Jet Set Zero (dʒɛt sɛt ziːr1oʊ) The belief in, and practice of, a jet set life on zero dollars. Jet Set Zero is the belief that the adventures, experiences, and awe of a jet set life are possible for anyone willing to take risks and follow a dream with passion and dedication.

The Basics
Jet Set Zero is a story about four friends who decided to travel the world together and see where adventure would lead them. We started with two key ideas – first we would start from almost nothing working only modest jobs, and second we would document our journey to show others that it could be theirs as well. Our story starts in Seattle, where we work and save, and it follows us overseas as we pursue the adventure and awe of a jet set life.

We follow five simple rules:

1. We start modestly. We must fund ourselves on only 3 months of work, with jobs paying under $10 an hour.
2. We stick together and support each other. We must approach every challenge as a team.
3. We accept adventure in all its forms and with an open mind. We must actively seek out local experiences and stories wherever they take us.
4. We have to see it all, and the world is a big place. We must stay for no longer than 90 days in any location.
5. We want to share this dream with everyone who believes anyone has the potential to accomplish great things. We will listen and incorporate the advice and feedback of our community.

The Experiment
We didn’t just set out to travel the world together – we wanted to do it on a bare-bones budget, a budget within reach of anyone. With this in mind we set aside our professional jobs and savings, and took up simple jobs paying a simple wage. We wanted an accessible starting point so we decided on three months of housing and nothing else. It could be a friend’s couch, a graduation present, an investment with a group of friends–regardless, our start was 3 months in Pinehurst, a little suburb of Seattle. From there we got jobs serving coffee, folding clothes, and selling electronics for everyone’s favorite and familiar corporations, averaging $8.52/hour.

We lived as spartan a life as possible, eating on less than $1.20/person/meal, utilizing the public bus system, and foregoing restaurants, movies, long trips, even decent beer. It involved a lot of sacrifice, but it was only 3 months and you’d be surprised how far camaraderie can carry you. As it was well put, “being poor is brutal, but being poor with your friends is a lot less miserable.” In total, we pulled in $12,451 on 11 weeks of work. We managed to spend only $4140 during the summer – food, utilities, transportation, phones, insurance, and 5 outings. Our total preparations for travel–tickets, VISA’s, vaccinations, expat insurance–came to $4352. So we survived the summer to land in Vietnam with $3859, a healthy padding to get settled, find jobs, and have money to depart for the next country.

Summer: Seattle, USA
Our summer was brutal. Between 4 AM and 10 PM, on any given day, at least one of us was working a job that ranged from boring to grueling to demeaning. After an eight-hour day of folding shirts, placating the insane and insulting demands of an endless stream of customers, pouring 10,000 scalding coffees, and standing and standing, we would head home.

When we arrived home, we took off our shoes, set down our nametags, and started a pot of coffee. After a few restful minutes, we’d start again through sheer strength of will— slogging though emails, spreadsheets, phone calls and the myriad tasks that it takes to build a production company.

The summer saw us learning many lessons about hard work, and simple living. We figured out how to survive on a fraction of the income we were used to. The challenge was not only to get by on our meager earnings but to save as aggressively as possible so that we could ensure a September departure. On top of all of this, we took weekly trips, exercises that allowed us to get out of the house and learn how to film and work as a team. These trips took us to the beaches of Cape Alava, the forests of Rainier, and even the wilds of our local miniature golf course.

Though in our long days some tasks fell by the wayside, we were able to save enough to feel comfortable setting out for exotic destinations and after extensive discussion and consideration, we decided that Vietnam would be our new home for the next three months.

Fall: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam
We arrived in Vietnam with almost no idea of what to expect. Over our hectic summer, we had worked almost every waking hour, which left us with precious little time to prepare psychologically or research much more than the logistics of our arrival. When we landed in Ho Chi Minh City on September 4th, we hit the ground running– pushing ourselves as hard as we had at home– and our morale deteriorated.

When we didn’t have fun, we wondered if we had chosen the right city. When we spent too much, it seemed as though minimum-wage travel was impossible. And when we couldn’t find jobs, we began to look for a way out.

We looked back towards one of our original destinations, Korea. With a booming ESL market, high wages and free housing, Korea made sense for four travelers with empty pockets. The country had clearer laws around filming, and its open government and free media stood in stark contrast to the risks we faced in Saigon filming and shipping tapes. But as we began searching for jobs, the commitment we felt to the journey caused us to reconsider. Why had we given up so much to be here, only to turn back so soon?

After long conversations and soul-searching, we decided to stay here in Ho Chi Minh City. Giving up was something we had never done before, and certainly something we were not about to start. Our decision to stay was an appropriate end to our self-doubt and an exciting way to begin our lives in this city.

In our second week, we quickly came to understand Saigon’s basic survival skills — xe oms (motorcycle-taxis), the ESL job process, local food, housing, and how to ward off an endless stream of street merchants.

Life quickly accelerated with amazing experiences seeming to come at every turn: a mob scene at the English-speaking club, challenging and interesting jobs teaching English in a foreign country, a Vietnamese LAN party (hell yes), a friendly guide to help us track down local goods, buying a motorcycle, learning how to ride the motorcycle, repairing the motorcycle, a wedding the highlands, riding elephants, moving to a new home, drinking snake wine, sampling delightful and terrifying local cuisine, finding totally obscure watering holes, making new friends, meeting DJs, VJs, and hitting the club, and it just keeps coming.

We’re not sure what happens next, but we’ll let you know.

Today we returned from the beaches of Nha Trang.  I have never seen so much vacation packed into so few dollars before.

