Hanoi & Homecoming

My journey has finally come to an end. After spending nearly a week in Hanoi meeting up with friends I had met in previous cities and meeting new people in my hostel, I made the long series of flights via Tokyo back to the United States.

This past week in Hanoi and all of Vietnam was exciting for it was the 40th anniversary of the reunification of the country. On April 30th, 1975, Northern Vietnamese troops invaded Saigon, finally signalling the end of the long and brutal war that plagued the country for over a decade. My week was spent not doing a whole lot of activities, but rather enjoying relaxing and getting into a little routine with my days with working out at the local gym, reading in the park, eating meals of pho and bun chau (a delicious Hanoi meal of rice noodles and pork in a succulent broth) and hanging out at my hostel.

The hostel I stayed at was called Drift Backpackers Hostel, located in the Old Quarter of the city, and was one of the best hostels I stayed at during my SE Asian trip. For $2.50 a night, I stayed in a clean dorm bed, got free breakfast of coffee, tea, a baguette, and eggs, while also getting free keg Bia Hoi beer every night from 7-9 PM. While one of the cheapest hostels I had stayed in during my travels, it was also one of the easiest to meet people and staffed by some of the kindest and helpful Vietnamese people. An awesome place that I would recommend to anyone looking for a cheap place to meet cool people from all over the world.

While I type here from my brother and sister-in-law's apartment in Los Angeles, CA, I look back to all of the amazing experiences, wonderful people, and beautiful places I had the pleasure of encountering during my trip through Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Many people ask me what my favorite place was during my trip. That question is terribly difficult to answer because out of every country I visited, each place offered completely different wonderful experiences and people, leaving me unable to narrow down even my favorite five places.

Another question I was asked frequently by the locals I met during my time in Asia, was,  "Isn't traveling alone scary, lonely, etc?" I always answer that while yes, sometimes traveling alone can sometimes be lonely, but in general, one can meet people from all over the world extremely easy at hostels, on transportation, and in just random situations throughout the day and night. I also have found that traveling alone is wonderful in that you have the freedom to go anywhere you want, eat wherever, whatever, and whenever, and generally do anything you want. 

During my travels, I occasionally spent a few days at a time traveling with others ranging from one other person to a group of five others. While traveling with others is nice in that you always have someone to hang out with and talk to, it does limit you in the experiences you have. Traveling alone forces you out of your comfort zone, causing you to do things that you shy away from when you have a group of friends to retreat to. Also, random and wonderful experiences happen more to people alone than those in groups because someone alone is more easily approachable by others and without having to think of someone else, you can change plans at any moment to follow any unexpected experience.

While the feeling of being back in the United States has not set in yet, I am sure soon I will start to notice the differences of culture and the shock of being back in my native, yet now seemingly foreign, country. I know I will miss Asia in due time, but for now I am excited for reuniting with friends and family, seeing familiar sights, and moving on to my next adventure of working as a Wilderness Ranger in the White River National Forest this summer in Colorado.

I'd like to end my first ever blog with two quotes that I read from the book Blue Highways, an account by William Least Heat-Moon, who writes about his two month long journey driving around the backroads of the United States and living in his van around the year of 1980.

"If a man can keep alert and imaginative, an error is a possibility, a chance at something new; to him, wandering and wondering are part of the same process and he is most mistaken, most in error, whenever he quits exploring." 

--William Least Heat-Moon, from Blue Highways

"I can't say, over the miles, that I learned what I had wanted to know because I hadn't known what I wanted to know. But I did learn what I didn't know I wanted to know."

--William Least Heat-Moon, from Blue Highways