Bac Giang province is located about 70 km northeast of Ha Noi. It takes about 1-1.5 to get from the Bac Giang to Ha Noi, depending on the traffic. The province is really industrial with a lot of factories in the area. The nature is not as nice as in the other parts of the country but there are some nice places to go.

Bac Giang city has about 150,000 citizens, so for Vietnamese standards it's considered as small / medium-sized city. The city itself is not particulary exciting, but you can find there everything you need, shopping malls, nice cafes, local markets, gyms, street food or even luxury restaurants. Bac Giang has a really nice park and big museum in the city center, which we unfortunately didn't visit.

Although Bac Giang province is not the area that I would recommend for tourism, there are still some nice places. I would definitely recommend renting a motorbike around the surrounding villages. In about 20 minutes ride from the city, there's a nice hike around the Thiền Viện Trúc Lâm Phượng Hoàng temple. A bit further away, around 1 hour drive by motorbike there is a wonderful place to have a pick-nick by the waterfall called Thác Ba Tia near Thanh Sơn village. Then a bit further away, in a Thai Nguyen province, I would recommend visiting the tea farms and Phuong Hoang cave. In overall, there is much to see in the North Vietnam and I would suggest also visiting Ha Giang province, Ninh Binh province, Cat Ba island, Sa Pa.

Fec Group Join Stock Company is a medium sized company with about 50 employees. People there are very friendly and I made a lot of friends among our colleagues. However, the english level of the people in the company is not great and sometimes we had to communicate through Google translate. Nevertheless, everybody, including the management was very helpful and kind and I enjoyed working in there. What I would state as a negative, is that we had to work even on Saturday every second week. What was on the other hand very nice was that the company has provided us with delicious lunch on every workday.

I worked as a lab assistant, so my job was to prepare chemical solutions, clean the laboratory glass and from time to time record some video for the marketing team. The job was interesting and I learned a lot, but after a while, it got a bit repetitive.

At first we received salary of 5.000,000 VND, but since we had to pay for our accommodation we negotiated a rise to 7.000,000 VND. The salary was sufficient to cover basic expenses such as food, accommodation, and transportation. For other expenses, such as travelling or shopping , one had to reach down the pocket and cover it from own savings.

In general, the English level in Vietnam outside of the big cities is not that great and the same goes for Bac Giang. Few of our colleagues spoke English well, and they helped us to communicate with others, but in overall, we had to use Google translate a lot.

At first, we were provided with accommodation by the employer, but it didn't meet the provided standard, since we received just an empty room with no furniture. After a mutual agreement, the employer helped us find alternative accommodation and in the end we decided to stay in a hotel room close to the company for a price of 2.500,000 VND per person for a month. The hotel room was clean and in a good standard.

Vietnam's local IAESTE committee was pretty active and organized a lot of events. However, it was based in another city and we were not able to attend all of them. But from what I heard from my friends in Thai Nguyen, there was some IAESTE event with local Vietnamese students happening almost every week. Nevertheless, we went on several trips organized by IAETSTE Vietnam and Mrs. Bui Thanh Huong is very sweet and willing to help.

Aside from the IAESTE-organised trips, we met with other foreign students on several occasions on our own and became a good friends. Over time, our group spread out even by students from other internship programs and we made a nice small community, within which we shared experiences and tips about travelling around Vietnam.

The most popular sports are football and badminton. Overall, there are fair possibilities to practice most of the sports. There are a lot of festivals and holidays in Vietnam, each with it's own traditions that often differ even across the regions, so it's nice to attend them.

Vietnam has one of the best cuisines in the world with a lot of delicious meals. If you are vegetarian it might be a bit harder to choose, but still the food is amazing. The must-try meals are Pho, Spring rolls, Banh mi, fried tofu in tomato sauce and bun cha, however, there is plenty to try. Overall the hygiene in there is fairly good even for street food and I have not encountered any stomach problems. Moreover, there are many nice cafes and you can get a decent coffee or tea almost anywhere.

All of the major social sites are working there and I have not encountered any censorship of the European websites. The most popular platforms in Vietnam are Zalo and Facebook.

Ask the local colleagues to show you around and add you to the facebook groups for shared rides between Ha Noi and Bac Giang city. Also, get an international driving license before coming, it might come in handy, especially for renting a motorbike and travel as much as possible! Vietnam is a wonderful country and there is so much to see.

The international driving license, sunglasses, tracking shoes, passport and visa.

You get to know so many wonderful people and get to places that you would otherwise never visit.

The process of obtaining all the paperwork before coming was long and a bit chaotic, but nothing horrific. Once we in Vietnam, communication with local IAESTE went without a problem.