He arrived in Vietnam 34 Years Ago! Why he left America for good.

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the Cost of Living a broad Pod,
we talked to Hal from Pittsburgh. He told me why
he believes it's safer and easier to raise his son
in Vietnam, what it was like to be one of
the first foreigners allowed to travel to Saigon thirty four
years ago, and how he bought a condo in Hanoi,
Vietnam that has tripled in value and this experience has
led to him living a culturally immersive life and building

(00:22):
a family in Vietnam. I'm Evana and you're listening to
the Cost of Living a broad Pod. For full interviews,
find us on YouTube at Cost of Living a broad Pod.
But before we get started, I just wanted to let
you know that if you're struggling with the cost of
living crisis and looking for a sustainable and affordable way
to relocate your life abroad, check out our resources, courses,

(00:43):
and community at cost of Living abroad dot com. When
you first passed through with a backpack twenty one years ago, so.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
First thirty four years ago, I thought it was magical.
I thought it was incredible. The lakes were beautiful, the
conical sun had, the whole thing was romantic for me.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Stuck in my head, and.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
It was part of the reason why I came back.
In two thousand and nine, when I was recently divorced
and looking to change things up, I was like, I
want to go back to Asia, and specifically I want
to go to Vietnam. You know, loving the place isn't
the same as living well there. Nobody invited me to
this country. I'm here as a guest.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
It's speaking thing.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yet speaking Vietnamese is the difference between existing, existing and
living in a place.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
You know, I'm not just existing in Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
I live here, but I was one of the first
foreigners in this country. You know, arriving in Hochiming City,
there were two hotels in the whole city where foreigners
were allowed to stay. I would go out to eat
pa and fifty people would gather around to watch me
eat fa. Obviously, if you end up having a relationship
with a Vietnamese person, whether it be a romantic relationship
or just a very close.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Friendship, you know, you're allowed to fall in love with people.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
By the way, That's part of travels, living anywhere. And
I think this maybe even truer as we get older,
you know, we become self contained, we become comfortable. I'm
in my six dies with a ten year old, but
I don't want to be so inward looking that I
ceased to be interested in where I am and vibrant.
And I think that a big part of YouTube for

(02:11):
me about Hell on Earth and the direction I want
to take it is simply to continue to force me
outside of myself, continue to force me into Vietnam been
passing laws to control some of the traffic, insanity. I
think those are all improving those things. So those are
the main negatives. Look, Vietnam suffers from over tourism. That's
just one of the huge places like Hoian, which used

(02:33):
to be wonderful, are intolerable to me. A Hazang luked
forget about that. And it was wild, man, it was
absolutely wild. I thought the country was beautiful, I thought
the food was great. I got sick like crazy because
the hygiene was not what it is now.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
By the way, I eat street food. You know.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Not eating street food in Vietnam is like going to
Paris and not eating at a bakery, and its well.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
So let's start. Nice to meet you. Welcome to the
cost of living in broad Pot. Why don't you introduce yourself.
Tell me how long you've been living in Vietnam, sort
of the basics, the backgrounds of who you are.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Well, my name is how I'm from originally from Brooklyn,
New York, Cuban American family, grew up speaking Spanish and English.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
I lived abroad. I've lived all over the place.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
I'm one of those people that's had a backpack on
since I was sixteen, figuratively and literally.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
I first came to Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well, actually, I first came to Vietnam in nineteen ninety
one as a backpacker when Vietnam was just beginning to
open up to the outside world, and it was an
extraordinary experience. Had a really amazing month traveling through the
country at that time, and it's sort of always stuck
in my head.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
And then two thousand and nine, fresh off of divorce.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
At that point, I had a house in Pittsburgh, so
I had relocated there. I hadn't been to Asia for
a while, and it was a good time to change things.
So now two thousand and nine, I moved to Hanois,
got a job in a language school as a manager.
I have a master's degree in education, and I've been
working in education and language teaching for thirty something years,
and as so happens, you know, you never plan these

(04:06):
things out, you know, I met a woman, we started dating,
and sixteen years later we're married.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
We have a ten year old kid and annoys our base.
So it's a it's one of those fortuitous I.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Think, a remarkably parallel story a little bit but a
different you know, maybe a ten ten year gap or
something like that.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Well, let's jump right into some of the costs of living,
basics and stuff, and then later we'll dive deep into,
you know, into the pros and cons and what brought
you to Vietnam, motivations, all those things. So let's let's
start with the basics, like how you'd start with your
day with a coffee, a breakfast, lunch, Like what your
sort of budget. I know you're living in the Tajo

(04:46):
sort of Westlake part, So what's the cost for breakfast, lunch,
and dinner, you know, every day or every month for
you and your family?

Speaker 3 (04:53):
Well, I should say that we eat at home most meals.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
We you know, one of the great things about Vietnam
is the street food as extraordinarily cheap as you know,
so I would say a few times a week I
go out for buncha or bound or gay in the
winter or.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Something like that.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
But for the most part, you know, I make my
breakfast at home. I've got a really nice home office
where I work. My wife is a really good cook,
and I am too.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
We both enjoy cooking.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
So so I would say that our expenses are pretty
low because of the fact that we're buying at grocery
stores and I make my morning coffee. I probably come
out to a cafe like this two or three times
a week. This isn't an every day and you know
how it is in Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
I mean I can.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Eat lunch for a dollar fifteen US and then the
coffee costs me two and a half dollars. You know,
there's so I talk about multiple there are multiple economies
in Vietnam. There's the basic Vietnamese economy. There's the sort
of middle class Vietnamese and working you know, middle class

(05:59):
Westerner economy, and then there's the rich people's economy, which
I dip in.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
I think it's nice to be able to dip into
all of them.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
We do go out to a more expensive meal, yeah,
maybe once a month once, you know, and that by expensive,
I mean fifty to eighty bucks for the family.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
But our daily expenses are really very little.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
My wife is the boss on all this, but I'd
be surprised if we're spending more than one hundred bucks
a week for a family of three, including our meals out.

Speaker 4 (06:27):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
And I think like, if it's one hundred bucks for
the sort of the groceries, the basics, the coffees, and
then you throw in maybe fifty bucks a couple times
a month, so you're thinking like maybe five hundred dollars
you asked for.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
That would be ballpark.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
I mean, my wife would be able to tell you
more precisely, but that's that's ballpark.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
All right.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
We're gonna do.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
We're gonna put up the five hundred dollars a month,
or maybe we'll match the Pittsburgh Pe. All right, So
what about I think that is sort of like the
miscellaneous monthly costs, whether it's like and this can be
like subscription stuff like whether you pay for Camba or
Adobe or some sort of software products, can be Netflix subscriptions,

(07:06):
like any of those sort of intangibles that come off
your card every month.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
And you know, we all forget about.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Well, I don't.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
I don't have any media subscriptions. I don't do Netflix
or Hulu or tub or any of those things.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
I only occasionally, you know, watch a movie. I do
a lot of YouTube, to be honest. Sure you like
hearing that. So that's I do pay for news a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
I pay for the South China Morning Post and the
New York Times, primarily for the for the cross Road.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
I'm a cross road addict, so I've got to do that.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
And I like their sports, the athletics, so yeah, other
miscellaneous things. I mean, we can we can spend We
spent about two hundred bucks a month on our house
for utilities utilities, and that's fairly pricey.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
But we have a big house, you know.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
So in the summertime where we're running the aircon, in
the winter time, we're running the heat.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Hanoi is one of the This is the first interview
for the series I've gone up north and Noi is
one of the few places in Vietnam where realistically you
do have to do that. You're gonna have both heating
and cool and lost because it has seasons.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah oh yeah, and and and the houses are are
not very well insulated, even though you know, I lived
in Pittsburgh, which is much colder than Vietnam. Ever gets
I think the way the cold gets into your skin
in Hanoi is quite different because you never quite thought
out for the you know, for the.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Winter you mentioned off camera Seattle. I think it has
that right, that like Pacific Northwest Seattle Vancouver vibe where
like it gets in your bones.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
Yeah, just free. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
And it's and it's you know, surprisingly gray too in
the winter. I mean it's you know, plenty of sunshine
and and you know, you end up like, you know,
the enemy is actually the heat. As you know, it's
the same in Danang. You know, the people people don't
freak out about cold here.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
It's the colds are relief.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
It's summertime when it's forty five degrees that that you know,
that's the enemy.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Well yeah, I mean my of the vast majority of
my time in Vietnam, the first five years were in
Ho Chi Minh. To me, one of the biggest bonuses
about moving to De Nang has been the climate. First
that it's cleaner air, yeah, and then on top of that,
it's cool. I'm wearing jeans, sweaters, like layered shirts, and
I just couldn't do that.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Even at work in ho Chiuman City.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
I ended up getting like, you know, short sleeve callers
made and everything, because like a shirt like this, you're
just like you're dripping.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Oh no. We went down to dena hangover just after Christmas, and.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, we had our we had our we had our
proper you know, proper coats on, especially for motorbiking around Nice.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
So okay, so we're saying like five hundred months for
food and BEV for a family of three, maybe twenty
bucks for the sort of more news space or like actual.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Two hundred bucks on utilities that I would include Internet
in that because internet's very cheap as you know, good
high speed. I require internet for my work, so I
have a dedicated line to my home office, which is
separate from what the family.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Uses, like an Ethernet or no, it's it's a separate router,
different router.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Nice and I just pay for that, you know sometime
what fourteen US dollars a month or something like that
for faster throughput than I ever got in the States.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Oh yeah, and I don't know Goshen's why. Yeah, So
five hundred and twenty two seven twenty. Well, let's talk
about like, do you do like monthly gym membership the
names you're taking your child.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
To recreation that kind of paying.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, okay, so Jim, I paid for a two year
membership that was about four hundred and twenty.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
Five US dollars for the entire two years.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
So I don't know that it doesn't actually come out
of my monthly expense.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
That's pre paid for two years. So what's yeah, there's
seventeen eight.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, my son we do pay for He does swimming
on Wednesdays and football soccer for the Americans, but you
know football, the kind you play with your feet is
on Fridays.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
And I can't remember what we're paying for that, but
it's not much, man. It's like, again, we pay for
the entire year up front.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
So I would say that what happens is around you know,
and this is with an elementary school child.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Around August, we have.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
A big old bucket of money that comes out of
our pockets and that sort of covers the year. He
does go to a private school. It's not a super
expensive school. It's the Cambridge program at Bin School. It's
a bilingual English and Vietnamese program, so he's getting educated
in both. That costs about six seven thousand US per year,
which is far less than your average international school. These

