Hương Tôn – Unafraid to Start from Zero

Hương Tôn was once a culture editor and has always been passionate about solo journeys to new lands. In 2023, at 42, she decided to marry a man eleven years her junior. Together they are building a new life in the Lake District, known as England’s fairyland. She has long felt driven to live the way she wants, not along a set path: graduate, marry, have children…

The solo journeys of youth

In the book “The Courage to Be Happy” by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, the philosopher tells the young man visiting his study: “Anyone can be happy from this very moment. It’s just that we cannot enjoy happiness by standing still. We must keep walking the path we have set foot on.” Hương Tôn’s story embodies enjoying happiness in exactly that way.

At eighteen, Hương left Vietnam to study in Yunnan, China, beginning a youth of solo journeys. Before that, she was raised in a rather strict, traditional family, but as she came of age, an inner voice urged her to live the way she wanted rather than follow a set path: graduate, marry, have children. So she persuaded her family and went to study in China without knowing a single word of Chinese. Over ten years of studying and working there, the shy young woman explored every corner of that vast country alone with her backpack.

To date, her solo journeys have spanned Vietnam, South-East Asia, Nepal, India and Europe. One trip that changed her greatly was trekking to Everest Base Camp in 2012. Back then, everyone was surprised to see a Vietnamese woman wandering the Himalayas alone. The trip was sparked by something a friend said: “Hương seems like a different person since coming back to work in Vietnam”. Those words startled her into realising that her environment had triggered old patterns in her, slowly stripping away the wildness and freedom she had as a student abroad. She decided to quit her job to go trekking and take time to reflect on what mattered to her.

Another trip that left a deep impression was a journey through Laos, Thailand and Cambodia in 2014. For months, she lived closely with local people in different regions. Everyone was gentle and ready to help unconditionally. They taught her to simply give. “Whenever anyone needs help, just open your heart and help them unconditionally, and naturally everything else in your life goes smoothly, because there will always be others willing to help you in the same way,” Hương Tôn says. On her solo wanderings in foreign lands, she made many friends – fellow solo travellers from all over the world. The young Vietnamese woman’s worldview opened up and merged with those of the people she met; prejudices gradually faded, because “some things I thought were a certain way turned out differently in another culture, another context.” The more she travelled, the more this petite woman grew confident in her choices.

Six months on the road with Birdy the parrot

Hương Tôn’s farewell-to-single-life journey ran from February to mid-August 2022, starting in Hồ Chí Minh City and ending in Hà Giang, through 18 provinces and cities of Vietnam. Her long-cherished dream of riding the length of Vietnam on her scooter, Cherry, with a special travel companion – Birdy the parrot – finally came true. Since a long journey requires so much preparation, only in her forties did she have enough money, time and experience to make it happen.

Everyone adored Birdy. A roadside drinks seller in Huế fanned Birdy while cooing: “Little parrot, are you cool enough? Poor thing in this sun!”. Children in Hà Giang crowded around to play with Birdy, seeing a travelling parrot for the first time. Once, I got to meet Hương Tôn and Birdy when they stopped in Đà Lạt. She was staying at a farmstay about 30 km from the city centre. That is where what we later called “Birdy’s Adventures” took place.

Birdy usually watched the world through a transparent backpack, only coming out to fly in truly safe places. Yet for some reason, one fine day she left the farmstay, following the call of love from a handsome male parrot. After a few days of searching, Hương left the farmstay thinking, “Maybe Birdy is like me, at the age of longing for a free life?”. Then suddenly a local posted that a parrot had flown into their house, and Birdy was brought back to Hương.

The slow motorbike journey into Vietnam’s remote areas also gave her deep impressions. She remembers the trip through her senses: “Đắk Nông smelled strongly of green and red peppercorns drying in the summer sun. Buôn Ma Thuột was fragrant with freshly ground coffee. The mountain passes were filled with the scent of the highland people’s upland sticky rice. Smelling fish in the distance meant the sea was near. And crossing the Hồ Chí Minh Trail through the Trường Sơn forest, the scent of trees, grasses and flowers along the road was so fragrant and pleasant that it sometimes left me stunned and moved. For months, I didn’t need music. Early mornings watching clouds drift past the window, birds singing; evenings watching fireflies, hearing the wind rustle through the forest leaves, the rain on the eaves, the cicadas buzzing on summer afternoons – everything in nature felt precious. Travelling with all my senses wide open, embracing every beauty of nature, I felt truly happy.”

Marrying at 42

Many people asked why she didn’t marry and just kept travelling. She confides that she had grown used to and loved living alone and travelling alone. On her journeys, the chance of meeting “the man of her destiny” was surely high, but perhaps in their youth both she and others were too absorbed in exploring the world and not ready to settle down. Now, having been through so much, she knows what she likes, thinks of others and empathises with them, so life feels gentle and it is easier to find harmony amid differences.

“Don’t be afraid of marrying late, there’s no need to rush. Everything happens for a reason. As long as you don’t regret your decisions, in the end everything will fall into place the way you want”, she says in a soothing voice.

She wanted to experience a settled life somewhere close to nature, so you could say that for her, marriage came with the right person at the right time. In marriage, she sees herself as still at the centre, with her partner by her side sharing her life. They respect each other’s private space and know how to reconcile their different personalities. The man she is spending the rest of her life with is gentle by nature, loves stability and accepts the free spirit in her. Even after marrying, she still takes time to travel alone, and he fully supports her.

She is now settling into her new life in the Lake District. She says: “Many famous English poets and writers chose this place as home to write and live peacefully. In summer, the sun rises at half past five and it doesn’t get dark until ten at night, so the days are very long. Open your eyes and you see grass, trees, hills and beautiful trails for trekking. The supermarket is only five minutes’ walk from home, but every time we go, we like to take the long way round, which takes a whole hour.” She sent me lots of photos of the nature there: streams, rows of trees, clumps of wildflowers, snow-white sheep on lush green pastures…

Unafraid to start from zero

Besides immersing herself in the poetic scenery, she spends most of her time cleaning, gardening, cooking and setting up her new life. She has also learned to sew clothes and knit to pass the time, as having just moved to England she couldn’t find suitable work right away.

Talking about starting a brand-new life, she smiles happily and says she has never been afraid to start from zero. Many of her friends live “by the book” – by thirty you must have a company, a house and a car – but for her, none of that matters. Whenever she is doing a job and suddenly feels it no longer suits her, or that she can’t learn anything more, she is ready to stop and move to something new, even if it means relearning from scratch or starting at the bottom. Like the time she quit to go to Everest Base Camp, or the many other times in her life she left jobs and switched careers.

One special thing I noticed about this woman is her calm. While so many others struggle to find out who they really are and try to assert themselves, she is serenely happy in her own way. Thinking it over, Hương Tôn’s philosophy of life is just like a tree: not greedy, not fighting pointlessly, not resisting its environment, not needing to be perfect, ready to face hardship, fully enjoying the present moment, and growing every day stronger, calmer and wiser about the world around her.

_Published in Đẹp magazine, issue 288.