Narrative

I lived in Medellín, Colombia for 3 months from late May until late August 2019. This post is written and published after the fact.

Medellín, Colombia, (pronounced me-da-jean in the local accent) like many other places I’ve been to is a complicated place with a troubled past. To the chagrin of pretty much every Colombian I’ve had the fortune of befriending, Medellín is best known to the rest of the world as the home of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar, who is also the subject of the Netflix hit series Narcos.

I watched Narcos while I was in Colombia, and the truth is that some of the stories I’ve heard from that time period are actually even more haunting than what Narcos portrays. In fact, during the 1990s, Medellín was known as the most violent city in the world, owing mainly to the fact that Pablo Escobar’s primary tactic for getting what he wanted from the government was to hold the civilian population hostage. There was a time when innocent people would literally be killed randomly in the streets and when policemen had extraordinary bounties on their heads. I came away feeling like virtually everyone who lived in Colombia during that time must have a story about someone they knew who was injured, kidnapped, or murdered.

As an outsider, even a contemporary outsider, it’s easy to look at events like these and think “Ah, that’s unfortunate” but then to subconsciously write the issues off as part of the problems of a far away land concerning people you’ll never know. However, spending time in Colombia has helped me realize that often domestic issues are inextricably tied to international causes and effects. For example, I’ve learned that, on average, Colombians are not the ones who consume the large quantity of drugs produced in their country. Rather, the vast majority of those drugs are exported to meet worldwide demand, particularly in the West from countries like the US. In many ways, drug consumption worldwide had a role to play in driving the cycles of greed and violence that long plagued Colombia.

This is, of course, only part of the complex story that is Colombia, and it’s not really the narrative I’m here to tell. Colombia has since undergone a major transformation and, while there is still a lot of crime and political instability, and there are dangerous places you absolutely should not venture to, it is not the country it was in the 1990s. And though Colombia–and Medellín specifically–still has a, sometimes well-deserved, reputation for being dangerous, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that, on average, Paisan people–this is the self-given name of people from Antioquia Valley, in the heart of which Medellín can be found–are some of the nicest people I’ve met in the world, and that Colombian culture is one of the most vibrantly invigorating cultures I’ve ever experienced.

I went to Medellín because it is a famous global nomad capital (similar to Chiang Mai in Thailand in its notoriety), and after hearing so much about it, I felt I had to check it out for myself.

My first impressions of Colombia were actually all fairly negative. Before arriving at the airport in Medellín, I was warned by a few friends to ride in the front of my Uber and not to be too obvious about calling an Uber in the arrivals area of the airport. It turns out that Uber and other ridesharing services are actually illegal in Colombia, but many of them operate anyway, simply absorbing the fines incurred by drivers who get caught. When riding an Uber in Colombia, one must therefore ride in the passenger’s seat so as not to raise suspicion from the police that a normal civilian car is being used as a taxi. If you are pulled over you are meant to explain that this driver is actually a good friend of yours and that they are giving you a quick ride somewhere for no compensation at all. Thus, some of my very first moments in Medellín were spent worrying that my Uber might be pulled over by the police and that I’d end up stranded halfway between the airport and my accommodations.

(As of January 2020, Uber has actually exited the Colombian market.)

Two close friends of mine had already been living in Medellín for a couple of weeks, and had filled my head with frightening stories. For example, a friend of a friend allegedly went on a Tinder date in Medellín, and made the mistake of allowing the girl to call their car home at the end of the night. En route, two armed men jumped into the car and kidnapped him, threatening to cut off his fingers if he didn’t give them his banking information. He complied, and lost tens of thousands of dollars. Afterward, they didn’t know what to do with him, and he floated from motel to motel under armed guard for awhile until he escaped one night to tell us all his tale.

Other common stories in Medellín include accounts of people bringing women home only to be drugged, then waking up to find that she and her buddies stole everything during the night (this actually happened to someone I met in Medellín) or the use of a drug called “Devil’s Breath” to make someone susceptible to the suggestion of emptying their bank accounts.

Petty crime and theft are fairly rampant in Medellín–so much so that there’s a local phrase you can’t help but pick up: no dar papaya, which literally means “don’t give papaya.” It’s a funny phrase, but the idea is that if you cut papaya and leave it out on a platter, people are going to eat it. Your belongings are the papaya, and if you make it easy to steal your stuff, people will definitely do it. I never personally had any problems in Medellín, but this concept became real to me when, after hanging out at a local friend’s restaurant past closing, he started literally removing the lightbulbs from a string of lights he had hanging outside. Believe it or not, people will even steal the light bulbs, even in the relatively nice part of the city I lived in.

All of this is to say that when I arrived in Medellín, I was super cautious and super afraid. So much so that I considered cutting my stay short from three months to just one. My first few days, I remember employing tactics I learned in Vietnam where, even just a few blocks from where I was staying, I would never feel comfortable taking my phone out to check for directions because I didn’t want anyone to see that I was carrying something so valuable. It makes me laugh to think about that now considering that I’d eventually graduate to walking home through those same streets alone at night. (Obviously still not recommended if you’re solo traveling as a woman–checking my male privilege.)

What made me feel safer? Well, I visited a few of the definitely seedier and more crowded parts of Medellín, and I realized that my neighborhood was not particularly dangerous. I also started to realize that my two friends, having heard so many negative stories, were likely overreacting, and passing their fearful emotions along to me. There are, of course, places that you avoid in general, and places that you avoid during certain times of day, but so long as you exercise a reasonable amount of common sense, you’ll generally be fine. Most of the really bad things you hear about happening to people in Medellín happen to those who have come searching for drug or sex tourism. In three whole months in Medellín, I never personally had a single problem.

Son Havana, a cuban-style salsa bar in Laureles, Medellín

Ultimately, however, what actually tipped my decision to stay in Medellín for as long as I did was the Latin dancing scene. Let me make something clear: I’ve never been much of a dancer. Dancing is a form of expression that I’ve never felt terribly comfortable or confident in, and for me it’s always been something to tolerate, not to enjoy. But my first week, on a Friday night, I went out to Son Havana, a little salsa bar in Laureles, the upper-middle class neighborhood I was living in. Son Havana blew me away. The environment was so tangibly alive, and people were just having so much fun dancing and singing and being merry. I don’t know how to describe the experience as anything other than incredibly, incredibly invigorating. I walked out of that bar thinking to myself that 1) I’d stay in Medellín for three months and 2) I really wanted to learn more about how to participate in everything I had just witnessed.

I started taking salsa and bachata lessons, since those were the two most popular dance styles in Medellín. In the process, I found out that classes for just about anything were super affordable. I paid on the order of $15/hr for private salsa lessons with a professional teacher. I also got a membership at a nearby gym for $30/mo which included unlimited CrossFit classes, and I found a Jiu Jitsu dojo where I could take an unlimited number of classes for about $60/mo (and the price was inflated because I had to pay to rent a gi every class since I wasn’t willing to buy my own).

In fact, most things in Medellín are pretty affordable, which likely explains part of why it’s so popular amongst nomads. I’ll include a full budget breakdown later in this post, but the other stand out thing was the price of food. In Colombia, many restaurants offer a menu del día, or menu of the day. Usually the deal is a soup, a main, a dessert, and juice for between $2 and $5.

Bandeja Paisa, a local Medellín specialty, consistent of rice, fried chicharrones, ground pork, a fried egg, a potato, and a fried plantain

As a foodie, I have to say that food in Colombia often leaves a lot to be desired, however. I wasn’t impressed by Medellín’s local specialty, the bandeja paisa, which turned out to be a cut of meat, beans, rice, arepas, and sometimes fried plantains. Unfortunately, the bandeja paisa turned out to be fairly representative of most dishes in Medellín, and few things left strong impressions.

There were a few highlights, however. In search of the best menu del día in Medellín, I stumbled upon Achiote Bistro in Laureles, which became a staple in my diet (some weeks I’d literally go there 4 or 5 times). The food there isn’t exactly traditional Colombian, but it is fresh, delicious, and pretty healthy. In spending so much time at Achiote Bistro, I befriended the restaurant’s chef and co-owner, Pablo, who would become one of my closest friends in Medellín.

Helping Pablo prepare lunch in the kitchen of Achiote Bistro in Laureles, Medellín

Pablo surprised us one day by breaking the fourth wall and asking us if we’d like to hang out. That night we all went dancing, and from there Pablo and I became fast friends. Since I love to cook, before long I was coming to Achiote every now and then to help Pablo prepare his lunch menu. One morning, Pablo brought me along on his supply run to a very local market, despite knowing that many vendors might raise their prices when they saw me. We even had a few small events where Pablo let me use his kitchen to cook something fun, the most memorable of which being when I decided to learn to make my own sancocho, a traditional Colombian soup often served at family gatherings.

Pablo would not be the only local friend I would make in Medellín, and in general I found that meeting and befriending locals was much easier in Colombia than it had been in most other places I’d been. This actually surprised me quite a bit–given Colombia’s not-so-distant violent past, and given the sheer amount of petty theft, I had a hard time understanding how and why Colombian people were so amiable, trusting, and open to strangers. On multiple occasions when I turned out not to have enough cash to pay for something, people simply trusted me to come back another time to pay the difference. Additionally, even given the sorry state of my Spanish at the time, I found that people were excited and willing to spend time with me. This is certainly different from how I felt in France, and I can’t say for certain whether the difference can be explained better by the change in environment, or by development in my own ability to make friends. It’s probably a little bit of both.

Medellín’s gondola system, also known as the metro cable

In a lot of ways I admire the Colombian people and their apparent ability to be cheerful, to enjoy life and to keep looking forward, despite recent darkness. This can be seen in the numerous dancing clubs in Medellín where locals will often dance the night away until 3 or 4 in the morning. It can also be seen in Medellín’s surprisingly well-done public transit system, which, built in the 1990s at the height of the violence, is one of the cleanest and best-maintained metro systems I’ve seen outside of Japan. I’m told that locals revere the metro as a symbol of hope and progress, thus they take care of it better than virtually any other part of the city. Medellín also has an impressive gondola system as part of their public transit network. Contrary to the “house on a hill” paradigm, in Medellín the higher up on the mountains you live, the poorer you likely are. (Most of the gang fights and other violence still happen in some of these areas.) Together with the metro system, the gondola system creates an affordable way for all Paisans to navigate the city for work and leisure.

These 300 pillars light up the open plaza at night, bringing literal light to one of Medellín’s formerly seedy areas

Likewise many of Medellín’s seedier former crime hotbeds have been transformed into symbols of light and restoration. For example, Parque de la Luz, close to the city’s government center, was once one of the more dangerous parts of the city. Today, it’s been replaced by an open plaza with 300 pillars that light up in the darkness to symbolically and literally provide light where there was once darkness. (I should note, though, that this is still not an area generally recommended to foreigners to visit at night on their own.)

Are things perfect? Of course not, and people are not ignorant of the facts. It’s not super common, but on occasion after making conversation with Uber drivers I’d realize that not only had they spent time in the US, they’d actually illegally lived and worked there and, in some cases, had actually been deported, which is why they were now back in Colombia driving for Uber. One girl I went on a couple of dates with also expressed an almost single-minded desire to emigrate to the US. (Which, of course, being a US citizen myself, makes the dating dynamic a bit awkward.) I don’t bring these examples up to hold the US up as a shining beacon of hope and progress–in many ways it is, in many more ways, it is not–but rather to illustrate that a desire to escape does sometimes exist in Colombia.

Colombia and Medellín still have plenty of problems, ranging from fractured and militant political groups to the still booming drug trade. Yet this is a city, a country, and a people that has lost much, but, at least from my outside perspective, refuses to lose more by letting that define them.

The spirit of the Colombian people, the ease with which I could make friends, the low cost of living, and availability of cheap outlets for new hobbies all culminated in a very positive experience for me in Colombia. Probably my only complaints were the food, and Medellín’s rather small town feel. (I actually generally prefer bigger cities with more going on.) While I don’t know when or if I will return, I could see myself spending more time in Colombia some day.

Living and Working

There are two major areas that stand out to expats in Medellín: El Poblado and Laureles. El Poblado is the main tourist center of the city, and is where you’ll encounter a lot of foreigners. It’s also the center of nightlife in Medellín–bars, clubs, dancing, restaurants. At night, the party in El Poblado seems to stretch far into the morning, and the streets will be lined with prostitutes. While El Poblado is generally pretty safe, it is somewhere you can find trouble if you go looking for it. It’s certainly the louder and livelier of the two options.