(11:29):
average these schools are twenty thousand plus a year. That
we can't We're not going to do that.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
We can't afford it. And I don't think it's worth it,
to be honest with you.

Speaker 4 (11:36):
No, I don't.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
I mean, I'm not going to talk trash about my
former employer. But the senior in general is it's unregulated,
and I have talked about this in other videos with
other people. It's regulated, so you end up having tuition fees.
You end up having tuition fees that are basically the
same as in Hong Kong and Singapore. But the pay
and the sort of cost of living here is a
fifth or maybe even a seventh of that, right, And

(11:57):
so it's not the level or quality of education. It's
not paying teachers either. Teachers here don't get paid with
the paid right, they don't get paid with their pad
and singamore. So so five hundred bucks a month for
a good education bilingual, I mean, I'm I know, I've
been school familiar with it.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Yeah, that's good. That's a good price, I'd say.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
I'd say it's fine, you know, and it's less and
all than it's you know, less than than. Yeah, as
I said, these other schools are often more than what
you would even spend in the US for private Oh.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, they're two or three thousand dollars US a month,
and they're really us we're not, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
And also, you know, just for elementary school, I think
one of the biggest goals for elementary school is just
getting kids to like education, just getting them to value that.
And both my wife and I have master's degrees, so
we're an educated household. We're readers where we talk around
about things in the house. My son's fully involved, so
we figure we're covering a lot of his education just

(12:48):
through just through his home life and as long as
he enjoys school, as.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
Long as he's getting through the basics.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
But yeah, we wouldn't do the Vietnamese public schools because
I think they're not quite at a standard yet I
would want for my care.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, we had a preschool issue with you know, everything
about the school was lovely, except for the fact that
they're basically doling out corporal punishment. I mean, they weren't nasty,
but it was like, you know, just in a way
that was Oh, that's it's taboo, right, Yeah, that's not okay.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
Okay, let's jump into transportation class. We're going find moving quick.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
Yeah, you know your stuff. I love it, so do you.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
It's going to be public transit. There is sort of
public transit now in Hanoi. Taxis are car service. If
you guys own a bike, rent a bike, if you
take grabs, sm whatever.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
You're going, Well, we've got so I'm still renting a
bike now. I should say I've only been back in
Vietnam about nine months at this point, a little over
nine months. I intend to buy an electric motorbike because
I'm all about electric Hanoi. The not that electrics are perfect,
but in Hanoi, as you know, the air quality has
been the big, you know, one of the big negatives
of this town. Since since electric cars and bikes became

(14:00):
more ubiquitous, the air quality has improved tremendously. So has
a way to go, But compared to four years ago,
I can already see that better. So sort of guide
a lot of what our transportation choices are. So at
the moment, I'm still renting a motorbike. It's about forty
US dollars a month. It's a gas but I hardly
use it. That's one of the nice things about my

(14:21):
lifestyle and being self employed working from home is I
if I ride twice a week to go to some
cafe or restaurant, that's plenty.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
And I'll go joy riding too. You know, my wife
takes taxis twice a week.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
She's going down to Vins School to pick up my
son after his extracurriculars. And you know, taxi from Vins
School from Times City to our host houses five dollars
US for about ten kilometer ride.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
We do also probably pay a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
We like, Saysang, the electric taxi fleet, and so again
for the same reason as we said earlier.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
We'd rather Is then than than Grab or my Ling
or one of those.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Other They're gaining market share, right, I know, yeah, big
time Go Go Jack exited Vietnam a few months ago
last year sometime, and they had about twenty percent of
the market share.

Speaker 4 (15:12):
And I know that I'm gonna pronounce wrong, Sang.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
They gobbled up a bunch of that and I think
they've actually cut a deal with my Lin Taxi too,
but they're definitely they're aggressively growing.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
And it's it's it's Vietnam's billionaire. He's the guy that
you know, he's behind vin Fast, vin Holmes, vin Mark,
vin Ai, you know, his his everything, vin Is is
him and uh and he's well connected and he's got
a reputation for getting stuff done. So he's the one
who's also behind the you know, the Hanoi is in

(15:44):
the process of converting all of their buses to electric
and that those are all going to being his electric,
his vin Fast.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
The fleet is fleet, yeah, and they're and they're making
I had a friend a few years ago when I
was still rock climbing regularly in cap and she was
a Spanish engineer working on the production line at at
the Infast in Hifung.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
So it's I mean, it's.

Speaker 4 (16:08):
They're all in on that.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
They're they're all in on electric vehicles.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
And also I think on on basically you know, not
copying but mimicking or doing something parallel to China where
they're they're creating a domestic market, right. The ultimate plan
for those in fasts and stuff, it's just supply Vietnam.
If they export them, great, all the better. But it's
very clear that you know, with over one hundred million
people here now you know, the tariff announcement stuff yesterday.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
It's bad. But long term, long term, getting long term
Vietnam is all about.

Speaker 4 (16:37):
It's going to be all about Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah, and look that that was something that maybe the
tariffs will even accelerate that because that's something that Vietnam
was already planning. And rightfully, it's one hundred million people,
as you said, highly educated, increasingly large middle class. That
does push that does push inflation, that does push prices up,
so cost of living does rise, but it's still a
fraction of what I spent in the US man.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
I mean, it's well, yeah, when we will we get
your total? I like to do that to sort of
do the comparison, even if it's just a rough one. Sure,
so would you say maybe forty for the motorbike and
maybe another sort of forty to sixty a month on
SASAYG and taxis not that much, not even so Le'll
say seventy five.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
A month for yeah, go ahead and round it to
eighty bucks shred on transport.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Eighty bucks on transport. So I think we're our total
is like around thirteen hundred or something. What about this
is something that's going to be possibly similar for the
two of us, but different from most people watching. Any
travel you do or any sort of visa and travel
related costs, I have no no.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
I'm married into the culture. I have a five year
residency through marriage. I don't work technically work in Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
I work.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
I have a business in the United States. I work
with international clients that pay into my US bank account.
We do money transfer, so we do lose any bit
on that on fees and exchange rates. But but basically
because I don't have any complications in Vietnam, I'm simply
married in.

Speaker 3 (18:05):
My wife handles my visa and she sponsors my visa
in every five years I think I need to do.

Speaker 4 (18:10):
Yeah, it's like three or five years or something.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
I don't even think about it.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
It's maybe two hundred dollars every five years. It's a
pretty low.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Cost, whatever my wife says it.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
I know, you have a house, so we won't really
talk about rent. But let's say, let's ballpark what it
would be the average in Hanoi, I think is about
twenty million dong for a three bedroom. I look this
up on Rimeo, which is eight hundred. You asked roughly
for a three bedroom. Do you think in Tahoe would
rent places be sort of similar to that or they

(18:43):
higher the lower?

