July 26, 2026 marked the beginning of my journey with my friends as we joined the *IDN Student Immersion 2026* program. The first country we visited was Vietnam. We departed in the early morning at exactly 2:10 AM, flying with Vietnam Airlines.
The trip started off smoothly, but I had one unpleasant experience. About 15 minutes before landing, my right ear suddenly hurt really badly it felt like intense pressure building up. It was quite panic-inducing, but thankfully, once the plane landed, the pain immediately disappeared.
We arrived in Hanoi at around 7 AM. After that, we picked up our carrier bags and got on a type of vehicle that, honestly, I had never seen before. From there, we headed to our homestay.
Our homestay was divided into two locations. The first location was for groups 1 and 2, while the second location was for groups 3, 4, and 5. My group, group 4, got a room on the 4th floor. Once we arrived, we immediately settled in and rested until Asr time.
After Asr, I went out with groups 4 and 5 to look for an ATM and stopped by Circle K. We stayed there for about 15 minutes. After that, we continued walking for around 10–15 minutes to find a shop that sells Vietnamese SIM cards, but unfortunately, it was already closed. So, we decided to head back to the homestay.
At night, after praying, we spent some time transferring photos from our cameras to our laptops and uploading them to our social media. Not long after that, around 9 PM, we started getting ready for bed and finally rested, ending our first day in Vietnam.