Laureles, which is where I stayed, is much more down-to-earth. While you will encounter foreigners in some of the more popular cafes, it has a more local and less gentrified feel to it. It is, however, an upper-middle class neighborhood, and therefore nicer than many other parts of the city by Colombian standards. Laureles was, in fact, so clean and so nice that in my first week when I arrived I had serious cognitive dissonance–it absolutely did not match the picture of Colombia that I had in my mind. While Laureles is smaller and quieter, there are still a lot of good restaurants and cafes in the area. For those who want to party (or go out and salsa dance!!) there is a strip nearby called Setenta, which houses a lot of the nearby bars and clubs.

I ended up in Laureles based on the recommendation of a friend of a friend, and don’t regret the choice, though I’m sure staying in El Poblado would have been a very different experience.

I lived in a new coworking/coliving space called Conomad House. I can’t say that it was anything particularly special, but it was cheap and 3 of my friends were staying there with me. The $350/mo I paid there included a small working space with blazing fast internet, but the walls were thin and the neighbors were loud, so I’d often be woken up earlier than I wanted to be. The location was good, situated in the heart of Laureles, and I spent most of my days working from home.

If I end up back in Medellín some day, I think I’d likely try to get myself a room in a penthouse, preferably in Laureles. My impression is that these can be quite affordable once split amongst multiple people–something like $1800/mo for 3 bedrooms.

Recommendations

Here are my favorite spots in Medellín. Keep in mind I spent most of my time in Laureles:

  • Food
    • Achiote Bistro
      • Fresh, delicious, healthy food in a cool environment
      • Tell Pablo, the chef, that Daniel says hi!!
    • Arepitas Rellenitas
      • Ordinarily, I honestly despise arepas. This is the only place I’ll go to eat them!
    • Restaurante La Aldea

      Sancocho from Restaurante La Aldea in Santa Elena. One of the best soup dishes I’ve probably had in my life.

      • This one’s out of the way in Santa Elena, but well worth the trek
      • Best sancocho in the world!! Delicious, savory, smoky. My chef friend Pablo took me here and I was not disappointed.
        • So good that I went all the way back one more time before I left Colombia
    • Caduff Pasta Fresca
      • Go for their lunch menú del día–handmade pasta at an incredibly low price point
    • Empanadas La Catedral
      • Delicious empanadas!!
    • Los Perritos
      • Colombian-style hotdogs inundated with tons of other unhealthy stuff that makes it delicious but terrifying to eat
      • Really only need to go here once haha
    • Restaurante Mistura
      • First tried this restaurant in Cartagena, but they do a very interesting fusion of Latin and Asian cuisines
      • A little on the pricier side for Colombia
    • Chef Burger
      • Seldom would I recommend a burger place outside of the US, but Chef Burger’s patties made from high quality ground beef mixed with Argentinian chorizo are simply delectable
    • SMASH Avocaderia y Cafe
      • A more casual and healthy meal, but a common staple in my diet in Colombia
    • Casal Bakery
      • A staple for me because I lived right above it
      • Very good value for menú del día and delicious desserts!
      • Food otherwise is just OK, but they often serve traditional Colombian dishes
    • Olivia Pizzeria Laureles
      • Good place for a pizza if you’re craving one!
  • Bars and Breweries
    • 3 Cordilleras
      • Cool craft brewery that has an awesome deal on craft beer flights (something like $20 for 5 or 6 very generous glasses of beer)
      • Often have live music events and concerts at the brewery!
    • BBC Cervecería
      • Awesome craft beer! Their stout is quite good
      • Used to come here to hangout a lot
  • Salsa Clubs
    • Son Havana
      • The place that originally made me fall in love with salsa
      • Live music here past ~11 or 12 on Friday nights!
    • El Tibiri
      • A pretty local spot that’s usually pretty packed
      • It’s sort of in a poorly ventilated basement, so be warned that it gets HOT!
    • Dance Free
      • A popular salsa school/club in El Poblado
      • I only went once, but was impressed–lots more space to dance here than most other places I’ve been
  • Dance Schools
    • Euforia Escuela de Baile
      • My salsa teacher, Catalina, was super awesome!
      • Very affordable private lessons ~$15/hr
    • Solo Ritmos
      • Great group classes at a very affordable price
      • Most of the instructors here don’t speak English, however
  • Gyms and Fitness
    • 360 Fitness
      • Not the nicest gym you’ll ever go to in the world, but very affordable at $25/mo
      • For $35/mo you also get access to unlimited CrossFit
    • Checkmat Colombia-Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
      • Cool dojo to train Jiu-Jitsu
      • Unlimited classes for ~$60/mo
      • Instructor speaks some English, though will mostly instruct in Spanish
  • Sightseeing / Activities

    • Me picking coffee cherries on a Colombian coffee plantation

      Coffee Plantation Tour

      • Colombia is famous for its coffee! And there are many plantations accessible from Medellín.
      • Learn about the coffee process, and pick your own coffee cherries.
    • Medellín Bike Tour
      • Website is a little janky, but the tour is high quality
      • Be advised that the tour is catered toward people who enjoy cycling (and have a relatively decent fitness level). Not for the faint of heart.
    • Free Walking Tour
      • Covers a lot of places you probably don’t want to go without a group
    • Ride the Gondolas to Parque Arví
    • Plaza Botero

      Plaza Botero in Medellín, Colombia

      • Featuring many statues from celebrated Colombian artist Fernando Botero
      • The Free Walking Tour above will take you here briefly
  • Side Trips

    • The view from La Piedra, Guatapé, Colombia

      Guatapé

      • The site of the La Piedra, a very, very large rock with an incredible view, and a very colorful city that actually feels more Mexican than Colombian at the end of the day
      • A couple of hours from Medellín by bus
  • Miscellaneous
    • Lava en Happy Laundry
      • I came here all the time to have my laundry done for cheap
      • Staff is super friendly, and most of them speak very good English
      • If you drop off in the morning, can have your laundry done same day

Flower Festival

Believe it or not, Colombia is one of the world’s largest exporters of flowers, and Medellín is one of the flower capitals of the country. Thus, every year in August Medellín hosts a huge Flower Festival, which involves parades, pop-up events, decorations, the whole nine yards. I hadn’t planned on it, but I had the good fortune to be living in Medellín during this event in 2019.

An example of a rather elaborate silleterra–I was too impatient to wait my own turn 😛

On the whole, I think it was a cool experience–silleterras, the traditional flower displays–are really quite extravagant, and cool to see. The legend goes that once upon a time before the mountains opened Antioquia Valley to more convenient forms of travel, people would literally put chairs on their back and carry people–often the wealthier class–up and down the mountains on those chairs. These days, one can still see the chair-like nature of the silleterras that people carry on their backs, but nowadays the carry flowers, not people.

A flower farm in Medellín

I personally went to up into the mountains to see some of the flower farms and watch the process of making the silleterras. I was a little disappointed to learn that some of the more stylized designs involving text or brands were actually spray painted, but nonetheless still very impressed by the level of craftsmanship that goes into these works of art.

A less floral and more stylized silleterra. This is achieved with spray paint.

I also had the chance to go to a few of the concerts that happened during the week of the festival, and I tried to make it out to watch the grand parade featuring Colombian cultural dances and flower displays, etc. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a very good spot for the parade, so that experience was fairly lackluster.

At the end of the day, however, I’m not sure if I would recommend that someone make a special trip to Medellín just for this festival. At the very least, if you do, go the extra mile and reserve yourself an actual seat somewhere for the big parades–watching the parades from a distance through a hole in the very large crowd isn’t terribly gratifying.

Budget Breakdown

My typical monthly living budget while abroad is around $2000/mo, and in Medellín I actually found myself struggling to spend anywhere near that amount of money.

Here’s a breakdown of my budget from May 30 to August 27 (exactly 90 days):

A detailed breakdown of my budget and spending in Medellín, created using Nomad Wallet

I could have spent much less on food, if I had tried, but I didn’t. I split my $350/mo housing cost in half, and logged half of it as coworking, since the arrangement included coworking. I tended to get free coffee out of that deal, too, so spent very little on coffeeshops. The majority of my services expenses were laundry, costing me ~$6 every 10-15 days. I ultimately didn’t need the insurance I purchased, so I probably could have dropped that. These numbers also include a side trip I took to Cartagena for a few days, which probably cost me ~$200 in total.

My only health expense in Medellín was a routine dental cleaning. In retrospect, I honestly wouldn’t recommend Medellín for dental care–the cleaning was cheap, but the technology wasn’t very modern, and I didn’t feel the dentist was terribly thorough (yes–the dentist himself did the cleaning!). Dental care was much better in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and in Mexico City, Mexico (which I’ll publishing my thoughts about soon!).

But as you can see, despite trying to spend more I ended up spending only about $1250/mo in Medellín. My life was pretty comfortable for that amount–I ate out for pretty much every meal, sent my laundry out for service, and used Uber as my main mode of transport. The only other thing I might have considered splurging more on is a housing upgrade as I mentioned earlier.

Sooo turns out I’m terrible at posting regular updates. Looks like I haven’t written much since probably July of last year. I owe an honest apology to anyone who has been waiting expectantly month after month for… silence. And I owe a genuine thank you to everyone who has lovingly–or impatiently–nudged me to write more here. I suppose this post is going to be my repentance–sort of a reflection on everything that’s happened since last July, and a little bit about where I am now and what I’m up to.

Buckle in, this is probably going to be a long read. So long, in fact, that I’m going to leave a summary and a table of contents for those without the time (or patience) to read everything:

Summary

The short version: since my last post in France, I’ve traveled through Morocco, Bali (Indonesia), India, back to Chiang Mai, and to Taipei, Taiwan. Things were rough for me in France and Morocco, but I’ve recovered since then and learned a little bit more about what I need in order to be happy, healthy, and productive. In my darker periods, I was fortunate to have a few consulting projects fall into my lap, and ended up consulting on various project nearly full-time for almost 6 months.

Consulting isn’t what I set out to do, but it’s been cool realizing that I can recreate the job I used to have in Silicon Valley on my own terms. What’s more, the pay is usually good enough that I’ve been able to start funding my lifestyle with plenty of time leftover. I’ve gone from working full-time as a consultant to half-time, and now even less.

At my present burn rate, just a few consulting projects a year is likely enough to pay my annual expenses, and then some. Right now the rest of my time is spent on my own projects. Currently I’m working on a new project with two close location-independent friends. We’re expecting to start beta testing the product in the next couple weeks. Between all the plates spinning in the air, things are busy enough that I’ve actually had to start turning prospective clients down. In short: work is going well. It’s taken me longer than I expected to get to where I am now, but I’m excited to have found a potentially sustainable way to continue traveling and to have time to work on my own projects.

Geographically, I’m currently in Medellin, Colombia, though I’ll be moving to Mexico City, Mexico very soon. I have a lot to say about Colombia now that I’ve lived here for almost 3 months–I expect I’ll publish something about my experience here soon :).

Recap

So let’s rewind: if you’ve read a few of the earlier posts here, you’ll know that a little less than 2 years ago I was working in Silicon Valley for a relatively prestigious company called Palantir. By some metrics, I was set for life and could have simply continued to climb the Silicon Valley career ladder in comfort. Yet I found that I was deeply unhappy and unfulfilled with what I was doing despite ostensibly having it all. So in August 2017 I quit both to challenge myself and to challenge the fragile definition of success I had implicitly bought into. The plan was to build small, self-sustaining, and automate-able businesses using my existing skillset as a software engineer, with the hope of 1) learning from repeated failures as much as I could in a short time span and 2) in the ideal case, eventually find a product or business that would stick well enough to generate the revenue required for me to win back my time (i.e. ~$2000-5000/mo in relatively passive income). I had about a year of runway saved up at the time, and figured that would be enough time to work something out.

Pre-Travel

After quitting I spent about 6 months at home with my parents in San Diego slowly acclimating to self-employed life. To be honest, this was a hard time. I knew to expect it, but my initial enthusiasm inevitably gave way to anxiety. It turns out that after over 2 decades of schooling followed by a full-time job it’s not the most simple thing to transition to completely managing yourself. I was surprised by how much I initially struggled with this, especially since I’ve always been very independent and extremely self-disciplined. I had such high expectations for myself to crush it that in the early moments when I realized I was definitely not crushing it I made myself feel awful for it. For obvious reasons this led to even less crushing it.

So 6 months passed, and I managed not to release a single product of my own. I did end up doing a few other things in that time, however. For example, I intentionally got rejected a lot, and for a little while I wrote some so-so weekly articles here on this blog. I also wrote a lot of foundational code for a library that I have ended up using for a couple of client projects. Oh, and fairly importantly, I took on my first consulting project building a prototype for a friend’s nascent startup. (The company was called Sain Health and we were building software to improve post-operation outcomes for hospital outpatients. The founder has since moved on to bigger and better things.)

