Hello, everyone. After taking my very first flight, I finally arrived in the first country of my backpacking journey: Vietnam. My first impression was that it actually wasn't all that different from Indonesia. There weren't many noticeable differences, although one thing that immediately stood out was that I hardly saw any women wearing hijabs here. That's understandable, considering Vietnam isn't a Muslim-majority country.
As soon as we landed at Nแปi Bร i International Airport in Hanoi, we headed straight to our accommodation by minibus. At first, my group had already been assigned to one house, and we had even started putting our bags down. Then, out of nowhere, we were told to move to another house. Well... okay then. The new place was quite a bit farther away, and when we finally arrived, we discovered that our room was on the fifth floor. Carrying a heavy backpacking carrier all the way up five flights of stairs felt like taking a shower in sweat. By the time we reached the room, we were completely exhausted.
We unpacked our belongings, cleaned and rearranged the room, took showers, and then decided to get some sleep. We were simply too tired to do anything else. I woke up at around four in the afternoon, and a few of us decided to explore the area around our accommodation while looking for an ATM to withdraw some Vietnamese Dong. After about a twenty-minute walk, we finally found one. Surprisingly, the process was quite simple. I only needed to enter my phone number, type in the OTP code, choose the amount I wanted to withdraw, and that was it. I withdrew 500,000 VND.
Right next to the ATM were a Circle K and an ice cream shop. I figured this was the perfect opportunity to use Vietnamese currency for the very first time. Some of my friends went into Circle K, while a few of us walked over to the ice cream shop instead. Thankfully, the cashier spoke English, which made ordering much easier. I asked which flavor was their best seller, and she recommended caramel. One of my friends and I both ordered it. It cost 40,000 VND, and honestly, I had no idea whether that was worth it for a few scoops of ice cream since this was my very first purchase in Vietnam. The caramel flavor wasn't very strong, but it had a nice aroma. Not bad at all. I'd give it a 7 out of 10.
After that, we headed back to the accommodation. One thing that surprised us was how bright it still was at 6:00 PM. It looked more like four in the afternoon. Back in Indonesia, the sky usually starts getting dark around 5:30 PM, so it felt a little strange. Once we got back, I took another shower and washed my clothes. I felt that doing laundry would be very important during this trip because I couldn't imagine running out of clean clothes. From that day on, I decided to wash my clothes every time I took a shower.
After getting cleaned up, we prepared to go to bed. I thought the night would end peacefully, a calm first night in Vietnam. While everyone else was already lying on their beds, I was still standing. I wanted to adjust the direction of the fan in our r
oom.
That was my mistake.
Instead of moving the fan safely, I accidentally slipped my finger between the spinning blades.
Scrrkk.
I pulled my hand away almost instantly. The whole thing happened in less than a second. My friends, who had been chatting just moments before, looked over and laughed at first because they thought I was joking. I didn't say a word. I just stared at my hand.
At first, everything seemed fine.
Three seconds later, I saw blood.
Another three seconds passed, and my finger was already covered in it.
The laughter disappeared almost immediately. My friends' expressions changed, and they started panicking with me. The bleeding wouldn't stop. It stung. It hurt.
Mr. Tio quickly grabbed my hand, guided me to the sink, and ran water over the wound while cleaning it, waiting for the bleeding to slow down.
After a while, the bleeding finally stopped. Mr. Tio disinfected the cuts and covered them with bandages. The w
ound was fairly deep, and there wasn't just one cut. Eventually, everything settled down again. The room became quiet, everyone got ready for bed, and the lights were turned off.
Everyone fell asleep.
Everyone except me.
My ring finger, wrapped tightly in bandages, kept throbbing. Every pulse made it harder to fall asleep. It really hurt.
I lay there for about half an hour before exhaustion finally won.
As I stared into the darkness, the same questions kept repeating themselves in my head.
Why am I always this careless?
Why don't I think before I act?
Why am I the one who gets hurt again?
We hadn't even been in Vietnam for twenty-four hours.
Our backpacking journey hadn't even completed its first day.
And yet, this had already happened.
Those questions kept echoing inside my head, becoming the lullaby that eventually carried me to sleep.
See you tomorrow.