My First Vietnam Trip It was the first time I've been to Vietnam. One of my weakness is to be punctual, I didn’t use to be not a very punctual person, but I’ve learned to be more responsible with time through a small thing I saw from my last journey to Vietnam. I met people from Germany, Australia, and mostly France. We were given only 20 minutes break before we continue our journey. So everyone was supposed to use the time given as effectively as we could, go to the toilet, buy some food, have a cigarette break, have some snack and all. I was still chilling out while buying some bread, but everyone (before the 20 min break end) already stood standing near our bus, waiting for it to be opened. I was so stunned by their punctuality. I should be more punctual, respect punctuality by the smallest things first. By travelling, it I was motivated more to learn a new language not to be afraid to talk with someone new and to be more helpful towards others even though they are strangers. It reminds me of one time when we were nowhere in Vietnam, and we ran outgas. There wasn’t anything around us which we could dependable on. Since the nearest gas station was more than 2 miles away. In hilly mountain, pushing our motorbike would be our longest 2 miles. Luckily, there were a friendly Spanish group of people willing to help us. One of my friends had a very brilliant idea of pushing our motorbike with a foot while riding a motorbike at the same time. It’s a creative way to help other motorbikers who has run outgas. Unfortunately, they don’t didn’t understand, what we were talking about because of our language gap, but they still very enthusiastic to help us. Because of it, we swap motorbike, my friend who understands the way to push motorbike with one leg, while the other leg still driving the motorbike, so one of the Spanish man on the broken motorcycle. Eventually, because of those reliable people, who we don’t even know their name until today, we succeeded to get to the nearest gas station and safely arrived in the city :)

Our Addiction to Phone Have you ever asked yourself how many times you check on your phones, even though nobody texts or calls you in a day? Honestly, I lost count myself. It is enough to tell me that I am unconsciously trapped by my addiction to my phone. The little tiny thing, which we never leave without, really gives us numerous bad impacts. Who knows that our beloved phones have the same effect as cocaine. In this digital era, we flood our brains with a high amount of dopamine on a daily basis. When we are getting used to the high-dopamine activity, we will not enjoy other low-dopamine-activities, for instant studying, reading a book, and working in the office. This is the reason why we are not able to focus on the thing we are working on. The irony is that we don't know how bad the damage we have done to ourselves is constantly sticking to our phones. Even not being able to enjoy the holiday without checking on our phones, where we should enjoy the beach, the mountains, but our minds are stuck where they shouldn't be. By scrolling into social media, playing video games, or watching pornography, we will trigger our brain to release dopamine and make us feels rewarded, that's what makes it hard to let go of our phone only for couple hours in a day. It's also another way of self-avoidance which leads to incapability of sitting with only our heads and thinking about ideas which really matter. We could fix this if we wanted to, by letting ourselves have dopamine detox. This means we live for a day without internet, phone, junk food, and computer, but we can take baby steps by eliminating one-by-one. I understand most of our jobs are dependant on computer and internet, like my job, but eliminating scrolling mindlessly on social media will help a lot too, it will be better than nothing at all. There will be a lot of boredom for the first time because it's the same as when the drug addict tries to quit their addiction. It feels hard, but eventually, after we have lower dopamine tolerance, going through a day without social media wouldn't be a problem. THE lower dopamine tolerant we have, the more fun we can have with those boring, low dopamine activities. So let us be more aware of our addiction to our phones. To have advanced technology will lead to a more convenient experience, but don't let us be outsmarted by those technologies. Listen to yourself, and don't let yourself be a gadget slave.