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Well, I don't know apartments other than Time City, so
I should, I.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Should Time Cities that I used to live. Yeah, so
we own a condo in Time City. Okay, so we
actually bought that for and I can give you some
money around that. We bought that for about one hundred
and thirty thousand US bucks. Paid cash in Vietnam. It's
not mortgages. You know, people don't finance things like the
rates are very high.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah, we we just paid cash.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
We had it from another house sale that I had
owned a house in Pittsburgh. So we paid one hundred
and thirty thousand in twenty seventeen or something like that.
And it's close to three hundred thousand already, so in
eight years it's you know, it's it's just an astoundingly
good investment. We don't live there because I just don't
want it. We did live in Time City before. I
don't want to live in an apartment building. It's not

(19:29):
what I came to Vietnam for. Man and we don't
rent it out because we in our situation, we have
elderly aunts and uncles that come and they swim at
Times City. They love Time City because you know, these
are people who lived through war and famine and you know, poverty,
and to them, you know, wow, Singapore and Vietnam, this

(19:50):
is better than they could have ever believed. So we
love having our house as a place where our family members,
especially our elderly family members, can go rest, you know,
use the low local facilities. So that's simply sitting there
accruing value. We spent about one hundred bucks a month
on that as for utilities, and that's really just not
part of our regular cost of living, so I didn't

(20:11):
include it before.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, I would say, you know, what we have is
bigger than what you described.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
It's a four bedroom, three story villa with really nice
garden space and outdoor terrace and big kitchen, living room.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Three bathrooms.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
And what you described as the average for a three
bedroom apartment is about what we're paying for that villa.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
It's in that range of what we're paying.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
For the Yeah, so if we're i'd say the ballparking
number though that that cost would be whatever twelve hundred
bucks a month for housing or something like that. We
do the total up, we'll say that, we'll say about.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Twenty five hundred. That sounds like the high end.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
That sounds high.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
That sounds yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
That's one of the things I've found interesting though, is that,
I mean, we'll talk about this in a second, two
twenty five hundred is realistically probably high and to live
in one of the major cities in the country to live, well,
it's probably close to what my wife and I paid
with their kids when we lived in Hochiu Min When
we were living sort of we were liveing in an
older building, so it wasn't like like Time Square or

(21:14):
Time City is like that's one of like the brand
new develop Yeah, all the amenities, all the everything, right,
So we were living in an older sort of like
Singapore style to I think Singapore built Fumi Hung Corp.

Speaker 4 (21:26):
Place.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
You know, it had a pool and maybe like a
weight room, but not sort of the everything. And we
live really nicely in a really nice suburb of ho
Chiumen City for twenty five hundred bucks a month. What
would you think roughly the comparison to Pittsburgh would be
if you were to oh.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
I'm paying less than half, and Pittsburgh is less than
is half of New York City. So I mean, you know,
Pittsburgh is already one of the cheapest cost of living
cities in the US. And I would say in Hanoi,
where half of what we were paying in Pittsburgh less
than half when we're paying. We also don't have car insurance,
car payments, we don't have health insurance, and the same we.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Don't have the nickel and diming that you get.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
And then there too, you know, even your basic subscriptions,
your utilities. You know, we're paying over one hundred bucks
on water per month or in Pittsburgh, So you know,
there's just no comparison.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
We're living and we have a higher quality of life
all around here in.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
Hann only do you do health insurance here? Do you
just pay out a pocket.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
So far, I keep thinking about it because I'm sixty one, man,
I'm getting there, you know, so I keep thinking I
should at least have catastrophic and something like that. But
so far, everything that's come up we've paid out of pocket.
We go to again the hospital what do they call it, Yeah, VNMEC,
which is again top end hospital Singapore and Australian foreign

(22:48):
educated educated doctors and many many of them, most of
them are English speaking. And you know, everything we've had
to deal with has been really reasonable over the years
I've had. I had a motorbike accident a bunch of
years ago. I had a big old injury injured cosix,
which was no fun that didn't require much other than
pain killers. My son has had some dental work. I

(23:09):
had some dental.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Surgery too, a bunch of years ago.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
It's just, you know, you see how ridiculous the American
insurance system is because you know, you pay what what
do you.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Pay for an MRI in the United States, Like maybe
over a thousand bucks.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Here's like I think it was like one hundred and
fifty bucks to one hundred because that's the actual cost
of an MRS.

Speaker 4 (23:27):
It's actual cost.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
It's so tough too, that's and this is something that
I know aggravates people in the comments. There's certain things
that are so baked into your way of thinking. I mean,
Canadians are literally, I think the only people more insured
than Americans. And it's really hard to just tell someone
like I had an archostropic knee surgery fifteen sixteen months
ago now at the French hospital Hochiman City. I happened

(23:49):
to have some insurance from work, but it was like
my work insurance kicked in six hundred. I kicked in
six hundred, was twelve hundred all in, And it's like,
what I mean, why would you pay it too at
allar a month premium, that's a pretty major thing, right,
I mean I literally blew out my knee, like, yeah,
ideally it's a once in a lifetime surgery.

Speaker 4 (24:07):
And it was I easily could have afforded, you know,
could have just paid for the play.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
And I've had friends who have you broken an arm,
broken something here in the States, both Vietnamese and foreigners,
and it's the same. I mean, you just go ahead
and pay for it out of pocket if you're middle class,
which presumably anybody who can afford to relocate to a
different country is going to be that. And you know
it's not even a super high income requirement, just to

(24:35):
be able to bank on your savings being able to
cover a lot of what your medical costs might be.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
Well, let's segue then into your job, your work, your company,
because this is something people are always curious about of course, right,
how do you make money living abroad?

Speaker 2 (24:48):
I'm an instructional designer or what is that? I design
instruction just like it sounds. Basically, I started off as
an English teacher in Korea. In nineteen ninety one, I
got into content developed. I been writing English language tests
and curricula for course books and things like that. Then
around nineteen ninety five I pivoted into online and you know,
I've been right. I've been creating online coursewhere since you know,

(25:11):
nineteen ninety five, ninety six. I'm a grandfather in that field.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
I'm still up today.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
I use AI extensively for curriculum development and content development.
But I'm working with a company based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
It's another whole head trip in this day and age,
but it's an international company that creates English language teaching testing.
You know, It's just they operate in all kinds of markets.

(25:35):
My immediate bosses in Athens, Greece. My main partnerships are
with New York City and London. You know, I'm on
the phone, I'm on zoom all the time with like,
you know, five different countries and that's pretty fun. But basically,
the upshot is I do mine my hours. I work
about a forty hour week. I do you know a
tract that I get paid a salary and so it's

(25:56):
not actually contingent on my hours.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
It's just it's a salary job.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
I mean, I'm really good money for Vietnam. I make
what would be good in the US, but it's great
and the great here. So that ends up going into savings.
That ends up also really going to travel. Travel probably
takes up most of our discretionary income because that's something
I want my son to have. I want him to
grow up globally. You know, he had ten stamps on
this passport by the time he was three years old.

(26:21):
So you know, we're going to spend two weeks in
Japan this summer. Next to next Christmas heartbreak, We're going
to go to Oman in the Middle East. You know,
we popped down to Singapore, up to Hong Kong, all
these different places and of course all around Vietnam. So
our discretionary income gets used for that. Obviously, if I
was a gazillionaire, I wouldn't I'd be retired by now.
But you know, I got to sing for my supper,

(26:42):
and I at least enjoyed the song.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Tell me about you just moved back nine months ago.
You brought your family from Vietnam to Pittsburgh. Tell me
what the motivation originally to go to America and now
to come back to Vietnam as it were.

