Customary.

It was plane to see.

Toronto, Ontario – The day had unfolded like an origami crane in reverse: new angles, new directions, but a return to origins. Home.

And here I was, so close. Yet, so far.

Having just unfolded myself from a seat that had clutched me for the past 15 hours from Hong Kong, I was waved into Customs & Immigration with a big red marker scrawl across my form. The clocked ticked ominously on my impending connection – my last flight home.

Why would I volunteer? You’ve never been pulled in before? Why would I go by myself? So, you’re a student? The concept of international development was completely lost on the agent.

It had to have been obvious my story checked out within five minutes as he pulled torn bus tickets, hotel receipts, maps, a thank-you card and materials related to BTL from my bags. And yet, he continued to invert every sock, read each scrap page from my notebooks and go through all of my digital devices. "You wear pink polka-dot socks?"

Maybe I should have lied and said I had more than $50 worth of souvenirs?

When I told him I had a flight to catch, he replied I likely wouldn’t make it. “I like to be thorough; some guys don’t, but I do.”

I told myself it was just because I was being pleasant with him, and that was preferable to his having to deal with a line of angry people drained from hours of travel and flights to catch. He had a job to do, and I could respect that.

But well more than an hour later, it was as expected: nothing untoward caught in his fine-toothed comb, and no available flights for the rest of the night.

So close, yet so far.

Hash Function.

Paddie-whack.

Hanoi, Vietnam – A cloud of white smoke rose skyward as fire burned in the field.

The acrid air smothered my nose as we trudged through rice paddies, tiled yellow at the foot of the mountains. Conical hats bobbed among the plants, harvesting the staple of cuisine here.

It was my last time with the Hanoi Hash House Harriers, and my final day in Vietnam. I had joined the group for three of the four weekends I was in the country, and today was cooler than previous outings – a slight breeze tickled my face.

It was a nice alternative to the 45-and-humid that had usually slapped me across it.

Farmers took small sickles to the plants, stacking them into tiny bundles atop the severed stalks. Diesel-powered engines rattled heavily and belched black smoke as threshers separated the husks of rice. Scrap was left like large piles of exhausted hay.

Nearby roads were painted yellow by grain left to dry. As the sun glimmered its final smiles, women used hoes to pile it back up and bag it.

Like the friendly locals in these fields, I, too, could only smile: this was a great way to cap off my trip.

Sssupper.

Was the waiter's name really Mr. Feng?

Hanoi, Vietnam – “Would you like some more bile?”

I can honestly say it’s a conversation I never would have imagined having.

Particularly after having just dropped a cobra’s still-beating heart into a shot glass of its own blood, mixed with rice wine. Now, it was the same process with the snake’s bile.

Bottoms up.

The lump in my chest was to be expected, but the heart stuck in there wasn’t mine.

For weeks, Katrina and I have talked of visiting the Nguyen Van Duc Snake Restaurant in the far east end of the city, but finally built it into our schedules tonight. We made a conscious effort to check our ethical concerns at the door for a couple hours, and to simply take in the experience.

Plate after plate arrived at the table: our cobra – which had only minutes before wound its way toward us on the restaurant’s floor before being hooked by a handler – had been sautéed, grilled and folded into spring rolls. There was also a surprising amount of liver, but at least everything was used.

Its skin had been fried into cracklins and we were presented with bowls of snake head soup. I bit it before it could bite me.

And yes, it tastes like chicken.

That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

Gone Fishing.

Well planned.

Hanoi, Vietnam – “We don’t do market research,” Mr. Tien said.

“We go fishing – we just put the line in the water and maybe we catch a fish.”

It was the line of the morning, so to speak.

I continued the analogy by explaining how time consuming fishing is, and if you’re lucky to catch one, there’s hardly room for another. If you’re going to successfully market yourself, know your audience and how to reach them.

It’s a message I have been preaching for the past month.

In order to extend the impact of my stay beyond my mandate with BTL, I volunteered to facilitate a three-hour workshop this morning for the Vietnam Association of Community Colleges.

The group of 17 was engaged, active and thoughtful, leading to fruitful brainstorming sessions directed toward improving the reputation of community colleges across the country. We focused on planning, understanding audiences and putting the ‘social’ in social media.

As if to punctuate my point, Mr. Tien came up to me after we had taken a series of group photographs.

“My wife just texted me,” he said. “She told me I had been standing beside the tall foreigner.”

Female intuition?

No. Someone had already posted photos to Facebook.

Exit.

The BTL-WUSC Connection.

Hanoi, Vietnam – “I have high admiration for your work at BTL, and for your vision,” the rector said as we huddled around a board table at the WUSC office this afternoon.

We spoke in deliberate phrases and, given the structured hierarchical nature of society here, I had no option but to take it as significant praise.

“You are my English teacher and my communication teacher.”

My entire mandate, I’ve maintained my goal has been to establish meaningful connections at a personal level, rather than suggest wholesale changes. As such, I have been grateful to form a relationship with, among others, Mr. Vinh.

Since our first meeting, he has reminded me of my manager back home: aversion to the status quo, big ideas and the energy to see them through. The system in which he operates, however, is much different.

We held my exit debrief with the college today, and discussed both what I have accomplished during my time in Vietnam, and some plans for implementation.

As I flipped through the jagged scrawls etched onto my notebook’s pages, we found I have, over the past three weeks:

• Designed and developed three marketing pieces;
• Provided a marketing template, a how-to guide and basic training for design;
• Tailored a communications plan and trained staff on developing strategies;
• Provided consultation and analysis related to BTL’s marketing efforts; and
• Conducted a workshop to build capacity related to marketing, branding and communications.

The rector decided he was also looking for a step-by-step guide for crafting marketing messages, and I explained this would no longer be capacity building: I have left tools and provided training that can empower his staff to carry out this work. It’s time for the connections we established to begin to bring their ideas to life.

He smiled, and nodded.

I have volunteered to host a workshop for the Vietnamese Association of Community Colleges tomorrow morning, but my mandate for BTL is now complete.

On Deck.

The light shines brightly.

Hanoi, Vietnam – In many ways, I’m well suited for my position in Canada because I’d prefer to make others, and the university, look good.

It can be easy to hide behind the ever-shifting ink that flows from my pen: the spotlight and I aren’t really on speaking terms.

So, it was a bit of a stretch to my comfort level to be facilitating a 2.5-hour workshop at BTL this afternoon, where 23 pairs of eyes pointed toward me as the observer who has spent the past three weeks at the college.

Facing discomfort and expanding your horizons are, of course, key reasons for participating in an experience like Leave for Change. How else to grow?

I had, ironically, drawn up a deck short on words and high on imagery to get back to basics of branding, marketing and communications, and to have staff begin planning practical activities that address their flagging recruitment efforts. I used images I had taken of Hanoi to help identify audiences, and we began the process of defining who ‘BTL’ is.

From there, we pulled threads together by developing communications plans that address areas of strategic importance to the college. I wasn't there to provide answers, but to offer suggestions of things to think about, and different approaches. Share the spotlight.

Showing a picture of the college’s front entrance – and the impact it can have on both first impressions and BTL’s brand – drew immediate acknowledgements of improvements that should be made. Tasks were assigned before we left: ownership was in the right place.

Today was one of those rare instances in front of a room my nervous legs did not chatter at a greater pace than my speech. Instead, calm: it was a successful session.

And, somehow, we ran only 15 minutes long.

No Words.

Kayaking in one of nature's wonders: Halong Bay.