I am not afraid of much. Not heights, not tight quarters, not roller coasters or bungee jumping or skydiving — pretty much anything with a thrill on it, you can sign me up. You can call me a daredevil. So getting my paragliding license was not a sudden idea. It had been on my bucket list for the last five years. The question was never whether I would do it. The answer was always yes. What I did not expect was the doubt. I was not nervous. I was not afraid. But somewhere across those three days a doubt crept in, and learning the difference between fear and doubt is the whole story of my first flight at Đồi Bù.
And let me be clear about where the doubt did not come from. It did not come from the training. The training was phenomenal. It came from inside me — from whether I truly understood it yet, whether I was confident in it. Mây Paragliding sits about an hour and a half west of Hanoi, and every morning that week I was up at six, on an XSR motorbike, riding an hour and a half each way. The commute was its own event. Back roads and gravel, water buffalo in the fields, small villages waking up, local shops opening their shutters — the whole daily rhythm of how people actually live out there, the small-scale hustle of it. It was beautiful and, in stretches, dreadful: bare-knuckle traffic, going wheel to wheel with semi trucks and scooters.
And honestly, I took it upon myself to make that commute even harder, because I wanted the authentic version of it — to live a real piece of Vietnam every morning, not be shuttled past it. The reason I chose Mây in the first place is what makes them different: they are the only paragliding company in Vietnam with their own homestay — kitchen, men’s and women’s quarters — their own practice hill, and a whole side of a mountain where they have carved out a trail and a runway for their students. I picked them off the strength of the reviews and off Uncle Kim, the head instructor and a master paraglider. And Mây taught me something on the hour, every hour, eight in the morning until five-thirty at night: how to lay the wing out clean on the grass, how to pack it so it opens right the next morning, how to read the wind coming off the ridge. It was a lot to consume and pack into two days, but I had it — I could do these things, and I knew I could. Because to earn the P1, you do not stay on the practice hill. You jump off a mountain. I could not tell you how many feet it is, but it is massive, and it sits silhouetted right behind the school — you see it looming every single morning as you ride in.
By then I had run with that wing fifty, sixty times. I had jumped off the practice hill — about forty feet up, maybe a little less — at least another fifty times. I would not say I had mastered it, but I knew how to steer the thing, I knew what to expect. I was not ready for the mountain yet, but I knew what was coming. And then, around four o’clock on the second day, my instructor walked over and said the words: great news, you are ready for the monster. The look I gave him back was not fear, and it was not concern. It was: yeah. Give me the monster. And the second he said it, I turned and looked up at that mountain — and the mountain looked back at me, with a look like, this is not going to be easy; do not think you can come up here and tame me; I am going to give you something. Driving back to Hanoi at the end of the second day, I was excited, because I knew the next day I was getting my P1.
But that look from the mountain rode home with me too. Because the hill, I could do in my sleep by then — I had not mastered it, but I had it. The hill and the mountain are two completely different things, though: different temperatures, different winds, a different scale, a different set of skills and variables you are not even thinking about. I have trekked mountains. I have climbed them. But jumping off one with nothing but a piece of cloth to hold you up? I had never done that in my life. And that is when the doubt crept in — the first time in a long time. The training had been phenomenal. The doubt was not about Mây. It was a quiet voice inside saying maybe I was not quite ready. So I did the only thing you can do with a voice like that: I ate a good dinner, went to bed early, and got a real night of sleep.
Same route the next morning. Same routine. I rolled in at seven-thirty hyped and ready — but my classmates were dead quiet, every one of them, because we were all about to take the same leap of faith off the same mountain for the same license. We ate breakfast, we prepared, and the doubt crept in a little more. My gear was already packed and laid out the way the instructors had drilled into me. And then the white pickup truck came down out of nowhere to take us up. That truck is the last threshold — it is the thing that says, this is the vehicle that carries you to the top. It is a twenty-minute drive up, and that climb alone tells you the scale of what you are about to run off of. At the top, the school had already done the work: they had mowed the crown of the mountain into a runway, a patch about twenty yards by twenty yards. That is all you get. And past the end of it is a slope that falls away to nothing but trees and gravel and rock. So you had better be damn sure you get enough air under that wing on the way off.
