We made a lot of good friends during our time in Vietnam, but one of the best and most unexpected was Thao Trang.  Trang was in one of our general English classes, and asked us for weeks to go to her shows.  It took us awhile, but by the time we finally made it we realized what we were missing.  Trang is an incredibly beautiful and talented singer that really opened her life to us and showed us what Vietnam and Saigon were like for her.  This video lets you hear about her life, singing, and friendship with Jet Set Zero in her own words.

This is the music video that closes out our first season in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Check out Episode 9, or start from the beginning.

We’re bringing you the second installment of our famous “Cribs” series, once again focusing on the Minh guest house. This episode showcases not only our luxurious accommodations, but also the dysfunctional relationship between Matt and myself. Enjoy.

As I explained before, we left concluded our 3 months in Saigon with $5,364. Now, we just had to get to Tokyo…here, our paths were to diverge: Rob would fly back to the U.S. for 3 weeks for important personal matters and join Brian and I in Tokyo in January. We knew we’d desperately need our cash from Vietnam to survive for awhile in Tokyo, so we decided that Rob would fund his flight ($1,400) and the money he spent while home ($500) on a credit card, to be paid off with future earnings. So Brian and I had to spend as little as possible relocating to and getting set up in Tokyo. Flights from Saigon to Tokyo were discouragingly expensive, but luckily we found a $510 round-trip flight from Bangkok to Tokyo, so our journey to Japan would take us through Thailand.

Originally, we were going to stay for a solid week in Bangkok to rest, relax, and ready ourselves for another 3-month sprint. However, this plan was quickly thwarted when protests shut down the Bangkok airport and our airline suddenly became unresponsive to our inquiries. For about a week, we thought we’d lose everything we’d spent, make our way to the coast, and start building a raft – effectively postponing Tokyo for Season 3 and making Season 2 the “Rafting the Pacific Ocean to Tokyo.” Luckily, all’s well that ends well: the airport opened up, flights were resumed, and we were able to enjoy just a couple days in Bangkok.

Here are our major expenses:

	2 Flights to Bangkok: $350 Budget airlines have incredible prices; they also have incredible weight restrictions for checked baggage. So we ended up bringing around 35lbs of carry-on luggage each. >
2 Flights to Tokyo: $1020 We had to haul all our luggage through security *again* but luckily most it went into the belly of the plane…
	Taxis: $35 Taxis in Thailand are slightly more expensive than in Vietnam. Also, farting was prohibited…
Housing: $35 4 people, 2 “double” beds, one cramped smelly room – ah, the money-saving hostel experience…
	Food and Drink: $60 The street food was delicious: Pad Thai, mango and sticky rice, chicken skewers, and grasshopper and cockroach. It’s pretty easy to eat well cheaply.
Cafes: $15 We still had to do some work, so we enjoyed some iced coffee, fruit shakes, and cheerfully fast internet.

All in all, getting from Saigon to Tokyo cost us $1,550, leaving us with $3,844 when we landed in Tokyo – not even $4,000 to survive the holiday season, secure jobs, and set up some kind of lifestyle in the second-most-expensive city in the world…

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 video brings to a close our series on the foods of our adventure so far.  Honestly Eating this was by far the most intense food experience of my life. 

Warning:  As we do eat the still beating heart of a snake this video is a bit graphic.

The saga continues…

There are a lot of great moments that just do not fit in our weekly episodes and some of those are just too awesome or traumatic to let go off.  Bryan has compiled a series of shorts that outline the culinary highlights of our time in Vietnam and Bangkok.  It turns out that never turning down adventure or local experiences and occasionally lead to less than pleasant results.  Enjoy.

We’ve got a look back at what life used to be like in Vietnam.  A short glimpse into what it was like to live in Ho Chi Minh, and our home there.  Housing in Vietnam had its own style, but one things for sure – it was cheaper than Tokyo.

In many ways, Hieu was our first solid friend in Vietnam.  We met him on our English-club foray, and he treated us to some unforgettable chapters throughout our 3-month stay.

First, he was the first to suffer patiently through my absent-mindedess and general ineptitude: when he learned that we were still looking for cell phones, he gave me an old Nokia phone…which I left in the cab on my ride back, losing forever a phone that had been in my possession for a total of 10 minutes.

Second, our LAN party.  Warcraft III in a cooled, crowded but clearly ramshackle internet cafe in Vietnam with friends?  That’s certainly not an experience from the guidebooks.  One of our theses is that our “international counterparts” probably live similar lives to us, and bonding over video games helped corroborate this.

Third, Hieu helped plan our trip to Dai Nam and served as a cultural guide, bringing to life our wanderings through the temple, the mountain replicas and the history of Vietnam arrayed in miniatures, and the 15 stages of hell.

Third, he introduced Rob and I to beef knuckles, fermented shrimp sauce, and boiled beef skin soup.  Apparently, “I know this great beef restaurant” means something a little different in Vietnam than in the US…but it was a great time, and it certainly expanded our palettes. 

Finally, he  taught me how to play Chinese Chess or Xiangqi, which can be seen played on sidewalks at 6am throughout the city.  Some of the pieces are reminiscent of Western chess, with a couple twists e.g. the “knight” (horse) can be blocked and the “king” (general) can’t move outside a little 9-space box .  I found most exciting addition to be the cannon, which captures by leaping over an intermediary piece to strike the next piece in its direct line of fire.  I actually wish I had a playing partner here in Tokyo =(

I think we would have spent more time with him, were it not for his 6pm – 6am work schedule at a landfill just outside of Saigon.  He works for a waste-management company, which currently processes most of the city’s trash.  I actually found it a fascinating topic – managing all the trash from the city is no small feat.  In many ways, the past 20 years have seen activity in Saigon rapidly outgrow public infrastructure.  Motorbikes have flooded streets once used to bicycles.  No solid wiring bring reliable internet anywhere in the city.  The street is usually an acceptable resting place for trash.  The gutters flood during and after a bout of rain, and a huge lake-like reservoir holds most of the city’s sewage and liquid waste…unfortunately, this reservoir rings half of District 1, in the middle of the city, making most journeys outside the city center a gauntlet run through heavy stench.  Needless to say, safe trash disposal will be a huge issue in the coming decade for Saigon, especially as pressure to develop a more eco-friendly city comes internationally and domestically.  But first, the trash simply needs a destination, and at the moment, landfills serve adequately. 

Well, anyway, LAN parties, general orientation around the city, discussions about the future of waste in Saigon – he was an essential ingredient to Vietnam and the underpinnings of Season 1.