Trang Lan Anh Thu is from Vietnam and studied a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.
She majored in Marketing and Management and completed her degree in 2005. Here she talks about her experiences and about the choices she made.
Why I went travelling
I got a good job and income in Vietnam, after graduating from Australia, so I thought, ‘Why shouldn’t I explore this world?’ I loved travelling as a backpacker, since I was in New Zealand and Australia. Now I have enough finance to make some good trips to destinations that I have not been to before and that are also on my bucket list. I found out that travelling made me learn, and at each trip I reunited with friends whom I had not seen for ages and also made new friends.
Every trip was so exciting to me and I always had something to tell when coming back. I financed my trips with savings and income (salary from permanent jobs and freelance projects).
Countries I visited
New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, USA, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Belgium, South Korea, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Philippines, Bulgaria, Turkey, Taiwan, Greece, Spain. I have also visited more than 100 cities!
The highlights
There were some trips where I was a solo traveller. I really enjoyed travelling because I made a lot of new friends and learned more about different cultures. Besides those trips, there were some I travelled with my parents and they were precious to me. I had to learn how to take care of older people who were unable to speak English, while travelling. With those kinds of trips, I played the role as the tour guide and captain.
Due to my travelling experience, I was assigned to lead a group of more than 30 employees in my old company (some of them were staff under my supervision and the rest belonged to other teams, including my senior director) when we were on a company trip to the Philippines. The experience was amazing, due to the hard and challenging job, but also interesting.