Speaker 4 (26:58):
And yeah, and I'm very curious. That's a process.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
We didn't do this by the I mean to be
honest with you, the last few years handed us. I'm
going to say, you're going to bleep this out. The
last few years handed us a giant shit sound. What
happened was right around to twenty twenty, two thousand and
nine to two thousand and thirteen, ISH lived in Hanoi.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
That's where I met my wife, you know. And so
sort of the end of twenty.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
Twelve, we went back to the States because I owned
a house in Pittsburgh and I wanted to get back
to and I just missed the States. And also she
wanted to live there. She had never lived in the States.
She's you know, her boyfriend's an American. So let's try it,
you know. So we went back there, she got a
master's degree. We stayed there a few years. My son
was actually born in the US in twenty fifteen. Then

(27:43):
frankly Trump got elected in twenty seventeen. We thought that
was in twenty sixteen. Right at the beginning of twenty seventeen,
we thought this was a great time to come back
to Vietnam. We sold our house in Pittsburgh, we bought
the condo we had extra money left over, and we
lived for a few years in Time City in the condo.
Twenty twenty, just right towards the end of the COVID

(28:04):
stuff on the you know on calls with my mom
in the States, it was becoming pretty obvious that she
was declining cognitively.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
One of those.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Situations I did in retrospect, I would have preferred to
just fly there and check it out. But I think
we all felt like, let's go try to live with
Grandma for a bit. So we moved to Santa Fe,
New Mexico, which is where my mom was. Didn't work
out well other than we got her into an assisted
living there she desperately needed. We couldn't take care of
her if she was beyond our abilities. Remommed her house,
sold her house to take care of her expenses. Basically,

(28:36):
at that point we were at should we go back
to Vietnam. Should we stay in the States. And we
both love Pittsburgh and we really do, so we were like,
let's give.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
It a go.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Let's see this is about twenty twenty two now twenty
twenty one, twenty two, and we're like, let's let's give
Pittsburgh another try, and we went there. I still love
the city, you know, and I spoke this in one
of my videos that you know, loving place isn't the
same as living well there. You know, we just you know,
then my wife's mother got sick here and we just

(29:06):
had a giant bunch of family stuff. It became obvious
we would have been we would have actually come here
even faster, except that my son was in school for
the school year, so we waited for the end of
his third grade school year and then just high tailed
it out.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
I mean, make this very simple.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
If every time we've you know, I've lived in Vietnam,
it's gotten longer and longer. Every time I've lived in
the States, it's gotten shorter and shorter. You know, With
a nine ten year old kid, we don't want to
keep moving him back. I think, especially as he gets
into adolescents, it's more important for him to have his
own social circles that aren't so connected to mommy and daddy.
We don't want to mess with that. We want him
to mature into his own space. And so we had

(29:49):
to pick one. And we lived so much better here,
and it's ridiculous. Part of the lore also, I should say,
and this is important, is my wife has a big,
beautiful family. You know, and you probably know what this
is like, you know the the you know, I say,
these are words that normally don't go together, large, psychologically healthy,
loving family.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
Huh. So you know, they're really beautiful people. I love them.
They love me, They've accepted me from the very beginning.
They love my kid.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
He's got cousins and aunts and uncles and that whole
extended care. That's just not happening in the US right now. Man,
That's just it's not happening with my family. It's not
happening with my family. And just culturally people, you know,
as kids go through adolescents, they individuate in a very
different way in the States, and here, you know, the
individual individuate as well, but they still stay connected to

(30:44):
the can, to the tribe. And I think that's much
that's just psychologically a lot healthier. These kids strike me
as psychologically healthier than the kids in the States. And
I part of the reason was I want my kid
to grow up with that kind of social environment than
rather than what I was seeing him growing up in Pittsburgh.
And we had great friends in Pittsfer. He had great friends,

(31:04):
we liked. Like again, this is not dissing Pittsburgh, but
on the balance, I'd rather my kid grow up Vietnamese.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
I have a real we're going through a very intense
period right now because my parents amazingly still come here
for winters. They think this is probably the last time
they're going to do it. A father's seventy nine. They're
both cancer survivors, living in cancer. But the big thing
for us, and the break that spurred us to go
from Ho Chi Minh and tried Tony because my wife's psychony,

(31:31):
she's been in psychon for thirty one years, is that
my brother in law, Sigonese brother in law lives in
Atlanta and does it and the way the familiar connections
work here my parents in law, I've moved to Atlanta.
Oh great, which is I mean, we're very nervous. It's
like this is it year one for them in America.
We're super nervous and excited for them, and I hope

(31:53):
it works. They have a grandchild over there now.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
But for us, a cool city, you know, Atlanta actually,
I mean it's a very it's a very ethnically mixed city.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
It's got a really good, good culture, cultural mix.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
I think, you know, I am concerned about I am
concerned about raising a mixed race child in the United
States now with you know, the environment and all the
you know, frankly white supremacy. But I think I would
feel better in Atlanta because it's very black, it's very
just mixed.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Well, there is a Vietnamese community, and there's a Vietnamese
their their son, like my brother in laws, he's established
in the Vietnamese community there. So that part of it
I do feel okay with knowing that my mother in
law can't speak English at all, is at least going
to be you know, in a community where she's got.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
The Southern accent too, which is going to help her.
And you know the odd thing my wife with.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, right, no, she goes to Atlanta because all the
all the yet giel, all the yet expats in the
US generally come from the South, you know, because obvious
seventy five.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
You know.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Interestingly enough, when when we go to the States, my
my wife's northern accent sometimes causes struggle, you know, some
of the old folks especially they hear the enemy, you know,
and and so you respect that, you don't put that
in your face. But for your parents in law, you know,
they're going to fit in better in a Vietnamese community
in the States than we would have.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Yeah, that's an interesting, interesting insight, and for sure it's true.
I mean, I'm just hopeful for them. Obviously it's a
tense climate right now. We're worried about them, they're older.
But I do think it's what you were speaking to
your family connections here is that the community and the
relationship networks tend to be familiar based and not friendship based,
right where so that I think in the West a

(33:32):
lot of what we expect. Now, do you have a network,
Do you have a support system you ever you think
to like your high school friends or like the people
you went to college with or something, right this idea
that you know you can sort of and it's not purchase,
but right wherever you went to sort of your school
you said you went to the school in the Pacific Northwest.
I went to UBC for a bit, and it's like
that idea that that's there your people as opposed to

(33:54):
your blood relatives, whereas here it really is that like
it's deeply generationally connected. Absolutely know that, I'm sure you
felt the same way when you had a child. You're
literally now a part of your family.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Oh oh yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
And and you know if ennemies don't have the concept
of in law in the same way that that we
do in the West. I mean, once you're married into
the family, you are son, brother, uncle, nephew. You know
that this is it's one hundred percent integration in the family,
and it so happens, and that carries with it obligations.
You know that certainly means that I have to go
to the all the death anniversaries, I have to do,

(34:29):
you know, doing debt, I have to be a good
host when the family comes and visits. I frankly love
all that stuff. I totally embrace it. I try to
be as committed to those Vietnamese traditions and you know,
family rituals as I can be. And it's it's easy
because I happen to love my family, So that's it's
it's a great it's yeah. And also being a traveler

(34:52):
my whole life. You know, my best friends on the
planet are in New York, Seattle, Morocco. You know, I
have friends and I have friends in Cambodi and Latin
America and you know, all over Europe. So it's not
like I have a cluster of friends to go back to.
I'm never going to have that social scene like I

(35:13):
did in college.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
I think too, we should extend on that further. When
you're saying you're literally son, brother, mother, you're also talking
about ting viet right, You're talking about the language and
the pronouns used. So why don't we segue into the
question about over the years, because for you, this is
maybe a question that goes all the way back to
nineteen ninety one. How has the language very affected you?
How have you acclimatized, accommodated, learned, incorporated everything.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
When I came to Vietnam in two thousand and nine,
I immediately entered University jun dehlp Maqua and de gooviet
and I did two years of language study at the state.
You know, within a couple of months, I also had
a Vietnamese girlfriend who spoke excellent English.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
I mean we met in an English teacher English speaking company.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
But she was great because she was like, I speak
English all day when I when I when I hang
out with my boyfriend, I don't want to speak English anymore.
You better speak Vietnamese. So, you know, she pushed me
to improve my thing. Yet I read the newspaper. I
read things in Vietnamese in order to keep my language
skills going. I'm not, by no means am I able
to express the intellectualism that I can in English or Spanish.

(36:20):
I'm also a native Spanish speaker, but I'm very you know,
my Vietnamese is really good. Case in point a few
weeks ago, I went motorbiking around Macho and I was
talking with farmers about you know, what are you growing?
How many harvests do you have a year? How's the soil?
Do you need to add fertilizer to it? You know,

(36:40):
what do you do with these things? You know, do
you use the whole part of the plan for different purposes.
I was able to have those conversations without Google Translate,
so that that gives me a real and as you
said in the family connections. Of course, that gives me
a real insight into the place where I live. You know,
I for me, it's speaking thing. Yet speaking Vietnamese is

(37:04):
the difference between existing and existing and living in a place.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
You know, I'm not just existing in Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
I live here, and it's very comfortable for me to
code switch for me, the language switch everywhere I go.
And again, you know, I'm not perfect in the language
by any means, but comfortable enough to be comfortable.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
And that's uh. I think that's really important.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
And I and I see so many Westerners who don't
do that, and I don't get it, because to me,
it's what there is to do.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
Learning the language is what there is to do, you know,
It's like what else are you going to do?

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Man, You're gonna learn the food, You're gonna learn the
language're gonna learn the history. You're gonna learn this stuff.
This is and it's such a endlessly fascinating country. So
I'm totally boned up on the history and totally boned
up on you know, all the different on modern politics,
modern government stuff like that. I mean, I'm I really
like this is a important part of living in a place.

