Monday 28 March 2016

Guest blog by Kathy Boulton: 5 things I learnt in Vietnam

Today I'm excited and proud to present you with a guest blog by my sister, Kathy, who is going to share with you some of her impressions of Vietnam following her visit there at the end of last year.
Please enjoy, share, comment and encourage!

Chrissy 😉

5 things I learnt in Vietnam 

So, in November, I went all the way to Vietnam. I’ve been meaning to put this blog together ever since, but, well, life (as it always does) got massively in the way. Finally, I pulled my laptop out, sat studiously at my dining room table and pieced it all together. This is my first experience of writing a blog. It’s also been a loooong time since I’ve written anything, my studying days being far behind me. But it’s been fun. Really fun. And a good way to reflect on what was, in such a clichéd way, a life changing experience. 

Vietnam is never somewhere I thought I would visitbut when my sister and her partner moved there to work and travel last March, it became the place I wanted to go. Not only did I get to spend loads of time with them after nine months apart, but I also got to experience the life they had been living and after months of hearing what Vietnam was like, I could see it, smell it and taste it for myself. It was a holiday, an adventure, but it was more than that. Because they had been working and living in Saigon, I got to see the city from a different perspective. I saw it from the point of view of people actually living and working there. My sister was working as a teacher, so I got to experience her commute on a city bus, go to districts that I wouldn’t have even considered going to and met people I wouldn’t have done in any other regard. I feel that I got to see the city properly and experience a taste of Vietnamese life. I think I learned a lot in a very short space of time, about myself, other people, food, culture and another small part of the great big wider world. But I decided to narrow down what I learnt for the purposes of this blog, otherwise I think I would be writingforever! So, here are 5 things I learnt in Vietnam.