Vietnamese girl causes a stir with her experience traveling across America for only 300 USD

The only Vietnamese girl to survive an avalanche on a mountain in Nepal, Vo Thi My Linh, recently traveled across the United States on her own with $300. Sharing her "road trip" experience in the United States is causing a stir online.

Vo Thi My Linh across America.

Find a travel companion

My Linh shared that instead of staying at a hotel or a friend's house, you should stay at a hostel, where you sleep in a room with many other tourists but have the opportunity to meet fellow travelers with the same goals.

Alternatively, Linh can go to the Couchsurfing website and create an “event” to present her road trip plans and invite people to join. After 24 hours, friends from all over the world will jump in to “ask” to go with her. When writing an invitation, you must appear honest, trustworthy, and charming to attract friends who share her passion for discovery.

Linh's companions.

Prepare for the trip

"- Planning: use applications such as Roadtrippers, Road Trip Planner, ... to calculate travel time, determine the route to suit your time and schedule. In the US, there are many routes for you to choose from. I chose the West Coast because it has many beautiful national parks with an 11-day itinerary starting in San Francisco, visiting Lake Tahoe, then following the route to visit national parks including Yosemite, Sequoia, Death Valley, Zion, Horeshoe Bend, Antelope, Monument Valley, Grand Canyon and finally ending the journey in Las Vegas.

- Find a campsite: In the US, you are not allowed to camp freely but must camp in a designated area. Areas with toilets and showers usually cost you about $20 for a group traveling in one car. If you want to save money, you can find a free campsite (without toilets). An application that helps you find free or paid campsites and shows you the way is WikicampsUSA. Cell phone signals in national parks are often very weak, so you should prepare an offline map in case you don't have GPS.

- Car rental: To rent a car, you need an international driver's license. Car rentals vary in price. If you rent and return the car in the same location and the driver is over 25 years old, the cost will be cheaper. My group rented a car in San Francisco and returned it in Las Vegas, so it cost $800 for 11 days. Gas is about $20/day. If you have a lot of money, you can rent a camping RV with a full kitchen and a bed designed on the car.

- Road trip equipment: In the big supermarkets in the US, especially Walmart, there are always enough camping equipment classified by price for you to buy comfortably. A big loophole in the US is that customers can return the product if they feel unsatisfied after the trial period. The backpacking community takes advantage of this to save money by choosing to buy good quality tents, after finishing the "road trip", bring the product back to return. (This is just reference information, I do not support saving money in this way.

- Regarding food and drinks: to save money and make it easier to travel, you should buy things that can help you survive but do not require complicated preparation such as instant noodles, bread, ham. Every national park in the US has automatic drinking fountains so you do not need to worry about drinking water.

- Cost summary: After finishing the trip and calculating the costs, each of us only paid $300 for the entire trip. For many Vietnamese, $300 is a significant amount, but if calculated according to American income, this amount is only worth 3 working days."

Beautiful scenery and roads that Vietnamese girls have experienced with only 300 dollars.

Explore the big world

Linh shared that, to her, a “road trip” is a wonderful journey that helps you step out of the stuffiness and suffocation of crowded cities to see the vastness of America and also to have time to contemplate and find yourself.

“But more than that, it was the companions I met, the stories of sharing that helped me grow. I remember when we were climbing Nevada Falls, I was walking slowly because of low blood pressure, Ben stopped to wait for me. I told him to go ahead, otherwise he would lose his companions. Ben encouraged me saying, “Don’t worry, they will definitely wait for us because we are holding their food!”.

I remember Angelika, the day I happened to hear about the Volunteer House Vietnam project, immediately grabbed my hand and asked if there was any way she could contribute money to the project. She didn’t have much money but if everyone contributed just $1 it would make a big difference.

I remember one evening when it was getting dark, the campsite was so big that I got lost. A kind old lady decided to show me the way home. Even though her legs were tired from walking with me for an hour, she still tried to encourage me, “Don’t worry, the other kids are probably preparing dinner to welcome you back.” Then she burst out laughing when I said, “No, they’re probably looking everywhere for you because you’re the cook!”

I remember Oleg, a Russian boy who dreamed of seeing America with a tight budget and broken English. He hitchhiked from state to state, carrying a 70-pound backpack with tents and kitchenware to cook for himself along the way. He slept in abandoned houses to save money. He didn’t even ask for much from the trip, just wanted to keep pictures of the places he went. So every time he stopped, he took out his camera to take a selfie. We looked at him and shook our heads, wondering how he could go on a trip like this.

But above all, I realized that there was nothing wrong with the boy who dreamed of seeing America. I returned from the trip with new friends, new experiences and a new mood. As someone once said, we travel not to escape life, but to keep life from escaping us.

I told Roger about my trip, saying I was impressed by the honesty of the Americans. We stopped at campgrounds where there were hardly any ticket inspectors, but all the guests paid automatically by putting money in an envelope at the check-in gate or paying at the automatic teller machine with their credit card.

According to Dantri