My Google Maps Addiction, and Why You Should Use It, Too

Today I'd like to talk about how I log what I do for fun around town. It's really nerdy!

For several years now (maybe 4?) I have been using Google Maps to document all the cool places I've visited, what I've eaten, and all the great coffee I've had to drink.

It sounds kind of inane now that I'm saying it out loud, but I absolutely love using this service, mostly on my phone. It has even become something of an addiction, I'd say! 'Must get rid of the yellow marks...!'

Here's the overview of my immediate neighborhood, for example:

• Blue checks are the places (cafes and restaurants, mostly) that I've visited and reviewed.
• Yellow checks are the ones I haven't been to yet but want to visit. 

The orange ones are the standard google maps suggestions, which are sometimes accurate for your interests and sometimes not. I don't let Google track my location, so these are pretty random for me, personally.

Let me tell you about why this is a great way to explore HCMC, or any city - click through for more!

How To Clean Your Motorbike Helmet

De-stink your insurance hat! 

If you're anything like me, you put this task off regularly (it's easy to forget about and ignore it, honestly), but it's very easy to take care of.

Motorbike helmets are obviously a necessity. However, all that foam and fabric lining collects a lot of bacteria, mold, sweat, hair products, and just general nastiness, so it's necessary to sanitize and un-gross it regularly.

I spend about 2 hours on my bike on a normal workday (uf da, that was physically painful to type). I admit that I'm a sweaty person, and most of that happens above my shoulders, particularly my head - having the sun beat down on the plastic while I'm driving to my far-away workplace doesn't help at all. The foam lining of my motorbike helmets can get preeeeeetty smelly after a month in the tropical sunshine, and if I get rained on and then have to wear it with wet hair, it gets even worse.

There are two ways you can take care of this minor, but inconvenient, task:

Vegetarian in Vietnam: Vocabulary and Notes

Cha Gio Chay - Vegan spring rolls

Strap in - I'm about to start a series of my favorite veg restaurants in Saigon, according to area!

But first, a little background information...

It's absurdly easy to be a vegetarian here in Vietnam, and I've been upping my vegan intake in 2020 - a lot. At this point I'm probably about 60-70% vegetarian, and I feel great. I've also noticed that, even though I still sweat like a waterfall, I've got less BO! It's the little things, people.

Buddhists in Vietnam traditionally eat vegan two to four times a month, the day before and after the full moon, and before and after the new moon. For this reason, there's almost always a few veg places around, and even meat-centric places will often offer a vegan version of their most popular dishes on those days. It's very popular to gather in groups on these days and go out to restaurants, but many people also choose to cook at home.

So without further ado, here are some things to look out for, to understand, and some words that will help you navigate menus and street food signs across the city and through Vietnam. They'll also help you understand what you're drooling over when I post lists of my favorite locations.

Onward, to learning!

I Bought a Motorbike... and I Didn't Do My Research

@&#$ this fake Honda Wave. Looks fun and zippy. Is actually murdercycle.

A genuine Honda Wave is a great motorbike for a lot of reasons. They're cheap to fill up, cheap to repair, last basically forever (with proper care, of course), and are generally pretty good bikes for zipping around on any kind of trip, near or far.

So it's entirely on me when I say that the Honda knock-off I bought has been pretty much a total *$&%ing disaster. It was my own, personal, eternal teachable moment, every day, forever (it seemed) for 7 months. Truly, the gift that kept on giving! It was only when I moved houses and got rid of that disaster deathbike did my daily nightmare end.

First it was the brakes.

Then it was the gears.

Then the turn signals. Then the front lights. Then all the lights. Then the fuel hose. Then an oil leak. Then the engine. Then the ignition.

I thought I could learn to fix it. Mechanics laughed in my face. True story. I am much more shy around mechanics now. For some reason they are as intimidating as barbers and doctors for me (a lot).

Murderscoot Jr. continued to totally suck in new, ever-more impressive ways. I looked forward to learning some new horrible thing about it every time I got on... it was a major stressor in life for me, tbh.

The symptoms were clear: I had bought myself a lemon!

Tipping in Vietnam: A Focus on Service

Bottom line: do they light up your soul? Tip time.

