The 18 students from Carroll College, one student from Moruya High School, two teachers and a guide will take on the expedition, to start in Hanoi on November 22.

Student Nick Broad-McGregor said they’d only have a few days to acclimatise themselves to the culture when they first arrived.

“After that we’re going up to the mountains in northern Vietnam, near Sapa, to do a hike for five to six days,” he said.

They’ll be stopping in at villages and learning the culture, and will then spend a week helping build, paint and entertain children in a local orphanage.

“Then after that we’ll have two to three days to ourselves,” Nick said.

The trip has been organised with World Challenge school expeditions and Carroll College is one of 13 schools in Australia participating.

While they still have over two months to prepare, the students said they were starting to get “jittery”.

“We have to start planning now - all the medical stuff and paperwork,” Nick said.

“Then there’s also the realisation that we’ll be spending a whole month overseas,” David Feletto said.

The students said the experience would be invaluable to them, especially at their age.

“And we’ll be doing all of the decision-making, it’s not like there’ll be teachers telling us what to do,” David said.

“It’ll give us an idea of the different cultures and a whole new experience,” Bridget Tegart said.

Fellow student Alex King said most of the students want to travel when they finish school, and having this experience behind them would give their parents peace of mind when that time came.

Carroll College teacher Simone Walsh will accompany the students, but she said: “as soon as we (the other teacher and I) get off the plane, we’ll put our hands in our pockets”.

The students said their biggest fear was getting injured or sick on the hike, losing passports, and, for the girls, trying to fit everything into one bag.

Carroll College opened up the adventure to Year 10 and 11 students who were interested.

In the lead-up to their departure, the students have held pancake days, sausage sizzles, big breakfasts and trivia nights to raise money for the orphanage.