Life in Hanoi: 54 days of Vietnamese culture

Written on September 19th: I’m sitting in one of the best places in Hanoi right now, drinking Highlands coffee and enjoying the view on Hoam Kiem lake. It’s my last day in Vietnam and I came here to reflect on the past 2 months of my life here. 

                                                                  Center of Hanoi

Introduction to Hanoi & Aiesec project

Past 54 days I spent in Vietnam. I decided to apply for Global community development programme through Aiesec (www.aiesec.org). Process is easy, I needed 2 weeks to go through with everything: first introduction interview, where you get information about different programmes, then educational seminar, where you make your profile on Aiesec page and learn how to use a base. Afterwards it depends on you - I was searching for internships near Indonesia, since this was my place for holidays in July. I knew, that I don’t want to work with children, since I don’t know what to do with them and I preffered some kind of event management programme. I found Global leadership activating day, one day long conference about leadership and multicultural environment and I liked it immediately. Working tasks described were building content, searching for sponsors, promoting the event, so it seemed perfect. Also the fact that I would work with 20 students from all over the world made me really excited. 

                                               Aiesec = world largest student run organization

My second choice was GCDP in Philippines, which was more focused on making workshops about globalization - a big motivation for going there was also the fact, that TEDxManila was happening at the time. Anyway, I decided for Vietnam and I was kind of happy about that, since I was following Facebook page of the project in Philippines and it often said: “We are really sorry for the flood in dorms, please stay inside because of the storm, thank god that we have WI--FI here”.

Livin’ in Vietnamese family

My arrival in Hanoi was far away from perfect - it was raining as hell, there was 0,5 meter of water on the street and I had no idea with whom am I going to live for next 7 weeks. Aiesec member Lizz was waiting for me at the airport and she told me, that they found a host family that has 17-year old son. I taught: “What the hell am I going to talk about with 17-year old Vietnamese boy?!” 

                                                                 My home street

Well, when I came to their house there was his 19-year old sister as well, so I was very happy about that. I got a nice place to stay, much better than I expected - I had my own room and my bathroom - awesome! Family turned out to be really nice and a bit crazy at the same time; I really enjoyed my host father’s stories and on the end we could really communicate with our Czecho-Slovenian language, which we invented to communicate. He spent 3 years in Czech studying and since we both know a little Russian, we found our way. I am still very sorry that my host parents didn’t speak English, because I am sure we could talk a lot more and I would learn even more about Vietnamese culture. 

                                                                Tao, Son & Lan

My host family is very rich for Vietnam: both parents are teachers of math and they have a private school at home. They have 300 students and they earn 3000 dollars per month! I was really surprised to hear that, because this is very nice even for Slovenian salary. They don’t have to pay any taxes, government hasn’t figured out the system yet. Average salary in Vietnam is just 100 dollars per month and many people have shitty job selling fruit or other things on the street. I was spending time with my family when we had lunch or dinner and we often talked a lot. 

                                                        My room: always a mess

My host father was definitely very interesting person to meet. He had a terrible childhood, during war he spent 9 years away from his parents in a place where he went to school with other children of war. His father was soldier at that time, his mother was a nurse. He discovered his passion of teaching just when he was 30 when he met his wife and today is is very respected teacher. students love him and he loves them. I believe his daily routine goes sth like this: he wakes up at 6am, breakfast and reading news, at 8am he goes to the swimming pool, at 10am he comes back and he spends time online reading about stock market and other news. At 12am he eats lunch made by his wife and then he takes rest till 2 or 3 pm. Then he meets his friends in a bar, has a few beers, plays some chess. At 6pm his class starts and he finishes around 8.30pm. Then he has dinner at 9pm and then he goes to sleep. It almost feels like he is retired, since he is working just 3 hours per day. Not a bad life with salary 30x times higher than average.

                                   Children during war: my host father was one of them

My host brother and host sister are very focused on school and for any Slovenian student so much hard work is impossible to imagine. My host sister studies in US, her father pays 10.000 USD per year although she got 80 % of scholarship. My host brother is in high school and he is getting ready for university exam: he starts preparing 1 year in advance and every day he has classes like from 7-11am and 3-7pm. All Vietnamese students have to take extra classes in the afternoon, because their school system is pretty bad and you can’t pass the exam without taking extra classes. Being good in school is very important to them and parents even sell their house to get them into a good school - they take care about being the best much more then Slovenian students, which are more focused on having fun. 