Then, in February 2018, having still not really figured out how to run my own businesses, I left the United States. I had been reading about the trend of people traveling around the world who worked from wherever they chose to, and was naturally drawn to the idea. I also had a desire to live abroad and learn a number of foreign languages, so I already knew I would eventually leave the States when I quit my job.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Image source: http://www.chiangmai.bangkok.com/

My first stop was Chiang Mai, Thailand, in February 2018. To be honest this was also initially a hard time. I still remember moments of extreme anxiety my first week in Thailand where I asked myself just what in the actually fuck I was doing there and why I had thrown away so much of my existing comfort and security for a life of who knows what the fuck I’d find. It got so bad at one point that I remember literally getting online to search for a therapist only to realize that I wasn’t sure I was willing to spend my precious runway to talk to one.

Things got better, of course, and, though I didn’t realize how important this was at the time, I was extremely fortunate to not be alone in Thailand. Prior to making the jump to Thailand, I had gotten in touch with an alumni from my college fraternity who also turned out to be headed to Thailand with his then girlfriend (now wife). Hilariously, I had only ever talked to him on the phone before showing up on his doorstep in Thailand to rent their extra room. I now count the two of them among my closest friends, and have crossed paths with them again a few times since we parted ways in Chiang Mai. Their presence plus the continued financial stability of my first consulting contract combined to make Thailand a very positive experience for me overall. And so, by the end of the month, much of my initial anxiety had given way to excitement and enthusiasm to have the privilege to live my life on the road.

Saigon, Vietnam

https://asiadaytours.com/featured/ho-chi-minh-city-information.html

In March I moved to Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam. I had an unexpectedly spectacular experience in Vietnam, likely owing largely to the fact that I fell head-over-heels in love with a beautiful and intelligent Vietnamese woman. I never expected that I’d find the next love of my life while traveling, but I suppose life has its own plans sometimes. Anyway, what was supposed to be a single month in Saigon turned into two when I eventually decided to cancel my plans to move to Penang, Malaysia (again, mostly motivated by my then budding relationship, though I probably would have denied it if you had asked me at the time).

Saigon was a definite highlight in my early adventure: the food was delicious, I found community at a good coworking space, and I was in love. While there I wrapped up my first consulting project and finally got back to work on my own projects, though I didn’t release anything.

Return to the States

After two months in Saigon, it was finally time to go back to the States for the month of May to watch my little sister graduate from NYU. I spent a bit of time on both coasts. I picked up a motorcycle license in California. I planned a trip to Yosemite to reunite with many of my Bay Area friends. I went camping and spelunking with a close friend in Pennsylvania. The focus was really on spending time with friends and family, so work was once again put on hold.

During much of this time I was long distance with my girlfriend in Vietnam. Toward the end of my shore leave, she dropped a bomb on me that ended our relationship and left me pretty emotionally shaken. At this point, I’m more than capable of talking about what happened, but it’s a long story that a few sentences won’t do justice to. That one will have to wait, sorry :P.

France

The view approaching Mont Saint-Michel, France during low-tide.

At the end of May, at long last, I flew across the Atlantic to France, the one place I had actually really pictured visiting when I started traveling. (I mostly started in Asia because, as a spoiled Southern Californian, I wasn’t sure I’d survive a European winter.) I was driven by the dream of learning French and eventually going to Le Cordon Bleu for culinary school. It was also one of my annual goals to visit Plum Village near Bordeaux, France as part of an effort to deepen my mindfulness and meditation practice.

I landed in Marseille, a port city in the south of France with a bit of a seedy reputation. Marseille is a rougher city, for sure, but I actually really like it there. It isn’t nearly as clean or as orderly as most of the other large European cities I’ve been to, but what it lacks in splendor it makes up for in character–the walls along the streets would often be covered with colorful graffiti murals.

I eventually went on a 2-week long road trip with a few good friends from the States. There were lots of fun moments getting stuck or stalling out inconveniently while getting used to driving a stick as I drove all the way from Lyon on the eastern side of France, through Dijon, up to Paris, out to Mont Saint-Michel, and back to Paris.

From Paris, I took a train to Bordeaux closer to the Western coast of France, where I spent a few weeks before and after my 2 weeks at Plum Village. Of everywhere I went in France, Bordeaux was probably my favorite city–beautiful architecture, lots of gorgeous public spaces, and a shimmering river that cuts through the city’s center.

When I came back from Plum Village, I bought a bus ticket to Lyon, often hailed as the gastronomic capital of France. I got a deal on a nice apartment in a lively area and spent my last 6 weeks there, occasionally splurging on expensive Michelin-rated meals. (For the record, my favorite restaurant in Lyon actually wasn’t any of the 1- or 2-star Michelin restaurants I ate at, but instead an up and coming restaurant called La Bijouterie.)

France was actually really tough for me. When I arrived in Marseille, I barely spoke the language, I was still reeling from breaking up with my Vietnamese girlfriend, and I was staying in this very strange AirBnB situation where it seemed like my host would kick himself out onto the couch so that he could advertise his bedroom as a private room for guests.

“Dimsum” at La Bijouterie, Lyon

I honestly didn’t make many friends in France, and I started to experience social isolation for the first time. I also felt poor for the first time, since I wasn’t making any income and prices in Europe were at least 2 to 3 times what I had been paying in Asia. There were a lot of moments in France when fear and self-doubt crept back in, and I resumed asking myself if I had torpedoed my career for nothing. I’m not hugely superstitious, but on one of my darkest days I remember having two people reach out to me on the same day to see if I’d be willing to take on some new consulting work. It almost felt like someone knew I needed help to get back on track.

Needless to say, I said yes to the consulting gigs, again at the expense of working on my own projects. I worked on a small project for the Robin Hood Army, built a website for my sister as a graduation gift, and starting working on the first version of I’m With Them. Along the way, I picked up another client building productivity software for a professional services firm in Hong Kong.

I didn’t intend for it to happen, but consulting for various clients turned into my full-time profession for awhile after that. It was reassuring to me to realize that my career was far from over just because I left Silicon Valley, and I found that it was much easier for me to be super self-accountable when I knew I wanted to impress my clients with my skills. It wasn’t what I had set out to do, but I learned that I could re-create my job in Silicon Valley on my own terms.

The New Stuff

Now we’re more-or-less caught-up to the last time I posted a real update. Since then I’ve spent 3 months in Morocco, a month in Bali, a month in India, a month back in Chiang Mai, almost 4 months in Taiwan, and am now writing from Medellín, Colombia. There’s still a lot of ground to cover.

Morocco

After 3 months in France, my visa finally ran out at the end of August. (As a US citizen, a standard tourist visa gives me 90 days out of every 180 in the Schengen Area, which covers pretty much all of Western Europe.) I moved to Morocco, thinking that it was the nearest non-Schengen French-speaking country, and vaguely recalling that a friend had long ago joked with me about moving our startup to Morocco to extend our runway.

Marrakesh

The courtyard in Bahia Palace, Marrakesh

My first stop in Morocco was Marrakesh, where I spent 2 weeks. Speaking candidly, I hated Marrakesh and my time there left a bad taste in my mouth toward both Morocco and Moroccan people that took weeks to go away. The best way I can describe Marrakesh is as the living image of what Moroccans think Westerners think Arabian Nights should look like. In my humble opinion, the city has completely sold its soul to tourism, which makes up the majority of the local economy. I’m sure it’s not actually all Marrakeshi people, but most of the locals you’ll meet in the streets give you in the impression that you’re a walking money bag–they want your money, and they have no qualms about lying to you or scamming you to get it. Given the maze-like streets and markets in Marrakesh, an extremely common tactic is to tell foreigners that streets are closed so they get even more lost and confused and ultimately pay for assistance. Most of these offers for assistance are phrased as a friendly favor, not as a service being sold for cash, so you’ll often feel confused when they flip and pressure you to compensate them for their time. Additionally, unlike most mature tourist economies, many vendors in Marrakesh give off a distinctive sense of entitlement–nowhere else in the world have I heard a street food vendor go so quickly from trying to hard sell you on buying his food to cussing you out in every language he knows simply because you weren’t interested in what he had to offer.

One of the many “souks”, or markets, in Marrakesh

Marrakesh was also the first city where I felt actively unsafe and on edge, despite having spent time in a lot of places that other people might not consider totally safe–Ho Chi Minh City or Marseille, for example. It’s awful, but I often tell people that my time in Marrakesh has given me more empathy for what it’s probably like to be a woman in today’s world. It was incredibly uncomfortable to feel like a target every time I’d walk around in public, and like everyone I met secretly or not so secretly wanted something from me. It was scary to feel like people might get aggressive if I did not or could not give them what they wanted.

Essaouira

All of this is to say that I was positively relieved to leave Marrakesh for Essaouira, another touristy town, this time on the coast. Essaouira is a beautiful walled city, once occupied by the Portuguese. Some people may actually recognize Essaouira as the set for Astapor in Game of Thrones.

For 5 weeks, I lived in a huge, beautiful apartment with a rooftop ocean view. Calm and relaxing with the sound of crashing waves and the occasional sea breeze, Essaouira was a welcome contrast to the hustle and bustle of Marrakesh. Gradually, I began to let my guard down and opened myself up to experiencing a different side of Morocco and its people.

An iconic view at the port of Essaouira, Morocco

I had other challenges in Essaouira, however, chief among them being a lack of community. The sense of social isolation that had begun in France deepened severely here, as I began to realize that my only potential friends were either locals, who I had trouble communicating with and relating to, and extremely transient tourists typically just passing through Essaouira for a couple of days. The closest things I had to friends were the staff at my favorite spots for breakfast and dinner. My loneliness was compounded by the void left by my ex-girlfriend, a wound which was still healing at the time, and which had been opened again by some recent communication with her. At times, I felt depressed and struggled harder than ever to keep myself focused and motivated. I spent a lot of time cooped up in my apartment, usually only leaving for breakfast, dinner, and the occasional coastal sunset.

Despite everything, when my AirBnB lease ended, I didn’t want to leave. For the first time in a long time, I had no idea where I was going next, and the uncertainty daunted me. I would almost have rathered the certainty of my notably dreary existence in Essaouira to the effort of facing the uncertainty and figuring out what to do next. Given my experience in Morocco up to this point, I might have considered leaving the country, but I had been talking to one of my clients in Hong Kong about the possibly of flying me out there to work on site for a month as part of my next contract with him. Not knowing yet whether or not that was going to pan out and the hope that if it did it would cover the long flight back out to Asia left me feeling kind of trapped in Morocco.

Taghazout

The beach in Taghazout, Morocco, at sunset

When I finally pulled myself together, I decided to move further down the coast to Taghazout, a touristy little surf town so small that you actually have to take a taxi to the next town over to find an ATM (and, of course, cash was king in Taghazout regardless). Though I grew up in San Diego and surfed when I was younger, I’m not actually much of a surfer these days, which should leave any reasonable person wondering why the hell I moved myself to a middle-of-nowhere surf town. The answer is that Taghazout is also the home to a reasonably well-known coworking and coliving spaces called SunDesk, which I wanted to try thinking that it might solve my isolation problem.

Fortunately, it did. While I have a lot of gripes about Taghazout as a place and am not honestly sure I’d go back, the community at SunDesk was wonderful–I got to know a lot of people pretty well, and was relieved to have interesting people to spend my meals, evenings, and weekends with.

While in Taghazout, I finally decided to stop waiting for my client to potentially send me to Asia, and instead bought a ticket to meet my sister in Bali, where she planned to do Yoga teacher training. With my dates set, I got serious about finishing my sightseeing rounds in Morocco, especially because I had a feeling I’d never be back.

Sahara Dessert, Fez, Chefchaouen, Tangier

Before leaving Morocco, I had a chance to spend almost a full week trekking in the Sahara Desert, which was an awesome experience. I went to the desert in Zagora, to the south, where the desert covers more area and the terrain is more varied. As we trekked, the scenes changed from a stony dryness to a fine-grained sand, and, finally, to a sea of sand dunes as far as the eye could see.

I made good friends with my guides, and we passed the time trading words in English, French, and Arabic. At night we would gather around the fire and enjoy a bowl of harira, a hearty, tomato-based soup that still makes my mouth water to think about.

This is what it looks like the get stuck in a sand storm in the Sahara Desert

The climax of my dessert experience was Erg Chegaga, a huge, nearly quarter-mile high sand dune that feels like a small mountain of sand.

I also ventured north to Fez, Chefchaouen, and Tangier before boarding my flight to Bali.

