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...

On Valentine’s Day we took a car to Ubud, located an hour north into the mountains. Home to rice paddies, yoga, and traditional arts and crafts, Ubud was a nice change of pace simply because there was more to do there. On our second day, we visited the Agung Rai Museum of Art, just one of the many museums in the area. ARMA’s mix of traditional and modern Balinese art was housed in two buildings on an extensive — and beautiful — garden. The whole experience was lovely. In general, Ubud had many more things to do, from restaurants and shops to monkey forests, elephant temples, and various dance shows. I, of course, didn’t do any of these things, as my main goal was to visit the Bali Bird Park, which I did on a sunny Friday afternoon — the only wholly sunny day we had. I didn’t even know about the bird park until we drove by it on the way up from Canggu, and immediately made it my singular goal. There was a zoo nearby too, and an adjoining reptile park but I skipped both of those t...

A lot of people asked me: Why Bali? Great question, since I’m not exactly into beach vacations, nor am I into the whole Elizabeth Gilbert thing. Well, over the past year or so, two separate friends have spent extensive time there and both have told me — specifically me — that I had to go surf there. One is a fluke but two is a trusted recommendation right? So off to Bali for a month! I was waiting for my friend to quit her job in New York and she finally did back in January. Bags packed, apartment ditched, belongings stowed away, she met me in Taipei and then we set off to Indonesia together. My main concern heading to Bali was the volcano situation but as it turned out, that potentially Bonnie situation wasn’t really a situation at all. Nobody told me about the food though. But more on that later. Our first stop, Canggu, is on the southwest coast of Bali, about a half hour from Ngurah Rai airport. A friend of a friend was already there and he said “It’s like Brooklyn.” And i...

Taipei has been dreary. Grey skies, light rain, flippy winds. All much colder than I remembered. Aren’t I supposed to come here to escape winter? Instead I find myself wearing all my layers, including my New York leg thermals, simply to stay warm. And when I’m at home, curled up reading or watching NBA, I’m under two blankets and too afraid to move outside the comfort zone. Why don’t Taiwan apartments have heat? No need, it’s a semi-tropical place! Psssh, yeah right. Bali sunshine couldn’t come fast enough... Before leaving, I had a semi-disaster as I stupidly locked myself out of my phone. Did you know that if you unsuccessfully attempt to unlock your iPhone ten times it goes into shutdown mode? While my fingers were still damp, I tried to access it to Shazam a song (never got it) and summarily took it from “oh forgot my passcode” to “panic, it’s gonna have to be wiped!” So my last day in Taipei was spent running from Apple Store to semi-fake Apple store, eventually paying $1...

My basic day here is waking up at 1-2PM, waiting to see when or if Des will come back — she’s long since ditched me for her own daytime wanderings — and then wait for my friend S to see if we’re headed to a cafe. Once there I fiddle around on the computer for awhile, thinking about doing some things online but ultimately just browsing and chatting. It’s a lovely rhythm and it’s been awhile since I’ve had regular laptopping times, since Sundays in San Francisco nearly a decade ago. Last Saturday we went to this Sofar Sounds thing that Des concocted, an exclusive invite-only music event that she’d previously been to in LA. The Taipei version was small and cramped, and my friend and I spent the entire post-first act on the stairwell outside, contemplating when we should leave. Luckily Des and her cousins were also ready to get out of there so we headed down the a Mercedes closing night event in Xinyi. The crowd was mostly the young nightlife Taiwanese, as opposed to the hip indie ones ...

Coincidentally Des was in Taiwan about the same time I was slated to be there so we made plans to take a little side trip to Tainan, located about 300km south on the east coast of Taiwan. Her two cousins came with us, and all we did was eat eat eat — Tainan is reputed to have some of the best food in the country. Having her cousin, Tim, along was a tremendous boon as he could literally eat all day. I followed a guide from Synaptic, as well as Clarissa’s articles, and used Foursquare to navigate us around for back-to-back-to-back meals. Standouts was the 豆花 and shaved ice that comes topped with a pudding. I mean, c’mon! There was also visits to some of the local sights like Fort Zeelandia, Anping Treehouse, a very unexpected Michael Jackson dance/music night at Legends Sports Bar, and my favorite, the National Museum of Taiwan Literature. Even though I couldn’t actually read most of the on-display items, the museum was one-of-a-kind (Taiwanese lit!) and the presentation and displa...