            My host sister (on the right) with her friend: both smart enough to study in US

Experience of living with local people was the best thing about this internship and I want to do it again in some other country: there is no better way to learn about other culture. Finding family was easy, because i didn’t have to deal with it: Aiesec took care of everything. Motivation of my family to host me was to improve their son’s English: I hope he learned something:)

So, what’s up with Vietnam? I want to share some facts that are interesting or surprising:

You got to love the food: it’s diverse, tasty, surprising flavors put together.. definitely the best thing about living in Hanoi!

 Sticky rice

 Noodle with crab

 Meat, egg, potato

 Lunch made by my host mother

 My favorite noodles at 77

Traffic is Asian; lots of motorbikes, an inefficient mess on the crossroads, rush hours are horrible, but people there don’t really seem concerned about their time.

 Rain can't stop motorbikes

Public buses stop driving at 9 pm, which is really weird for a city with 3 million people.

 One ride = 3000 dong, monthly ticket = 4 USD

Vietnamese are not big on staying up late, they like to get up at 6am (which really didn’t fit my style of a night bird..I often got up for lunch and  went to sleep right before they woke up)

 Street market starts at 6am

Hanoi is not a party capital; clubs are mostly for tourists and opinion of local people is that clubs are a waste of money and imported from western culture, so only “bad” people go there.

 Beer is cheap and popular, but they drink in the afternoon

Students have to be home at least at 11 pm. Also I had to come home at that time, since doors close after that - since there is no more bus then and taxi isn’t really cheap, it was not such a problem.

 We could party - till 10pm:)

Kissing in public is not okay: it’s not forbidden, but you never see Vietnamese expressing love on the street, they mostly have to hide somewhere to do that.

 The only thing you can kiss in public is pomelo:)

Peeing in public is okay, many people just do it anywhere, so that is really disgusting, and for the first time I was group woman toilet, which really freaked me out.

Mix fruit: intern's favorite snack

They eat dog. I taught that only poor people in village who have nothing else to eat to that; wrong! Dog meat is quite expensive and appreciated and I really hope that I didn’t have any. My family sometimes eats dog for lunch, but I think they didn’t when I was around.

 Pet or a meal?

No sex before marriage. Young people are becoming less conservative, but in general they still get married quite early (24-27). Girls need to be super careful and it’s really not fair: if they sleep with their boyfriend and he leaves them, it would be very hard for them to find a husband. In villages in Sapa parents still find husband for their daughters.

 Sunshine girl from social event 1

They are all so skinny and small! I think I didn’t see a any tall or fat people in all this time. Most woman have like 40 kilos and 1,5 meter; I really felt like a big bone sometimes and when I was buying clothes sometimes I had to take XL; biggest number f shoes is 39 for a woman, so that also did not work for me.

 They are both 21:)

People are generally friendly. They can be annoying trying to sell you sth, but it’s the same everywhere is Asia. I never felt really threatened and nobody stole something from me - once I even kind of lost my laptop, wallet and phone when I was running to catch the bus and everything fell out of my bag and I did not even notice - some guy picked it up and gave it to me.

Mr. Tony - friendliest hotel owner in Ninh Binh

Bargaining is common for everything, except in supermarket. Funny thing I noticed that European interns were much better bargainers as Asians; they were too nice.

 Black H'mong woman on the market

Bread, milk, coffee, potato. Some basic food: they actually have normal bread (rare for Asia), but just white one of course. They use sweetened milk all the time, which is kind of annoying. Their coffee sucks and it’s the thing I missed the most from home - good old Illy in the morning. They use just sweet potato, which is quite good, they sell European as well, but my family never eats it.

 Iced coffee with yoghurt - best thing ever

Small chairs on the street. They are funny, but represent very good use of a space. 10 European chairs = 40 Vietnamese chairs. First it’s funny to seat on them, but you get used to it. 

Fruits. Mmmmm. So good - you can buy them everywhere on the street: dragon fruit, lychee, orange, mango, banana, pomelo... Fruit juices are also very easy to find, but prices really differ: in touristy old quater you can buy it for 40.000 dong (2 dollars) and in another parts of Hanoi it’s much cheaper, we had a favorite place that we called “mango juice place”, where you pay just 10.000 dong and even Vietnamese students say it’s very cheap.

