By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
A subtropical state of roadless drivers, sweltering heat, and swarms of bodies. Taking no prisoners; Vietnam is scathing. My first visit coincided with a coming of age moment. 17 is perplexing - cusping adulthood whilst towing the line of being a being a young boy. And in grandiose fashion, I marked the occasion the only way I knew how; to travel solo to Vietnam. Premised by helping special needs children; such a venture was never to be promised easy. Arriving in Hanoi was unshakable. It’s June. 35 degrees and 100 percent humidity. Cooking from the inside out, I’d soon be lobster red. Speeding through arrivals seemed totalitarian. Customs officers, kitted in army green, are faceless. Not a word spoken; only a nod to continue forth. Awaiting my bag to swindle past me in baggage claim proved daunting. Passengers, like ants, followed in and out of conveyor belt in orderly fashion; all but for me. As minutes turned to hours, it was clear my bag wasn’t coming. To be told a lifetime later the airline had lost the bag proved gutting. When they say pack lightly; listen. Empty-handed and yearning for my mother’s help, I found my driver and was taken to Hanoi. Out the window pain, the streets seemed unapologetically maniac. A fusion oriental architecture and French colonialism can be dizzying. Scooters own the streets, weaving across lanes with zero regard. Monsoonal rain intensifies the smell, something of a marriage between street food and sewerage. By all accounts, I’d truly taken a leap into the unknown.