When we travel somewhere for the first time, I think there are two types of people.
The first are the super tourists. They have a list of restaurants to try, coffee shops to visit and enough saved recommendations to fill an entire week. The second are the people who try to act like locals despite very obviously not being locals. I, however, can confidently say I was both.
Before travelling to Vietnam, I had already saved enough cafés, vintage stores and restaurants to keep me busy for days. And to be fair, I did exactly what any self-respecting tourist would do. I drank the egg coffee. I visited the viral cafés. I hunted down the most fashionable spots. I stood on Hanoi Train Street watching the railway tracks. No regrets.
But somewhere between all the places I’d saved and the places I found by accident, the trip became about something else.
This was my first time in Asia and, coming from Dubai, I expected to spend most of the trip feeling out of place. What I didn’t expect was how quickly everything started to feel normal. A few days in, I was jumping on Grab bikes without thinking twice, crossing streets that looked impossible to cross and squeezing onto tiny plastic stools for dinner alongside people whose conversations I couldn’t understand but somehow didn’t feel excluded from.
One thing I wish someone had told me before my first trip to Asia is that not every hour needs to be planned. I arrived with pages of recommendations saved on my phone, but some of my favourite memories happened when I ignored them all.
Some mornings started with a coffee and turned into five-hour walks. Afternoons disappeared inside cafés because it started raining, and I didn’t feel like leaving. Other days, I’d end up on the back of a Grab bike heading somewhere I hadn’t even heard of 24 hours earlier.
If you’re visiting Vietnam for the first time, download Grab before you land. Trust me. Within a few days, I was treating motorbike rides like your average everyday transport and wondering why every city doesn’t work this way. The viral cafés are worth visiting too. The coffee really is that good.
But don’t build your entire trip around recommendations. Some of the best coffees I drank came from places I found because I was tired, lost or simply curious enough to walk inside. That’s probably what I loved most about Vietnam. It constantly rewarded curiosity. There was always another street to wander down, another café to sit in or another reason to change your plans halfway through the day.
When I got home and started going through my camera roll, I realised most of the photos weren’t of the places I’d spent months saving online.
By the end of the trip, Hanoi felt a lot smaller than it had been on day one. The streets that seemed chaotic suddenly felt familiar. The Grab rides felt routine. Even crossing the road no longer required a silent prayer.
If you’re planning your first trip to Asia, save the cafés, book the tours and make the restaurant list. I certainly did.
Just leave a little space for doing absolutely nothing, too. You might be surprised by what you find when you’re not looking for anything at all.
Okay, if you are travelling to Asia, Cosmo ME has all your summer essentials sorted out here.