I’m working an insanely demanding job, with a long commute spread across many buses and trains, which take me a 10-hour stint of intense concentration.  Unfortunately, I’m still on our travel budget, which is still hobbling along after Japan.  So what sees me through the day?

Starts with a 900 KRW ($.75) can of coffee.  I like this brand because it’s not packed with sugar, which usually just leads to a sugar crash midday, always an awful experience at this job.  Also, I ate some instant ramen: 600 KRW ($.50). Total: 1500 KRW ($1.25)

Then lunch…

(more…)

I know I blogged about this a bit while it was happening, but I slowly descended into a sort of sleep-deprived mania madness, and I lost the ability to compose coherent posts about it.  So now I can explain in a little more depth and lucidity…

The Backstory: We were so broke in Tokyo, mid-April, 2.5 weeks away from departure, and one of our monthly leases was up.  Renewal would be $500 we didn’t have.  We were already living in poverty in one of the world’s most expensive cities, so why not go one extra step…Manga Kissas, Internet Cafes: Tokyo is peppered with internet/manga cafes, a cross between an internet cafe, a manga library, and a hotel that rented cubicles instead of rooms.  You can rent by the hour or stay overnight.  They seem to be used for 4 things, as far as I can tell. 

First, people who have missed the last train home and who don’t want to pay the monstrous cab fees to go home.  They’re either Japanese salarymen, stumbling out of a client dinner, or those damned denizens of Tokyo with money to enjoy the nightlife.  In the cafes, you could hear them throwing up or snoring drunkenly. 

Second, highschoolers who want some private time – they live with their parents and they can’t go to love hotels.  In the cafes, you could hear them…well, you could hear them.

Third, manga lovers and gamers. I was actually surprised that people paid money to go to a manga library and read manga.  What kind of manga people read or internet sites they browsed is anyone’s guess, although, in the cafes, they sometimes sounded like the highschoolers.

Fourth, the internet cafe refugees or “cyberhomeless” – people who can’t afford the outrageously expensive housing in Japan but who have enough money to afford a $10/night roof.  They rove from cafe to cafe, catching 7 hours of peace at night to recharge for a part-time job during the day.  It was in this fourth class that I fell.  So instead of paying $500 for another 19 days, I’d pay around $12/night for sleep in Tokyo’s central districts.  I’d save money on transit, because I wouldn’t need to travel out to exciting Kanagawa.  I’d also still be tutoring, so I’d be making a decent amount of money.  The cafes had free coffee and juice, and I’d enjoy internet speed we only wet-dreamed about back at our guesthouse.  I’d sleep in the cafes when I could and then just huddle up on one of the trains and sleep as it wound its way around the city.  So I packed my bags…

and set out with 4000Yen, about $45, to see where it would all take me…

ManBoo! Cafe, on the edge of Kabukicho (the red-light district near Shinjuku), has so far emerged as my favorite place between the hours of 11pm and 6am.  980Y/7 straight hours in you enter between 9pm and 3am.  That price is unbeatable…unfortunately, it buys you a dimly lit booth in a long line of computer stations.

Dark lights, sticky keyboards.

CONS
* The dude to my right smoked all night = first-class second-hand smoke
* No footrests = no lying down completely
* Constant commotion = no silence
* Crowded aisles = frequent bumping

PROS
* Cappuccino machine = (come on, that’s obvious)
* Slurpee machines = sugar fix
* Miso soup machine (!) = free warm salty calories
* Showers, though I haven’t used them yet

Drink machines!

Finding fun in Tokyo without any cash is a constantly evolving creative challenge.

Finally, an episode out on time!  Ever since I made it back to the States I’ve had trouble keeping things on schedule.  Before I went to Japan I was always at a two week lag from real time, and when I was with the crew on the road I was experiencing things as they happened, but at all times I had to be thinking a few weeks ahead to do my job as producer.  About 60% of my time is spent as editor thinking about what did happen, and about 40% of my time is spent as executive producer/director thinking about what will happen, and the result is that I spend a clean 100% of my time confused.  I was too inexperienced when starting this project to know why production and planning staff are almost always separate, but I think I’ve got the gist of it after living for a few months in this scheduled haze.

