Next day, we were talking about moving to Thailand.
We also knew there was a great, big world, and we had only seen like .0001% of it, so we decided to hold that thought and explore a little more. “More” for us ended up also being in Southeast Asia. What can I say? I’m the kind of guy that always orders the Double Quarter Pounder with cheese. This isn’t because McDonald’s doesn’t have fantastic items it’s because once I find something I like, I stick with it.
Vietnam happened in 2017. This time, we decided to share the experience. We brought our kids and a couple close friends. The kids were not close friends. They were kids. Specifically, they were 8 and 3. The 3 year-old didn’t even have any friends, and barely understood the concept of good friends. She really didn’t even understand the concept of travel, and that was one big reason we considered not bringing the kids. The 8 year-old understood, but they are a bundled package, of course.
Taige is very good at finding cheap travel. I aided her at this time. We made a hobby about finding cheap ways to move from country to country. We were not rich. We are still not rich. She found us tickets that were somewhere in the $520 per person round trip to Vietnam. I kept saying things like, “there has never been a time in human history when traveling internationally was cheaper and easier”. Honestly, it was true. It still pretty much is, all things considered.
We flew to Hanoi, then to Da Nang, then to Saigon, then to home. We were there something like 16 days, and had a great time. Vietnam suited us well. Both of our close friends had new girlfriends at home, so they were a little lonely. We had our whole unit with us, so we were not lonely. We were mostly full, from eating a ton. The food in Vietnam was incredible, as was the food in Thailand. We once found this lady in Hoi An: let’s call her Banh Mi Lady. You can probably surmise what she cooked. It was the best goddamn sandwich I had ever eaten. We went to her multiple times a day. If you asked her for a Coke, she would get on her moped and disappear for like 6 minutes before she came back with it. I miss you, Banh Mi lady.
We also drank coffee a lot at this place in Hue. We can call it Cà phê Muói. That was its name. They served a dish they called salt coffee. It came with a whole story about how the owner tried to win over a woman by making her coffee, but he had to make it better than her other suiters. To stand out, he put salt in it instead of sugar. It turned out so good (in the story) that it won over the girl and they lived happily ever after. We were also happily ever after, because we drank salt coffee every day, sometimes multiple times, for like 3 days straight. It was one of the most magical fluids I’ve ever ingested.
Bringing the kids to Vietnam was like dipping a toe into the water of living abroad. Maybe like a test. The girls passed the test with flying colors. Not only was it a totally different and very weird place for them to be, surrounded by people they didn’t understand eating foods they didn’t know; but they were also targeted by everyone because of their looks.
Now, I don’t mean targeted as in bad things, but they were touched and pinched and kissed and grabbed everywhere we went. This was due to their blonde hair. Most people we passed had never seen a blonde hair, and they thought it was good luck. One time we were in a really wild market, surrounded by people. Relatively normal southeast Asian market, which is to say that there were a thousand stores and the “aisles” were like a foot wide. Smells and sounds and you wouldn’t believe. Haggling, yelling, chaos; fans on everywhere because it was hotter than hell. You get the idea. We were single-file, because that’s the only way 4 people can traverse an Asian market. Madeline disappeared. Not the best place to have that happen. Turns out an old lady had grabbed her and sat her on her lap. I think she was petting her hair. The lady was over the moon, Maddie was not stoked. No big deal.
One time I was mistaken for an American athlete due to the baseball shirt I was wearing. They invited me to the head table of the Chairman of a province of Vietnam (basically the governor). I also was interviewed on the news. They fed me a bunch of great food and I got trashed because the servant ladies kept the rice wine flowing.
Sometimes we would ask the girls little sneaky questions. Loaded ones involved in living abroad, like “don’t you want to live here?” and “we could eat this every day if we lived here”. We were testing the waters of their water testing. At this stage, though, they were too young to really get it. It really didn’t mean much to them. To my wife and I, though, it meant a great deal. It was another example of us falling in love with another place, and seeing ourselves doing it long term.
Long term is the kicker, though, because everyone wants to move to the place that they are vacationing at. It’s not real life, it’s vacation. We understood that at the time, and despite loving Vietnam, we were ready to go home when the trip was done. In fact, we were still thinking about Thailand. We still do, in fact. I left a piece of my heart there. I think about it regularly, but that’s a story for another blog post.
the eventually home 