At Home in Hanoi

After the longest and earliest travel day of the year (we had to be up at 3:00am to board a 6:00am, indirect flight on October 22nd), we were more than eager to find some stability in our most recent home: Hanoi, Vietnam. We knew Hanoi was going to be different from our previous destinations: we were going to stay put for a whole month in dorm/apartment style accommodations, have only one roommate (!!), attend class at a university, and have weekends free to explore the city! The set up in Mongolia was similar, but Ulaanbaatar was so intimidating to us noob travelers that we couldn’t quite take advantage of it. To be fair, Hanoi also has a much less hostile atmosphere and more opportunity to shop, eat and hang out around town. But despite it’s good vibes, the majority of the credit for my comfort in Hanoi is due to the incredible hospitality, generosity and good nature of the students we were introduced to through National Economics University.

These kids were the cream of the crop in Hanoi, each hand selected from the International Business Program at NEU after a rigorous application process. There were six Program Assistants in all, hired to acclimate us to Hanoi and help us with a cultural project for our class. We called them our PAs. Aren’t they cute?

Yes, they were paid to hang out with us…but they went above and beyond their job description, I’m sure. I became very close to Ha, the 20-year-old student who helped with my project, and I’ve been keeping in touch with her since we left Vietnam.

NEU is well known and well respected in Vietnam for churning out hardworking students who are prepared to enter the country’s ever-expanding workforce. With difficult entrance exams and high tuition, most students we met were from upper-middle class families in the area. All of the classes in the International Business Program are taught in English, so the PAs were nearly fluent.

Their work ethic was apparent from the day we met them. Bright, friendly, eager, respectful, and polite, they greeted us at the gate to our dorm building at 4:00pm on the day of our arrival. I wish I had been in a better mood, but after a day of travel all I wanted to do was unpack and take a nap. But they graciously took us out to lunch for our first bowl of pho (more on that later!!) and showed us around the neighborhood. I didn’t fully appreciate this until the next day when I had no trouble or anxiety finding a place to buy some snacks and eat dinner.

They are practical people; when my friend Kari and I asked Tao her favorite place to get a haircut, her first response was to suggest that we look for a coupon online. I later began to understand that hair salons and other shops are ubiquitous on the streets of Hanoi (literally there are a handful on every block in most places), causing Hanoians to make many of their decisions based on price, or cost leadership. We took an International Business course in Vietnam, so I’ve got econ. vocab on the brain. Identical goods and services can be found everywhere. Substitutes abound, giving consumers plenty of options. Quality doesn’t drive too many decisions here, which could be a result of Vietnam’s yet undeveloped economy. Most choices are made for convenience and frugality’s sake. I’m sure the scene will be quite different in 5 or 10 years.

And the students are well aware of this changing atmosphere. They are optimistic, aspiring, and seek to do whatever they can to expand their horizons. Every NEU student we met hopes to travel abroad someday. We were approached around town many times by English-speaking students from other universities, just looking to have a conversation and practice their speaking.

Their goal-oriented mindset was surprising and their priorities were in a much different place than ours. Well, a different place than mine I guess. These kids don’t party…at all. Not that I’m a huge rager by any means, but I know how to make time for fun. We invited them out to the bars with us many times, but it’s the norm for them to be at home and in bed by 10:00pm. Alcohol wasn't popular. Most of them were commuter students who live with their parents.

Jim McCullough, our Puget Sound professor who flew in to teach our business course, offered us a silly anecdote that highlights their remarkable work ethic. A few years ago he was teaching an economics course at NEU, which happened to coincide with the Vietnamese New Year. He and his students were attending a New Year’s Eve party at which the students were asked to explain their new year’s resolutions. To his surprise, a significant number of them replied that it was their goal to gain weight in the coming year, not because they didn’t have access to enough food, but because they were simply too busy to focus on eating healthy, balanced meals! Not only is the Vietnamese lifestyle and relationship with food very different from ours, but their commitment to their futures is on a different level.

Their integrity was certainly reflected in the countless hours they spent translating, guiding, teaching and inspiring all of us. It was through our relationships with these wonderful students that we gained access to the streets and the flavor of Hanoi in an otherwise impossible way. By the end, Hanoi had a personality in my mind, something I haven’t found in any other city. I know I made a similar comment about our friends in Malaysia, but the two experiences were actually quite different. Though our friendships in the jungle were equally impactful, they didn’t lead to the same sense of place and belonging that they did in Vietnam. Malaysia never felt accessible to me. The forest was a foreboding, impenetrable entity, one that we and our hosts met with fear and uncertainty. Our relationships necessarily defined our experience at Matang by virtue of the fact that they were the only piece of the country’s culture we could access. In Vietnam, we met excellent people our own age who introduced us to the country through their eyes. We became students living in Vietnam, not just Americans passing through. I am so grateful to have experienced it in that way.