(38:03):
I experienced far fewer barriers, and I think my general
comfort level is much higher because I can do everything
in Vietnamese.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
Okay, I got a good follow up question, and now too,
I'm getting into the space where I think I'm slightly
either envious or admirer in both.

Speaker 4 (38:18):
Probably.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
What about in your household? Are you speaking with your
child team? What's the language?

Speaker 3 (38:23):
English? Mostly? My wife?

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yeah, our home language is English, although my wife speaks
Vietnamese with my son quite a bit.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
He's fluently bilingual.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
But of course whenever family comes over, which is quite often,
then we switch to Vietnamese. We become Vietnamese speaking household
often enough. But our natural language, our relationship language, is English.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
And that's fine.

Speaker 4 (38:45):
Yeah, yeah, that's fair. I mean, it's that's how my
household is.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
And I this is odd to say, but in some
ways I think I was a better Vietnamese language learner
before I got married, or before I really became seriously
involved with my wife, because we did then become like
an English household as soon as we started living together.
Whereas when I was spending for myself, I found necessary,
needed mandatory right like to incorporate just even just learning

(39:11):
basics like reading menus and reading signs and asking for
help and those types of things where I think, in
some ways I've been able to become lazy with my
language learning, you know, by using my wife as a crutch,
or by just being insular, right and.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
Just let it.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
I'll tell you one thing I do one way, I
hack that, because that's that's certainly I know that I
know the feeling. You know, I use her for for
as my Vietnamese teacher all the time. I read the paper,
so I'll read yesterday, I was reading about the tariffs, right,
and tariff they just got announced yesterday, and so you know,
m clay and all of this vocabulary is coming in,
and I'm talking to my wife, you know, you know,

(39:44):
and I'm asking her based on what I'm reading. You know, now,
can I say this? Can I say if I want
to say business culture, if I want to say blah
blah blah, you know, and there's so many nuances to
the language that you know, she's able to kind of
scratch her.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Head and like, you know, why do we say that?
Say this? You know?

Speaker 2 (40:00):
So I end up because I'm reading and then asking
her about what I've read, she ends up giving me
Vietnamese instruction.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
Kind of every day. To be honest with you, just
about every morning around coffee time, I'm like, you know,
I read this in the Vietnamese paper. Is this how
you say this? That and the other thing? And she'll
be like, well, yes, but no, the way you said
it is not right, and she'll give me a lot
of correction.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Not that I'm going to go around talking about the
you know, Trump's tariffs and the economy with everybody, but
it's it's there in my head. It's that kind of
passive knowledge that allows me to then go motorbiking somewhere
and talk to farmers about, you know, soil quality.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
It's just it's there. But she helps me a lot
with that. Yeah, I make her do it.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
So your like love and passion for this place and
her noise, like it's very self evident. It comes off
of you, the way you speak, your ambulance. But I'm
curious what are the you know, obviously you clearly do
still love America and Pittsburgh because you talk romantically about
it as well.

Speaker 4 (41:00):
So let's hear what are some of the I don't.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Want to say cons necessarily, what are some of the
drawbacks you find as an American living in Annoi and
living in Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Well, the surface level stuff is the pollution and the traffic.
I mean, those those are well known urban problems. They
are getting better. I think Vietnam is at a point
in its development. It reminds me of Mexico City, another
city that I absolutely love. That in the nineteen eighties,
I could I couldn't spend more than three days in
Mexico City because the air quality was so poor. Well, they,

(41:30):
you know, through government policies and through through better infrastructure development,
they've improved that. Now. You know, you go to Mexico
City and it's you know, the air quality is not fantastic,
but it's relatively good. It's fine like any city in
the world basically, And I think Hanoi's just had to
go through that as well. And four years ago the
air quality was worse than it is today. It's still

(41:51):
not great today, but I'm very bullish on where. You know,
I think the government knows that it's a problem. They're
taking proactive steps. All the electric vehicles, as I mentioned,
I think in a few year more years, it's going
to be much better. So they're also improving the transportation infrastructure.
They've been passing laws to control some of the traffic insanity.

(42:14):
I think those are all improving those things. So those
are the main negatives. And if you have a job
that requires you to actually trans travel, so I'm very
fortunate that I don't have to commute. When I commuted
in Hanoi in the past, my stress levels were higher.
So I'm very very conscious of the fact that I've
got a luxury there.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Those are the main negatives.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
As far as other negatives, I mean, yeah, you know, look,
there's certain I'm not going to talk politics because I
take it as nobody invited me to this country. I'm
here as a guest, and there are certain things that
happen in this country that I have opinions about, but
I don't feel it's my standing to voice those opinions.

(42:57):
It's the same as if you know I'm best friends
with you and your family. I go to your house
for dinner and your family starts having an argument. I'm
not going to interject in that because you all may
love me.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
I may love you, but I don't have standing.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
I'm not really in the family, and I see my
role in Vietnam the same way I like Yetam's foreign
policy quite a bit. I think that creates a real
security for us here. The fact that they're not aligned,
they have no military alliances, that no foreign bases on
Vietnamese soil, and you know that, you know, as the
world is bifurcating, I think this is a good place

(43:30):
to be.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
But there's other things that happen in Vietnam that, you know.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
The corruption doesn't hit me every day, but once in
a while you just have to grit your teeth and
bear with it.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Yeah, I mean I've had that too, where Like it's
so funny to push back on the sort of world
of YouTube, right, Whereas if I don't make videos about
the sort of common too risk ams, I have viewers
who are American and Canadians asking me about those things
I asked me to make them, So then I do
make them, and then there's this kind of pushback that's like, oh,
you're a total moron. How could you fall for SCA

(44:00):
It's like, well, you know, it's a story from six
years ago, or it's a story from a friend of
a friend.

Speaker 4 (44:04):
It's no.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
But also let's let's let's talk about that. I mean,
I think ninety nine percent of the trail. Look, Vietnam
suffers from over tourism. That's just one of the huge
places like Hoian, which used to be wonderful, are intolerable
to me. Hasang Loop forget about that. You know, noticen't
what you want to be part of a motorcycle gang
that goes into that destroys every small village you ride into,

(44:25):
you know.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
No.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
So so what ends up happening is you have ninety
something percent of all travelers to Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
They do the same goddamn trip trip. They start in Saigon.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Maybe they do the ho Chi Ming, maybe they do
the Mekong Delta, they do the Kuchi Tunnels. Maybe they'll
do Nachan, they'll do Hoi An, then they'll do maybe
they'll do Huey. They'll bypass the Nang then they'll go Hanoi.
They'll only stay in the Old Quarter. Then they'll go
to Halong Bay, maybe Sappa, maybe Hazang Loop. You know,
and they'll leave and they're like, oh I got scammed
and it was a you know, yeah, because that's because

(44:55):
you spent six weeks in Kankun.

Speaker 4 (44:57):
Yeah, Niagara falls right right.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
It's like, you know what the hell you went. You
went to the tourist shops and people scammed you. What
a shock, you know, And certain things are worth saying.
I think it's worth, you know, seeing some of what
I just described. But but don't just make that your whole.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
Trip, because you won't. You're not really seeing Vietnam, you know.
Same thing with Danang.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
There's a whole there's whole sections of Danang that I
don't go to very much because it's all it's you
go to a restaurant and they don't even have Vietnamese
language menus.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Well, it's all it's all for the foreigners.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
There's literally, in literal pilance is called Antun Tourist walking
district and it was a pile of sand twelve years
ago or something, right, And it's that's an interesting one
that obviously the audience is approachable. It is probably if
they come to Danang the first place, they'll sort of
land or get acclimatized. But then in this other way,

(45:47):
it's it's very odd because it's it's entirely for tourists,
but tourists then complain about get it getting sort of
over touristy, But it serves no other purpose, right, I
mean there's and Danang has an international airport for tourists.
Like all the infrastructures been as a as a relative
sort of new arrival to d Nang. This whole sort
of discussion of it fascinates me because it's like, well,

(46:08):
what else I mean other than it being fishing.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
Village prior, Like, all of this infrastructure is built an entire.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Tourist yeahs a very new city, so it's not doesn't
have the history of the Hanoi.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
And and the locals all live riverside too, they all
live in I chose. So this idea that like the
sort of beachside ocean part of d Nang is going
to be over touristy, it's like, well, what what like
in a real literal way, like.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
And there's that whole area which is also touristic, but
it's still is you know, that's also a Vietnamese tourists
go there.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
Yeah, the part they any less touristy than westerns.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
No, No, no, no, not not not that.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
But look, you're right, you're in a beach resort. Yeah,
but I still think that you know, frankly, I think
staying in the middle of town is really kind of
interesting in Nang.

