Vietnam came with many challenges, laughs, smiles, experiences and opportunities. In this post, I want to share with you the absolute best moments of the trip – for me personally.
As I might have mentioned in one of the other blogposts, for me, the authentic feeling of Vietnam is what really made me feel like “wow, this is why I came here!”. One of these moments happened when we were visiting Katu village on our first field trip! To go to Katu, we had to drive for over 3 hours, occasionally on very bumpy roads, until we finally reached the two villages situated far into the highlands. The Katu people speak their own language separate from the Vietnamese, but most of them understand Vietnamese as well – perhaps not the oldest of the generation though. We slept overnight in the village for one night, and had dinner on the floor together inside the bungalow. This was a truly amazing experience, and I am so happy we got to go there. Maybe not everyone thought it was so wonderful to be sleeping on the floor and getting scared by giant, furry wasps, but playing with the children there and seeing all the people living off their own grown food was honestly worth everything! Not to mention the dance around the bonfire at night.

 

The house where we slept and ate

Friendship goals <3 

Magical morning in Katu at 6 am.

Photo by Jimmy

Photo by Jimmy

Another similar experience I had, was again whilst visiting a Katu village – this time a village that some of the other students were doing research and English teaching in. After lunch there, we went on a short hike through the woods and up to this beautiful waterfall that we could swim in!! For me, this might have been the best moment of the entire stay in Hoi An. Swimming there reminded me so much of my childhood in Norway, when me and my family used to go to the waterfall at our out-in-the-woods cottage every day we stayed there during summer. I don’t think anyone quite realised this, as no-one knew about those memories, but the joy I felt was certainly childlike and I wish I could go there again! On the way down however, we came across a big snake that the indigenous managed to catch, and so there was a sense of adventure in the air as well.

The waterfall

I also want to highlight our many breakfasts and lunches at the Balance Café, which were always so good and a safe place to both study or take shelter when it was either too warm or raining too heavy outdoors. Thank you to Vinh and everyone who made our food and stay comfortable!

Breakfast at Balance

The week I probably enjoyed most out of all the lecture-weeks we had, was the one on sustainability with Arve Hansen as teacher! That is to say, as it is the subject I am most interested in, this is for sure the reason why. Actually, having such educated and knowledgeable new teachers every week was really inspirational to me, and something you very seldom experience during high school. Studying in university is different though, and I found it so cool to be able to talk to humans who really were experts in their field. What we learned about sustainability was partly familiar to me, like the fact that meat-consumption is affecting the environment in a very serious way (up to 30% of greenhouse gas emissions in fact, which is more than the combined transport sector!!), and some things were completely new. I will take the knowledge further into my future studies I think, and I really value having learned so much here!
Rounding up this blog-post, the last thing I want to mention, was our visit to the garment factory close to Hoi An. This was also our second field-trip. We got to see people producing clothes for companies like H&M and Forever 21, and I think it was a good reminder, if not a wake-up call, to some people about the interconnectedness in the global world we live in today.

Our classroom

Workers at the textile factory

I want to encourage everyone and anyone who feel like traveling and learning about the world is what they are supposed to do, to go ahead and take Development studies in Vietnam. It will be something you will never forget!

You are beautiful Hoi An!

I will be back…

-Margrethe-