I actually really enjoyed Fez. It felt like it had all of the trappings, culture, and attractions of Marrakesh, but with an overall cleaner and safer vibe. Unlike Marrakesh, tour guides and vendors in Fez were very respectful and professional. Many of them seemed almost aware of Marrakesh’s horrible practices and would almost go out of their way to leave the opposite impression. If I could do it again, I would have spent more time in Fez and next to no time in Marrakesh. It was, however, super cold in Fez–much colder than I had ever expected any part of Morocco to be–and my wardrobe was not prepared for it.

Chefchaouen, famous for its distinctive blue streets, was another highlight for me. The town was very, very touristy, and I was given the distinct impression that they simply continue to re-paint the walls blue to continue attracting foreigners, but the vibe was calm and relaxing, much like Essaouira but up in the mountains instead of by the sea. I had the opportunity to go on some spectacular hikes in the nearby mountains of Akchour.

Tangier was a strange but interesting place. As the northern-most major Moroccan city, Tangier is a sea-side gateway to Europe, and the influence is obvious. However, since Morocco isn’t a terribly wealthy country, there was often a kind of funny juxtaposition of classic-though-poorly-maintained European architecture and a sense of poverty and squalor common to countries in the developing world. It was cool to see, but I’m not upset that I didn’t have much more than a night in Tangier.

Reflections

I can’t claim to have had the best experience in Morocco overall, but living there did challenge me in some interesting ways.

This was my first experience living in a pre-dominantly Muslim country so it took time to get used to things like the call to prayer from all of the nearby mosques. I was also surprised by how deeply religious and conservative the local culture is, and how much that seemed to dictate social norms. Many countries can point to a major religion as foundational to their predominant culture, but most of the time that influence feels more in the background at this point–you can find it if you go looking for it, but aside from the occasional temple, church, or shrine, you won’t constantly be reminded of it. In Morocco, on the other hand, religion feels very much in the foreground. I left with the impression that no sane Moroccan would ever be caught admitting to being anything other than a very devout Muslim. The rare secular Moroccan locals that I befriended confessed to me that they likely wouldn’t admit their atheism even to some of their close Moroccan friends. One friend even recounted for me how he had to hide the sounds, smells, and sights of his cooking during Ramadan–normally a time of ritual fasting–to avoid being persecuted by the local authorities for disobeying religion custom.

Morocco was also my first time visiting a country with a culture so different from my own that it was difficult for me to relate to people or predict their behavior. As an Asian-American, I feel pretty comfortable in stereotypically Western countries where my own Western upbringing can help me relate, and I also feel pretty comfortable in Asia where my loosely Chinese upbringing (thanks, Mom!) helps me to understand cultural values. But in a place like Morocco, where much of the local culture and values are derived from Islam, a religion and philosophy I haven’t spent much time with, I occasionally felt like I just couldn’t fathom what was going through peoples’ heads. Sometimes I think this cultural divide contributed to my feelings of unease or indignation in certain situations. Unlike in Asia where most places I go people assume I’m a local and likely treat me better for it, I always stuck out like a sore thumb in Morocco. Being so conscious of being different certainly put me more on the defensive. I now wonder if this is what my Europeans friends experience in, e.g. Vietnam, where they feel hyper aware of and hyper sensitive to being scammed in any way.

Pastilla, a Moroccan delicacy

I doubt I’ll make a special trip to return to Morocco, but that doesn’t mean Morocco doesn’t have many great things worth seeing and experiencing! In particular, I’ve come away with a huge appreciation for Moroccan cuisine. Many of their dishes are an absolutely ingenious merger of sweet and savory flavors. For example, pastilla, one of my absolute favorites, is kind of like a perfectly spiced puff-pastry Moroccan chicken pot pie topped with cinnamon and powdered sugar. It sounds strange at first, but is absolutely amazing when executed correctly. Additionally, despite some of my initial impressions, I met quite a few Moroccan people who blew me away with their kindness and cheer.

Bali, Indonesia

It hadn’t really been my intention to return to Asia in 2018. After things broke down with my Vietnamese ex, I had this funny idea that she could have the continent for awhile, and that I’d instead head to South America. Part of me admittedly worried that I wouldn’t have the strength and good sense to stay away, despite lingering feelings of pain and disappointment.

My sister talked me down, though, and lured by the prospect of traveling with her for a little while as well as the possibility of traveling in India with our parents, I boarded a plane to Bali, Indonesia in mid-November.

Sunset in Uluwatu, Bali

In the ~month I spent in Bali, I spent about 2 weeks in Canggu, about a week in Uluwatu, and another week in Ubud. It was all a bit of a whirlwind as I moved around with my sister a little more frequently than I’m accustomed to. I also had a major client deadline to launch I’m With Them in December/January, so I was working quite a bit between obligations to sightsee and spend quality time with my sister.

Overall, I enjoyed Bali–the cost of living is fairly low, there are plenty of cool things to see and do, and there are lots of other nomads. There’s a strong subculture in Bali centered around things like yoga, spiritualism, and health–not exactly my typical crowd, personally, but still cool all the same.

Sunrise over Mt. Batur, Bali

For those who like to surf, Canggu and Uluwatu on the coasts have a number of popular spots, with beaches often either walking distance or a short motorbike away. Ubud, more in the center of the island, has good access to a lot of cool nature spots and some of the more famous views of Bali’s rice terraces. I can particularly personally recommend a sunrise volcano hike up to the top of Mt. Batur.

Particularly relevant to a young, eligible bachelor, there are also a lot of single nomad women in Bali, which was a surprise because my experience so far had taught me that the nomad scene is predominantly dudes with the occasional woman traveling with her long-term boyfriend. It sort of makes sense–solo traveling isn’t as common for women as it is for men due to safety concerns, so one can reasonably expect there to be fewer nomad women as well. In some ways it felt like all of the single nomad women that ever existed had somehow conspired to congregate in Bali.

Tanah Lot Temple, Bali

It was also awesome to spend time with my sister, though she and I would occasionally argue over travel styles–by then I was pretty tired and fairly content to see or not see whatever, and she would sometimes become frustrated with my lack of strong enthusiasm or opinion. She and I have always been close, and particularly after my more recent spouts of isolation in France and Morocco, it was nice to have a constant companion.

Bali did, however, feel kind of overrun with expats and foreigners. Many of the major destinations had a very gentrified feeling to them, creating a tangible privilege gap. It’s hard to know what to feel when you talk to hard-working Balinese business owners who want to travel, but have to literally save for a decade to afford even a shoe-string vacation to somewhere like Europe. Where is the fairness in that? What have we done to deserve what so many will never be able to afford? And what must it be like to serve people everyday who take privileges like these for granted?

India

After Bali, my sister and I flew into New Delhi, India, in early December to meet our parents for 3.5 weeks of sightseeing in India. I won’t say much in detail about this, but this was essentially all time off for the holidays. While I got to see a lot of really cool sites in India, I have to say that I really didn’t enjoy the experience of being a full-time tourist for so long. I’ve become rather accustomed to my typical mode of travel–long stints of time in one place, with most of the sightseeing spread out over the occasional weekend. It’s ironic because, as my sister is quick to remind me, I used to very much be the type to “maximize” every minute in a new place. My mentality now is a lot more… relaxed. I don’t feel nearly as scarce about my vacation days or about my ability to return to places I’d like to see again as I used to. These days I would prefer learning what it’s like to live my life, embedding in the local culture, and establishing a routine in a new place over checking tourist sites off of a list as efficiently as I can.

I know visiting India for the first time is a life- and perspective-changing experience for many people, but I didn’t really feel that way myself. Perhaps it’s simply because our itinerary mostly took us through tourist traps, or perhaps it’s because I’ve seen and experienced enough at this point that the perspective-enhancing returns are diminishing. That said, here are a couple surprising (though shallow) learnings from India:

  • Contrary to my previous stereotype that all Indians love super spicy food, most Northern Indians don’t seem to actually eat spicy (at least, not in the hot sense) and will even actively shun spicy food. I couldn’t find a spicy option at virtually any restaurant I ate at.
  • From many of my tour guides, I learned that the food we typically think of as Indian in America is actually Mughlai, heavily influenced by the Mongol conquerers of India.

After nearly a month of sightseeing, things really started to blur together, but some of my favorite memories were:

  • Trying Jalebi, one of my new favorite simple desserts :d
  • Visiting the Taj Mahal.
  • Visiting the kitchen of a Jain temple where they produce thousands (maybe more?) of free meals during every service.
  • Spending a day on a house boat in Kerala, in the south of India.
  • Watching the local Keralan custom of burning an effigy of an old man to ring in the new year. (The figure looks a little like Santa Clause, but I think is meant to just represent leaving the past year behind.)
The Taj Mahal, India
Just getting artsy with my shots…
Sacks and sacks of chilis in a market in New Delhi, India
Jalebi, my new favorite Indian dessert
A collection of house boats docked for the night in Kerala, India
Not pictured: several moments later when the effigy burst into flames. Kerala, India.

Chiang Mai, Thailand (Reprise)

Coming back from India, I was kind of sick of sightseeing and feeling very ready to get back to work. One of my clients had finally given me a definite launch date for I’m With Them, and I knew that January was going to be busy a month getting everything ready. I had also previously planned to meet two close friends (my original roommates back in Chiang Mai the first time!) in Taipei early February, so I only had a month wherever I went next.

I chose to return to Chiang Mai because a few friends were there already (community? check), and because I knew exactly what I was going to get. My sister decided to tag along for a couple weeks, not totally sure where she was going to travel next before returning to the States.

I hit the ground running in Thailand and worked pretty long hours to support the big product lunch. At one point, I had to switch to a nocturnal schedule to be sure I’d be awake during Pacific business hours in case anything spontaneously combusted. Most of my time was spent in my favorite spots to work, like Nine One Coffee, Barisotel, and Camp. Occasionally I’d get away long enough for a session training Muay Thai or to take my sister, who had come with me after India, to one of Chiang Mai’s many night markets.

The White Temple in Chiang Rai, Thailand

I didn’t have much time for anything other than work in Chiang Mai this time around, which was fine since I’d seen most of the things I wanted to see the first time I came. I did visit Chiang Rai, another popular town in northern Thailand with a few famous temples and art emplacements. I also executed my first legit border run by driving a motorbike north to the Burmese border and crossing for lunch in another country before walking back across to Thailand.

Taipei, Taiwan

In February, I moved to Taiwan for ~4 months with the intentions of:

  1. Improving my Mandarin Chinese
  2. Better understanding my cultural roots
  3. Reconnecting with extended family abroad

Much of the recountable history on both sides of my family traces back to Taiwan. My mother was actually born in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, and lived there for about 7 years before immigrating to the States. Ironically, despite not speaking a word of English when she got here, my mother went on to become an editor, and then a marketing executive. Despite the best efforts of my English teachers growing up, I learned pretty much everything I know about writing and communication from my immigrant mother–you’d never guess her first language wasn’t English.

My aunt’s delicious home-made beef noodle soup

My maternal grandfather was a well-respected Taiwanese businessman. He owned a successful import/export business, but lost much of his wealth after moving his family to the States. Through my grandfather, my mother’s family counts Terry Guo, the founder of Foxconn and one of the richest men in Taiwan, as a family friend. Apparently Terry Guo’s father worked for my grandfather in some capacity, and my grandfather always went out of his way to help him and his family.

On my father’s side, both of my grandparents emigrated from Taiwan to the States. My grandfather’s grandfather was a man named Qiu Fengjia (丘逢甲). During the First Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Empire ceded the island of Taiwan to the Japanese, but there were many Chinese nationals that weren’t willing to give up Taiwan so easily. Qiu Fengjia was a leader in the resistance movement against the Japanese, and became the Vice-President of an independent Taiwan that existed briefly in 1895 before the resistance was crushed. Taiwan was occupied by the Japanese for about 50 years after that, ending only after Taiwan was returned to China when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II. I’ve never been able to learn much about my great great grandfather on my own, but he apparently appears in Taiwanese history books and even has a university named after him in Taichung. I gave a talk to a group of high school students while I was in Taiwan recently, and when I mentioned my relation to Qiu Fengjia in order to help introduce myself the whole room went up in excited ooh’s and ah’s–a much larger reaction than I would have expected for what seems like a fairly minor historical figure.

Launching a lantern with my sister at the Ping Xi lantern festival in Taiwan

Anyway, the last time I had been to Taiwan was in 2015, shortly after graduating from college. I remember loving my trip, but feeling a strong cultural disconnect–like there was so much more I should be able to understand and experience in this place that I simply couldn’t because my Chinese was nowhere near up to par. I wanted to feel like I could belong in Taiwan because I knew some of my recent ancestors were so in love with it, but I couldn’t help but feel like a complete outsider. I think it was probably after and because of that trip that learning Chinese started consistently appearing in my annual goals.