Speaker 5 (46:51):
You know, it's it's you know, it's it's a it's
it's it's still has a lot of authenticity, still has
a lot of Vietnamese cultures there are you leave the
leaf Cantcu and that's all I gotta say.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
Just just get outside the terrorists.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
I will say, like in recent memory, you know, aside
from the sort of very sort of first when I
was naive off the plane in Ho Chi Minh and
that sort of first six months I was here, I
probably went to boy Van and had a couple of
bad experiences in boy Van, which, as you say, boy
Van is built to have bad experiences. I had one
or two bad experiences in Joian this summer right after

(47:26):
we relocated, and it reminded me of like I used
to live in Mexico for a long time. What part
of Mexico, first in Ju and then is one of
my favorite places on earth.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
Man University, that.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
One of the in Mexico, Mexico and the jar.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
It's incredible.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Yeah, that was my I was my first teaching English
abroad job four dollars an hour, but Man Man that
I love.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
It was in the language center at the university.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Of and I've stayed there for two years, and then
I went to Mexico City because you know, because it
is I lovefa Man and then I and then is
has swallowed me up. But I mean it's in my
mid twenties, a different time now.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Deaf is just it's it's a dynamic, amazing city. It's
it's one of my favorite cities on Earth.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
And oh that's great.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's interesting. That's that's
been a weird change for me too. Here, like a
blow to the ego that the language, you know, I
did I took lessons, so I got in exchange for
teaching English at the university. I was able to take
Spanish lessons in the language exchange center, and I became

(48:39):
fluent you know, pretty fast, really within sort of six
to ten months. And that was a real ego blow.
I think in sygone that even after you know, a
year and a half, I would sort of go and
drive up to the gas station and say, you know,
I want fifty and.

Speaker 4 (48:54):
Get just catch up flat a flat blank stare.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Yeah, it's humbling, then means is humbling, that's right.

Speaker 4 (49:00):
Yeah, I do agree with you, though. Joyan Is is
a special kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
It's the old town of Joyan has been the sort
of least pleasant part of the central coast.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
You talk about, you know, you're getting back and you
talk about people ask you to talk about the tourist scams,
and I'm like, you know, yeah, yes, tourist scam if
you are simply going from tourist place to tourist place
to tourist place, the tourist place.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
If everything you see in Vietnam is that industry.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Yeah, and especially at a time when that industry has
itself been pushed.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Beyond its capacities. It's over touristed.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
And I think, you know, you need to balance a
trip to Vietnam. You need to balance. Okay, fine, go
to Vietnam, go to go to Joyan. But then why
don't you go at the way and actually get on
a bicycle and just just you know, just bicycle by
yourself around.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
The Lenzang, you know, around the Ferfew River. Go find
some little eateries on on alleys. You know, that's that's Vietnam.
I mean, as you know, even without the language, I mean,
everybody's got Google translates now, can you can?

Speaker 2 (49:59):
You can make it a way and there are no
tourists can I sit down? In most of Vietnam, I
don't ask the price before I order. I know I'm
going to get an honest price, because that's what Vietnam does,
and that's that's the opposite of the impression that many
people have because they're just doing you know, Joan has
a loop.

Speaker 6 (50:18):
Yeahapa, well, yeah like it, and I think of I
mean the when I made a civic video request that
it was about a bad experience in japan Town and
coachingon city, which is like, who other than a tourist
or a businessman there for a night?

Speaker 4 (50:34):
No one, No one goes, no one who lives in it,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
You never just go there if you're living in the city.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
You mentioned my cho and sort of driving around that
ural part of the country when I was here during
the sort of worst of pandemic lockdown in twenty twenty
one and my wife was pregnant for the first child, that's.

Speaker 4 (50:52):
Where we lived.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
Oh yeah, we've moved.

Speaker 4 (50:55):
I mean, you know, it's temporary living.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
And certainly she felt like a foreign or an outside
of there because they spotted their sigoni out then of course, yeah,
the minute sure open their mouth. But that's like right,
there's there's an eco lodge there, there's a couple home
stays and stuff.

Speaker 4 (51:11):
Where you can continue down the road to pull I.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
Love that part of it.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
First of all, I go, I stay up on the
road to Kuntao. So there's really it's about seventeen clicks
outside of Maicho town. The village of my show is fine.
It's it's not unpleasant by any means, but it's not
the reason I go to Micho. The reason I go
to Myicho is basically to ride my motorbike around those hills.

Speaker 4 (51:32):
Man.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
That's that's the main thing, you know. And so you know, uh,
my wife and son and I, you know, we have
a regular resort that we go to. It it's a
fairly eco logic kind of place. They have their own
organic garden and everything. But you know, you just just
wander around there. Just the rice fields are just some
of the most glorious landscapes I've seen. And yet now
I just I just still do it just gets my heart, man,

(51:55):
it's just really I like, it's what it's Those are
the moments when I feel like I dropped out of
the twenty first century into a sixteenth century eight brush painting.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
You know it's like this is Asia the way I
imaginated my dreams.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
Well it's a great segway.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Why don't you talk and tell me, tell anyone watching
about how on Earth and your own creative process in
your videos, because I mean I love them. That's I
can't remember which one I saw first. I think I
saw is it the first video on your channel? I
turned to where I turn Vietna.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
I love that. I love that video. It felt very true.
It felt very true to me.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
You know it comes off man, tell us about that.
The process your your process of making videos, of creating
and telling stories, well.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
I mean it's changing. You know, as I told you,
I've taken a big break the last few months, I
only did I did less than twenty videos, and then
I took a break. And part of it was by design.
I wanted to sort of rethink what was working for me,
not just what I was getting likes on, but what's
working for me? What are the stories I.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
Want to tell?

Speaker 2 (52:55):
And it often dovetails that the stories that are getting
the most likes happen to be the ones that I
enjoy the most. I do think my map video you know,
telling the story of Hanoi frow its maps.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
I think that's my best video for a lot of
different reasons. It was well researched.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
I felt like I was telling a good story there
visually and in terms of pacing, I thought it worked
really nicely.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
But I needed to take a break. There are other
videos that I did that I absolutely loved. I love
my walk through the Old Quarter.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
But I got no views, you know, so it's like, okay,
so I had to take a break and kind of
go like, well, what's my motivation?

Speaker 3 (53:29):
What's you know?

Speaker 2 (53:29):
I Am I doing this because I want likes. I
want that dopamine hit of you know, oh people love me,
you know?

Speaker 3 (53:35):
Or Am I really just.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
Finding a way to process living in Vietnam and put
that back out there.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
And I'm realizing more and more, you know.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
When I also when I started doing the videos, I
was also very influenced by sort of these Sam and
Victor in Hong Kong esthetic kids.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
Beautiful what they were gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
I love their stuff, and I thought, oh, you know what,
I can really do this silent video well, you know,
well paced with good music.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
That's great for them. It's not who I am I'm
a talker.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
I mean, you've you know, You've comes across very obviously,
and I've got opinions, and at sixty one, having worn
a backpack since sixteen, I think I've got stuff to
share about my experience.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
So I'm realizing that I want to get more just
just I think I was.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
I was a little bit shy on camera too, which
I'm not often shy as it obviously, but I think
I was a little bit. I had to find my
camera voice, my camera persona, and you know, I made mistakes.
I came across to salesmany in some videos, I think too,
you know, not only that, but wait, you know, and
that's that's not who I.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
Want to be either. It's really more of this conversation.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
And as you said, I want other people's voices to
be part of it too, since that's a big part
of what keeps me here. So I'm going to get
back into it probably. I've have another video probably coming
out in.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
About two weeks or so.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
I've written a script and I started shooting for it
and doing some editing just to have a creative out.
But one thing about living anywhere, and I think this
maybe even truer As we get older, you know, we
become self contained, we become comfortable.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
I'm in my six dies with a with a ten
year old kid, so I've.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Got a lot to do in my house, and I
love that. I don't look for friendships at this point
in my life. Have me to have them when they
come around, man, you know, but you know it's I'm
not actively searching for social you know, I'm perfectly happy
to stay at home, play with God'zilla toys with a
ten year old boy.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
You know.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
But I don't want to be so inward looking that
I cease to be interested in where I am and vibrant.
And I think that a big part of YouTube for me,
about how on Earth and the direction I want to
take it is simply to continue to force me outside
of myself.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Continue to force me into Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Push my language skills too, because I like being able
to talk with people in Vietnamese and I'd like to
get more of that on camera, get more Vietnamese people's
stories on camera.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
I mean, I feel if we can have esp even
though we've just Matt, That's literally what I was just thinking.
As we've been talking more and more and I've been
sort of getting to know you more. The thing that
I is just like lightning in my head is like, oh,
I want to see you talking to me, to these people.
I want to see you actually living and being part
of this culture. Like that's me, is the peal. And

