ESL Blogs

Hanoi has been too hot for these two days. When I walked to work in the morning, I looked up at the sky and imagined it is the blue ocean. The clouds seemed to turn into the white canoe surfing on the sea. Gosh, I miss my 1 week solo travel to the middle part of my country. It was my first experience traveling alone, which I will never ever forget. I had written a short blog about it but did not publish on EC. Today, reading noaslpls’s blog, I feel inspired and want to rewrite it. Well, it is going to be a long story because I am not good at writing a concise blog.

Part 1- Before traveling

Three months ago, when I had quit my job and not wanted to find a new one, I decided to have a trip to somewhere.  I love traveling to new places but for many trivial reasons, I just had traveled to few places near where I am living. I thought this time was a perfect chance to do what I love because I was jobless. So I started to think about where to go. At first, the North-West part of my country came to my mind. There are a lot of breathtaking sceneries since it is the mountainous area. But then I thought it would be more enjoyable staying near the sea than mountains under such hot summer weather. Moreover, as I would travel alone for the first time, I don’t want to take risk going to some remote villages and places. A city would be a better choice. In this case, I had chosen Da Nang which is one of the famous tourism destinations in Vietnam.  It is about 800 kilometers from Hanoi to Da Nang and will take you only a hour by plane but about 15 hours by train to go there. I was so excited with my plan and I called my parents to tell them about this. I knew that they would not like my idea but did not expect their strong objection.

They were shocked and did not agree with my plan. They gave me tons of reasons not to do it. The biggest reason is that they think it is dangerous to travel alone. Every day, we hear the news on TV about trafficking, kidnapping, murdering, rapping, transportation accidents... The world is full of danger and they could not imagine their Little Tree was going to spend a week alone out there in a strange city. So I had to persuade them with a lot of rational reasons. Actually I don’t need their permission to do what I love. I would go anyway. I tried not to make them sad but it was impossible since we have different points of view. I think the world is not as dangerous as we always think. Moreover, I just travel inside Vietnam, my country with friendly people and I am old enough to take good care of myself.

Finally, I booked the one way train ticket thinking I would go as long as I can, until I run out of money hehe. And in order to make my parents less worried, I would stay at a friend’s house and visit my relatives there.

Hanoi was so hot that time. It urged me to escape from it as soon as possible. But watching the weather forecast, I knew that I was just going to escape from this oven to another one.

@@@@@@@ To be continued @@@@@@@