My Chinese is still a work in progress, but I learned a lot, and I had a fantastic time in Taiwan this time around. So fantastic, in fact, that I’ve already loosely blocked out 3 months out of each year to return to Taipei.

Enjoying a hike in Taroko Gorge, Taiwan

Particularly from a nomad’s perspective, Taipei is truly a magical place. For a developed, first-world capital city, Taipei is shockingly affordable–I paid $600/mo for a private room and shower in one of the most centrally-located parts of the city, and I probably could have gotten the same for cheaper. The food scene in Taiwan is amazing and also very affordable–the night markets are world-class, and you can find an array of Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese delicacies pretty much everywhere you go, often for as cheap as $3-5 for a meal. There’s a good amount of English in Taipei, but it can be hard to get around if you don’t speak some Chinese. That said, people in Taiwan are super friendly. I often like to joke that if you get lost in Taiwan, not only will someone patiently help you find your way, they’ll probably also give you a puppy. Ok, they’re not quite that nice, but seriously, of all the places I’ve been, I’ve probably felt the safest in Taiwan, and that owes largely to how friendly, hospitable, trustworthy, and honorable the average person is there.

Because I had been to Taiwan, and because I knew very quickly that I would be definitely be back, and soon, I didn’t actually spend that much time exploring in Taiwan. There’s a lot of spectacular nature, and amazing mountain hiking that I’d still really love to do in Taiwan, but most of my time there was spent working hard towards my goals–launching projects, growing my business, learning Chinese, getting in shape, etc.–or hanging out with friends. I’d say my life was pretty normal, and pretty average, and I honestly found it really nice.

While in Taiwan, I signed a new contract with an existing client, and finally started having about half of my time available to work on my own projects. Using everything I’ve learned in the last 2 years from numerous client projects, I’ve started working on the next iteration of Serenity. I’m going to nerd out for a few seconds here, but I’m really excited about the technology I’m working with right now–I’m experimenting with efficient workflows for simultaneously building for both web and mobile to see if it’s possible to quickly get to market with both (Serenity, particularly, requires at least a small mobile component in order to compete with existing solutions). Things are going pretty well, though I invested a lot of the time while I was in Taiwan into my tooling rather than features. While in Taiwan I also started working on a project for nomads with two close nomadic friends. The projects been evolving, and has turned into something we’re calling Tribe. I’ll describe it in greater detail soon.

Where Am I Now?

I’m down in Medellin, Colombia, where I’ve been living for almost the last 3 months. I’ll be moving again soon, this time to Mexico City, Mexico, where I’m also hoping to spend about 3 months. Mostly, I’ve been working on my Spanish, learning to salsa dance, and working a crap ton. In the coming weeks, I’m hoping to launch a beta version of Tribe. Ideally by the end of September, we’ll launch an MVP and see if it sticks.

I’ve got a lot to say about Colombia, but it’s going to have to wait until next time. (Not too long, though, I promise!!)

Why Haven’t I Been Writing More?

I imagine that some people have it in their heads that I’m constantly traveling, exploring, and adventuring–that my life consists of tromping through jungles or wrestling sharks or seducing beautiful and exotic women (I don’t know, whatever passes for your probably overly masculine ideal of adventure these days). At least, this is the impression I sometimes get from my friends and family who always seem surprised to hear that, yes, I do actually still work and, no, even though I technically could take way more time off than the average individual, I usually don’t because I still have my own professional goals and priorities to focus on, too.

The truth is often my daily life is pretty mundane, and on average I’m quite happy with that. I recently spent almost 4 months in Taipei, Taiwan and often when people would ask me what I’d had a chance to see since coming to Taiwan I’d have to say that mostly I spent my time in the same two or three rooms, eating more-or-less the same two or three meals. I’d work during the day, go the gym, hang out with friends in the evening. On weekends I’d go hiking, read a book, play some video games, or cook a fun meal at home to share. In short I was just… living my life the way most people would do just about anywhere else.

At first, I felt almost ashamed and embarrassed that I hadn’t been on the grand adventure I knew people were expecting me to tell them about. Given time though, I realized that I’m pretty happy right where I am doing exactly what I’m doing despite the relatively unremarkable repetition. Perhaps that by itself is a pretty remarkable thing, especially given that that certainly hasn’t been true everywhere I’ve been. As a wise friend once commented, if our lives are mostly made up of average, unremarkable days, then maybe the best we can hope for is to make our average, unremarkable days as fulfilling as they can be.

All of this is to say that I don’t always have so much to say about my travels so sometimes I struggle with what to write. I tend to prefer to err on the side of silence rather than monotonous repetition.

I’m already planning my next post about Colombia and I’m hoping it’ll include a narrative of my impressions, as well as a breakdown of my lifestyle, routine, and budget–I’ve started tracking it more closely so I can start doing this in each country!–and, if I work hard at it, maybe a quick plug for a few new projects I’m working on. So I’ll be back again soon, once I feel that there’s another complete chapter to write about. In the meantime, if you got down this far and you enjoy reading my musings, please consider subscribing to my email list both to be the first to hear about my next post, and to remind me that there may actually be people waiting around for it. I’d also love some feedback! In the comments below, please take some time to tell me: what aspects of these posts do you find most interesting? What do you want more of?

I wrote last week about why I went to a Buddhist monastery. This week I’m writing about the experience itself.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I arrived at Plum Village, a mindfulness practice center and Buddhist monastery near Bordeaux, France, but I went in hoping to find some peace, to learn more about mindfulness, and to learn a little more about Buddhism. Originally, I had planned to spend one week in Plum Village. I was intrigued enough by the end of that week to extend my stay for a second.

My first week was peaceful and joyous. There were moments when I was legitimately nearly moved to joyous tears. I felt happy, safe, connected to others, and very deeply at peace. Though I had started practicing mindfulness years before even hearing about Plum Village, my first week showed me heights and benefits of mindfulness I hadn’t thought possible. I was humbled to realize that I had previously only just scratched the surface and simultaneously excited to discover how much I had yet to learn.

By contrast, my second week was turbulent and emotional. I cried several times. I spent more time alone looking deeply within myself, and began to better understand the nature of sources of pain I hadn’t even entirely realized I had been running from. There’s a still long way to go, but the beginnings of that awareness combined with the wisdom of some of my mentors in Plum Village started me on the path toward healing and armed me tools I’m sure I’ll need to see the journey through.

I will, however, be the last to claim that everything about Plum Village was rosy and amazing. In fact, parts of my experience were initially rather mixed–I recoiled from a distinctly church-like vibe I got from some of the activities, and can’t honestly claim to have been inspired by or impressed with every Plum Village monk or nun I met. Many of the people I met at Plum Village had been coming back for years or decades, and were clear raving fans. I couldn’t initially see myself becoming one of them.

Writing in my journal late at night by the light of the Bell Tower in Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

By the end, though, I could see the value. When I left, I felt more focused, more mindful, more at peace, and more compassionate than I had ever been in my life. I left with a heightened awareness of my own habits and patterns and, thus, the power to change those that didn’t suit me. I also left with a new mode of relating to myself, others around me, and to the world at large.

It’s been just over 3 weeks since I left Plum Village and I have, admittedly, found it very hard to maintain many of those states of mind in the outside world. I still get swept up by some of my old habits and patterns, and I’ve noticed that I’ve returned to familiar ways of escaping from deeper pains I’m reluctant to face. In particular, I think I’m still learning how to approach the occasionally inevitably lonely moments while traveling–close friends and truly intimate relationships can be hard to come by when the cast in your life seems to rotates constantly. This loneliness is sometimes underscored by the still convalescing wounds from my less-and-less recent breakup. While in Plum Village I had no choice but to approach these emotions with mindfulness. Lately, outside, it’s sometimes all I can do to notice that I’m acting out of a habitual desire to avoid dealing with this before continuing to do so anyway.

Though I struggle to apply everything I learned, I’m grateful for my time in Plum Village and hopeful that some things have taken deep root in my consciousness. I would definitely go back and, as I may have the opportunity to head back to Asia later this year, I’m considering paying visits to the affiliated monasteries in Hong Kong and Thailand.

What follows is my nightly journal from my two weeks in Plum Village. It contains impressions, emotions, insights and philosophical musings brought about by the unique environment there. The contents herein have been edited only for clarity. I wrote it for myself and parts of it are rather personal, but I share it so others may benefit from my experience at Plum Village.

As it’s rather long, here is a table of contents and an index of a few of the highlights:

Journal

Day 1 – Saturday, July 7, 2018

I arrived at Plum Village in the late afternoon yesterday. Today is my first full day here. It’s… very peaceful here. The hamlet itself is well-integrated with the beautifully forested countryside, and is often kissed by the sun and caressed by the warm summer’s breeze. The lighting here when the sun’s rays peak through the trees at dawn and dusk is other-wordly.

The altar in the meditation hall of Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

With nature’s beauty all around and with the tranquil environment created by the community here, it’s hard not to find myself experiencing mindful moments and spontaneously enjoying the present. And yet, I am often restless here as well. The pace of everything here is calm and unhurried. Without realizing it, I often find that I’m walking faster than those around me. There’s also a bell they ring every so often as a reminder to return to the present. When they ring it, everyone goes silent and follows their breath for a few moments before returning to whatever they were doing. I’m often one of the last to notice the bell.

There are several meditation sessions of different varieties each day with the first starting before dawn at 6:00am. Despite years of meditation practice and experience with sessions as long as an hour, I’m often distracted and impatient. During breaks I tend to search for ways to occupy myself so I’ve been playing a lot of chess and Go with the other retreatants. As a practitioner of mindfulness, I know that occasionally getting distracted or impatient is natural and that I shouldn’t give myself a hard time about it. I’m also told by the veterans here that by the end of the week I’ll have adapted, but I have a hard time imagining myself slowing down so much at the moment.

I guess I’ve never had this much time every day dedicated to mindfulness before. We practice being mindful in almost everything we do, even walking, eating, and working. So much time with my thoughts makes it hard to hide from any difficult emotions I might be avoiding.

I’m making friends here and meeting interesting people, though it sometimes feels like my naturally extroverted nature is at odds with the intentions of the retreat. Today at lunch I made the mistake of carrying on a conversation while waiting in line for food. The dining hall is a “Noble Silence” area, which means we are meant to practice being present, silencing both our mouths and our minds.

I clearly have a lot to learn about mindfulness and I’m excited to learn over the course of the retreat! I wonder a little if one week is enough time to internalize what I learn here and if I’ll really be able to take mindfulness with me into the distracted and hurried world outside. I suppose only time will tell.

Day 2 – Sunday, July 8, 2018

A view of the lotus pond and bell tower in Lower Hamlet, Plum Village.

I’m quite pensive today. I suppose my overactive mind doesn’t take many breaks, even on a mindfulness retreat. After morning meditation and breakfast we walked down to the Lower Hamlet, which is, I think, typically where the single women stay. In some ways the Lower Hamlet is even nicer than the Upper Hamlet, where the men stay: there’s a large lotus pond in the center, and a peaceful grove of trees for walking meditation. We visited Lower Hamlet for a “Dharma Talk”1, which is perhaps the Plum Village version of a lecture or a sermon.

I’ve been drawing a lot of parallels between my experience here and my sparse childhood experiences at Christian and later Universal Unitarian churches. The community for practice here, the “sangha”, is much like the parish of a Christian church. The monks even seem to have a few songs which they lead us in before certain activities. Today, before the talk there was a performance of sorts with many of the monks and nuns chanting. I must admit that the comparison between Plum Village and a religious retreat makes me uncomfortable. I understand the powerful principles underlying the creation of a community of spiritual practitioners, and the way things are organized here makes sense, but I’m finding that I’m a bit resistant to some of the teachings here because of the format. I know that there is wisdom here, as there is in many of the world’s religions and spiritual practices, but I think the church-like format and strong devotion of many of the other retreatants has me on high alert for dogma. As is often my practice, I find myself questioning and examining everything, and I wonder if my habit of doing thi is diminishing my experience. There’s a common aphorism in Zen that goes something like “One cannot learn new things when the cup is already full.”

I wonder if my cup is too full. People often rave about their experience in Plum Village, and many of the retreatants are veterans who have been returning for years. While I certainly see the value, I’m not sure that I’m a raving fan yet, and I’m not sure what it would take for me to become one.

The poem inscribed on the large bell in Lower Hamlet, Plum Village.