(56:14):
you know, whether whatever whatever format, that's him, whether that's
an interview formats or like vlogging with local people formats,
a lot of the sort of poaching and bloggers, New
Food and what did and Max whatever all those guys
sort of and in some extent Sunnyside and the best
ever food review thing, which is now a television show.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Like Sonny, he's terrific man, He's he's like, he's.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
A heavy hitter man.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
He is man great.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Well he built his thing is that he built the
whole team. That's what I really admire, what I'm emulating.
He is a team about thirty people.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
That's good for him.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
I love the idea of that of making a show,
you know, and he is a show.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Right, yes, And I love that food review show. Yeah,
and then impressed him he knew it from the start. Yeah,
name's never changed then. Ready, he had his concept from
day one.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
He's stuck to it and of course, as full of
personality as he is, he's actually very respectful place when
he's where he is and the people.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
He's not sunnyside. That's that's an on screen thing he does.
I'm not a friend of him, but his friends are friends.
He's a ho chemn guy and that's that's part of it,
is that that's his on screen persona.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
But I meant even on screen he's you know, he'll
play up like, oh my god, we're eating worms, but
actually then he'll say, you know, in the West, we
have a very limited concept of what protein is. Sure here,
you know, if you get over that and you see
what people have been doing for thousands, So he really
does well it ultimately accept it's very accepting of all
these Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
And it's cliche to say, but it's also real.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
I mean, he talks to talk, he walks, the walks right,
and that's that's why I think ultimately the success, the
way I've really had YouTube success, if I've had any success,
is to see something and think, oh that works like
class business idea, but I can do better.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
And what fok Map's done is for years he has a.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Primarily Vietnamese audience right, and and he's in a really
honest way, you know whatever, in his own honest way,
managed to share his story of integrating into Vietnam society.
And I spent in that concept like that's something that
with your voice and your creative will come out and
totally it would look and feel and sound a different
way than it is, but as a concept of like

(58:28):
what it is, you're doing the same way, Like if
I do xpat interviews, they're not going to look or
sound really anything like Max turn off right.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Max by the other on the other hand, speaks Vietnamese
fluently very well, and the mac macfarlank's Max Max mac
macfarland's Vietnamese is excellent.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
But he does it to bring people into the.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
Food experience, into what he's doing, and I think he
does a marvelous job.

Speaker 4 (58:52):
Yeah, I'm sad that he's not in Vietnam anymore.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
Let me let me make a parallel to being a
classroom teacher.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
All right, So I've been I've been you know, academic coordinator,
and I've done teacher observations and stuff like that. They
are always your rock star teachers. There are certain teachers
that are like everybody loves them. Because they're fun, they're
full of personality. But then there are the rock star
teachers who use that to push people back into the work.
And then there are people who just stay at being

(59:19):
a rock star teacher. It's like being popular and loved
is not enough. You gotta have a certain selflessness. You've
got to have a certain amount of like, yeah, I
have this personality that can grab attention, that.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
Keeps people entertained.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
Now, let me push you back into what you need,
which is you need to do method You need control
practice for your practice and extension. You need proper methodology.
You need, you know, feedback on your language performance. And
that's a really good classroom metaphor for what this YouTube
thing is. Because I think the teacher part of me

(59:51):
kicks in a lot with YouTube. I don't want it
to be performative. Look at me, I'm so funny. Can
I put a stupid hat on my head and go
dancing in the street. Sure, But I want people to
be to learn something, to have insights. I want the
people I interact with to feel respected by my interactions
with them.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
I feel like their story is being honored.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Like anything performative, as you say, whether it's being a
teacher making videos and appearing as just say, making videos
main videos and appearing and videos. You can't not have
an aspect of ego or vanity to it. It's impossible, right.
I think even a good example of this too would
be it's a complete misnomer to think that someone making faceless.

Speaker 4 (01:00:33):
Videos is not also ego vanity driven, right.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Magnets magnets media is a very strong persona.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Right, and it's and it's you're still making all of
the creative choices of the director. And briefly, having worked
in photo and film and TV in my younger years,
directors have at least as much ego and vanity as actors, right.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
They need to because they're controlling actors. That's right, at
least at least.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
I dated a stage manager a bunch of years ago,
a girl who ran ran theater and you know, in
Seattle and in New York.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Yeah, the ego had to because she had to control
the egos. You had to be like, no, you're following
my direction.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
It's like, well, the on's the ones the god hand,
and one's the marionette. Right, Okay, so let's get back
a little bit. Bring it into some via suggestions. I
think your particular perspective really being Hanoi based, and the
thing you hear on YouTube these days is definitely not
come to Vietnam, come live in Hanoi, which is fascinating

(01:01:34):
because I remember about maybe twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. I
was still an avid watcher and lover of YouTube then,
and that actually was what you're hearing then. You were
hearing come live on chook back Blake for two hundred
dollars a month and teach English and Hanoi and you
have an incredible life. And that's one of the first
At the time, I was really spending more time in

(01:01:54):
China and I had never been here, but I remember
that that was the first sort of thing I heard,
and I think out so where I am in Danang
is it's sort of like, oh, everybody makes Danang videos
and do something.

Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
Else, and it's like, well, actually live.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
In now, Yeah, you actually live live here now, So
this is the thing I'm going to do right now
until elsewhere. What would you say to someone doesn't have
to be encouraging, but just would be the advice to
someone watching this video who's like, oh, maybe I should
try living in Hanois and not in a beach city
and not in or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
Try it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
I mean, it's like the advice I'd give for anything,
don't don't make a permanent move side unseen. That's kind
of risky, but come and check it out. Like there are,
like any city of eight nine million people, there are
many types of lives.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
To be lived.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
You can live and entirely, you know, as you said,
live on chickback and teach English and have your entire
social CNB twenty year old expats. You know English speaking expats,
you know Brits, Canadians, Americans, Australians.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
And that's if that's that's one life to live. I
know plenty of people who live that life. You can
have a different life.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
You can go to Vietnamese language lessons, you can make
Vietnamese so you can go out of your way to
make Vietnamese friends. You can go learn find something about
the country that interests you. It could be Vietnamese cuisine,
it could be Vietnamese history, Vietnamese art, I Vietnamese literature.
It's a fascinating literary tradition this country does. And so
find a research thread that pulls you, and that's going
to push you in a different direction. Obviously, if you

(01:03:21):
end up having a relationship with a Vietnamese person, whether
it be a romantic relationship or just a very close friendship.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
You know, you're allowed to fall in love with people,
by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
That's part of travels, you know, be very open to
that happening, and if it happens with the Vietnamese person,
then marvelous.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
You just follow what that thread leads you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
So I can't say that moving to Hanoi is a
single experience, because it's not. Again, if you live in
a Mopa, you live in Haibachung, or you live in Wankiem,
or you live in Hotei or you know, all of
these places are also going to change your experience. I
avoid it Theho for fifteen years. I didn't want to
live in the giant xpac community. It so happens that

(01:04:02):
I'm loving it now, surprising to me. But the Dayho
that I live in is probably very different from some
of my neighbors. Because I speak, I don't know a
lot of my Western neighbors. I have some rushing friends
I've made oddly enough, and then I speak to my
Vietnamese neighbors primarily. And that's you know, that's a very
different even though I'm in Tha Ho, it's a different

(01:04:23):
day Ho. So make it, you know, find what your
nichees or your niche however you want to pronounce.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
It, and give it a go.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
See, you know, there's nothing there's nothing wrong with putting
your stuff in storage and checking something out. You know,
it's just a few months. It'll change you, even if
all it does is reinforce. There's no place like home.
Click your hails three times and there you are.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
You know that's all right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
Your life will be informed by having had that experience.

Speaker 4 (01:04:51):
So what when you first passed through with a backpack
twenty one years ago?

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
The first thirty four years ago, thirty four years it
was my first time Viatinam.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
God, it's so funny that I did this cost a
living in the language teacher, Man, you can't do man,
it's terrible.

Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
Yeah, don't I'll live in I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
Fucking terrible, And I do even simple arithmetic, doing like
currency conversions. When i've been doing I've interviewed a few
people who are like not Vietnam or talking about other countries.
And as I go back into the edits every every
single number I say is wrong and has to be
edited out.

Speaker 4 (01:05:25):
Yeah, ninety one is thirty.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Four years thirty four years ago. It is my first
strict yet.

Speaker 4 (01:05:29):
What was the first sort of hint of love, you know,
was a love at first sight? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
It was man, Yeah, mom blew me away.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
When I first came here, I was already a very
experienced traveler, and this was the experiences I wanted.

