When I was younger, a mentor told me that growth happens when you turn discomfort into curiosity. That line has stayed with me for years—tacked to the inside of notebooks, murmured during long hikes, whispered like a lifeline when life got hard. But I don’t think I fully understood it until Vietnam.
I went in expecting to love it. Everyone I’d ever talked to who had been before raved about the food, the scenery, the kindness of the people. I didn’t even know until after I landed that only 5% of travelers return to Vietnam. That statistic would’ve surprised me before. It doesn’t now.
We arrived in Hanoi at the tail end of a storm system, and the skies weren’t just overcast—they were thick. A weather inversion had pressed the ozone down, trapping heat and smog over the city. By the end of our first week, I had a deep, hacking cough that forced me into a pharmacy for antibiotics. I was too sick to walk much. The air felt heavy with a kind of weight I couldn’t name yet.
That first night, still jetlagged and bleary, we wandered the streets of the Old Quarter looking for food. My stomach turned as we passed a group of construction workers roasting a dog on the side of the road. It was jarring. I felt everything all at once—horror, shame, sadness, confusion. It wasn’t just the scene itself. It was the recognition of how little I knew. About Vietnam. About poverty. About what people are forced to do when they don’t have another option.
But that wasn’t the whole story.
A few days later, I ended up in a bar with a bartender who served us a drink called ‘Dogs are Friends’. He explained the name before I could ask. It was about how his generation is trying to move away from that part of the past—how, with more economic freedom, our generation of people are starting to see dogs as pets again. He talked about what it meant to his parents and grandparents to have to make those choices in the first place. We had this long, honest conversation about culture, hunger, compassion, survival, and shame. I’ve thought about it every week since I left.
We saw floating styrofoam in the water at Ha Long Bay. Oil slicks. Grease trails. Piles of trash. The bay is beautiful, but it’s also struggling under the weight of its own popularity. And the people who live there? They’re in the middle of something massive—trying to survive the fallout of war, environmental collapse, tourism, and climate change all at once.
There are legacies here that still live in the soil. Entire regions were bombed into craters. Fishermen have lost their livelihoods. The cát bà langur—one of the most endangered primates in the world—nearly vanished because its habitat was shelled. And Agent Orange, dropped by the barrel, didn’t just kill forests. It changed the genetics of the people. It changed families.
All of this—the garbage, the scams, the hard conversations, the pollution, the poverty—was painful. But also, the people. The people were incredible. They were warm, direct, funny. I never once felt unsafe. We had some of the best food of our lives. And slowly, something in me started to shift. The parts of the trip that made me uncomfortable weren’t detractions. They were the point.
Vietnam didn’t care if I was comfortable. That was my job.
And the moment I stopped making it about me—how I felt, what I expected, what I thought I deserved—I started to see it. Really see it. The past, the struggle, the generosity. The way locals find dignity and joy in the everyday. The softness beneath the noise.
This was the hardest place I’ve ever traveled. And I think that’s why it’s the one I’ll never forget. I’m not sure I would’ve said this at the time, but now, with some distance, I know I’ll be part of the 5%.
Vietnam wasn’t easy, but it stayed with me. And that feels like enough reason to return.