On the ride up I had no headphones, nothing. A bottle of water, goggles on, helmet on, sitting in the bed of the truck in a daze — not panicked, just in my own head, running back through every instruction and lesson, crossing every T, dotting every I. One of my classmates leaned over: hey, you good? And my favorite line came out: I’m Gucci; slang for I’m good. But deep down the voice was still there — man, I cannot make a single mistake up here. One mistake and that is it. Bye-bye.
We reach the top. The instructor parks the truck and kills the engine, and I am the first one out of the bed. I start making noise immediately — bird calls, anything — hyping myself up and hyping my classmates up, like I am breaking down a huddle before a game. I pull all the gear out and hand it down, because I am the only one riding in the bed with it, and we start laying it out on the grass. And then my instructor says it: you’re up first. Cool. And I say, without further ado — let’s go get it.
Left foot into the left hoop, right foot into the right, slap it up through my thighs, the back straps over the shoulders, and I start clipping every clamp and cinching it all down tight. I clip my walkie-talkie to my right shoulder strap, switch it on, and wait for my instructor, who spreads the wing out behind me and lays out the A, the B, the C and the brakes, and hooks it all into my harness.
So I make the call down to the landing zone. Landing zone, landing zone, copy copy, this is Kaf. And they come back: good morning, Kaf — we’re here, ready for your landing. And that was it. There was no I changed my mind, no let me retract, no let me not do this. That radio call was me signing the contract. Time to go. My instructor runs the final check — harness connected, everything tight, the wing, the strings, all of it — and gives me the thumbs up. You’re ready. I’m ready.
Then I held the straps and waited for the air. Five, ten minutes, watching the windsock — that little flag on its pole that tells you which way the wind is coming, the same one we watched all week on the practice hill. Early on I was still learning to read it; by now, after all that training, I could. But before the flag even perked up, my instructor perked up. He felt the gust before the pole did, and that was all the sign I needed. I perked up too, right foot dug into the ground, because I knew I had maybe twenty steps to get this wing into the air and run myself off the side of a mountain. And then all of a sudden, I hear it: go, go, go, go.
I dig in so hard. I am running like Sonic the Hedgehog, arms thrown back, head down, back flat, hauling that wing up off the ground with the wind pulling against me. Running, running, running — and then, all at once, I am not running anymore. I am in the air. The wind has taken the wing and lifted me clean off the mountain. I bring my arms up, I work myself down into the harness, I sit back into the seat, and I take my brakes in my hands. And would you believe it? I’m in the air. Every concern, every ounce of doubt I had carried up that mountain turned out to be so easy. I had been worried for no reason at all. And then the walkie crackles: great takeoff, Kaf. That is all I needed to hear. I did it. Because that — the takeoff — is the hardest part of earning the P1, and I had it.
And you will honestly be surprised how peaceful it is up here. You settle into the harness, which is more comfortable than it has any right to be, and then there are the views you simply cannot buy. I saw a side of Vietnam, an angle of it, that no video, no photo, no magazine could ever show or tell you — villages and hills and far mountains, rivers and roads and schools, people the size of dots moving through rice fields, the greenery running to the horizon, the sun and the clouds from a place I had never seen them. All of it looked painted. Surreal. And it was the most peaceful thing I have ever felt — and that is the part I did not expect. I was not expecting peace. I came for a thrill, and it was a thrill. But it turns out to be a two-way thing: you get the thrill coming off the mountain, and then you settle into the peace, and the two of them together are the whole reason to do it. I conquered that mountain in a single gust. And now I am itching to get to other regions, other peaks, for different views and different photographs — because now I am addicted. Now I want that feeling again.