When I used to teach IELTS speaking or just regular spoken English classes, I liked to have a travel lesson, and one of the questions I often asked the students (usually as a warm-up or introduction) was: How do you like to travel? With family, with a friend, with many friends, with a tour group or solo. But I never asked about traveling to see people, which is a type of travel that I do often.

Most of my friends know that I love to travel. Many of the people who read my blog could probably figure that out as well. But you may not know that one of my common ways of traveling is visiting friends (or friends of friends). I have done that several times in China. My friends or students will sometimes invite me to their hometowns to spend time with their families, especially during the Spring Festival holiday. I’m always very honored to receive these invitations, and I’ve had some very special memories with friends and their families.

During my first year in Hainan, a student invited me and some other friends to her nearby town for the holiday. We took a bus and spent the day eating good food and hunting for clams in a shallow inlet of the ocean.

Another year, my American friend, Megan, and I spent 3 weeks with a friend’s family in central China (Henan). We took a trip for a day or two to a nearby city to see some tourist attractions in Kaifeng, one of the ancient capitals of China, but the vast majority of our time was spent at our friend’s house, learning about their routines and trying to find a place in that routine. When Megan got sick, I would go on long walks around the river by myself listening to the Wicked soundtrack over and over again. I couldn’t speak much Chinese at the time, so I was pretty limited in what I could do, and since Megan was sick, and our friend was busy, I had a lot of time to myself.

Later, my friend, Ruby, invited me to her hometown for about a week, and I spent the holiday sitting in her family’s water shop, hanging out, or wandering around with Ruby when we could get away. We drove to another city to visit her grandparents, and we had lots of adventures while we were there, visiting Ruby’s middle school and high school friends. We had a barbeque where we buried food in an oven made of dirt and then dug it up several hours later after it had finished cooking. We also drank lots of tea because her hometown’s way of interacting is to pop in to someone’s house and sit down, drink a bit of tea and chat for a while. By this time my mandarin was better, but people would usually speak in the local dialect so I was just as lost as when I first came to China.

I’m thankful for all of these adventures and experiences. Through these times, my understanding of China and Chinese culture deepened to another level. In Henan, for example, I learned that some Chinese people do not put dirty underwear into the washing machine. So I washed my underwear by hand for those three weeks. I also had lots of time to watch family dynamics as I saw my friends interacting with their parents and grandparents. In Jieyang, Ruby’s hometown, I held her grandma’s hand while she spoke to me earnestly in a dialect I couldn’t understand. I watched Ruby lovingly interact with her grandma, and I saw the room where she had grown up when she lived with her grandparents.

So when I decided to go to Vietnam to visit Kendra, who was staying with one of her Vietnamese classmates and her family, I knew that the trip would not be a conventional traveling experience. I decided to go before the holiday because I wanted a bit more of a relaxed environment rather than the craziness of lots of celebrations with people I didn’t know, but it was still quite the adventure.

While I was there, Kendra and I did some really fun things. We traveled around Hanoi and did lots of touristy things with her friend’s cousin on my first full day there. He could speak English, and we had some really interesting conversations with him about his life and Vietnamese culture. When we visited a lake with a turtle, he told us the traditional story of a turtle who gave good news to the king.

Kendra’s friend, her husband (Kendra was partially there to join the wedding celebrations), and a sister and brother took us into the downtown area of their small city and we tried lots of local snacks on my last day.

Another of my highlights was biking with the retired neighbors who took us through the suburbs and then out through the rice patties and out to the ocean where we looked at the water, took pictures, and scrounged around on the rocks looking for snails. Later the neighbor sent the snails home with us and Kendra’s friend’s family cooked them for dinner.

But of the 10 days that I was gone, very few days were spent doing these touristy things. Most of our time was spent trying to figure out what was going on, waiting for something that we thought was supposed to happen, or occupying ourselves while everyone else was busy.

The family owned a lighting shop, and the house was in the back of the shop. Sometimes we would help out packing up light bulbs for deliveries or building lanterns to sell. I liked looking around the shop at all of the fans, clocks, dozens upon dozens of styles of lights including chandeliers, wall fixtures, or lamps in all kinds of designs. They also sold other household appliances like air conditioners, stoves, pans, water boilers, and lots of other things. Kendra and I would wander around the shop looking at all of the interesting things.

One of our favorite things to do was to go to the next door coffee shop and chat. Kendra and I both love walking, but unfortunately, this area of Vietnam was not conducive to walking. The shop was right next to the road which was right next to a river. There was no sidewalk, and cars and motorbikes sped by on the road all day. So we contented ourselves with chats in the café. Our friend’s family owned the café as well, and sometimes we could even manage to pay for our drinks which was nice since the family did so much for us in feeding us.

Often we would eat lunch at the back of the shop with the family. These meals were always interesting because Kendra’s friend could speak Chinese, so we could interact with her easily, but the rest of the family could only speak bits and pieces of Chinese or English if they could speak any at all. So communication was a challenge, but we could feel the warmth and love of the family in many ways.

In the evenings, we would often go out for dinner. These dinners were always a bit stressful for me because I never knew what to expect. Often we wouldn’t eat until after 8 p.m. which was a bit of a challenge for me, but I tried to have snacks in the afternoon so I could survive until it was time to eat.

Sometimes we would go to grandparents’ houses, or we would go see family friends. One evening we went to the grandparent’s house to celebrate the 7th birthday of two twin boys in the family that we were staying with. Even though we didn’t have a common language, I enjoying interacting with the boys who were very sweet. I felt especially happy when one of the boys asked me to play badminton with him. The older kids had been playing earlier, and he hadn’t been able to join. So while everyone else was busy, I went out with him and we played for a while.

Spending time with a family like this is always its own kind of adventure. Kendra and I often found ourselves in situations that we never could have imagined. One evening, our friend’s mom took Kendra and I to a wedding (I had no idea who the couple were, and I still don’t quite know), and then afterwards we went to the wedding reception. Kendra’s theory is that the mom wanted someone to go with her and we were available. The dad had another event that evening.

Another night we spent the night in an Airbnb that the friend’s husband’s family owned. They had a factory, and they were building the Airbnb to let foreign guests have a place to stay. But this wasn’t just any Airbnb, it was actually a few shipping containers stacked on top of each other and painted blue. When I realized that, I had lots of questions about how comfortable it would be, but the little rooms inside were quite delightful. I still felt a bit like the Boxcar Children, but it was lovely. The only downside was that since they were still building it and finishing things up, the bathroom had no hot water, so the shower that I had been looking forward to proved to be quite the letdown.

The Airbnb was near the ocean, and we walked out to a church right on the coast. The church was just the ruins of what much have been a beautiful building. The tide seems to have risen since the church was first built. It had been battered by floods and typhoons and now the tide came into what used to be the floor of the church. Now it was just dirt and cement. Thankfully, we got there when we could still walk around the church, but the tide did seem to be getting close.

Another unexpected adventure was when we dressed up to go to the opening ceremony of our friend’s husband’s family factory. We wore traditional Vietnamese clothes, called ao dai. There was lots of loud music, a lion dance, lots of food (Vietnamese hot pot), and a raffle. I didn’t win anything, but that’s probably a good thing because the prizes were mostly kitchen appliances with the grand prize being a refrigerator. I don’t think I could have fit that into my suitcase.

Even though visiting a family like this is stretching in many ways, I’m thankful for the opportunity to step into someone’s life and see how someone in Northern Vietnam lives. I saw lots of close family relationships. I stepped into the business culture which is something that I know almost nothing about. And I got to spend lots of time talking with Kendra, deepening our relationship as we went through the uncertainty and adventures together.