[A journey in Vietnam] Travelling gives a major lesson: never give up.

Life is not always easy and presents us with innumerable challenges and problems everyday. It gives us blue when we desire green; it even presents us with some terrible surprises that we weren’t expecting, and it overwhelms us with unresourceful emotions that tend to tie us down to a life of mediocrity and unhappiness. Despite all this, it is not so much what happens to us that actually makes a difference, it is rather what we do with what happens to us that determines where we will end up, what we will have, and how we will be transformed by our experiences. during my travel experiences, I live such situation that learn me one thing : Never give up.

I try to travel in Vietnam the most I can so as to have no regrets when coming back to France. Travelling in Vietnam is not easy. First because of the language. When you call a company to book a bus or when you want to have a motorbiker to take you from A to B, it is not easy, because I do not speak Vietnamese and most of Vietnamese do not really understand english. Secondly, because of the organization. Sometimes, we, I mean my friends and I,don’t really get what’s going on. For instance, we took a night bus a few days ago, and the bus stopped. We thought it was a 5min-stop but no, it was a eating stop. We did not take our money which was in the bus, so we did not eat with all the passengers and it was too complicated to ask someone to lend us some money so as we could eat something.

But, I think all of those difficulties are part of the game when travelling, otherwise it is a bit boring, isn’t it ?

So I would like to share some travelling story I lived and that learnt me that we should never give up our project.

Last week, with my friend Valentine, we decided to go to Quy Nhon. We had booked a night Futa-bus leaving Ho Chi Minh City at 8pm. There are many Futa-Bus agencies in Saigon and we thought that we had to go the Bui Vien one, as always. We arrived there at 7:55pm and the receptionist told us that we should go in the other agency to take our bus. But the agency was 20 minutes long by car from where we were and the receptionist told us that it was not useful to go there because we were going to be late. The problem was that we really wanted to go there, first because we had paid and then because we wanted to discover this place so much. We decided that we should go to the other agency anyway.

We arrived there. The bus was gone and it was the last one. We decided then to try to find a solution with one of the Futa-agent. He does not speak english well but understood our problem. He left us alone for about 20 minutes. We could have left and go home because we did not know what was going on. But we decided to be patient and to wait for him. Maybe he was trying to have our tickets refunded.The man finally came back and told us to follow him and guess what. There was a bus heading to Quy Nhon waiting for us. We were so lucky !

This story may seem a bit simple and childish but we were so happy not to give up our project. We tried to find solution and it worked. With determination, you can have what you want. You should try and try and try. Never giving up to find solution, because solutions do exist. What’s more you should trust people who are here to help you and be patient, otherwise you get nothing.  Never say die and fight for your project.