My thoughts on tipping Vietnamese have evolved over the time that I've spent in this country.

At first, I followed the standard model of tipping I'd heard of from other expats: spas and barbers get a tip and everyone else can suck it, because who wants to upset the apple cart? Which, honestly, is kind of an jackass perspective, as virtually everything I'm paying for in a service setting is drastically cheaper than comparable experiences in developed countries.

Slowly, I've evolved to be more of a tipper (as I was in America, which I'm proud of)

Vietnam's epic and ambitious plans for achieving Developed Nation status are well-known and well-underway at this point and, perhaps surprisingly, there IS a minimum wage for Vietnamese.  However, this minimum wage applies to the entire country, which is still pretty darn agricultural and poor, relatively speaking. City wages might be at the federal minimum, but the costs of living in one of these major metropolitan areas (Hanoi, HCMC, Da Nang) is much higher than if you live out in the provinces, where a lower minimum wage might be enough. Young people come here to try and find themselves and new opportunities, and they can't succeed if they're earning subsistence levels of income. Everyone deserves to have enough cash to enjoy a smoothie with friends on Friday night, right? Let alone attending one of Saigon's many universities....

Getting good service is the standard in the south of Vietnam. And, generally, Southern Vietnamese are quite helpful and friendly (I have... other thoughts... about the few Hanoi residents I've met). If you encounter a situation where you have messy or outright terrible service, I trust you'll recognize that and tip accordingly (0.00 USD).

So what's the best way to approach service situations?

Drug Laws in Vietnam

Let's get high on information!

After I saw this painting in a Bui Vien bar (Cyclo?), I realized that this might be an area of interest for some people coming to Vietnam. After all, it's not like drugs don't exist here - just like gay people, Visa, and Coke-Cola, they're everywhere you want to be. Here's the information I've collected on this topic - I hope it's useful... or at least interesting!

I would guess that roughly half to two-thirds of the foreigners I know in Vietnam smoke marijuana at least occasionally, and a fair amount of younger Vietnamese as well. The truth is that drugs are easy to procure here in Saigon... but that doesn't mean they're legal. Far from it, in fact. They are super, duper illegal, and trafficking will net you the death penalty (so... please don't do that).

Current friends who smoke up tend to do so in their own homes and limit their purchases to marijuana. The people I knew that did harder things, like ecstasy or MDMA or cocaine or what-have-you, have all moved away back to their godless, liberal Western countries, so more power to them and I hope they're staying alive and healthy. I've never heard anything about an acquaintance getting caught for drugs, but maybe that was the point (mwahahaha). So, for the reason that I only have sources about marijuana, I'll focus exclusively on weed in HCMC.

Let me be clear:

If you're into heroin or opium, this is not the article or nation for you. You are playing a very dangerous game bringing an appetite for these drugs into the country, and ANYONE carrying even a small amount of heroin is given the death sentence. So, again, please reconsider your life choices if this is your intention, and seek help.

Also, I'm not advocating anyone smoke marijuana. Many people do recreationally, including in America (but who knows what will happen under Trump!). Be safe and discrete. Whatever you do, do NOT take your stash or anyone else's across borders! Do not be a stupid drug user, and you'll have many lovely years of getting high in low-risk, beautiful settings ahead of you.

Click through for rumor, vague laws, innuendo, hearsay, bribes, and the death penalty - everything I've been able to find about drugs in Vietnam!

Three Vital Skills I Learned from Acting Classes, and One I'm Still Working On

I don't always use memes, but when I do, I use five of them.

I've always valued the training I received in theatre school. It was a really rough time for me mentally, but as I've grown older ('matured'?) I am able to look back and be amazed by just how many wide-ranging situations I've navigated by dint of my training.

I am continually surprised at how these various skills (and, my god, what a bizarre, heady, useful range of skills they turned out to be!) have come in handy here in this brave new world of traveling abroad. As I get to know myself better, and fall back in love with who I am, I wanted to take a moment to detail here how they've helped me on my worldwide, and inner, journeys.

