The Universe's Timing
I've been solo for so long that the word 'group' makes me twitch. But there I was in a Hanoi hostel in September, nursing my third egg coffee of the morning, when a Swiss banker named Marcus asked if I wanted to join a four-day improvised adventure. His girlfriend Yuki (Japanese, deadpan) was in. So was Tom, an Australian paramedic who'd just quit his job. And Rosa, a Mexican architect with a laugh that could wake the Old Quarter.
I said yes because they seemed chaos-capable, which is the most important quality in travel companions.
We met at 8am the next day, groggy and armed with screenshots of tours we'd collectively decided on. It was the best decision any of us made.
Day One: The Minsk Chronicles
Nothing says 'trust the group' like getting on a motorcycle with a stranger driving. We booked the Hanoi Motorbike Tour: Hanoi HIGHTLIGHTS & HIDDEN GEMS Hanoi Motorbike Tour: Hanoi HIGHTLIGHTS & HIDDEN GEMS, and I'll be honest—I was nervous. Solo female travellers develop specific anxieties about motorbike tours, and none of them are unfounded. But our guide Duc was meticulous about safety, and more importantly, he seemed actively uninterested in the museum-standard tourist circuit.
Yuki and I shared a bike (she drove, thank God, because my motorcycle karma is questionable). We rocketed through the Old Quarter at dawn, slipping into the spaces between the postcard photos: a family breakfast spot where vendors were just firing up woks, a tea house where six men had been playing the same game of cards since sunrise, a blacksmith's workshop that hasn't changed since 1987.
Duc pulled us into a narrow lane where an old woman was arranging flowers at a street altar. She didn't mind us watching. Marcus asked permission to photograph everything, which I appreciated—he's the kind of tourist who understands that documentation is a privilege.
Then came the egg coffee. We crammed into a tiny café, and Tom immediately got foam on his nose. Rosa recorded him for Instagram. I drank mine without thinking, and only after the fact realised how good it was. That's the best way to experience things: backwards, unguarded.
Day Two: Ceramics and Daring
We'd booked a second motorbike adventure, but this time we were heading further afield: the VIETNAM BACKSTREET TOURS: Explore Bat Trang Ceramic Village By Minsk Motorcycle VIETNAM BACKSTREET TOURS: Explore Bat Trang Ceramic Village By Minsk Motorcycle. The guide handed us proper crash helmets and actual Minsk bikes—the kind that looked like they'd survived the war and looked angry about it.
'Don't worry,' Marcus said in his accountant's voice. 'I've done this before.'
'You've ridden a Minsk?' Yuki asked.
'No, but I've managed risk portfolios.'
We laughed so hard that Rosa almost dropped her phone in the Red River dyke.
The ride to Bat Trang was the kind of chaotic beauty that makes group travel worthwhile. We careened past fields where farmers were already working in the heat, past orchards and market gardens, past children who waved at us like we were a parade. The road narrowed and narrowed until we were basically threading through someone's front garden. Our guide—whose name I can't transliterate but who made it very clear that we should stay close—navigated with the confidence of someone who'd done this ten thousand times.
The ceramic village itself was a working town, not a tourism construct. Real potters were actually making things—bowls, jars, roof tiles—in exactly the way their families had for centuries. We got to shape our own pieces under the patient instruction of an older woman who said nothing but whose hands were fluent in clay. Tom's bowl was lopsided enough to be structural unsound, but he was so pleased with himself that we all pretended not to notice.
Day Three: The Trek
Sapa is where the itinerary got serious.
We'd booked the Number one top rated ethical cultural trekking and homestay by ETHOS Number one top rated ethical cultural trekking and homestay by ETHOS for a reason: we didn't want performative tourism. We wanted to walk with people who were being genuinely supported by our presence, not just tolerating it.
Our trekking guide was a young Zay man named Shen who'd grown up in one of the villages we'd be staying in. He moved through the mountains like he was reading a book written in topography. The landscape was aggressively steep—we're talking 'why did humans ever settle here' gradients—but Shen set a pace that the group could sustain. Even Tom, who'd been chain-smoking in Hanoi, kept up without complaining.
We stayed with Shen's relatives in a simple, immaculate family home. There was no electricity in the bedroom, one shared shower situation, and the toilet was a squat situation that required actual commitment. It was perfect. We helped prepare dinner, which meant watching Shen's mother work whilst we chopped things inefficiently and asked questions she answered with patience.
The real magic happened after dark. We sat outside, eating, while the valley disappeared into blackness and someone's dog decided Marcus was the most interesting human ever created. Yuki asked Shen about his plans. He wanted to keep guiding, he said, because it meant staying in his village and earning enough to help his parents. Tom told him he'd made the right choice about quitting his paramedic job. They talked for three hours straight while Rosa took approximately nine thousand photos of the stars, and I sat there thinking about what it means to travel with people who ask real questions.
Day Four: Wildlife and Wonder
On the way back to Da Nang, we stopped for the Endangered Monkeys Watching - Red Shanked Douc Langurs Endangered Monkeys Watching - Red Shanked Douc Langurs. This was our wildcard adventure, the one that was pure luck and timing.
A three-hour tracking expedition sounds benign until you're actually doing it: bushwhacking through Son Tra Peninsula's forest on trails that are barely trails, listening to your guide breathe and waiting for the leaves to move. These langurs are catastrophically endangered. They exist almost nowhere else, and spotting them requires the kind of patience that group travel usually murders. But our crew had developed something by then—a shared comfort with silence, with waiting, with not needing to talk through every moment.
We saw them for maybe five minutes. Four of them, moving through the canopy like they were made of silk and fury, their red haunches bright against the green. No one spoke. Tom had actual tears in his eyes, which felt right.
Day Five: The Cooking Class and the Goodbye
Our last real adventure was the Da Nang Authentic Home Cooking Class Da Nang Authentic Home Cooking Class, which felt like the right way to end things: in a kitchen, with our hands in food, learning recipes that had shaped someone else's everyday table.
Our host was a woman named Linh who cooked like someone who'd learned from watching her mother and her mother's mother. We made four dishes over two and a half hours. Marcus was oddly talented at seasoning. Yuki moved through the kitchen with the same precision she brought to everything. Tom nearly set his sleeve on fire but recovered with grace. Rosa asked Linh for her story, and we learned that Linh's daughter was studying in Saigon and that she missed her but was proud.
We ate everything we'd made, and it was the kind of meal that tastes different when you've cooked it alongside the person who taught their family to cook it.
The Honest Bit
I used to think that travelling alone meant travelling purer. Less compromised by other people's needs and timezones and bathroom schedules. But these five days taught me that's nonsense. There's something about moving through a place with people who are equally unmoored, equally curious, equally willing to trust a stranger's suggestion—that changes everything.
We exchanged contact details at the airport with the understanding that we probably wouldn't use them much. We live in different hemispheres. But I think about them constantly. I think about Duc navigating Hanoi's chaos like it was a personal board game. I think about Shen's mother's patience. I think about Tom's ridiculous bowl. I think about Rosa's laugh echoing off the Red River dyke.
Vietnam is a country that rewards group travel because it's built for discovery, for sudden plans, for finding your people in a hostel and following them into adventures. Travel solo if you must. But consider, for once, saying yes to strangers.
You might become friends with them instead.