On some level I think my personal philosophy is grappling with Buddhist precepts and finding a few places where there may be conflicts. In particular, Buddhism emphasizes slowing everything down and even just being OK with doing nothing for no reason. It also emphasizes the dual ideas of managing suffering while cultivating joy. While I’d agree that in our daily lives most of us are too hurried to mindfully enjoy the present, and that most of us struggle with the idea of having nothing to do and no stimulation, I believe in a balance in all things and have been wondering if the Buddhist work ethic as I’ve experienced and understood it so far is really the middle path. I also believe that some amount of stress and suffering is actually good and necessary, and that sometimes we should even seek it out (learning to face one’s fears, for example, usually has large personal benefit but could be argued to be a form of suffering). I have yet to see this conundrum fully addressed by Buddhism, though I’ve seen hints in the way my teacher talks about sitting for meditation (there is often pain, but one accepts and overcomes it and, in so doing, the pain bothers one less as they become practiced).

Anyway, today’s talk was about following the breath, finding joy/happiness in the mindfulness of doing so, and ultimately applying mindfulness to transform neutral and unpleasant experiences into pleasant ones. The core idea seemed to be that by applying awareness (rather than thought or avoidance) to these emotional states, we can take pleasure in the experience of acknowledging that we are bored (neutral) or sad (unpleasant). I think there’s truth in this though I sometimes feel skeptical of the somewhat mystic terminology of Buddhism. I suppose I’ll just have to try for myself sometime.

Day 3 – Monday, July 9, 2018

Fields of sunflowers litter the beautiful Bordeaux countryside.

I gave up my watch today. I was talking to one of the other retreatants and realized that my watch and sense of time were pulling me out of the present. Though I’m still somewhat skeptical of some of the Buddhist teachings, I’ve decided to do my best to embrace the spirit of the retreat. To this end, I’ve also given up chess and Go for the remainder of my time here as I was finding that my attachment to the games was distracting me–even in moments when I didn’t have down time I would look forward to the next time I’d get to play. I think perhaps I will make exceptions to this rule–the goal is to be present and mindful with myself, my surroundings, and my companions here. There are mindful interactions I can have with others over chess, but for now I will prefer conversation.

In the absence of other distractions, I mostly fill my time with walks and with talking to people. Many of the people here have followed similar paths or struggled with similar things and found refuge in mindfulness and Buddhism, so the conversations have been interesting and fruitful.

Today we visited New Hamlet via bus for another Dharma Talk. I decided to listen to the talk in French, and I’ll admit I was a bit tired–we sleep around 10pm and wake-up around 5:15am–so I only got the gist of the talk. Mostly it seemed to be about how Buddhists conceptualize the mind and human psychology. The analogy they’re fond of using is that the mind is like a garden with many seeds we can water to bring things into our consciousness. Focusing on the negative seeds causes negative thoughts and behaviors to grow, while focusing on the positive seeds does the opposite. Mindfulness, then, is tending a garden, and being judicious about which seeds to water and with what nourishment.

In the afternoon we learned about the 5 Mindfulness Trainings, which are a sort of code practitioners can commit themselves to. It includes things like mindful consumption and mindful interaction, and it implies that one make a commitment to vegetarianism and giving up substances like alcohol. Hearing these trainings felt a little like receiving the 10 commandments, and I could feel that comparison making me tense and less receptive. Though the trainings sounded rigid, the monks expressed two sentiments I really appreciated: 1) this is an ideal to work towards, and it’s not meant to be dogma–interpret them how you will while maintaining the spirit of mindfulness and 2) take what’s helpful to you and leave the rest with us. These sentiments really helped me to feel less like I’m on a religious retreat and being pressured to convert. We’re given the option to accept the trainings in a formal ceremony before we leave. I haven’t decided yet if I will.

The walking meditation path through the forest in Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

I got into a bit of a debate with one of the other retreatants today which I felt illustrated one of my hesitations about the community here. Basically, I’ve observed that a lot of people here put a huge emphasis on “going with the flow.” This makes sense, as a lot of these people are recovering control freaks who were previously on high-stress career paths. They seem to have found in Buddhism an invitation to embrace the opposite extreme and now attempt to control nothing. The same pattern is observable about thought and intellectualizing–many of these people have experience stress, anxiety, or depression from being too much in their heads. They seem to now profess a total rejection of intellectualization and rational thought, preferring instead to feel everything out. My concern, and the kernel of the debate, is that these reactions are too strong and may lead one to a less-than-optimal path down the other extreme. In most things in life, I have found that balance is ideal because there are advantages and disadvantages to nearly every way of thinking and every way of being. In the cases here, following the other extreme does involve much less stress, which makes it potentially falsely attractive, but I think it may also lead to a state of under control, where one does not exert influence on things in life they actually can and should control (it’s knowing which is which that’s the real challenge, in my opinion). I can’t claim to know what the right balance is, but I have an intuition that the opposite extreme is not it.

On my way to write this entry, I was invited by one of the monks to join him for some late evening tea. Though it was getting late and I was eager to write down my thoughts for the day, I felt it would be wrong to decline. We drank tea by a lake, and he graciously offered to help untangle some of my internal knots. I shared with him some of the difficult emotions I’ve experienced in separating with my Vietnamese ex-girlfriend. He is, himself, Vietnamese, so I felt a little bit of a language barrier, but was appreciative of a compassionate ear. His advice itself confused me somewhat, however. He seemed to make a lot of assumptions about my ex- since she was Vietnamese, and he seemed to make a lot of assumptions about what and how I felt about her and about the depth and nature of our relationship. It struck me at points as a bit strangely ironic to be receiving advice on such matters from a man who became a monk at 17 and who likely had little actual experience in such matters, but I enjoyed the tea and the company and did my best to keep an open mind. This monk has suggested I stay in Plum Village for another week or two, and I’ve learned from  him that it may be possible to borrow a tent. There are a few other hurdles to staying longer, but I’m considering it. He claims that I should take more time to heal, not just from my ex-, but also from suffering I have from my parents. He thinks that in the outside world I’ll distract myself and run away from my suffering rather than sit with and understand it. I’m not sure, but he may be right–I certainly think I felt better about the break-up leading up to Plum Village because I was so busy I didn’t really have bandwidth to process my emotions.

I’m not sure what I’ll find if I stay another week, but regardless of my continued skepticism, I do know that I feel more deeply calm, relaxed, and at peace here than I have for a very long time.

Day 4 – Tuesday, July 10, 2018

The smaller activity bell in Lower Hamlet, Plum Village.

I have decided to spend another week here if I can make it work logistically. All day I’ve been playing with the question of whether or not to stay. For most people, I think Plum Village represents a place of refuge where they can escape from the stress in their daily lives and connect with the mind space to recognize and really deal with their deeper internal fears and issues (or, as Buddhists would say, their suffering). I’ve been struggling a bit to understand why my experience so far hasn’t matched up with others’, but now I think I see that it may be because I have made dealing with fears and issues a major focal point of my life.

The argument for staying in Plum Village is usually that doing so will help one to better understand themselves and their suffering so they can deal with them here rather than run away from them through distractions and consumption in the outside world. For me, though, I’ve been wondering if Plum Village is actually my way of running away from my problems: I deal with my fears and my problems every day, though I’m admittedly not always as mindful as I could be about how I go about it. Here in Plum Village, I am safe and can give myself a pass to not deal with the fears involved in walking my own path or the suffering involved in my close relationships. Though I recognize that staying here has value for most people living more traditional lifestyles, I have been trying to decide if I would get more value here or out there. Also, particularly because of some of my resistance, I’ve wondered if I should go.

What changed my mind today was a moving experience at the end of a talk today about “Beginning Anew.” “Beginning Anew” is a practice they have here for renewing, repairing, and strengthening relationships. It involves recognizing that relationships are dynamic, and cannot be expected to remain the same over time. It also involves recognizing that every fulfilling relationship has good moments (flowers) and challenges (compost), and that both are equally important in maintaining a strong relationship. Their process here has four parts: 1) flower watering, in which one recognizes, affirms, and appreciates what is beautiful and special about the other person, 2) expressing regret, in which one takes ownership of the things they wish they did better so the other person might suffer less, 3) expressing suffering, in which one describes how they suffer as a result of the other person’s actions, without blaming or any vindictive or harmful intent in order to simply help the other person understand you better and 4) asking for support, in which one asks the other for specific help to reduce one’s suffering.

All of this makes great theory, but what really brought it home was the monk inviting a couple to volunteer to actually go through the steps in front of all of us. At first, nobody volunteered. After many minutes, there was a woman who seemed interested, but her husband was visibly reluctant. She eventually got him on stage with the promise that perhaps they would just go through the affirmations.

Her affirmations were so heartfelt and tender that they brought her husband to tears. For some reason, I also couldn’t help but cry watching this–perhaps because the expression of love was so beautiful, and perhaps because it reminded me of something I had recently hoped for and lost in my ex-. She didn’t stop there, though. She ended up going through the entire process and when she was finished her husband, reminded of her love for him and of his love for her, leaned over and kissed her. Unexpectedly, he then got very into it and similarly walked through the process. We could actually feel and see their love for each other, and feel and see that their relationship had tangibly been healed by the exercise. It was a very moving and very human experience, and watching it feels as if it has healed something in me as well.

In the wake of that experience, I’ve come to the insight that though I will not necessarily agree with every teaching here, this is, indeed, a very special and very healing place. I don’t entirely understand how or why yet, but perhaps I don’t need to. There is much that I can learn and practice here, if I allow myself to, and for all I know I may never get another chance to come back. Tomorrow I will ask at the registration office if I can stay another week and I will take a friend up on his offer to borrow his unused tent.

Day 5 – Wednesday, July 11, 2018

The monks and nuns put on a small concert for us near Song Ha Temple, Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

Yesterday was lazy day which meant that there were next to no official activities and I had time to sleep in. Waking up for 6am morning meditation after such a day was a bit brutal. It was a fairly uneventful day, but I want to write about a few philosophical insights I’ve had. A few of these came up during a Q&A session with the monks and nuns during which I tried to phrase a few questions I had been thinking about only to find that I already had the answers, or at least that I had made progress since the last time I thought about them.

The first question is whether or not happiness equates to meaning in life. I ask this question because it’s almost cliché to look beneath surface-level desires (e.g. money, fame, power, etc.) and state that what people who want these things really want is to be happy and that they pursue these things because they believe having these things will make them happy. Buddhism teaches that the conditions for happiness are always present, and that a form of happiness is readily accessible through mindfulness. Empirically and experientially, this is true for me: being mindful helps to generate a wondrous sense of appreciation, gratitude, and connectedness, creating a joy that could be most likened to the joy children experience as they discover the incredible nature of even simple things in the world for the first time.

Happiness–become and staying happy–receives a lot of attention in the teachings at Plum Village, but I am increasingly convinced that happiness is, itself, another red herring in understanding what truly motivates and inspires people. I’m beginning to think that what we truly seek from life is not happiness, but meaning. Though they are related, they are not the same thing. I think that the existence of meaning generates happiness, and that being happy is meaningful and makes it easier for us to find meaning in our situations and surroundings. However, meaning does not necessarily require the presence of happiness: we often find meaning when we suffer, and we sometimes find meaning in relationships that at times give us more frustration than joy (e.g. family). If what we really seek is meaning and meaning does not equate to happiness, then the idea that our goal in life is to pursue happiness is an oversimplification. What we should pursue instead is meaning, which will commonly be found on the road to happiness, but which can be found through other paths as well (e.g. converting to a religion and accepting a dogmatic definition of meaning; suffering but suffering well also often leads to meaning).

The second insight is related: it’s that our goal in life cannot and should not be to eliminate suffering. I often hear people who have had some exposure to Eastern philosophies express an aspiration to “be liberated,” as if liberation implies an end to all of their pain and suffering for all of time. I’m learning, however, that happiness cannot exist without suffering anymore than light can exist without shadow. Furthermore, the balance and interplay of suffering and happiness is an important source of meaning. I think it’s possible, therefore, that the concept of enlightenment has less to do with not suffering and more to do with learning the perspectives and practices to suffer well–finding meaning in our suffering and therefore naturally reducing the suffering.

These ideas need more exploration and refinement, but if I’m right than I think my approach to life does change slightly to optimize for meaning in whatever forms I can find or create it rather than just optimizing for happiness. I wonder also what implications these ideas have for how we should structure our societies and define our societal goals as well: if the aim isn’t to eliminate suffering, is it still to lessen it as much as we can? Is there an amount of suffering that is actually good to have present? Should we even create suffering to achieve that if necessary?

In other news, I’ve confirmed that I can stay here another week. There’s a dorm bed available in Sơn Ha for 350€/week and, though pricey, I think I’m going to take it. I may see if I can use my tech skills to volunteer and receive a free or reduced rate in exchange.

I also had a few really interesting conversations today: one about politics and societal values (including a discussion of direct democracy, its merits and its flaws), and one about “the 7 chakras” and theories for personal philosophy and the progression of consciousness. A more in-depth recounting of those conversations will have to wait until it’s not super late at night before a 6am meditation, but suffice to say I have found very interesting topics on which to connect very deeply with some of the people here. I can’t help but feel that I’m making some good friends for life here, and this also motivates me to stay longer.

