Landing and Spending the First Day in Hanoi as a Volunteer

From my travel diary; a description of a series of events that I experienced on my first day and its associated feelings. I was heading over to Hanoi, Vietnam from Kuwait via Dubai to volunteer to teach English and exchange cultures for 2 weeks. It was quiet extraordinary


Waiting in Dubai International Airport (DXB) in my 3 hour transit. Before getting onto the plane in Dubai the feelings of anxiousness and fear that I had before departing Kuwait were haunting me again....why the hell was I flying to Hanoi? Who are all these people around me? It would feel so much better lying in my warm bed back home chatting with my older brother or sitting on the dinner table having dinner with family and friends… I felt lonely for an hour or two during my transit for, as an 18 year old, I am not used to being alone; this was partly why I decided to solo travel. I knew they were just feelings and acknowledged the way I felt, embracing my situation. When we take a leap into the unknown our brain automatically feels unsafe, it’s the way we have evolved. I had no clue who was going to pick me up at the airport in Hanoi neither did I know who I was going to live and eat with or whom I will be teaching English to. I told myself that I am stronger that my own emotions. On the plane from Dubai to Hanoi, one small conversation on the plane with a Vietnamese person steered my thoughts into another direction and partly relieved the anxiousness I was feeling.

When I ordered my first complementary instant noodles and quickly finished it, the Vietnamese man took a photo of the empty cup in order to show it to the air hostess when she would come around (I figured it would be his way of ordering one, since he couldn't speak English) so I pressed the ' air hostess request ' button on his dashboard to help get his order quicker as this meant the air hostess would know he had a request and quickly come to his seat. He turned it off as the air hostess was already beside him. Holding eye contact, we exchange smiles. Although there was no direct exchange of dialogue between us, this situation gave me a feeling of ease, warmth and familiarity and helped get me to sleep on the 6 hour flight to Hanoi.

Touchdown Hanoi 

View from Hanoi airport

It was 31 degrees celcius outside. Through the window, it looked very green and appeared to be humid as it had just rained. This immensely contrasted the flat Kuwaiti desert that was scorching hot in the middle of summer, with temperatures reaching 60 degrees celcius. I could not wait to embark upon this journey although I still felt slightly nervous to meet “Tuổi Trẻ Nhiệt Huyết”, whom I just knew would pick me up from the airport via a Facebook message from Gấm ( Gấm was the volunteer coordinator working for Mercury, the English center I was volunteering for)

Stepping out of Hanoi international airport 

As I came out of the gate at Hanoi international airport, I was greeted by Luke (Luke was in fact “Tuổi Trẻ Nhiệt Huyết”, and I later knew that everyone at Mercury had both a Vietnamese name and a western name, in order to make it easier for volunteers to remember and pronounce everyone's name) he was extremely friendly and smiled a lot despite speaking very little English. After exchanging my US dollars to Vietnamese Dong I was shocked to know that we would use a motorbike to get home ....how the fuck would I fit my three pieces of luggage on one motorbike? Motorbikes are not too widely used in Egypt (my home country) or Kuwait (where I was brought up). I repeatedly told him, “we CANNOT fit the three bags AND sit safely on the motorbike.” I even offered to pay for a taxi back to the place, but he kept replying calmly, “It is okay. Don’t worry.” I told to myself, “fuck it.” We strapped two of the larger bags on the back of the motorbike and Luke fitted the smaller bag in the tiny space between his legs and the front part of the bike and we headed on our 40km journey to the volunteer home stay.. It was not as uncomfortable as I thought it would be and I quickly saw that having shit loads of stuff behind your motorbike is very common in Hanoi. Strapped chicken cages and three huge boxes of clothing merchandise were amongst the things I observed. I started to feel at ease and no longer felt in danger to be on the 120cc motorbike with Luke. 

Luke and I on the motorbike

Hanoi was extremely busy and I think I saw more motorbikes than people, it was crazy. Crossing red traffic lights was normal (about one in every fifty bikes crossed it) even if there were police men standing at an intersection. Later that day one of the Vietnamese volunteers at the accommodation explained how they referred to police men as‘Pikatchu’, because they dressed up in a yellow uniform and did not do too much. Upon arrival at the home stay accommodation I introduced myself to everyone I met and had a short conversation talking about their background. Despite being anxious about departing my country and arriving in Hanoi, I consider myself to be a very sociable person. I am very much interested in other peoples character and enjoy understanding cultures different to mine.



Luke invited me to eat a weirdly tasting rice and pork stew topped with spring onion and pepper. I was not used to eating Asian food yet so although everyone around me liked the dish, I felt that it was nothing special, perhaps because nobody eats pork back Kuwait. I quickly got to know that it was Sara's birthday (Sara was a 21 year old volunteer from Ireland/Sweden) , and that we would be later heading out for a party . I took a quick shower in the shared bathroom and got dressed. 

Then everyone in the house (around 10 people) headed for dinner at a local Vietnamese restaurant which served snail as one of its main dishes. The snails tasted fine, the french fries were good, a ginger coconut infused oyster stew/hotpot tasted absolutely amazing, and some fried pork with the chilli sauce was delicious. In Vietnam, everyone has chili sauce with everything. One plate that got everyone's attention was a baby quail boiled out of its egg that looked like a bulging eye. It tasted bland and did not have much flavor (the soup it was in was delicious though) and I felt it disintegrating and separating into individual body parts in my mouth. The juices served were nice and sugary. There was ginger, sugarcane and tamarind drinks. They tasted very familiar because sugar cane and tamarind juice are the two most popular drinks in Egypt.

After we finished we got into ‘GrabCars’ (GrabCar is Asia’s equivalent to Uber, they also have GrabBike for motorbikes) to head towards Hero, a nightclub, after discovering that the first club we tried going to was closed. To be completely honest, I did not enjoy partying that night. I overspent using money that I was supposed to use to go on a trip to Ninh Binh that weekend and did not even get drunk. Although I believe that having fun is solely each individual persons responsibility and not the environment he or she is in, I was too tired from the flight and the club was filled with people I could not easily speak English with (except the other volunteers of course). 

I met two 26 year old beautiful Swedish girls that I talked to for 10 minutes but the conversation didn’t go anywhere and quickly died out. We ended up dancing like monkeys in the gogo dancers’ cage (which was fucking hilarious) and ended up breaking one of the steel bars which resulted in us being kicked out of it by the bouncers. Hours later we found ourselves exhausted and in GrabCars heading back to the accommodation. There I was invited for a marijuana joint in the balcony overlooking the beautiful Ha Dong district in the 26 th floor by Oliver from Estonia and Alejandro from New York. I could not exactly remember what we talked about but the weather after the rain created a chill and relaxed atmosphere.I ended my day with a cold shower and ended up sleeping on a shared bed next to Oliver on my blue scarf, without a blanket. Stay tuned for the next post where I will reveal an UNFORGETTABLE moment that I will stay in my memory forever. Until next time :)

 Wessam Nasreldin | Volunteer in Mercury Center, Hanoi, Vietnam

Mercury is a non-profit teaching project to support education in Vietnam. Which welcomes volunteers from all over the world to teach English for less privileged students. We implement some free English classes, as well as other low-cost classes, with the help of international volunteers from around the world. We ask volunteers to support us from one month to several months or more. We provide free different, delicious food for meals, accommodation. We require NO prior experience, NO certificate.

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