Solo Travel to Vietnam: Taking Control of My Life Post Depression

Before I decided to travel to Vietnam last month, the thought of travelling alone had never actually came to my mind. Heck, I didn’t even think about traveling outside of Malaysia. I thought ‘traveling alone’ is just something that risk-taking people do. Not me, especially not a 20-something Malay lady with a strict Asian parent.

How did I make the crazy decision to do a solo trip? Well, the short answer is, my depression made a comeback after 2 years of being mentally stable. The long answer — my depression relapse actually forced me to question my life, my purpose, my actual values.

I lived my life being trapped in the depression spirals for over 15 years, and I was so fucking happy when my psychiatric medication worked — to the point that I was 100% dependent on those tiny little pills for almost 3 years.

When I attempted suicide & was hospitalised, I wondered if this really was the life that I wanted to live. I wondered if that was it. It’s a shitty feeling to realise that the majority of my life was spent in the darkness of my mental illness.

So I decided. To take control. For once.

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That night, while playing random songs from my childhood, I stumbled upon a song by Tom Rosenthal. It says,

“You can’t count every single grain of sand
You can’t save a heart by holding a hand
You can’t make everyone understand
But don’t die curious”

Don’t. Die. Curious.

As a highly suicidal person, that one line stuck inside my head.

Don’t die curious.

It’s like the singer is telling me that there’s so many things to do in life, so if you wanna die, at least don’t leave this life while being curious about what could happen. That one line was really significant to me, it made me think really hard about the kind of life I wanted to lead.

I asked myself, ‘Are you sure you wanna die without seeing what could happen? Are you really sure?”. So I opened my email, and typed out a resignation letter to my manager.

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The next morning, the first thing that I did was to talk to a traveler friend of mine, Amiera. Amiera has been travelling a lot across the world, and she even has an Instagram account dedicated to her journey (link at the end of this article).The reason why I reached out to her was to ask: “How can you afford traveling so much?”. With excitement, Amiera told me how she found a lot of volunteering opportunities on a cultural exchange portal. Many of them offer a free accommodation and food in exchange of our skills.

I was skeptical, so I turned to Reddit and read about other people’s experience with the portal mentioned.Everything seemed good, nothing fishy, so I registered myself an account, and started scrolling through the portal. I applied for several design volunteering opportunities in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

3 days later, a young Vietnamese man named Ha responded to my application. He has a farmhouse in Que Son, which was exactly what I had in mind — to surround myself with animals and nature. Ha was excited to host me, the first Malaysian volunteer, at his farmhouse.So I bought a one-way flight ticket to Vietnam, and it was the best decision I have ever made in my entire life.

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I stayed at a small village in Que Son. Within 3 days, I had made friends with people who I could connect with emotionally.

Hairu, a pretty girl with the best laugh from Netherlands. Nam, the sweetest girl who loves hugs from Hue. Tom, a local farmer who is super talented in photography. Chang, a very smart girl who wants to learn English. And so many more people who were initially strangers, yet felt like.. family.

As a volunteer, I tried my best to design a simple website for the farmhouse, and within 3 weeks, the website was live. After staying in Que Son for nearly one month, I decided to fly to Hanoi and took a bus to Sapa to experience my first winter! Was I scared to travel alone? A bit, but I was more excited than worried.

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In Sapa, I made friends with a local bartender. We exchanged conversation about life over a cup of Vietnamese coffee.

He said that he was from the South, and chose to live in Sapa because of a simple reason: It makes him feel at peace. So while sipping my coffee, I told him about how peaceful I felt after I quit my job. “Do you think that you made a right decision?”. He asked. “I’ll find out”. I answered.