Day Nine:Exploring Hoi An Old Town and Visiting NGOs by Emily Almeida

 

We were given some free time the morning of our first full day in Hoi An, Viet Nam, which was very appreciated by our group of weary travelers. Having the opportunity to sleep in after our early wakeup call the morning prior was much appreciated, especially considering the busy day that we all had ahead of us. 

As I’m sure you’ve noticed through reading the blog posts about this trip, goods and services in Viet Nam are a fraction of the price that they’d typically be in the United States. From teeth cleanings for the equivalent of $20 USD to meals for about $2, everything seems to cost less that it’d be back home. As soon-to-be lawyers, many of us had our interest piqued in tailoring services, specifically in order to have a tailored suit made. With a few recommendations in our hands from locals and other hotel guests, some of us spent our Thursday morning hitting the town with this goal in mind. 

I ended up at a tailor called ‘Blue Chic’ in Old Town, joined by Andrew Y., and I went through the process of picking fabrics for my suit while he inquired about having some bowties made. 

After ordering everything, we received instructions to return the next morning, and we began to walk around together, talking about anything that came to mind as we peered down rows of shops and enjoyed the cooler weather. 

We ended our time in the city that morning with a coffee stop, where our conversations continued, interrupted occasionally by merchants ducking into the shop to try and sell their wares to the patrons inside. 

One of my favorite parts of these trips has to be the bonds that are made between students, and the opportunities that we have to process different things that we’ve experienced in our conversations with each other. Andrew Y. started at Willamette Law a year after me, and though I didn’t know him too well prior to setting off on this adventure together, getting to know him and learn with him- as well as all of our other classmates- has been one of the highlights of this trip for me. Those little moments that we get to connect with one another are so appreciated, especially knowing that we’ll be working alongside many of our peers before we know it, and those connections truly make the learning we do on these trips all the more impactful. 

With the afternoon quickly approaching, Andrew and I returned to the hotel in order to meet up with the rest of our classmates. We took a twenty-minute walk in some light rain to Noodle House by Streets. Streets is an NGO that provides culinary and hospitality training to disadvantaged and vulnerable youth living in poverty. The training process is 14 months, and while students complete the program, they are also provided housing, a budget for living, healthcare, and life skills training.  

Streets offers a restaurant, called Noodle House, and a cooking class, called ‘Oodles of Noodles’, where some of the students of the program teach tourists how to make the different noodle dishes that they offer. We were a bit short on time on Thursday, so we opted to just grab lunch at the restaurant while we learned about the NGO. Our food was delicious and knowing that we were giving back to such a fantastic organization simply by having lunch made the experience all the better. 

After lunch, we ordered some Grabs (the equivalent of Uber or Lyft here) and drove a few miles away to visit CHiA, Children’s Hope in Action. CHiA is an NGO solely funded by private donors, and they are dedicated to improving the lives of economically disadvantaged children and families in Hoi An. They provide multiple programs to meet different needs, including funds for utilities, home building services, supplementary funds for educational expenses, and- what ended up being the focus our visit- physical and occupational therapy for disabled youth in the neighborhood. 

We learned that CHiA serves 12 children currently, all different ages and with different needs. We were joined multiple times by these children throughout our conversation with the Director of CHiA, and we all enjoyed the opportunity to multitask between speaking with the Director and playing with the kids. CHiA has over 20 children still on the waitlist to receive their disability-focused services, we learned, and over 60 on the waitlist to receive benefits from other programs. 

The Director explained that disabled children still face incredible bias from their communities here in Viet Nam. She told us the story of one of their kids who was outright denied the opportunity to play with another girl in her neighborhood by the girl’s parent. CHiA allows these kids to play with each other while experiencing occupational and physical therapy, and the Director informed us that the volunteers also bring their children in so that the kids have the opportunity to play with other children outside of the program. 

When we organized the visit to CHiA, we were informed of the importance of us visiting their facility in-person during their hours of operation for the children’s program. They explained that having visitors would draw attention to their organization from others on the street, would hopefully work to combat the explicit bias still present in their community, and would also contribute to the occupational goals of the children in the program. Having the opportunity to visit with CHiA and meet all the kids was so important, and something that many of us felt was one of the most impactful experiences of the trip. 

That evening, we all gathered in one of the hotel meeting spaces to discuss some of the things we had seen on the trip so far, and some of our thoughts about the different programs we learned about on Thursday, as well as how they help to combat the trafficking epidemic in this country. Our class discussions are always appreciated, as they give us the time and space to verbally process some of the ways that our learning has impacted us. 

Our night ended at a French Café in Old Town, where we all enjoyed some fantastic meals and time together. It’s hard to believe that our program is over halfway done, but I think I speak for everyone when I say that this experience has been absolutely unmatched and educational in ways that none of us could have ever imagined.