I graduated with a degree in Technical Theatre. Practically speaking, I was a carpenter, designer, stage manager, stitcher, props designer, and periodically unemployed person before deciding that my career in theatre was unappetizing and way too uneven, to say the least. I wanted out, but I had no idea what to do, where to go, or how to get there. It was like coming to the end of a road and discovering that the last bridge I crossed had been struck by meteors (that I helped direct there) and the road up ahead goes off a cliff into a ravine, like the train tracks in Back to the Future 3.

For years I thought I didn't have a hoverboard or means of escape... but I was wrong*.

I bemoaned my theatre degree for years. I made terrible mistakes. I bemoaned my life choices. I lathered, rinsed, and repeated... and instead of being an agent of change in my life, I became one who reacted, instead of acted. I was a passive, unhappy meatbag of a person.

I bemoaned a whole lotta things, and never really got objective enough to rise above the bleak, depressed person I was and achieve something brighter, something that my Self always knew I was capable of, but never let myself achieve.

But then I made a choice.

To me, this choice was to build a new dream, something with long-term value and interest for myself. (which are evolving every day). I want to get into sustainable landscape urbanism, with a strong eye toward regional environmental balance. We are social animals, and we should live within our environments, in balance... and in cities.

To survive in a foreign culture, I think that you have to be willing to embrace a certain amount of flexibility. This was definitely NOT in my personal vocabulary when I came, or at least not in my immediate brain. My animal brain knew what was up, though, and kicked into gear. And while Flexibility is certainly a skill that theatre helped hone (along with creative problem-solving and keeping a cool head), there were several skills that I discovered came from the most unlikely of places...

No one was more surprised than I to find that these skills originated in acting classes.

Saigon Survival: How To Navigate Markets and Haggling

Ben Thanh Market is one of the oldest (and most highly valued) buildings in Saigon, and it's huge, crowded, and fascinating.

Learning how to haggle successfully has been one of the most infuriatingly difficult obstacles to enjoying Markets. But let me make one thing clear: Markets are the most interesting and reliable places to buy a wide assortment of things, all under one roof.

That means no jetting around on your moto/bike with increasingly heavy loads and/or slowly putt-putting along until you find the one half-hidden shop that you've heard has what you need! Meanwhile, central markets will often speak in a little English, and are quite anxious to help you... if they think they can make a profit.

Unwanted touching, a lack of common knowledge, and complicated social interactions outside your native language... there's a lot for an introvert to dread about going to Market in a new country, but you know what? It's totally doable. And the more comfortable you become at market, the faster you'll discover new things, people, situations, and more - Vietnam's bustling, dense, and outright sunny street culture is nowhere more reflected than in the local market.

At first, market is a hectic, nonsense sea of insanity, with people reaching and grasping like the zombie lake in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and you're certain you'll drown in a mass of soggy language difficulties and have no chance of escape.

But is that accurate?

I'm Legal!: How to Get a Driver's License in Ho Chi Minh City

Hey, look at this guy!

And what's that he's holding? Why, it looks like some kind of identification... MY GOD, IT'S A DRIVER'S LICENSE. Honest-to-God official, state-issued proof that I can walk into an office, hand them money, and pick up a real license 10 days later... with no driving test.

Yes, my friends, after 20 months of living in Vietnam, and a full 17 months of driving a motorbike (with no police incidents and only one minor fall!), I'm finally street legal, and covered by any kind of insurance that might involve an accident on the road.

For the moment, that is. Because, of course, there's a catch.

Read on to learn how easy it is (in Saigon, at least, although I hear that Da Nang and Hanoi are similarly conducive to foreigners)...

Vietnam's Visa on Arrival (VoA) Process

Vietnam's visa process is just a little stranger than most other countries, because of course it is. Of course it is.

My mother visited last year, and prepared my sister some instructions for when she prepared her trip to visit (she's arriving TODAY!!!!!).

Since it's all such good advice, I'll post it here. Easiest blog post ever? Yeah, probably.

Thanks mom!

"Vietnam visa" by Alex Steffler - originally posted to Flickr as Vietnam visa. 

Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Click through for the gory details (ha ha, just kidding! It's actually pretty easy. The waiting is the most obnoxious part)!