A Month in Vietnam First: What Ten Days Could Not Tell One Woman

Ten days can tell you what does not suit you.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Picture a couple named Joan and Phil, who are curious about Vietnam. They have a cousin who loved it and a photo of a beach. They have booked a week, because a week fits the calendar.

I read two stories that bear on this. One was advice from someone who had thought it through: plan a month before you move, not a week. The other was a woman in her 50s or older, travelling alone, who spent ten days in Da Nang and decided it was not a match.

What a week can and cannot show

A week shows you the view. It shows the airport, the hotel, the first dinner. It does not show a Tuesday.

I think of the days in the middle of a trial as the real ones. By day ten, the excitement has faded and the plain days arrive. The shopping, the noise, the heat, the way you spend an afternoon. That is when you learn whether you could live there.

Why ten days was still useful

The woman in Da Nang did not waste her time. She left sure of something. Many people read a "no" as a failed trip. I read it as a trip that did its job. She learned she did not want that city, and she learned it for the price of ten days, not a lease.

At the same time, the advice for a longer stay makes sense to me. Ten days can tell you what does not suit you. A month tells you much more about what does. I would hold a quick "no" more lightly than a quick "yes", because a first week often shows the tourist side of a place.

What a month gives you

• Time to hit a bad day and see how you feel the day after.
• Time to find your own café, your own market, your own route.
• Time to ask other people who live there what they wish they had known.
• Time to notice whether you miss home, and what exactly you miss.

A small moment

Joan looks up from her phone on day nine.

"I thought I would love it more."

"Or maybe we have only seen the nice part," Phil says. "Shall we stay in a different neighbourhood for the next three weeks?"

I like that answer. A trial is a chance to change one thing and look again.

What I take from it

I do not tell anyone to go or to stay. I do think a longer trial lets you read your own feelings. And I think it is fine to leave early. A short, honest "not a match" is worth a lot, because it saves you from a larger mistake.