 Dry fruit is very popular

Mix fruit

Dragon fruit

Lotus sth

Best juice ever!

Sth like lychee

Banana - so much better than European

Selling fruit on the bicycle - random

Cold trains. Trains are nice, much better then noisy buses. But they really love to use air conditioning and you get sick after you ride with them. There is also a lot of choice regarding comfort: hard/soft seat, hard/soft sleeper, different prices of course.

Since I also spent one month in Indonesia, I can make some comparison regarding traveling:

-Vietnam is cheaper for food and accommodation: average meal is 1,2 euro on the street and in Indonesia it’s more like 2 euros, room value is much much better in Vietnam: you get a hot shower, air conditioning and a towel for cca. 5 dollars and for the same money in Indonesia you get shitty room with fan and cold water

-Indonesia is cheaper for transport: petrol is just 0,4 eur/liter and in Vietnam 0,8 eur/liter, so of course prices of bus/train are much higher

-Vietnam is more comfortable for transport: you never share your seat with anyone else and you don’t share it with a chicken, people don’t seat on the roof and you don’t stop at every house to pick up people, there is an actual bus station and buses have air conditioning. Everything I mentioned happens in Indonesia + transport is often slow, smelly, buses break down, lots of waiting and so on: but I must say, it’s always an adventure.

- Vietnam is more friendly to single travelers, because they actually have dorm rooms, I didn’t see that in Indonesia

- In both countries it’s really easy to find accommodation, you don’t have to book anything.

- Indonesian’s are much better with English: almost everybody speaks some, in Vietnam people even in old quater don’t know a single word

- Food is good in both countries, basic dishes are similar - rice, noodles, vegetables, but Vietnam offers more diversity so it definitely wins

- People are friendly, but I think Indonesia wins, especially on Bali and Lombok they are very nice

- For both countries you need visa to get in, with Vietnam you have to do it in advance, Indonesia has visa on arrival for max 30 days of staying

- To explore whole Vietnam I think you need 2 months and it’s much easier since you don’t have to fly, to explore whole Indonesia you need at least 6 months

- I love both countries very very much but I think that Indonesia is still my favorite (maybe because of surfing?

Global leadership activating day & Aiesec FTU Hanoi

My project sucked. It was very different from what I expected and I didn’t really learn much: the only thing I know is that I prefer not to work with Vietnamese again and definitely not with Aiesec FTU Hanoi:)

 On the main day of event

 The biggest problem that I noticed was the structure of the project team, which is wrong from the start: too many people who have nothing to do and Aiesec people who don’t know how to include interns. The only aim for Aiesec FTU was the number - they wanted to have 20 different cultures presented on the day of the event - but they had no idea what to o with us before the event. We had quite few feedback session with concrete suggestion, but nothing really helped. 

I am a person that wants to spend time in a quality and effective way and in this point I really suffered this summer - so much ineffectiveness in such a short period of time sometimes almost gave me a stroke on the beginning. But then I kind of adapted to the situation and expected the fact that I will not be really working in Hanoi, but I will have another holiday. We had lots of fun with other interns and it was really cool to make friends all over the world. We spend a lot of time together and I think for the first time in my life I experienced “hanging out” whole day with my friends - we met for a juice, then we had lunch, we went to the movies, some shopping..

 Our international group: we had people from China, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, Poland, Czech, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Russia, France, Germany..

 If somebody would ask me, if I would recommend Aiesec, I really don’t know what to say, because it depends so much on the project. Some people really work hard and some do nothing, but you never know when you apply. I certainly exceeded my expectations regarding traveling in Vietnam: I didn’t even bring Lonely planet, because I taught we will have time do do some small trips around Hanoi just during weekend. I actually saw north and central part of Vietnam and really made great trips and Vietnam is great place to travel - taking trips with other interns was fun and different. 

 Halong bay trip

 Perfume pagoda trip

 Ninh Binh trip

 Mai Chau trip

 Hoi An trip

At the end I can say that it was an awesome Asian summer and I don’t regret any decision I made. Purpose of the trip was also to get away and think about what I want to do with my life and I really cleared my head about some things, so purpose achieved:)