Our trip started on with an 8 hour overnight train ride from Ho Chi Minh City.  The train was about what you might expect from a train traveling down Vietnam’s only railway, and it was reminiscent of the Darjeeling Limited.  We had a room stacked floor to ceiling with our six bunks, and midnight exploration lead us through a corridor of packed cars and eventually a dining cart where the train crew did most of their drinking.

After an uncomfortable, but fantastically unique night we arrived and fell out of the train tired and ready for the beach.  Our hotel was literally across the street from an almost deserted beach that stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions. The hotel – 12$/night.

After a few quick hours of sleep on real beds in rooms with slightly less people we made our way out on a boat we chartered privately for about 12$/person.  With this we were able to sail to Mun Island and get in some snorkeling before one of the most unique seafood lunches I have ever had.

Part 2, Tomorrow.

So, the suspense can end: we’re committed to Vietnam.  The decision was difficult and complicated, and it seemed on that every issue we faced a dilemma.  Financially, leaving Vietnam would mean basically eating the $3000 it took to get us all here, but it also promised higher wages and more job stability, at least in theory.  Logistically, Korea would be easier in the long run, but leaving now would disrupt a production cycle that was in the nascent stages and growing quite well.  Mentally, Korea seemed like a more comfortable incubator – modern cities, reliable internet, more English – but, since when has comfort been our primary goal? 

We never fully surrendered the notion that Korea was a promised land, but at the end of the day, we realized that we simply couldn’t quit.  This team had built this production project from scratch, endured a summer of double-jobs and near poverty-level wages, left behind almost everything that was familiar – we weren’t going to let these challenges prevent us from doing what we left our former lives to do. 

We each had our personal reasons for wanting to leave.  For myself, I thought back to some of my initial reasoning in joining this project: if I walked away from this opportunity, I would regret it forever.  Here similarly, I felt that walking away from Vietnam would leave a rusty taste of regret.  I knew that at the heart of the matter, I was afraid, and in the end, knowledge of that fear galvanized me.  Wasn’t that what all of this was about? 

- Matt

The speed at which we became friends and a functional team, piecing this start-up together, learning how to film and be filmed – it felt so smooth.  As Rob has said, “give this team glue, wood, and a saw and we can go to the moon.”

I think Brian’s pose sums it up quite well…

At first, Vietnam was scary. Our initial impressions included thick smog, traffic, and a scooter-by robbery, in which two men on a Vespa zipped past a Mercedes with its window down. As they passed, they pulled a wallet from the passenger’s side and swiftly disappeared into traffic. I could hear the crew pull our cameras closer, and everyone got a little quieter, except for our taxi driver who seemed to think it was pretty funny.

District 1

After arriving and taking in the backpacker district, we saw an array of expected and unexpected sights. Food vendors and small restaraunts sat beside postcard stands, but also next to seemingly empty concrete caverns and the rubble of razed buildings. Vietnamese is a very difficult language, and that made our new home seem impenetrable.

As the week went on, the job hunt continued to be less than fruitful (which is to say, infuriating). Moreover, we noticed that backpackers have created a rather unpleasant atmosphere here in District 1. Every step down the street includes some head-shaking and “khom”s, to inform walking vendors that you do not need sunglasses (as there has not yet been any sun to speak of) nor do you need a wallet (because as soon as you can, you’re turning your money into Spicy Beef Pho). After a summer of bare-bones living, and sacrificing health and happiness, was this what we had worked for?

Of course, the right thing to do in our situation would be to have rested this past week. We should have overcome jet lag, and excursed slowly into the city to build enthusiasm for our new home. We should have slowly ramped up filming, to ensure that we were comfortable with our environment. We probably should not have stumbled into the red light district on our second night here.

Well, we didn’t do any of that. And now, we’re at yet another crossroads.

Pouring Rain in Pham Ngu Lau

Filming here continues to present us with intense challenges. Our conspicuousness (which once, as we sat at an out-of-the-way restaurant, made an elderly woman guffaw in amazement) becomes like a scene out of “Close Encounters…” when the camera turns on. People crowd, and we lose the protection of anonymity. Shipping may be a problem due to customs and we probably won’t be able to publish freely.

Although it may not seem like our biggest challenge, we didn’t allow ourselves time to understand and enjoy this city, and so, the challenges that lie ahead of us here seem nearly insurmountable.

We have a tough decision to make. Do we stay here in Vietnam for three months and brave jobs with minimal hours, difficult and taxing filming, and an infrastructure that will make building out our company even more difficult? Or should we look to our original promised land, Korea, where we could easily secure jobs, housing and transportation, but would have to commit 6 months of our 12-month journey? Do we risk it all—our precious work, safety and happiness— to stick to our convictions, or should we defer to practicality and comfort?

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Well, this weekend we hope to take a break and go to the beach. For $60 a person we have been promised nothing but white sand, sailing, fishing, and maybe a few coconuts with straws poking out of them. We need time to relax and think about our choice.

One of the key links in the process that will let us produce regular episodes of our adventures here is shipping footage back to the US from our setup in the field.  However, this is not as simple as it sounds.  Today Rob and I set off with a fairly simple goal – take a stack of full tapes to a DHL shipping center and send them along to Jed for post production work.   We hopped in a cab, showed the driver the address, and sat back to enjoy the ease at which we were completing our task.  The first problem was that the DHL shipping center wasn’t in our district or the next district or on this side of the river, or even near the other side.  It was in fact almost an hour away though the dense and extremely prevalent Ho Chi Minh City traffic.  The laughs continued once we got there as we were told that customs need to watch each and every tape before they could be sent out, and “oh, we don’t have a machine for them. Please bring your machine – tomorrow.”  They would need our camera so that a customs official could watch hours upon hours of tapes.  Heads held low, Rob and I returned to the waiting cab and the realization that we had an hour of driving before reaching our hotel, and much less money than the fare.