First of all, Happy Give Love to ALL the People Who Matter To You Day from New Delhi, India!

Yes, like two of my inspirations: Brene Brown and Marie at Journeying Behind Breast Cancer, I am jumping on the rebranding Valentine’s Day bandwagon. For all of you other singles out there who would prefer to pretend Feb 14th doesn’t exist, I’ll let you in on a secret…

February is a great month to volunteer locally or internationally and to share your heart with people who need a little love and attention. If you’re overseas, you’ll also enjoy the fringe benefit of escaping from the Hallmark cards, the chocolates in heart shaped boxes, and the chatter of co-workers as they trade notes on their romantic dinner plans. Nope – I’m not the Valentine’s Scrooge because I happen to be single this year. I feel the same way regardless of which side of the relationship coin I’m on. And, as my time in both Cape Town and Vietnam has taught me, LOVE sometimes comes in the most unexpected packages…

Whether you’re newly flying solo, blissfully crashing into love, or plodding through the ups and downs of everlasting togetherness, I think today is a GREAT day to tell the people in your life (single and coupled up) how much their friendship means to you. On that note, I’m sending BIG LOVE to all of my Sisters From Another Mister and Brothers From Another Mother around the globe!

Now it’s time to switch gears. For those of you who want a distraction from the hearts and the hoopla, I want to pull back the curtain and give you an insider look at my time in Vietnam. It was an inspiring, culturally diverse, and, at times, emotionally draining month. If you have joined me from the beginning, you know about my inspirational visit to K Cancer Hospital in Ha Noi, my adventures over Tet in Da Nang, and the lessons learned over my 10 days at the Ho Chi Minh City Cancer Hospital. (To catch up – here’s the link to all of my GeoVisions in Vietnam related posts.

But, if you want to hear about the good, the bad, and the ugly and not just the polished for public consumption posts, read on for my Top 5 Tips for Traveling or Volunteering in Vietnam..

• GET A VISA BEFORE YOU LEAVE HOME – If you skim through a website and trust the advice on the *always accurate* Internet, you will think you can buy your visa when you land in-country. After your long-haul flight from Vancouver, you will roll right up to the Vietnam Airlines check-in desk and pull out your passport and airline confirmation (with the nonchalance of the well-seasoned traveler that you are). You will half listen to the overhead announcements as you calculate how many hours until you can sit down to a bowl of steaming fresh Pho. But, when the thin-fingered Asian man-child flips back and forth through your passport and asks you where your visa is, you will forget all about the Pho. When the man-child further explains that you cannot board the flight without a visa and you realize you’re about the miss a flight for the first time in your life, the oxygen will whoosh from your lungs and you will have to grasp the counter for support. Whether you remain stoic or you lose your sh!t and bawl like a baby, you will still hear (on repeat) the heavily accented words, “I’m sorry m’am. There is nothing we can do” until two days later when you finally get a much coveted letter from immigration and board your flight.

• FORGET ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF PERSONAL SPACE/PRIVACY – If you are lucky enough to have a truly local experience, you will step off the plane in Ha Noi and wait (shoulder to shoulder) with a crush of tourists and locals for 90 minutes until your bag finally arrives. Then, when you drag your sweaty bedraggled self through the arrivals hall, your smiling host will greet you and escort you to a “well used” white van and point towards a seat by the window. You will climb under and over the maze of seat belts and luggage and then stuff your backpack under your knees and wedge your laptop under your armpits as you keep half an eye on your rolling duffle to make sure it makes it into the van (along with what feels like half the city’s residents) before the driver pulls away from the curb. A phone will ring incessantly to the Inspector Gadget tune, horns will blare, and you will occasionally decide to hold your breath to avoid the bombarding smell of humid humanity.

• DON’T KEEP ANYTHING VALUABLE IN YOUR POCKETS – Don’t be lulled into thinking Ha Noi is a safe place simply because women in conical hats ride around on cruiser bicycles. If you relax your guard, a young, strung-out punk might come at you with a stack of postcards from 1982 and lean into you with such force that you have to physically push him away. While your arms are busy protecting your still sensitive-a-year-later-post-mastectomy chest, his hands will be busy slipping the bright, shiny, still so new it doesn’t have a scratch on it iPhone out of your rain coat.
  • Don’t bother sputtering out an accusation (mid-disbelief and pre-meltdown), he will simply disappear into the public toilet and then re-appear only to look at you like you’re the moron who lost your phone somewhere. Then, he’ll hop on his “getaway” motorcycle and careen into the writhing mass of honking, revving scooters that fly through every street with no concern for lights or pedestrians;
  • p.s. This little episode will earn you a trip to the Vietnamese police station where half the “cops” don’t wear uniforms and the other half chain smoke and fill out paper triplicate forms on a dirty laminate desk. They will all look at you like you are the CRAZY tourist who has some deluded pipe dream of getting her already-unlocked-and-sold-on-the-black-market phone back. You will settle for buying the cheapest Nokia phone you can find and go back to texting the way we used to in 2005. You will be fired up and pissed off about the audacity of the thief until a visit to the K Cancer Hospital puts your problems in perspective and you realize that someone else obviously needed your phone much more than you did.

• LOOK BOTH WAYS THE WHOLE TIME YOU ARE CROSSING THE STREET – If you stand on the sidewalk, waiting for traffic to clear, you will probably be there until the end of your trip. So, gather your courage and step out into the abyss. I promise you will get more confident at threading yourself through oncoming traffic, once you have done it a few times. With each step you take, motorcycles will start to veer in front or behind you depending on their calculations of where you will be when they get to your exact location. But, don’t let your focus wander for even a second because it really is pedestrian BE-WARE. (I almost got mowed down at least twice).

• GET USED TO BEING THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION – Be prepared for more stares than you have ever had in your life when you board a packed train in Ha Noi for the 16 hour journey to Da Nang. With a swarm of locals heading to visit family for Tet (the annual New Year’s celebration), you will barely have room for your luggage on the overhead rack that is crammed with suitcases, brown boxes, brightly coloured plastic bags and sacks of rice. EVERYONE will stare at you every time you get up, hoist your bag on your shoulder, weave through the crowd, and step into the “bathroom”. The handle welded to the wall in front of you will be the only thing that keeps you from falling onto your ass (literally) as you place your shoes on the silver feet and squat over the tracks flashing at you through the hole below.

• The staring will only stop when you get to the more touristed areas of Hoi An or Ho Chi Minh City. Then you will be the one staring at other foreigners and their unfortunate travel fashion sense…

In spite of the noise, the pollution, and the cramped living conditions, Vietnam and I fell more in love every day. Over the course of a month, I met so many people whose generosity and hospitality inspired me to be a better friend, sister, and daughter. With gracious hosts, delicious food, fascinating traditions, and a complex history, Vietnam is well worth an extended visit.

If you go, I encourage you to ride on the back of a scooter, squat on a plastic stool with the locals for Pho (made out of a cauldron on the street), and build connections with as many new Vietnamese friends as you can. I promise it’s an experience you won’t regret and I am so grateful to GeoVisions for the opportunity to partner with them on the Vietnam leg of My Adventure of Hope.