Vietnam

In the late summer of 2023, I took a one-way flight to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. In my personal life, I found myself searching for something—something to chase after. I left home with my life savings, thinking I would be away for as little as a year to almost indefinitely.

I took the hippie trail north and followed all the other soul-searching backpackers. From south to north, I traveled by train, bus, and motorbike, spending exactly the first month on my visa thinking I was just there to travel, probably not coming back. Little did I know that after exiting the country, I would go through a handful of other spots in Southeast Asia before taking up my previous tour guide on an employment opportunity to live and run motorbike guides through the most remarkable and untouched province in Vietnam—Ha Giang.

The agreement consisted of a loose arrangement of free food, beer, and petrol in exchange for motoring through the mountainous bordering towns to China, giving other foreigners like me an immersive tour. Total tours completed on the now-famous ‘Ha Giang Loop’ totaled 28 tours—1 solo tour and 1 tour as a customer—four days per trip.

I lived with a few other foreign guides, who later became some of my closest friends. We were living the backpacker dream while everyone else was in transit far from this land. We stayed in motion but stayed local, blending with the tight-knit group of native men. We were the western liaisons to this land—one of the poorest, but probably one of the happiest I have ever seen.

Sometimes now, I think and reflect on whether that was where I was always supposed to be, because it felt right all of the time—but I guess I, too, had to be in transit.