As a last note: my Dharma sharing family2 facilitator, a very wise, joyous, and entertaining Thay3 Phap Dung, says that he sees something different in me since I’ve been here and that he’s glad I’m staying longer. Something in my eyes, he says. I think I feel it, too: here I am very deeply at peace and experience a very deep joy which I think reflects in my face. The challenge when I leave will be taking that with me and maintaining it in the world outside.

Day 6 – Thursday, July 12, 2018

A collection of Buddha statues in Lower Hamlet, Plum Village.

Today was the last day of the first week of the retreat. The day started with kind of a weird ritualistic ceremony. Many people here opted to receive the transmission of the 5 Mindfulness Trainings (or, at least some of the 5). Rather than sitting meditation, we had the ceremony at 6:00am, which involved some chanting, reading the mindfulness trainings, bowing to the altar in the meditation hall, and ultimately receiving a certificate including the entire text of the 5 Mindfulness Trainings (to be reviewed and contemplated on a regular basis).

I have not elected to receive the 5 Mindfulness Trainings myself, though doing so is more a commitment to one’s self than anything. I’m still deciding how much of the text I agree with. Since I’m staying another week, I figure I have more time to contemplate the decision.

I continue to struggle a bit with the more ritualistic side of the tradition here. I suppose in part, this is why I stay so intellectually on guard: the difference between a community and a cult can be as small as the absence of independent rational thought and the presence of cyanide in the Koolaid… I am, however, learning not to let this get too much in the way of my absorbing useful insights from the rest of my surroundings.

I had some harder moments today. In stark contrast to the feelings of joy and peace I’ve had throughout the week, today I often felt tense and was visited by heavier feelings of stress, anxiety, or fear. It was nothing I haven’t learned to be familiar with, but it was a bit surprising nonetheless. I’d attribute these feelings to two sources. First, I had to turn on my phone and refill my SIM card. That was, itself, rather frustrating, and reconnecting to the outside world had a stronger effect on my ability to stay present and mindful than I expected. Suddenly, with messages to send, replies to receive, and potentially work to do, my mind became very occupied and I caught myself often thinking ahead to something I might need to do later. I think this all contributed to a loose sense of stress, heightened by the fact that it feels like such a long time since I last experienced stress.

At first, the idea of having to stay in contact with the outside world or working while here bummed me out, but I’ve come to realize that it’s a wonderful opportunity to begin to slowly integrate my mindfulness practice into my normal life while still keeping a foot in the safety and energy of Plum Village. My first week here was quite relaxing and I learned a lot about the joy of slowing life down. These conditions–no phone, no watch, no deadlines–however, were not terribly similar to my actual life. To really learn to be mindful outside of Plum Village, I will need to learn to change my relationship with technology and with work. I’m quite excited now for the challenge.

The second source of tension was a brief feeling of disconnectedness from some of my friends here. I had a pretty interesting philosophical conversation with a friend, but left feeling like I had perhaps not been mindful and may have pushed too hard. I really enjoy talking about some of these questions, but I think I have strong opinions and an intensity in asking the questions that can sometimes wear people out.

The topic of the conversation also left me feeling a bit down. As I alluded to yesterday, it seems as if happiness and meaning don’t exist without suffering. Yet, the paradox is that we often derive meaning from lessening the suffering of others. In an ideal world would we not, therefore, work to eliminate all the suffering we could? Is there any meaning in a world without suffering? If not… should we involve ourselves in the lessening of suffering at all or should we leave it be? Somehow it doesn’t feel right for there not to be any meaning to anything, nor does it feel right to not aim to spread joy/happiness while lessening suffering, so the implications of this paradox deflated me a bit. I’m still playing with it, but I think the way out of the paradox involves recognizing that even if our intent is to lessen suffering as much as possible, it’s likely humanly impossible to completely eliminate suffering–that would involve removing emotions, something that feels very integral to what it even means to be human. There seem to be two forms of suffering: the original pain that kicks up emotions, and the additional pain we kick up by getting overly involved in these emotions in unskillful ways. With practice, we can learn to transform the second type of pain into something positive (e.g. when we feel stressed we can either be stressed that we’re stressed or we can develop a healthy relationship with stress and learn that some amount of stress helps us to grow and evolve).

I think it’s unlikely that we can ever eliminate the first type of suffering without removing our emotions–and that’s OK because joy and happiness can often be found in the absence of that pain, but can also be found in the practice of making that pain an ally when it is present. So perhaps our goal as a race and an important way in which we find meaning is in helping others learn to suffer well. If we did this perfectly it would not mean the end of all pain, but it would mean the transformation of all negative affectations of suffering. Such a world would, indeed, be beautiful.

An incredible countryside sunset seen from a church on a hill near Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

I had two really beautiful high points today despite the introduction of stress. The first was during dinner when I looked around at the faces of everyone in my Dharma sharing family and realized that I really, honestly, wanted to help them all experience joy and suffer less and that I knew they all wanted the same for me. This is an important part of what they refer to as “True Love” here (only one part of what I personally consider important in romantic love). The realization that I feel a sense of love for all these people and from all these people was very moving and powerful. I imagine for some it’s also incredibly healing–it may be the first time in their lives they’ve experienced such a love.

The second was after dinner during a special tea meditation we had to close out the week. My small family hiked a ways to a church on a hill outside of the monastery. There we shared a delicious oolong tea, some inspired music from the talented musicians in our family, each other’s presence, and the beautiful orange light of twilight as the sun sinks over the hills and valleys of rural France. All of it came together to create what felt like a beautifully perfect moment full of joy and full of presence. I kid you not, it was nearly enough to move me to tears. It’s hard for me to describe why, but there’s so much meaning to a joyful moment like that shared with people I care about. I believe it may even have been one of the most beautiful moments in my life so far.

Day 7 – Friday, July 13, 2018

A small bamboo forest in Lower Hamlet, Plum Village.

I’ll try to keep this one short, as I’m trading sleep for time to write these sometimes and I did not sleep long last night.

It’s arrival/departure day for the second week of the retreat so there wasn’t much scheduled programming for the morning, but I chose to rise at 5:45am and meditate on my own despite having gone to bed past 1:00am.

Today was a difficult day, perhaps for a number of reasons. Not getting enough sleep didn’t help, but I also said goodbye to a number of departing friends today. I’m not terribly good at goodbyes. It’s been interesting, though in some ways alarming, watching the energy of Plum Village as one wave of retreatants leaves and another arrives. When I got here a week ago (feels like a lifetime ago) someone mentioned the hurried/excited/anticipatory energy of new arrivals and how it seems to change over the course of the week. Now that I’m on the other side I understand better. I think I’ve found this renewed sense of rush from outside a bit stressing and my lack of good sleep didn’t afford me the fortitude to normalize. It’s incredible how big a difference a good night’s rest can make.

I have found, however, that I seem to need less sleep here in general. On average I think I sleep 7 hours or less, yet I’ve often felt more energized here than I have in a long time outside.

I’ve had to stay in touch with the outside a bit as well today, and I found I had unmindful moments where I’d pull out my phone for no terribly good reason. I’m starting to get in the habit of leaving it in Airplane mode until I really need it, and am learning to check it a few times a day without feeling anxious to check it. Nevertheless, I’m sure this also had something to do with my darker moods today.

For my second week in Plum Village, I debated switching myself to a French Dharma sharing family so that I’d be forced to speak and listen in French. At the last moment, however, I decided to return to my original English Dharma sharing family because there are many younger retreatants there, I’ve gotten to know some of them quite well, and I think I’ll get more out of the group activities in English. I’m trying to make a commitment to engage more of the many French retreatants in French–I already get to speak more French here than I did in Bordeaux–and not give up and switch to English when I have trouble. I actually had a nice conversation with a French web developer for about 45 minutes before writing this :).

I honestly don’t know exactly what to expect from myself during this second week here. Will it be more of the same, or will I experience something totally different? I’m trying not to get too attached to an idea of it. I do, however, want to set the intention of using this time to learn to apply mindfulness to technology and my work and potentially to engage more with the suffering I know I still carry from my parents. I can’t expect too much, but it would mean a lot to me to be able to meaningfully mend my familial relationships. Up until now, I’ve often found I can’t muster enough compassion to view my parents’ transgressions in a truly forgiving and loving light, but perhaps I can make a breakthrough with support from the nurturing emotional environment here.

Day 8 – Saturday, July 14, 2018

I cried twice today. Once while I sat by the large bell and again during Dharma sharing when I recounted my personal insights.

Bell tower, Upper Hamlet, Plum Village

The bell tower where I spent most of my down time at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

I discovered today that I have been running away from much of my suffering, and I’m really glad I’m staying an extra week. This morning I woke up after a dream about a typical disagreement with my mother, which left me feeling tense all morning. I missed morning meditation because I woke up late, but I made it to the Upper Hamlet for the rest of my morning routine. Over tea, I had a long conversation with Hamish where he shared that Thay Phap Dung had given him an assignment to write a letter of gratitude to his parents about all of the great attributes they have that he has inherited from them. Of course, we ended up talking a lot about our parents and difficulties with them. Not long after our conversation I was sitting alone by the large bell with some tea and my Kindle as I often do. I had just resumed reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse when I realized my pain was starting to surface. I closed my eyes and mindfully followed my breath and just let it come, and before I knew it I was crying. In these tearful moments, I had a few insights: that while I’ve been facing my fears and learning to deal with other forms of suffering, I’ve been running away from the suffering I have inherited from my parents and the suffering their suffering has caused me; that they could never have taught me to deal with my suffering since they have never known how to deal with their own suffering; that I’ve tried and failed many times to mend my relationship with my parents, and for a long time have sort of given up and decided to just keep my distance instead; that I’m incredibly grateful that my ex- helped me to gravitate toward Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh, grateful that she taught me to recognize my parents’ suffering with compassion, grateful that her last great gift to me was the knowledge that I have the capacity to forgive even when others have made me suffer greatly, and grateful for the knowledge that I have the capacity to transform my suffering and the suffering of others; that the way our relationship ended taught me about the same love, compassion, and forgiveness I must now learn to apply to my parents; that through my compassion I still love my ex very much, though I have learned that love and attachment aren’t the same thing so I believe I can continue to feel this way for her without desiring a romantic relationship with her or avoiding one with someone else someday; and that I must learn to listen with more compassion and master the art of suffering well.

I shared all of this during Dharma sharing. It was intense and cathartic. I wonder if it was a bit much since some people were attending their very first sharing session ever, but oh well.

I’m still wearing two hair ties my ex- had put around my wrist for me to remember her by. I haven’t felt completely ready to take them off yet, though sometimes noticing them has triggered a feeling of missing her or of residual anger about how things played out. Now I think that I’ll continue to wear them and instead use them as a frequent reminder of my capacity to love compassionately and to forgive, and of my gratitude in discovering that capacity.

Tomorrow I’ll start trying to bring my parents into my meditation, and perhaps do some writing about and for them. I’m nervous about facing my suffering, but I think I have the tools I need this time.

The Happy Farm, where volunteers help to grow food to support Plum Village.

On a different note, I visited the Happy Farm, where they grow many of their own vegetables, today. I helped them harvest beans and learned that farming is a great method for overcoming my fear of critters–they hide pretty much everywhere on the farm. While there I had some interesting conversations which once again got me thinking about the relationship between happiness and meaning. I’ve had a couple new key insights to explore on this topic: 1) happiness is personal and has to do with lessening suffering and cultivating joy in one’s self while meaning is usually realized in relation to others and has to do with lessening suffering and cultivating joy in others–the more compassion we feel for someone else, the more potential for meaning in the relationship; 2) most people seek a sense of both meaning and happiness ; we tend to feel something is missing without one or the other (this was the missing link before when I wrote about authenticity and integrity); 3) happiness is, in many ways, a prerequisite for most meaning, as we can’t help people feel joy if we don’t have it ourselves, and we can’t as effectively lessen suffering in others if our own burden is too heavy; 4) meaning often generates some happiness, but happiness by this definition cannot be meaningful on its own (e.g. I’m happy, but I long for someone to share it with); 5) authenticity perhaps maximizes both happiness and meaning; 6) there is, perhaps, a separate concept from happiness and meaning which is purpose; purpose and meaning may fulfill overlapping roles, but I need to think about this more.

Anyway, that’s enough musing for now–I need to sleep.

Day 9 – Sunday, July 15, 2018

An early morning shot of the meditation hall in Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

The weather is changing a bit here. Occasionally, dark clouds crowd the sky and threaten to litter the hamlet with rain, though it has not truly rained during the day yet.

