Travel, experience, conserve with
Schools Worldwide Jump to main menu

Cultural Exchange in Vietnam

Student Leila Gunn gives her experience of her trip, when 22 students and 3 teachers jetted out to Vietnam as part of a cultural exchange organised through Schools Worldwide.

After an 11 hour flight from Gatwick to Hanoi, and a two hour transfer flight to Ho Chi Minh City, we met our tour guide, Hai, who was to show us the wonders of Vietnam and swiftly became our best friend! On our orientation tour, we witnessed the hustle and bustle of the city, where crossing the road was a fairly difficult task compared to back home - due to the 4.3 million moped cyclists passing through Ho Chi Minh every day! We visited historic locations such as the Cu Chi Tunnels (not one for the claustrophobic), Reunification Palace and the extremely moving and thought-provoking War Museum depicting the effects of the Agent Orange defoliant used by the USA during the Vietnamese War.

{img_alt} On Day 4 we travelled to our homestay in the Mekong Delta which we could only get to by tuk tuk (effectively a motorbike whizzing along the roads with a trailer attached) and by riverboat. We spent the following six days building a toilet block for a local primary school; plastering, tiling, grouting, painting, even making cement as well as making friends with a couple of the Vietnamese children who spent every day with us. One of our new friends was a little boy called Duy who taught many of the girls Vietnamese, helped us to paint hand-prints on the wall and had many of us in tears when we had to leave! Also along the Mekong Delta, we visited a coconut manufacturing house as well as a basket weavers, where we bought traditional Vietnamese hats. {img_alt}

I don't think any of us would disagree that visiting Vietnam was a trip of a lifetime, we made so many friends and memories along the way that we will cherish forever and I can't wait to go travelling again in the future!

Find out more about all our school trips and projects in Asia, or contact us for more information.