I was supposed to show up at her place that morning, so it only took me one stressful half-hour to reach and tell her about the change of plans.

Luckily there was no problem with that on her end, so I just stayed with Phan for another day.

Now either Phan thought I should really go there before I left the area or she just wanted me out of the house for a bit.

Either way, she offered to drive me to a bus station from where I could go to “The ethnology village”. It sounded pretty cool (and she had mentioned it before) so I happily agreed and off we went.

It was raining so she lent me her hat ( you know the one. The conic “rice-farmer” hat) and once she made sure I also had an umbrella, she sent me on my merry way.

Now riding the bus in Vietnam is a bit trippy for me, because busstations are only marked by a humble sign, that kind of gets drowned out by all the others around them, and even that only sometimes. If not for the helpful drivers and ticket guys (you buy the tickets inside the bus from someone) on the busses themselves, I would often have no idea when to get off (Google maps tends to be pretty fallible in Vietnam and Asia in general, I’ve been told)

Thankfully Ethnology Village or The village for ethnic culture and tourism as it’s officially called, was the last station on this busride, which made my life a lot easier.

Getting adopted into a guided tour

What is Ethnology Village (yes I’m going to keep calling it that, it’s way shorter and get’s the message across)?

From what I understand, it is essentially a government programm to both raise awareness of and interest in Vietnam’s many ethnic minority groups, many of which still live pretty isolated in the mountains. People from these groups live in traditional buildings (such as the longhouse of the Ede people, a matrilineal ethnic group of central Vietnam).

So it’s essentially a culturally educational themepark.

Now, before I continue, bear in mind that I did not do any extra ressearch for this and everything I know is from what Phan and the tourguide told me. I in no way claim complete knowledge. If you want to know more, look it up yourselves.

Anyways, once I arrive (and after a bit of confusion on who would deal with me) I payed the student fee for a simple day ticket. This includes rides on the XXL-golf cars that serve to carts tourists (both foreign and domestic) around.

My ticket did very much not include being accompanied by a tourguide that explained what I was seeing. And yet that is exactly what I ended up getting.

Because the Sri Lankan family that happened to arrive basically at the same time as me, just took me along with them after I started talking to them. I literally got adopted into getting a tour.

Now this tour was both the best and the worst thing that happened to me that day.

The best, because it was genuinely very interesting and allowed me to experence a pretty big part of the “village” whithin one hour. We visited a few communities living in traditional housing, that showed us their ethnic music and dances, as well as replicas of some of Vietnams most important temples.

The worst, because I felt painfully akward just walking into some family’s livingroom and have them perform for me (our group). I know very well that this is how they make their living, but if I had the choice (and I do), I would rather not experience that again.

Once the hour was up, I bid a heartfelt farewell to the family and walked on. Sooner rather than later i ended up in an area that was under construction. I’m pretty sure I was not supposed to be there at all, but what can you do.

I wandered around a bit more, found a lot of empty houses (And I do mean a lot. I think most of the Village stands empty at the moment. I don’t know if thats because of the lack of tourism due to Covid or for other reasons, but it does explain why the guided tour only last an hour and has about 5 stops) and eventually realized i was lost.

The problem was, that I had just been dropped at the last tour stopp when the time ran out, so I had no idea where exactly I was or how to get back to the exit once I got tired.

To cut off all potential suspense, i did eventually make it out. After walking in what was probably very wonky circles for about an hour, I found myself back at my “drop off point”. And as coincidence will have it, there were a bunch of oversized golf cars (aka the busses) unloading a bunch of (probably) Vietnamese tourists.

I asked them how to get out and they drove me back. Problem solved!

On the busride back I was following along on Google Maps, only for the ticket guy to let me know in advance that the next stop was going to be mine (told you they were helpful!)

The rest of the day was pretty eventless, but we did make springrolls together, so that was nice.

I could have been kidnapped

Thankfully she was really just nice

Now it was actually time to move on to the next host. I got up early again, loaded my giant backpack into the car and off we were. Once we arrived at her workplace, Phan ordered me a Grab Car (since riding on a motorbike with my luggage would be less than comfortable) and was nice enough to pay for it too!

Kitty (my new host) had given me an adress as well as the instruction “call me when you get there”, which I did.

She asked if I was standing “in front of the alleyway” and since I was right next to one, I tentatively confirmed. She said she was sending someone to pick me up and hung up, since she was at school.

(To clarify: Kitty is the 19 year old daughter of this family and took over coordinating with workaway volunteers since both parents are busy and her English is better. As I only learned that later, I was kind of confused at the time.)

Maybe a minute later a woman on a motorbike shows up and stopps next to me. She says something to me in Vietnamese.

I could not think of another reason why she would have stopped, since she wasn’t offering a ride (aka repeating “Taxi!” on loop) which is what people usually do when trying to get a foreigner on board . So I asked her if she was here to pick me up and she nodded andasked for the adress by pointing at google maps until I took the hint (admittedly slightly odd under my assumption, but I didn’t think much of it. My bad).

I showed it to her, she offered me a helmet and off we were. For about 100 m. Then she guestured at me get off, took the helmet back, pointed down an alleyway and drove off. (I am by now convinced she didn’t speak a single word of English. Am still flabbergasted.)

I was still looking around kind of confused when a man asked me “Are you Saray?”. Let me tell you, I have never been so glad to be asked for my name!

I followed him back to the house, where he introduced himself as Du aka Kitty’s dad, gave me the wifi password and showed me the room. Also how to feed myself, since both he and his wife would be away for businesstrips for the next few days.

And while I was walking up the stairs to my room, it finally hit me that I just got onto the bike of a complete stranger that could have just driven me off to God knows where, because I didn’t think things through.

So while I was sitting on my new bed, contemplating my life choices, I told myself that I at least had a pretty relaxed couple of days ahead of me. (As I correctly predicted, the kids told me they didn’t need help with anything as they didn’t feel like volunteering for additional schoolwork in their free time.)