Three months after being on the road, I have to head home. Most of the reasoning comes from a financial standpoint, but my heart is broken from having to leave. There are a million things that I’ve learned in the past few months with Jet Set Zero, and I’m quite frankly, completely and utterly not ready to go. Many of the other travelers I’ve met continuously wallow about the things they miss at home and their love of Western comforts, but I have found myself more at peace and relaxed abroad. Sometimes I miss little things like a comfortable bed or Taco Bell, but the truth is I was more happy in Turkey and Vietnam than I have been in a long time.

The bests and the worsts:

Bests:

Turkish Republic Day- The best fireworks display I have ever seen, ever! Getting to sit on the roof of our house with friends witnessing this brought me all sorts of tingly feelings.

Turkey PARTY!- I like parties, in fact, I think they’re quite awesome. I especially liked this party because I got to meet cute Turkish boy, and to this day am quite happy over that meeting.

New Year’s in Vietnam- This was the best because just about everyone I know in Saigon showed up randomly this evening. Dance party ensued, of course.

Friendship- I’m always one to appreciate the small moments. I enjoyed multiple dance parties with Jen and Kris in a variety of locations, hanging around eating chicken, carrying Kris home drunk, accidentally kicking a cockroach on Kris, eating noodles while thoroughly intoxicated and inventing my own languages, talking video games with Jen, beers over the Bosphorus with Rob, Brian’s sleepy “hello” in the morning after I accidentally woke him up (everyday), sitting on the steps of our hotel with all the staff of the Hai Ha over beer and peanuts, and laughing to the point of tears god knows how many times.

Seeing Ratatat in Saigon Two Times- Need I say more?

Worsts:
Kris and Jen leave- When Kris and Jen walked out the door for their one month trip to explore the rest of Vietnam, I’m broke down like a little girl into a big mess of tears.

Jobs: I hate job hunting. I’ve always hated job hunting, and will probably continue to hate job hunting. My experience with tutoring in Ho Chi Minh was minimal, but I grew to not like that much either. I don’t think instructing young children in the English language is quite my cup of tea, as I don’t particularly enjoy screaming children nor is my English very good.

It’s a little bit funny that I’m going home, because I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who didn’t experience a whole lot of being homesick. But who knows? Maybe I’ll be back again soon!

The second I moved out of my house when I was 18, I knew that I was a city girl. I had big dreams of moving to San Francisco, which somehow ended up turning into LA (I still am not 100% sure how that happened). When I first arrived in Saigon, I think I felt a bit more comfortable than the other girls when it came to the chaos of city life. Now I’m not saying I was 100% comfortable, far from it, but I did feel a bit like I was at home.

The funny thing about being here for the past couple months is that I think I’ve started to appreciate mellow towns and mother nature more. Hanging out in Mui Ne was ridiculously refreshing, and getting to see some of the natural world has been more uplifting than anticipated. The pollution, motorbikes, chaos, street vendors, and overall bad mood of some of the people in Ho Chi Minh compared to the small villages has made me reevaluate the charm of small towns. I used to think that sometimes the craziness of cities was all that I needed, but now all I want to do it sit and look at some pretty green and blue stuff.

Don’t tell me I’m turning into a hippy.
VS.

VS.

So, what did we decide to do for our Christmas? Go the beach of course. We all figured that if we’re going to spend Christmas away from our friends and family, why not do the complete exact opposite of what everyone imagines Christmas to be. So we hopped on a four hour bus ride, turned 7 hour bus ride, and headed to the small beach town of Mui Ne.

We landed ourselves a resort at about $15/night (!!!!), got massages for $5 on the beach (!!!!), and checked out Mui Ne’s beautiful sand dunes and red canyon. Overall, I’m pretty happy about it. And by happy about it, I mean stoked as all hell at how awesome my life is right now.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! I’m sure I can speak for Jen, Kris, and I when I say although we had a great time, friends and family, you were sorely missed.

I’ve always been pretty adamant about not stealing anything, and that used to include MP3′s, bootlegged DVDs, and books. Well, it seems that the whole of Vietnam is pretty keen on photocopying and burning discs, so I succumbed to the desire to get whole books for about $2-$3 each. At home, most of these would probably cost about $15, and I proudly spent that cash to support the authors that I love. Now, I’m supporting families with cheap photocopied book purchases in the local stores of Saigon. Sorry all of my beloved authors, your words have touched me, but my being broke as all hell has gotten the better of me in Vietnam!

On the other hand, you get what you pay for. There are quite a few pages that you can’t read because of paper jams placing multiple copies on one page, other pages that have been folded over to hide that the paper was cut wrong, and even misspellings on some of the covers.

Ah the page that sticks an extra inch out of the binding....

Now that's some hot page on page action.

Book selection à la Jen Cheng and Serene Hayes

My trek to landing a steady job has been well, more difficult than the other Jet Set ladies. I haven’t been able to land anything in an English school here, but tutoring is becoming my preferred occupation. At first, I got a tutoring gig from the website couchsurfers.org, as a replacement for an expat leaving the country. It was only three hours of tutoring a week, but since I couldn’t seem to find anything more than that at the time, I was more than happy to undertake it. All in my first week, that three hours has multiplied to seven and a half, and I now am capable of not only covering my rent of $210/month, I can now eat about $50 of food without going further into the hole. On top of it, one of the mothers of the children I teach is just about the most helpful women in the world. She’s actively helping me look for an English school that will take me in, and has been the only reason for my increased hours.

Thus far, there are two significant reasons why I think tutoring kicks English teachings ass (in a school anyway)

1) Its more personal. You get to know the children better, and its becoming easier and easier for me to understand the culture here through my interactions with these kids. Not to mention, they’re all pretty awesome and well-behaved, which tends to help.

2) The dress code. I hate, and I mean hate, dressing up in any way, form, or fashion. Getting to wear jeans and a t-shirt to my tutoring sessions definitely beats having to wear uncomfortable shoes and a button down blouse. My boss in Los Angeles had a hard enough time asking if I had even ever worn a dress in my life, much less business casual clothing.

If this upward trend continues, maybe I’ll be able to make up some of the money I lost during my first jobless month in Saigon.

On Friday night Jen, Kris, and I decided to head to a bar Vascos with our new friend Alex. We’d hoped since there were four of us, we could hop in a taxi and just head on over. The worst possible time to ever think you can hail a cab comes around soccer celebration time. We attempted to hail about 20 cabs in the street, only to be completely ignored. Then we actually managed to hop into three more cabs, only to be refused because “motorbike too crazy”. When we decided to say “screw it” and walk instead, even walking became an extremely tedious task.

So, as a courtesy note to any tourist in Ho Chi Minh City, never, and I mean never, make plans on soccer night that extend beyond a 30 ft radius. If you do, plan for arrival an hour and a half later.