Week two in Asia was just as good as week one, if not better. Hanoi still never ceases to amaze me and I’m just melting of happiness with the food…and because it’s sooo freaking hot. No joke, it’s like 95 degrees with 95% humidity here every. single. day.
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Work has gotten less crazy and my body seems to be getting a little better with the time difference, however I don’t think this morning person will ever fully get used to waking up at 11am as “normal.” This may be a loong four months..
What I did this week:
- Finally found a gym with mats for DDR and I to practice acro moves that we don’t feel comfortable doing on just grass (which was probably good because..well, see below)
- Sweated our FACES off at said gym but also crushed it!
- Decided to lean into Hanoi and getting out of the group a bit more this month and as a result found myself wondering “What is my life right now?” as I was riding around Hanoi on the back of a South African’s moped at three in the afternoon on Wednesday. He had been in town for several weeks at that point and we ended up having a ball getting lost while scooting around the city for a solid six hours. I have a feeling this won’t be the last time I see him 😉
- Learned how to make a summer roll and bun cha (❤️❤️❤️) on Thursday in my Vietnamese cooking class. The class was led by a graduate of Koyo. Koyo is this incredible non-profit that helps at-risk Vietnamese youth pursue culinary careers. Our teacher told us his life story about how he grew up extremely poor and then his mother got sick and couldn’t help provide for the family. This resulted in him having to drop out of middle school to help take care of her and his siblings.
When he heard about the Koyo program, he immediately applied and after a verrrry long application process (it’s extremely hard to get into) and two years of intense training his destiny was literally forever changed, as he’s now the head chef of the restaurant we were cooking/eating at (which was phenomenal).
I swear we were all excited..
It was such a wonderful story and I was so thankful that Remote Year is actively looking for organizations like this to partner with. Also, our spring rolls and bun cha were AMAZING.
So many spices to go in our bun cha meatballs!
Gimme.
Summah rollz
If any of y’all need a lesson in how to roll summer rolls, holla- I gotchu
- Friday night I went out with JP (the South African) again and we had another long night that ended with talking until sunrise at one of the 24 hour restaurants on my street. Who would have thought I would find such interesting people along this journey that aren’t even locals to the city I’m in? Oh Remote Year, you never fail to keep things interesting.
More exploring led to more fabulous views.
- Had a low-key Saturday until dumpling night catching up on personal admin tasks, like PLANNING MY THAILAND SIDE TRIPS (!!!!!)
- Attended, nay, stormed dumpling night aka this month’s family dinner. Ian and Tiffany taught 30 of us how to make both steamed and pan-fried Chinese dumplings (and for this reason alone they are my favorite human beings).
Easily the best entrance to a party ever.
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Being Kaizen, we obviously turned it into a drunken dance party and somewhere in the midst of everything I missed dumpling shots. Yes. You heard that right. Someone who shall remain nameless (l swear it legitimately actually was not me) thought it would be a good idea to do a shot of Captain Morgan and dumplings. The aforementioned person may or may not have also completely regretted this decision both immediately afterwards and the next day.
Have I mentioned that I love my group? Cause I do.
- Did the BEST track EVER on Sunday when I legitimately made a knife from scratch…in open toed shoes. (No one tell OSHA plz.)
Not even joking though. We went to this town on the outskirts of Hanoi that’s known for their knives and we literally got to forge (in FIAH!) our own knives.
But first- pho.
We started by choosing what knife we wanted to make- I wanted a chef’s knife and so did Sarge so our group ended up making two of those. The beginning was literally marking out the shape of the knife on a piece of metal with a whiteout pen. Then we scored the shape and broke off the extra metal.
Then we took turns hammering down the metal into a thinner blade. Two people would take turns hammering, with one also holding onto the metal with tongs (which was a lot harder than it sounds). The sound of two people unspokenly finding their rhythm thunk thunking away was easily one of the coolest moments of the day.
While this was happening two other people were working on whittling down wood for the handle (aka OMG WOODWORKING- my freaking favorite!!!) After getting some aggression out on the blade I went over to join them and learned how to use some new woodworking tools and was literally this little ball of joy. Man I just love creating things.
And then someone had the great idea of burning Kaizen into the handle which obviously fell on my shoulders. I wrote out our name in whiteout again and then used these long metal rods to burn it in..except they were red hot (which I suppose is what happens when you put them in a firing oven..) and the guy kept laughing at me because I don’t have asbestos fingers and couldn’t hold them as close as he could -__- lol so the ‘Kaizen’ turned out…authentic shall we say.
Does Toes Doe
The only part that I didn’t do was buffing the blade. I would have but honestly I wasn’t the most interested in it, and open toed shoes with sparks..maybe not the best idea. I also passed on the final step of honing it on the dry stone because meh, I’ll let the boys do that.
Eric was such a superstar at this whole process. A million cool points to him.
Compared to the rest of the world, I’ve learned that America really has just so many rules and regulations. There’s nowhere that this is more noticeable than in Vietnam. I was literally allowed to forge a knife with no training and no safety precautions today. Ok.
The final product!
What a fantastic group of artisans
Again, welcome to the new normal.
On a more serious note, some thoughts on Asia:
Hanoi is wonderful. This city can be summed up in the action of walking across the street. On the surface level it looks terrifying: an endless ocean of scooters and cars zipping every which way- the real life version of Frogger. There is no wrong side of the road here- one-way streets are at best a recommendation and traffic lights seem to be largely optional. Looking at the swirling chaos, it seems like there’s no possible way to get across. but if you step off the curb confidently and walk straight at a steady pace, the orchestra starts to tailor its song to you. Cars slow down, scooters weave around and as long as you maintain your pace, you’ll always make it to the other side safe and sound.
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It sounds very cliche, and it very well may be, but my everyday experiences in Hanoi really remind me of the Henry David Thoreau quote “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”
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Hanoi requires confidence. Asia requires confidence. You truly usually have no idea what you’re doing- how to cross the street, how to order food, what to even order off of the menu.. but you just pick something and go with it. Commit. Lean in. And as you do, things start to fall into place.
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Your horizons expand and you start to have experiences that you literally could have never even dreamed of at home. All because you made a choice and you committed to it.
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Whether that choice was to take an uber moto across town for the first time or it was to join a year long adventure traveling the world, you did that. And you’re the one that gets to enjoy the benefits, and cry at the sorrows, and laugh at everything in between because it’s so beautiful and strange and confusing.
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And it does get more simple.
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Here in Hanoi I’ve learned here that despite the craziness, it’s just like every other city- people live, they work, they play, they get by. Our lives may on the surface look so different, yet the similarities are so vivid when you watch something as simple as children playing. Although the children here have so much less, they’re just as happy as ours, if not more. To quote my second book in one blog post- It reminds me of one of my favorite passages from The Alchemist-
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“But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood…It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as a part of a search for something believed in and desired.”
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Although we’re all different, my travels have confirmed for me that there is a language of the world- a language of humanity, understood by all who walk this Earth. You don’t need to speak the same dialect to understand love, despair, hope, and sorrow. I see them every day here in Hanoi, just like I did in New York City, and this, to me, is the beauty of the world.
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