Not much different today than yesterday. Woke up, ate, chilled by the beach, ate more, and most importantly, drank a watermelon smoothie. Why is this important? Because in the morning when I had ordered this, the lady that took my order said they had no more watermelons left. NONE! Sad face.

Literally 15 minutes later, I saw a server walking by with a watermelon smoothie! WTF. I took a picture of the lady that lied to me. In hindsight, I don’t know why I took a picture of her. It’s not like I would make an insta post dedicated to her poor customer service. Nor did I really want to remember that feeling of bitterness when the watermelon smoothie walked next to me on a server tray. And it’s not like I didn’t get to drink one. So… I guess the point is that I take pictures of random stuff that I’ll probably never make public, but I do anyways, cause it’s like a snapshot of my mind at that exact moment. It includes what I saw and can trigger what I felt, what I heard, taste in this case, and how silly it was that a server lied to me to avoiding making a smoothie.

Anyways, after lunch, we headed back to Saigon. Got back around dinner time, ate at Charlie’s, and then packed to fly out to Cambodia the next morning.

Hungover day. Ate a lot and often. Laid around a lot more.

Oh and here’s the rows of tents I was talking about yesterday. I don’t know why, but I was mesmerized by the rows and rows of tents.

This day started at 3:30am for Charlie and me. Our overnight bus from Phan Rang got us to Saigon much quicker than motorbiking and dropped us off at a Saigon bus station. We didn’t want to bike that entire route back down. Luckily we bought bus tickets for our motorbikes and they came with us stored underneath the bus. By the time we got home, picking up McDonald’s along the way, it was 4 in the morning and we had a 8:30am van to catch. We had decided the previous night that we needed to hang out on a beach so booked the earliest bus to Coco Beach Camp. Why’d we have to leave right away? Shrug.

Before we had to catch the van, Charlie got to take a quick nap, but I had to return my motorbike before leaving. I ended up not sleeping until the ride. Yay.

Then on the way, the van got a flat tire. All the men came out to watch one guy change the tire. In our defense, one of the bolts refused to come off. One of the guys had to jump on the wrench to wiggle it loose. Men triumph over wheel. Yay.

Coco Beach Camp is actually quite nice. We got to stay in small little bungalows that were set up right next to the beach. Later, I saw rows and rows of tents being set up. Apparently, tons of other people came to party and sleep on the beach.

I eventually fell asleep on a hammock attempting to read a book. One of the best naps I’ve ever taken. Then came the party. It was quite insane. There were dragons and fireworks and lots of booze. Celebrating during Têt is great.

One of the most memorable nights happened the night I slept over at Tri’s family home. First of all, the house was beautiful with a large family all living together. I could see the happiness from them and their surrounding community. Charlie and I were so grateful to be invited! They fed us like family. Everything was home made. The bánh tét was delicious.

After breakfast, Tri showed us around his community, explaining how his family was forced to move to this location after the Vietnam War. Their original home town was taken over by the communist party.

Each family that came here received a plot of land for their home, and a plot of land for farming. The farms are all concentrated to one location, with division of property not marked by fences, but with shrubs and raised walking paths. It’s quite beautiful.

Later in the afternoon, the three of us went on a motorbike ride to Nui Chua National Park. From there, we took a small ferry to an island to have lunch. Well, Charlie and Tri had lunch. I ate very little, if at all. Just not a huge fan of snails and seafood. Charlie and Tri loved it.

When we got back to Tri’s place, his family had already prepared dinner for us. Things I could eat! There was pork, chicken, vegetables, and some delicious fruit I’ve never had before. I ate so many that Tri’s mom packed me some to take home with me. Mom’s are so awesome.

After dinner, we said our thank you’s and bid our farewell. It was time for Charlie and me to head back to Ho Chi Minh. We took a Virgin Airline-like overnight bus and off we went.

Oh, by the way, this overnight bus trip wasn’t the Memorable reason for this post. The memorable night was actually the night before. Charlie and I slept fully clothed with long sleeves, long pants, and two pairs of socks to avoid being eaten by mosquitos. They got to us anyways, not sure how. Tri and his entire family slept with shorts and tshirts and didn’t get bit once! Anyways, we slept with the windows open (no screens) cause of the heat. In the middle of the night we started to hear a dog whimpering and crying. Went on for hours until dawn. Later that day, we mentioned this to Tri and he had a confused look on his face. He couldn’t remember hearing a dog cry and he wasn’t sure if any of his neighbors actually had a dog. Then a lightbulb went off on his head and he said “ah, you heard the pigs next door. They were being slaughtered to be sold at the market this morning. You actually had some during breakfast and dinner.” What. Wow. Farm to table, indeed. I will never forget that night.

One of Charlie’s CoderSchool employees, Tri, invited us to his family home in Phan Rang for the New Year celebration. In total, it took us about 7 hours to motorbike north to his hometown. This motorbike trip was much more exciting than the first leg. First off, some of the views were incredible.

The ride was basically this. There was one stretch of road that winded on the side of a mountain next to the ocean. That day, this stretch of road happened to be closed to cars because of fallen boulders blocking the road. So lucky for the three of us, we just cruised along without having to worry about any cars, or that many other people!

Took some regular stops along the way to rest up and grab some grub. Got to try rabbit for the first time. Can’t remember what it tastes like. Probably chicken.

When I thought about people traveling overseas, I thought they were all going to experience some life changing moment that would give clarity on their life and purpose. I wanted to travel so I could recover from workaholism, to find my inner self, and to discover my purpose in life. I expected this to happen immediately. Spoiler alert: it never happened. (Thought: Should probably write more about this later…)

Turns out, the first couple weeks traveling was much more stressful than I anticipated. I expected to feel free from work and the burdens of life the minute I landed in Vietnam. Instead, I felt anxious and more lost than I did in SF. Why was I feeling like this? I had quit my job, moved out of my apartment, and flew to the other side of the world without a return date. My plan was to have no plan and let the traveling winds take me wherever they lead.

I found out that I personally cannot scroll through life or a vacation without a plan. Having no plan at all was giving me anxiety. I wasn’t even sure which countries I’d visit, yet alone when I’d fly back. So I decided to put together a loose schedule of which cities I’d like to visit during my trip. I wrote a short post about this on my instagram that day and it made me feel much more relaxed. Even though I knew it wasn’t a binding schedule, it gave me some inner peace to know that I had some idea of which country I’d be flying to next week. I slept pretty well that night.