Atelman, Nooooo!

In contrast to Hanoi, we started our Saigon trip off slow. Margot was sick (and me by spiritual link), so we spent the first two days sort of just caving in at our AirBnb, watching TV, doing laundry, resting up. We had a very cute space lined up but there was some incident with a fight and a shower and blood, and we couldn’t tell if we were being AirBnB catfished or what but at the end of the day it was all okay. As long as there's a washer, a television, wifi, and air conditioning, the living space can't fail! I was also excited about our rooftop pool but we didn’t use it once… Oh the downstairs lobby of this fancy building did have an automatic fresh orange juice machine, which was an attraction with a delicious output. During our many hours sitting in front of the TV, we consumed some episodes of Ugly Delicious and Somebody Feed Phil (both grating for various reasons, aka both hosts kind of suck) and discovered Nikki Tran, who has a streetside restaurant in Saigon s...

After a brief two week respite in Taipei, I was back on the road again, this time to Vietnam. I was waiting for podcast partner in crime Margot to wrap up her short Taipei jaunt, and we were going to meet up with K, whom I had left behind in Bali a few weeks prior. First stop: Hanoi! I knew very little about Vietnam before going and these days I do very little pre-trip prep. I figure once I arrive I’ll be on the internets and guides and looking for stuff, so as long as I get there in one piece, it’s all good. This time we rented an AirBnB which turned out to be very nice, with three floors and three separate bedrooms. I planned on doing only eating in Vietnam so I needed lots of room to sit around doing the day/night in the house. And sit I did, as quite a few nights were spent LoLing, especially since Margot and K left me for a few days to do an overnight trek to Sapa and also a Halong Bay cruise. So for half of Hanoi I was basically on my own! (Okay not really, but more on tha...