This week also marks the debut of our newest musical contributor: Tettix!  I’ve been listening to Judson Cowan’s music for years, both in his current incarnation and under his previous handle of Cicada.  His work has been featured in a number of creative spots, including this Boing Boing short.  It gives me no shortage of pleasure to be editing to his music, in this episode The Graves of Good Humans from the startling Technology Crisis II.  I hope to use a few more of Tettix’s tracks before Season 2 is up, but in the meantime check out all his albums at www.tettix.net or purchase his songs on iTunes!

As you likely ascertained from both our blog and episode 201, money is and will be a big issue in Tokyo. Before launching into that discussion, I’d like to catch everyone up on our financial situation, and I should start by summarizing the cost of Season 1.

A core thesis of Jet Set Zero is that a lifestyle of travel is possible on poverty-level wages: we started with $0 cash and have funded all our travels with easily accessible jobs. After a summer of suffering, we had saved enough to land in Vietnam with $3,859, to support us until we had steady income. We actually found teaching jobs within weeks, and while it took some time to accumulate a sustainable set of teaching hours, we did manage to refill our funds. So our travel-budget thesis was proven for Vietnam.

Dan used his teaching income to journey back home, so all the numbers I’ll include here are just for Rob, Brian, and I…

Budget Gourmet

From Seattle: + $3,859
In Seattle, 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 was hell, but it was only 3 months and you’d be surprised how far camaraderie can carry you: 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 $4,140 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.

Mayhem

Teaching Revenue: + $6,788
In three months, for a combined total of around 450 hours of teaching, we made almost $7,000. We would have made more, but because we were only in Vietnam for 3 months, our school gave us limited hours. When YOU go to Vietnam to teach, you’ll stay for 1 year, so you’ll make far more money in 3 months’ time…

Minh Guesthouse

Accommodations: – $1,940
In our first guesthouse, we spent about $15/night for 2 doubles for a little over a month, but then Brian, Rob, and I moved to a new neighborhood, where we paid:
* $240/month for Brian’s single
* $280/month for Rob’s and my double, pictured to the left
* All in all, around $230/person/month is pretty damned good.

Turtle Dove

Food: – $1,652
Our eating adventures took us from 25 cent donuts to $30/lb fresh lobster, but we ate almost exclusively at local (non-western) food places, so we generally didn’t pay much. This food budget amounts to $6.12/person/day, which treated us to fried noodles, numerous hotpots, fresh avocado shakes, bird head and goat’s penis, dog, beating snake heart, small Vietnamese sandwiches, the occasional egg omelet, and of course, tons of Pho.

Rob's Coffee

Coffee (Cafe Sua Da): – $102

Given that each coffee is roughly 55 cents, I thought it would be worth acknowledging that we purchased around 200 coffees in our time in Saigon. This also doesn’t include the innumerable coffees Rob and I made in our room in an attempt to save money, using a simple single-cup coffee drip. I suppose it’s a sad state of affairs when you’re making coffee to avoid a 55 cent price tag…

Seriously.

Beer: – $150
I know this may not seem like an intimidating number, but it doesn’t include the many beers our friends bought for us…and considering that beer costs about 50 cents for a big bottle, Saigon may have been harsh for both our lungs (pollution) AND our livers. Our favorites were Saigon Green – the domestic rice beer – and Bia Hoi – the fresh local beer on tap. We had to adjust to drinking beer with ice, but after awhile – eh, it’s beer, get used to it. Some of my favorite memories were sipping beer with friends, watching the lifeblood of Saigon flow through the streets, listening to the chorus (cacophony) of sounds, and letting the worries of the day slough off my shoulders.

Little Motorbike

Transit around Saigon: – $470
Lyhn (a.k.a. Bonus Hog) cost us $125 to buy and probably another $30 in repairs – she was a demanding mode of transit, somewhat like a sleek sports car…somewhat. Our rental bikes cost $50/month each, but we didn’t actually rent them until October. Gas cost us 60 cents/liter ($2.20/gallon), so we only spent around $45 total. Helmets were $10/each. Finally, there were some times we couldn’t motorbike, so we spent another $90 in taxi rides and Xe Oms (motorbike taxis).

