SUMMER IN 20 DEGREE

#Thong in Laocai

By AnhPhuong

August 15^th, 2017

We, #ThongSquad, decide to end the school year with a trip to Lao Cai. A break faraway from the heat and dirt, distant from the constant school and work at FTU.

Saying 'Hi!' from the top(ish) of Vietnam

4 HOURS TO SUMMER

The best things in life usually come in surprises! And so is our top-notch treatment on the HasonHaivan bus: bus with beds, VIP waiting room with soft buffet, and S-L-I-P-P-E-R-S - all for 250,000 dong. This is also the first time that some of us actually get to lie down during a long-haul drive so we were pretty much in ecstasy. But just let me remind you, what I want to tell you is not a happy-ending story: this was only the drive up North. The drive back will be much, much gritter.

Let's find out.

"Joy on Every Journey" - Niem vui tren moi neo duong

SALMON, SALMON, SALMON

Lao Cai is home to two very "homeward proud" friends of ours, Hoang and Quyen. Hoang's mum is this beautiful lady with a pixie cut and fair skin, while his dad is a small-build guy that you can tell is quick-thinking and humorous: Hoang does not take after either of his parents *conspiracies ensued*.

The couple treat us to an enormous fish hotpot meal. We conclude there and then that we ate an actual stream of salmon.

crazy?

If you ask me to describe our little ones in three words, they would be: Very. Freaking. Crazy. Not the kind of "crazy" that everyone would use to describe someone with energy and enthusiasm. No, actual crazy. Singing national anthem in the middle of the street at night crazy. Celebrity reenactment crazy. Model posing at the crossroads dizzy. Screaming at the top of their lungs when they know they are at Vietnam's border crazy.

Their 'out-of-norm' thought process is also what sets them so much apart from us. At work, they never settle for 'normal' and would always want to try and implement new things immediately after they found something. And they would try to impress us in whatever way they can. Such is a very 'marketer-like' quality that Hoang and I always encourage them to leverage and refine.

My generation (1-2 years older than them), would plan to find what works best, implement it after thinking all through. Quite business like. Their generation, leans more to a quick-trial-quick-error-quick-fix, that I am learning from. This approach requires a more persistent energy because they can burn out easily.

The other night while I was commenting on a piece of copywriting that my mentee did, I asked her: "Do you know the difference between a piece of literature and copywrite?"

and she told me:

"Writing stories is about writing what I want, copywriting is about what I think the readers want"

I was impressed. Not entirely by the accuracy of the statement (I think story writers do care about what the readers want, it's just that in their writing process the I-want-to-write-about-this comes first and much earlier). But by her effort of making it a short, concise, gist-like statement.

The obsession of being unique in every single thing one does deserves applause in my opinion. Working in a big corporate like what I am experimenting right now may not look for such particular quality. At school, in life and in love, however, trying to upstage those that comes before and being truthfully unique is admirable.

Crazy? Maybe crazy. But good crazy.

SAPAAA

This could easily be one of the happiest morning in my life. The weather was pleasantly cool. The air was clear. And I woke up among friends.

DRAGON JAW

The beautiful people meet the beautiful city - story continues! There were butterflies following us as we walked across the stoned steep step to the top of the Dragon Jaw. Our 1-hour target failed agreeably from all the photo-stop. But if what you produced is dreamy pictures like this, then it's worth it!

Please put this windy-sandy-floating-by song on your background before scrolling down: Falling - Joshua Radin

Lao Cai suits them well those photobook angels!

And then literal 'angels' in the very near future, they are.

Even more Dragon Jaw!!

At the top of the Dragon Jaw, finally

AFTERNOON IN CAT CAT

Let's go to where the sun hits the ground

You and me

We share these same days in the sun

And my youth has yours inside a candy glass too

The swing set segment!

THAT NIGHT

Whatever we did that night stayed in my memory as a blurry, twinkly, slow-motion video. I could not tell exactly what we did that night anymore, but I could tell at that moment, I was happy.