My name is Giang. I can spell it, G-I-A-N-G. The full name is Nguyễn Hà Giang is a family name. It’s very popular in Vietnam. Most of the people had this family name, Nguyễn. It was also the name of the last royal family in Vietnam that ended in 1945. I came from the suburbs of Hanoi, just around thirty miles away from Hanoi city.

My home village is around fifty kilometers, or thirty miles in the south of Hanoi. It’s called Dinh Xuyen but now it is a part of Hanoi. It used to be separate from Hanoi, but it is a part of Hanoi nowadays.

I came to study in Hanoi. I focus on tourism management, but I had nothing to manage [laughs]. Before working as a tour guide, I worked as a teacher for one year. I think I’m quite sporty. I play sports and do exercise. That’s why I work as a teacher in physical education. I work at a secondary school, so the school children are from twelve to sixteen. I enjoy working with the children, but honestly, I didn’t enjoy working with the teachers [laughs].
I have been doing different jobs in guiding job. I do cycling, as you know. We have been cycling for a few days. I did hiking. I did kayaking on Halong Bay. Of course I do the bus tour because most foreign tourists come to Vietnam on the bus tour. Generally, most of the tour, guides in Vietnam just do the bus tour, and they use microphones a lot on the bus or they lead tourists to the historical places. They make a lot of speeches and give information to tourists. My job is more related to physical activities.

I think among all the activities, I like cycling the most. I think cycling is the best way to see the country and to meet and chat with people. I think there are many obstacles, like long distances and big climbs, or the challenges of the heat or bad weather. It also comes from the people on the tour.

I normally say to the people who go on the cycling or even hiking trips, it is the way we see the world in Vietnam. Because if you would just go on the bus tour, you would just see the surface of Vietnam only. But here we come to see how people are living, what they are eating, and we can do what Vietnamese people do on our trip.

I think most of the people are very friendly and welcoming. Very, very nice. They are very innocent. They are curious to see the white people. In many places when they see western tourists, they just think of Russian people. This is because in the past, before you opened the door to the world, the only white people they saw were Russian. Nowadays, people come from all over the world. But in the minds of many people, they still think the tourists are Russian people.

In the opinion of many people, when they think about Vietnam, they think about the war. Vietnam was well known for the war. But I think there are a lot of interesting things for people who come to see and discover.

Firstly the people—it is a combination of many groups of people living together. We had 54 groups of people living
together, and luckily we haven’t had any conflict among these people. We haven’t got any conflict among the religions, between Buddhism, Catholicism, Taoism, Confucianism, so Vietnamese people live peacefully. So people are very nice and very friendly. Besides the people, we are lucky we have a very beautiful country.

Here is the beauty, consisting of mountains, farmland, the delta, and the sea, the ocean. Another attraction of Vietnam is the food. A lot of people just come here to enjoy the food, and some people have said that Vietnam should be the kitchen of the world.

I like eating. I eat all of the food. I like something simple. I like fish, I like prawns, I like phở, that’s like the traditional food of Vietnam. I also like spring rolls. I like cooking. Sometimes I cook for myself too.

Vietnamese people, and I myself, have some sayings. For example, đơn giản thì dễ sống . . . to be easy, to be simple, to enjoy life. Being flexible is a good way to live a happy life. Being easy is a good way to enjoy the life—I also hear some people saying during my childhood. I think that people in western countries normally say, “early bird catches the worm.” But I have something similar but different. My saying is, “early bird catches the shit.” [laughs] Some people wonder why I have this saying. I live in the countryside, so all the people are farmers, and in order to have a good farm, the people need to collect the shit from the animals to use as a fertilizer. So in the early mornings, we had to get up, we went along the way to collect the shit from all the animals, like cow, buffalo, even dogs, and if somebody got up late, they had nothing. That’s why the early bird catches the shit.

I am quite old now. I am forty and I got married ten years ago and now I have two children. I have one daughter and one son. My daughter is eight and my son is four. Especially my son, he is only four, and I think it’s a very interesting age. He stays very innocent and he talks about everything. He keeps talking all of the time. He is never tired of talking. But parents are sometimes tired of him [laughs].

I think just the education, the way we teach, they always behave. They get on well, very well. For the last ten years after I got married, I had to work far away from home. My wife was not very happy, so whenever I went away for a long trip she cried. I felt very sorry, and I worried. I was not happy. It affected my job, you know. But after a couple of years, when we had our first child, our daughter, I think the daughter brought more happiness to the family. We feel more stable. My wife was also happy at home, so I could enjoy my job. The second child had the same duty. He brings happiness to the family, and at this time, at my age, I’m enjoying my life. I don’t think much about changing now. I work for a living, but I work to enjoy my life and my family too. •