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
I wanted to be where people were. I was one
of the first foreigners in this country, you know, arriving.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
In Ho Chiming City, there were two hotels in the
whole city where foreigners were allowed to stay. I would
go out to eat Pha, and fifty people would gather
around to watch me eat Pa because they hadn't seen
a white person fu, either since the Americans had left,
or maybe they'd seen a Russian once or twice, or
they just were young enough to not have ever seen it.
And it was wild, man, it was absolutely wild. I

(01:06:11):
thought the country was beautiful, I thought the food was great.
I got sick like crazy because the hygiene was not
what it is now. By the way, eat street food,
you know, not eating street food in Vietnam is like
going to Paris and not eating at a bakery and
don't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
How did you get around then? I mean, I can't,
I can't even I've heard stories from my wife and
her family. But what was it like in Saigon in
nineteen ninety one?

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
Quieter?

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
You didn't have cars and motorbikes. You had bicycles. Occasional
Russian Lada automobile or Revolvo of all things or something
weird like that would come through. For the most part,
it was bicycles, walking, walked a lot, did rent a motorbike,
a Russian Mocaba motorbike, and took that into the Maekong Delta,
traveled around there for about a week, all the different

(01:06:55):
Meekong Delta towns, and went up up the coast by
pap transport.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
By the way, I wasn't technically supposed to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
I was supposed to be on a tour, and I
wasn't really open to independent travelers. But I did it anyway,
and and made it all the way to Hanois full
on dysentery. The first time I saw Hanoi I came in,
it was it was gray morning, coming in an overnight train.
I was, you know, I spent the first two days
over one of these squad you know, you remember those

(01:07:23):
guys and uh and uh.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
But you know, but it was magical. The old quarter,
you know, you could hear the leaves through the trees.
It was and I thought it was it was like this.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
This imagine Paris in an opium days fifty years after
its last paint job.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
You know, it was like this.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Crumbling Asian French mixture with this omnipresent missed for a
few days I rived.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):
I thought it was magical. I thought it was incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
The lakes were beautiful, the conical sun has the whole
thing was romantic for me, and it stuck in ahead,
and it was part of the reason why I came
back in two thousand and nine, when I was recently
divorced and looking to change things up, I was like,
I want to go back to Asia, and specifically I
want to go to Vietnam. I want to I really
want to check that place out more so, there was

(01:08:14):
a love at first sight.

Speaker 4 (01:08:15):
For sure. It's beautiful. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
The reasons the motivations for travel are like they're infinite,
right and then you but you ultimately you know, people
say there's this sort of like cliche phrase where you
bring yourself along no matter where you go. But I
think ultimately the self that you bring along evolves and
changes when you're traveling and becomes a part of if
you really do it, becomes a part of the place.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
That's the difference between being a traveler and a tourist,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
I mean, I think right now, social media has really
you have a lot of people that pick a location
based on Instagram. You're going to see a great go
take this, go to bloody train Street and take the
same stupid picture that everybody takes. I mean, that's what
you What have you learned? How have you been changed
by that? You know, there's a bar by the side,
you can have a few and see the chew choo

(01:09:01):
go by. How has that changed you? You know, and
you're surrounded by drunken kids, you know, how has that
changed you? I think going into a place where you
have to do a little bit of work and you
have to be uncomfortable and you have to really be
open to people who are different and becoming different yourself,
you know, being challenged by things that might you might
not even like to see.

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
You know, they eat dog in certain places what are
you going to do with that?

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
Are you going to moralize or are you just going
to like try to observe that and let that sort of,
you know, find your moral base around that. I don't
eat dog, I have my own things around it. But
when I see that, I don't have the same reactions that.
You know, I think after living here, you just kind
of get you know, your morality becomes affected. And I

(01:09:46):
think that to me is what's exciting.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
It's why I want to go to the Middle East
this winter. I want my son to go have positive
experiences with Arabs. You know, that's one of the top reasons.
He's traveled around Europe, he's traveled around Latin America's traveled
around Asia. I want him to go to go to
the Middle East. I want my wife and son because
I like the Middle East. I've never been to Oman.
It's a great, beautiful sounding country. So we're going to

(01:10:10):
go to Oman. And partly it is because I want
to be transformed by that, and I want my son
to have to come back to Vietnam going I had
some great experiences with Arabs and those people are cool,
and because that's in this day and age, that's a
that's a community that doesn't get that kind of press
a whole lot.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
Yeah, I certainly found my introduction leads to like East
Asia was definitely traveling by train through China, first on
a fast train, which was not very immersive, and then
a real slow train, and like, and I fell in
love with this part of the world, with geography, with
geology before I culturally immersed. And so when I first
started coming to northern Vietnam, I like literally knew and

(01:10:49):
recognized and felt the landscape because I had seen it
around like guay Lean and Yunan and southern China, and
it's literally it's the same limestone cars, right, It's the
same rock, It's the same stone when I first came here,
you know, feeling that and it's like and it's a
very particular feel. It's like sharp and it hurts your hands.
We don't have it in the West. But I felt like, oh,
this is kind of familiar and I kind of love this,

(01:11:11):
like I know what this is about. And then like
climbing and how Long Bay and Landha Bay, and it
was like I was doing a very weird sort of
like weekend warrior thing where like, yeah, I was kind
of trying to jibe with ho Chi Min City or
Segon before I ended up living near my work because
I hated commuting. But i'd originally tried to settle in
Cholan in the old Chinatown intentionally right to try and

(01:11:33):
like immerse myself in something and it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
Wasn't suburban and new.

Speaker 4 (01:11:37):
But it took.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
It took a really long time. I mean, it's still
taking on and I'm still learning. I still everybody know
me to be close to fluent and entingbia. But it's
so corney to say, but I really I found Vietnam
really just grows on.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
Me, really man. And and like you're saying, you can
see in people's eyes that they're missing it, and that's
okay too.

Speaker 4 (01:11:58):
It's okay to come and in the week.

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):
On the their experience, the experience they're having, that's right,
that's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
And I remember I remember thinking it the sort of
like when i'd see people in the sort of Holong
bay Landha Capar region who are kind of going to
do the whatever the the Anthony Mornay in forty eight
hour get their on cruise in singing karaoke, and just
telling myself like that's okay, because I don't really want.

Speaker 3 (01:12:22):
Selfishly, right, Like I.

Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
Don't really need these people like hanging out a butterfly
valley road climbing with me.

Speaker 4 (01:12:28):
So if they're.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Doing that, I think I feel that way about the Nang,
but I'm still mixed about it. Like, you know, d
Nang's airport's not at capacity right, so like the expectation
is that more and more and more people are gonna come.
And if that doesn't work out, you know, the Bin
group and everyone else, they've lost money, right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
So well that's gonna work out. I mean, it's it's
I mean, just look at the pace of Danang's growth.
Nineteen seventy five undred and fifty thousand people living there now,
it's what one point one one point two or something
like that, it's what you know, a million. It's it's
you know, grown five times in fifty years. It's like,
you know, it's become the digital nomad hub for not
just vietnamal Southeast age.

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
I think you know, it's one of the digital nomat hubs.
Sure and no, no, you're right.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
I mean people are gonna have the experience, they're gonna
have I guess what I'm an advocate for is go
ahead and do those Instagram bucket list things plus something.
Just don't don't only do that, like do something that
you didn't expect to do when you first got here.
You know, go suddenly hear about some village. Somebody talks
to you about some village that you never bloody heard of.

(01:13:33):
Go there, never mind the fact that you don't speak
Vietnamese or that you've never heard about it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
Yeah, it's a safe country, man, it's a very safe country.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
You're not gonna get There's no violence, there's no I
mean for women traveling around. It's a very respectful country
for female travelers as well.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
And just shake it up a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
You know, get off that same trip that ninety nine
percent of the foreigners take and.

Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
Just do one spur and see what that does.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
And maybe maybe my advice is bad. Maybe you find
I didn't really like that. I want to go back
to you know, where everybody else is doing. But you
had that, You at least got that little check in
with reality. And you know, it's more a matter of
there's so much here, it's such a deep country.

Speaker 3 (01:14:20):
Try to try to get a taste of that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
I'm evan a and thanks for listening to the Cost
of Living a broad Pod. For full interviews, find us
on YouTube at cost of Living a broad Pod. But
before we wrap up, I just wanted to let you
know that if you're struggling with the cost of living
crisis back at home and looking for a sustainable and
affordable way to relocate your life abroad, check out our resources, courses,

(01:14:45):
and community at cost of Living abroad dot com. Thanks
so much. New episodes air Sunday night in Bangkok.

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