Life in Vietnam transpires in the streets. Families and shopkeepers enjoy people watching from their stoops, while men and women sell produce or consumer goods from baskets balanced on their heads or makeshift markets laid out on the sidewalk. There appears to be a general disregard for traffic laws, and most people get around by motorbikes that can hold one or two passengers – or an entire family with a child balanced on a parent’s shoulders. I will be the…
This semester, I am studying with 25 students on SIT’s IHP Climate Change: The Politics of Food, Water, and Energy. We travel to San Francisco, Vietnam, Morocco, and Bolivia. I have several goals for the semester. First, I want to learn how to live out of a suitcase, while shedding some attachment to material items and 3G Internet connection. Second, I want to push myself out of my comfort zone for the sake of personal growth. Finally, I aim to…
When I tell people that I will be leaving to study in Vietnam for a semester, I am usually met with disbelief. “Oh my goodness, why?” everyone asks. “Will it be safe?” one says skeptically. If someone is feeling particularly diplomatic, she might say, “Well, at least the food will be good.” My response is just as terrible. I give a cowardly shrug, put on a fake grin and say apologetically, “I know, crazy right?” I usually top it off…
Our flight from Cape Town to Hanoi was tedious to say the least; we flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg to Doha to Bangkok to Hanoi in the span of twenty-four hours. Flying from South Africa to Qatar was quite an amazing experience, knowing that I was passing over dozens of countries that I’d love to visit. Our bus ride from the airport to the center of the city showed the progression of agriculture to urban density as rice fields were…
After I fell sick in Hanoi for over a week (the entirety of my stay there), I was glad to have a change in scenery once I was finally in recovery. Studying with IHP requires a lot of stamina in order to travel so frequently. For someone like me who has not traveled much, our travel days are exhausting. Our journey from Hanoi, Vietnam to Rabat, Morocco began on a Friday afternoon. We checked out of our hotel at 1:00 p.m. and drove…