Mounting

Random Adventures: $100
Riding ostriches, grass skiing, amusement parks, waterslides, a couple dates, a LAN party, a movie or 2, a Thanksgiving celebration, some Karaoke mishaps, and a couple other rounds of fun at Saigon prices. Also, despite our best efforts, we didn’t actually pay for lots of this stuff due to our friends’ overwhelming hospitality, so the number above doesn’t necessarily reflect actual prices. It does, however, further demonstrate that our friends made our time in Vietnam what it was.

Phu Quoc

Trips Out and About: – $744
In truth, the only major trips we paid for were the journey to Nha Trang and our trek to Phu Quoc island. $744 paid for the following:
* Trains to/from Nha Trang; transit to/from Phu Quoc
* Chartered boat around the islands of Nha Trang
* Guesthouses in Nha Trang and bungalows on Phu Quoc
* Sustenance, including food, beer, and coffee
* Motorbike rentals for ripping around Phu Quoc island

Miscellaneous: – $125
* Cell phones ($30 each), sim cards ($5 each), and a handful of minutes recharges ($3 each)
* Totally legit software and DVD’s ($1 – $7 each)
* Shampoo and soap (very cheap, and certainly not expensive enough to justify how little we bought)
* Laundry (50 cents/kilogram, also not expensive enough to justify how little we did laundry)
* Tailored shirts ($15/each)
* Odds and ends from various markets

So in 3 months’ time, we had $5,364, meaning VICTORY! Starting with $0 in Seattle, we made enough to travel to Vietnam and not go broke. Moreover, in our last month, our teaching hours were ramping up, our spending was going down, and were getting a taste of what a lifestyle would be like for 1 year in Vietnam. We proved it can be done in Vietnam. So if what you’ve seen on this blog and in our episodes intrigues you, go do it now – Vietnam is waiting for adventurous travelers. We did a lot in 3 months – imagine what you could do in 1 year.

Next, I’ll explain how much we landed in Tokyo with to restart our experiment.

This will be the second-to-last post about our time in Vietnam, and there, I’ll sum up October, the month when our income-spending ratio started to climb drastically.

+ $2,759: Even at hamstrung hours, we raked in almost 3k. Of course, this left us with a load of cash stuffed in envelopes hiding in our room (sometimes hiding even from us…or at least from me.
- $430: Another 2 weeks of rent
- $324: Delicious delicious food…all in all, it was only about $1/meal. I guess a diet of delicious fried noodles, delicious fried donuts, delicious fried pork with rice, another super-healthy dishes – plus some outrageous weekend splurges – is still under our summer food budget.
- $60: beer…probably lots and lots of Saigon Green
- $22: coffee…5 drinks at Starbucks or liters or liters of cafe sua da?
- $51: Xe Oms, mainly because Brian and Dan don’t dare brave the rush hour motorbike traffic for their evening classes…nor do I blame them
- $93: Gas, repairs for Bonus Hog, totally legit DVD’s and Microsoft Office, and some cell phone recharges

So: + $1779 for November plus the $862 we had when the month opened.

$2641: We’re proving this can be done! Another month of this and we’ll be in great financial shape.

Note: all of these are group funds. It’s difficult to break these down by individual, because spending and earning patterns are so erratic. Brian didn’t work as many hours so he didn’t make as much as Rob or I (slacker!). Rob sunk his money into Bonus Hog, while Dan, Brian, and I paid a little less to rent motorbikes. Dan buys DVD’s; I buy fruit and donuts; Rob buys Avocado shakes. But it all evens out in the end – we’re in this together, and funds have to be communal to some degree. After all, we’re in a communist country, and you know what they say: When in Rome…

Having finally received my electric bill for November I can tell you how things stand financially after my third month in this bizarre experience.  Again, I’m not tracking my money in quite the same way as the field team, but this should paint a pretty good picture of what the difference in living expenses are like.

Housing: $500/mo. still.  This isn’t likely to change any time soon.

