The girl inspired me

I was 20, first time traveled alone. Not really alone but with my best friend, on our own, without tour group or parents. It was a huge deal back then when internet was still more a concept amongst the most "forward" minds and Google was just a simple 4 colors thing, aka "that joke". My mom's friends were all freak out. "How can you let her travel alone like that? It's dangerous. You are not afraid of her being cheated or scammed on the road, aren't you?" You know my destination? Just to the north of the country. I didn't even have a passport back then.

It's said that people in the north considered us the South all rich. And they always charge us higher price for everything. I don't know if I was ignorant (so I didn't recognize) or if I was lucky but I didn't get "scammed" that much. The price got lower by day, and after a week walking around the block, I think we got the same price with people in the area. People got pity on "the students" and I still get same treatment traveling the world nowadays, even more than a decade later. But that's story for another day.

Story today is about the Japanese girl I met on the road. We took an open tour from Hanoi to Sapa. Back then, not many Vietnamese people traveled as backpacker and most open tours were for foreigners. Main language: English, of course. But back then, the majority of tourists in the north were not even English speakers. They can speak English ok, but mainly they are from France or Spain. On that tour, when we took a rest-stop, washing up and order some soft drink at the street stall, I met this young Japanese girl. She traveled alone, the real "alone", with a Japanese guidebook. She looked around our age, 18-20. She looked friendly and we said hi. My Japanese back then included hello, thank you, goodbye and I could count from 0 to 10. From my Japanese, we know she's Japanese, and her name is Nana. After some "action", we recognize she couldn't speak English at all. And she still traveled the world, on her own.

I love travel and I've been traveling on my own many many times after that. But I will never forget Nana or her being one of my travel inspirations. People always say you should know English to travel the world. She was the prove that you don't need to know another language to travel the world. English is overrated when it comes to traveling. You only need to love travel and have the gut to take that first trip on your own. English doesn't make your trip, it only helps smooth thing over. English will not help you at all in China where majority of normal people don't even know the world out of the China border. And English will not help much if you can't even read a train map (after all, I got lost on the train, in an English speaking country).

Anyway, we parted way, I never met Nana again after the rest stop. Girls traveling on their own is more a norm nowadays. But a girl on her own back then, with only a guidebook and no English will always be on my mind whenever I plan a trip on my own...