Travel to Vietnam and there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself on a flight operated by VietJet Air. If that happens, there is a 100 percent chance you’ll get this song stuck in your head. It is played on repeat until the plane takes off and on repeat upon landing. Here are the lyrics to the chorus:
One day I’ll touch your soil…
One day I’ll finally know your soul… One day I’ll come to you…
To say hello… Vietnam
Written by a Belgian-Vietnamese singer, Quynh Anh, about the child of Vietnamese refugees finally coming to see and understand her parents’ home country, it’s a poignant song. Unfortunately, the airplane engines drowned out almost all of the lyrics and we could only make out: “One day I’ll touch your soul… one day, I’ll find another soul.” A potentially impactful song became a punchline throughout our stint in Vietnam, until we finally decided to look up the lyrics to see why this lady was singing about finding more souls and why VietJet Air played only this same song. A lesson in doing your homework before coming to conclusions, which is something you should definitely do if you plan to visit Vietnam.
In three and a half weeks, the longest time we’d spent in any one country to date on the trip, we saw a lot of amazing places. Most of them started with the letter “H.” In fact, two of them are anagrams of each other, and this caused us some trouble when we tried to meet up with a fellow traveler from earlier in the trip. We were all set to see her again in Hoi An, only to find out that she was actually in a city Whatsapp had merely autocorrected to Hoi An…Hanoi.
We saw so much on this leg that it’s been taking us more time than we’d like to come up with a post. (We promise it has nothing to do with the fact that we’re enjoying Japan so much it’s hard to sit down and write.) In any case, South Korea is only two days away at this point, so we figure it’s time to divide and conquer and tackle this Vietnam post once and for all. Over the next two updates, Matt’s going to take all the “H” name places we visited, and Laura’s got the rest. Oh, also, we each authored a part of this intro. Can you tell who wrote what?
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