Utilities: $66/mo.  Since last month this number has literally doubled.  I’m expecting it to double again next month when the temperature drops even further (daily averages are in the 20s here).

Food: $58/mo.  Oh dear.  That’s less than one third of what I was spending on average as of last month.  It also works out to roughly $2/day.  The real secret is that I happened to buy a bunch of bulk items right at the end of October and then ate nothing but turkey for a solid week after thanksgiving, so my grocery bill was largely negated.  The only increase was in eating out: I have decided to start liking coffee, which I foresee becoming a financial burden in the long run.

Drinks: $188/mo.  Of course, what I gave up in my stomach I reclaimed in my liver.  It should also be noted that I lost 10 lbs in November (and for those of you who know me the pertinent question should be “from where?”).

Transportation: $0.  I still ride a bike.  It’s still a piece of shit.

Other: $13/mo.  I didn’t buy any more clothes this month (though I’m still on the lookout for a decent pea coat), or any luxury items/entertainment at all.  Some hardware to help insulate the house was about all I purchased in this category.

JS0 Expenses: $167/mo. (average of Sept. – Nov.)   I feel like it might be interesting to also track how much editing for JS0 costs me.  Since I’m all the way on the other side of the world it doesn’t make much sense for the field team to be handling procurement for my office.  I buy the hard drives, the networking gear, the cabling, and whatever else is necessary to keep my office afloat.  It doesn’t cost all that much (discounting the camera I use to capture tapes with and my laptop) but it might be nice to see where this number goes.

.

So, all told, I’m looking at roughly $1072/mo., now including JS0 business expenses (but still excluding my taxes).  Sustainable?  Maybe!

As September was closing, we had $1752 to our names. Unfortunately, the sources of our slow financial death continued unchecked, and money disappeared to fund coffee, food, drinks, transit, and accommodation.

It turns out that we get paid on the 4th of the month, which fell on a Saturday in the first week of October. So, we still had to wait until Monday to collect our meager paychecks.

We were prepared to open our wallets wide for this trip to Buon Ma Thuot, but as we mentioned, we didn’t spend a single Vietnam dong. This act of hospitality effectively saved us whatever money a normal weekend would have cost, plus $30 by consolidating all our gear into 1 room (with Dan) for 2 nights.

Accommodations were only $180 this week, while food was around $200. The small financial crisis of the week was renewing our VISA’s, which were set to expire on the 5th of October. We doubted Vietnam had the infrastructure to track us down, but we figured being illegal aliens in our first country would be a bad idea. So we dropped $240 to avoid deportation. With all of us having jobs, transit rose to $35. Finally, Rob, Brian, and I needed some new clothes for teaching, so 2 tailored shirts and 1 tailored pair of pants cost us $61.
All in all, the past week cost us $716.
We now have $1036, barely holding onto 4 figures.

Here’s how it broke down per person, for the week of September 29th to October 5th.

• $50 for food, about $10/day, which includes an ok breakfast ($1), coffees at a wifi cafe (3 * $1 = $3), lunch ($2), dinner ($2.50), and maybe 2 drinks after a day of stressful teaching ($1.50). Remember that food was free for the 2 days of Buon Ma Thuot. We still need to drive this number down.
• $45 for sharing our double rooms, which includes splitting the cost of only 1 room for 2 days.
• $60 for new VISAs and a small sense of security.
• $12 for transit, even with Bonus Hog, our new bike. Any given day could involve multiple trips to our school (about $.75 each) and trips to outside classes ($1.50).
• $17 for a tailored shirt.

So the week that ended with Buon Ma Thuot was about $184/person, still higher than we want and higher than projections.

It's Laundry Time!

In a former life I was fortunate enough to earn quite a bit of money; it was actually so much more than what I needed to cover my cost of living that I didn’t really keep track of how it was spent.  My financial goals these days are a little more focused.  Focused on breaking even, mostly.

Although I didn’t start this project with specific monetary guidelines in mind like the field team did, my accounting is pretty similar.  So while Matt catalogs the team’s expenses in South East Asia I intend to do the same in the American North East.

I don’t have an “initial fund” to reference so instead I’ll try to break my expenses down by month, starting with this average of September and October:

Housing: $500/mo. for my share of an apartment, which also includes the “Worldwide JS0 Production HQ and Distribution Office.”  Housing me in America costs almost as much as doing so for any four team members in Saigon.

Utilities: $34/mo.  I actually list this separately from housing because as we enter the winter months this number will become an indicator of when Brian needs to STFU about sweltering heat.

Food: $181/mo.  It might be useful to break this number down even further into groceries ($161
/mo.) and eating out ($20/mo.).  Check that out.  That’s $6/day, more than $2/day lower than the field team members are eating for in Vietnam.  And even that number is misleading: it includes an initial spending spree to buy bulk staple items when I first moved into this apartment and also accounts for (relatively) inedible purchases at the grocery store like mops and toothpaste.  Adjusted to account solely for food it works out to about $3.50/day.  There are more impressive ratios out there, but this might be as low as I can go for now.

Drinks: $119/mo.  What can I say?  I’m single for the first time since the Clinton administration, and there’s no Bia Hoi in Northampton.

Transportation: $0.  I ride a bike.  That I got for free.  It’s a piece of shit.  Actually, I might do a post about it later because it’s sort of like a “Bonushog Jr.”

Clothing: $169/mo.  I have been spending a lot on clothes recently for two reasons: 1.) it’s getting cold and I am skinny, and 2.) again, I have not really been single since 2002 (see above).  I think some wardrobe improvements were in order.  Besides, one can purchase a near infinite number of almost-fitting shirts from the Salvation Army on a pauper’s budget.

So, for a total of ~$1010/mo. (counting unlisted miscellaneous and not counting taxes or JS0 production costs) I’m living in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, one of the more expensive non-urban parts of North America.  I’m always trying to reduce this number but I’m especially curious to see how my efforts compare to future locations JS0 chooses to implant itself…

It’s time to make our accounting apparent. After all, one crucial thesis of this experiment is that these adventures are possible on a bare-bones budget. Frankly, It’s been a constant battle. As we’ve explained, a hefty savings would have been much more comfortable than a summer of grueling jobs and mimunum-wage living. The first weeks in Vietnam have been so hectic because Saigon made us sweat moisture and money at equal rates. Finances are another burden, another challenge, another one of those recurring crises people encounter in travel.
We’re trying to forge a path that others can easily follow, and money is the launch pad. So we’re weaving our fickle finances into our developing story – in essence, we need to prove the $0.00 in Jet Set Zero.

We left Seattle and landed in Saigon with $3859. Three months of labor had seen that money steadily accumulate, but our first month saw it rapidly melt.

Here’s our financial footprint so far:

$630 – Housing and accommodations for 3 weeks

$260 – Expensive trip to Nha Trang

$125 – Bonus Hog, but she’s a recent addition to our team…and yes, we bough, and are currently driving, a motorbike for $125

$672 – Food – 3 months of our summer nutrition-less food budget inspired a little financial recklessness our food spending, and we averaged about $8.50/person/day, including daily trips to wifi cafes. We love our hotel, but trying to do Jet Set work in those dark stuffy rooms just makes us yearn for cool temperatures, fresh air, and peaceful quiet, all of which are so abundant in Saigon… so we’re driven to local wifi cafes, which always involves opening and emptying our wallets.

$200 – Drinks – we haven’t yet figured out the cheaper watering holes, and we’ve had a couple epic party nights, though to be fair, a “bad night” drinking can set us back a whopping $30…

$45 – Transit – daily Xe Om (motorbike taxis) rides to/from work and big taxi rides (from drivers who liked taking long expensive excursions before dumping us off at our destination) are adding up pretty quick

$175 – miscellaneous get-yourself-set-up costs, including annoying banking withdrawal fees

So, we’ve spent $2107 so far, leaving us with $1752.

Seems ok, right? Unfortunately, we don’t get paid for another week and our teaching schedules are far from mature, so we don’t expect to pull in much money. At this point, we need to move to cheaper housing and find a way to stop leaking money at local cafes…
At the end of each week, we’ll post a financial report which follows the episode, telling you the poor, the bad, and the poverty of our travels.