We spent the day in Lower Hamlet. I got into a small argument with someone new in my Dharma sharing family. A few of us were talking and I was amused to hear the newcomers expressing the same discomfort as I did with certain aspects of Plum Village (e.g. the singing). One even compared it to a cult-like experience as I did a number of days ago.

Someone mentioned that there were a few things they completely disagreed with during today’s Dharma Talk. When pressed, he said that the meaning he got from some of the talk was “Just breath and your problems will go away.” While I could see how he might interpret things that way, I jumped in very quickly and very forcefully to correct him because I knew that his statement was a gross oversimplification of the philosophy here. They don’t teach that breathing will make our problems disappear–they believe mindfulness and the breath can be used as invaluable tools to become comfortable being with and experiencing our more uncomfortable emotions rather than running from them or finding ways to distract ourselves from them. They teach that in learning to do this well we learn to deal with our pain rather than hide from it and that this helps us solve our problems and become happier.

My heart was in a good place–I didn’t want him to reject his experience here or the wisdom offered here over a disagreement with an incorrect interpretation of the teachings. However, I could feel that I had made him feel judged, lectured to, and unwelcome. I wish I had listened compassionately instead and perhaps have picked a more tactful way of making my point. I have a lot to learn about compassionate listening4–my intellectual instinct is to correct and advise when often someone just needs to feel heard. Learning to do this well would have helped me in my relationship with my ex and will certainly help me make peace with my parents. I ultimately apologized to the person I corrected–even though I know I was factually correct, I also know that I was emotionally wrong to do what I did.

Today I’ve felt better than the last few days. I’m still very aware of my suffering near the surface, but for the most part I’m experiencing joy and suffering simultaneously and it’s a strangely beautiful feeling.

The community celebrates in the large meditation hall as France wins the World Cup.

It was also the World Cup final today, and we turned the large meditation hall into a screening area. Apparently Thay5 didn’t used to allow this but since many of the monks and nuns would watch secretly he decided to just bring everyone together to watch it. We were advised to notice how we and the people around us were feeling, and enjoy the rare outbursts of excitement the monks and nuns would show whenever a goal was scored. I don’t normally watch football, but a friend explained some more of the strategy to me and it ended up being an exciting match. I feel fortunate to have watched France play in and win the World Cup while at Plum Village in France. What are the odds??

No progress today with respect to my parents, but I’ve loosely committed myself to spending my lazy day in relative solitude just approaching the suffering and trying to work through how I feel. No reading or other distractions (even people!!) allowed unless someone invites me to share some time with them.

Day 10 – Monday, July 16, 2018

A view of the bell tower in New Hamlet, Plum Village.

This morning I woke up to distant lightning. I nearly decided to go back to sleep rather than hike 10 minutes to the meditation hall in the rain, but when I went outside it was clear the storm was still a ways off. Almost immediately after I sat down in the meditation hall, however, it started totally pouring. It was actually quite a magical experience sitting and meditating to the rhythm of the drumming rain. I always hated the rain growing up, but I’m trying to learn to appreciate it–after all, they say life is about learning to dance in the rain.

After breakfast I finished reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. It was a pretty profound read–I read it once in high school, but I don’t think I got nearly as much out of it. Finishing the book has me contemplating a lot about the tension between acceptance and action. I think the closest thing Siddhartha comes to attempting to explain the insight of enlightenment is the realization that time is a human construct, that everything that was will always be and everything that will be always was, and that the world is perfect in every moment despite present suffering. In this timeless sense, we become one with pretty much everything–what comprises my body may have existed in many forms: earth, animals, insects, elements, etc. and so I owe gratitude and reverence to all things. Everything on Earth is connected in this way by our complex ecosystem and the cycle of life.

What I’m struggling with, though, is that if truly loving the world and fully realizing this insight means accepting the perfection of its imperfection and recognizing my own and all other suffering as a beautiful part of the broader whole, then what motivation is left to us to change or improve the world or ourselves? In this context, if imperfection and suffering are parts of the genius of life, what does it even mean to improve the world? Thus far, I’m not totally sure what Buddhism has to say to this contradiction, and I keep coming back to it in one form or another. I hope to learn more about the Buddhist perspective here before I leave.

We went to New Hamlet today for another Dharma Talk. I’m still finding that this format isn’t for me–I never have been a fan of lectures. I’m realizing I gain more wisdom and insight reading about these concepts than by having a monk try to explain them. Every teacher has their own style, of course, but thus far I’ve felt that the way they’ve explained topics is logically brittle, trying to fall back on hearsay science at some points, and failing to skillfully back up their claims with good examples. I maintain that this is a failing of the teachers, not of the teachings, however. I’m grateful that these talks are not my first introduction to Buddhism–if they had been I might have been turned off to it. I wonder if my experience would be different if Thich Nhat Hanh still gave these talks himself–he does a reasonably good job explaining in his many books.

It’s now. A clock and watches from an exhibit about Thich Nhat Hanh in New Hamlet, Plum Village.

After the Dharma Talk, Thay Phap Dung offered to share an orange with me. I had been meaning to have a conversation with him for a few days and was very grateful for the opportunity to hang out with him. We talked mostly about our fathers and he offered me some guidance in navigating my emotions toward my parents. Much of what he said was both relatable and insightful for me, but one thing that really stuck with me was the concept of the “inner” parent.

Our parents and our ancestors are a part of who we are, both through their genes, and through the behaviors and suffering they have purposefully or inadvertently passed on to their children and their children’s children. In this sense, my father is within me as well. When I feel animosity toward my father I can’t help but also feel animosity towards parts of myself. Thus, to hate my parents is to hate myself and vice-versa. To love myself is also, in a way, to love my parents, and vice-versa. I can never truly love myself until I also learn to love my parents, and it’s difficult to truly love someone else without loving myself first. I’m learning to start small with my appreciation of my parents’ traits, and that I need to accept their love in whatever forms they can give it, even those forms are imperfect or cause me suffering sometimes. I’m also realizing that my taking care of my entrepreneurial fears (very similar to my father’s) and learning to deal with my wrong perceptions and difficult emotions (very similar to my mother’s) is not, in fact, a rejection of them or a trial to prove that I am better than them, but rather in a way is a very deep form of love: learning to transform the suffering passed to me by my parents so that I can help them both to heal and to suffer less. In this way all of the great trials of my life right now become connected…

The poem inscribed on the large bell in New Hamlet, Plum Village.

After our chat, Thay Phap Dung and I joined walking meditation and he asked me if I minded holding hands. I found that I didn’t, that I enjoyed the connection and his presence, that I could feel his love and compassion through his hand. It was a joyful walk, and we were soon joined by one of his many child friends. Thay Phap Dung never ceases to amaze me. He is at once so wise and so childlike, taking off running through the fields to play with a child. He is obviously wordly (and is thus more credible) but so joyful and so free. In his work as a monk I can see that he has touched many lives, including my own. I admire and respect him greatly.

Today after dinner was lazy evening, meaning there were no activities scheduled. The atmosphere of the hamlet changed greatly with many people singing and drumming and being merry in the dining hall. Some people even commented that it felt more like a music festival than Plum Village. For my part, I was challenged to a game of chess. I was also asked by a little girl and her mother if I might teach her how to play. I found that I enjoyed teaching her very much–she was clever and grasped the concepts quickly. I don’t want to stroke my own ego, but I also realized just how consciously competent I am at teaching. I’m able to connect to students on an emotional level, keep them entertained and engaged while presenting new material, can construct good exercises to test their understanding, and have the patience to allow them to think on their own and make mistakes. I think I also have a deep empathy for students and am able to explain things in a clear and relatable way at the right pace while also having good insight into why a student misunderstood something when they get stuck. I noticed the other adults lacked many of these traits–were either impatient or unclear and unengaging. I wonder, as I have once wondered before, if teaching may be one of my gifts. A young French boy has also asked me to teach him and I intend to teach him in French tomorrow.

Day 11 – Tuesday, July 17, 2018

The activity bell in the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

Another lazy day. I woke up too late to make it to breakfast. My plan originally was to read through No Mud, No Lotus, Anger, and Reconciliation by Thich Nhat Hanh and then do some writing about my parents, but instead I kept finding myself in conversations with people. It was good, though, one conversation was with a Vietnamese monk who approached me while I was reading near the bell tower, another was with an aspirant in my Dharma sharing family who I ran into on my way out to go running, and two others were with friends who looked like they were struggling so I wanted to lend my ear.

The chat with the Vietnamese monk was interesting. It’s often hard to understand what the Vietnamese monks are saying because their accents are strong and their English isn’t perfect. At first, I thought he was trying to give me some unsolicited advice about balance and types of pleasure, but I slowly realized that he and I were having a philosophical dialog. He brought up the point that perhaps some ego is good or even necessary for many things which has me examining whether or not my strong and total rejection of ego in recent years is an overreaction–perhaps a little bit of ego to give us drive isn’t a bad thing? This isn’t exactly a Buddhist idea, however, so I was surprised to hear it suggested by a monk. We also talked about human “illusions” like the beliefs we can hold about society and purpose. He argued that illusion is sometimes necessary to bring people together (e.g. movements like communism). I argued that truth is always preferable to illusion and that truth, or an honest quest for it, can bring people together in more constructive ways as it seems to have in Plum Village.

Beyond this, many of my other conversations today gave me good opportunities to practice compassionate listening. I had another conversation with the person I had corrected and apologized to a few days ago, and I realized how uncomfortably like me he must sound. Despite what I know to be intent to the contrary, he comes off as a bit arrogant and closed-minded. He also self-identifies as an “extremely self-aware” person and I realized that often people who profess to be self-aware (myself included), may in fact have huge blind spots despite–or perhaps because of–this belief. Regardless, I chose not to correct him or offer my own opinion to compare to his–I could see that doing so would likely not have resulted in a terribly constructive conversation. I must reflect on this encounter and learn to change my own often arrogantly combative communication style.

Before returning to my lodging I taught that young French boy to play chess. It was late and I wanted to come home to sleep, but I felt I had promised him and I noticed him waiting for me at the tea house. My French has certainly improved–I succeeded in teaching him all the rules of chess without any English. There is a long way to go still, but having had so many French conversations here in Plum Village I have reached the point where I can hold a reasonable conversation, though I sometimes need things repeated or slowed down and sometimes have to ask how to say a word in French provided its meaning (which I can often describe in French).

Day 12 – Wednesday, July 18, 2018

The poem inscribed on the large bell in Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

Today was a strange day. I decided to skip morning meditation when my alarm went off at 5:30am. I woke instead at 8:30am missing breakfast and a chance to pack a lunch as well. I was surprisingly exhausted–I think a few of my shorter nights have caught up to me.

I’ve been in a weird mood. At the same time I think I’m starting to feel ready to leave but I’m also a bit nervous about returning to the stressors and distractions outside. I’ve found much here in Plum Village–peace, joy, love, compassion, self-knowledge, wisdom–and I fear losing all that I’ve gained as soon as I leave. At the same time, I’m excited to try and perhaps a bit anxious to start applying what I’ve learned to my normal life. I think perhaps a third week would have been too much for me–I’m starting to get used to the pattern here so some of it is losing its novelty and magic. Perhaps at some point I’ll try 3 weeks at a different monastery (Asia?) regardless just to be with those new impatient emotions.

There was a Q&A today and I got to ask my question about the conflict between truly loving and accepting something (or someone) and the desire to change it. In this case, I’m particularly interested in how we can truly love and accept the world while reconciling that with the desires we often have to change or improve it. It seems to me that a true love and acceptance implies no need to change something–if we need it to be different we’ve failed to accept it by definition. I’ve been wondering what the Buddha would have said about this, but the answer I got from a young nun simply challenged my definition of love/acceptance and state that when we accept something, action is a natural consequence. I’m not really convinced by her argument, but I will reflect on the answer she gave me nonetheless. She also recommended that I read True Love by Sister Chan Kong.

In other news, I’ve decided to accept the transmission of all 5 of the 5 Mindfulness Trainings. The ceremony is early tomorrow morning. I’m not yet convinced I agree with all of Buddhism or even all of the text in the mindfulness trainings, but I acknowledge that it seems to have gotten some things right and I see my taking the trainings as a commitment to continue to reflect on Plum Village ideals and to at least be mindful of what I say, do, and consume.

We also had tea meditation today which was by far my week’s highlight last week. I don’t think quite the same energy was there today–it’s hard to top that evening of music, joy, good company, and sunsets–but I’m grateful to have shared the experience with wonderful people nonetheless. This time I shared my gratitude with the family and also recited one of the beautiful poems written on the sides of the bells in the bell towers. This was a bit embarrassing, however, as they’re all in French and my pronunciation needs work :P.

Day 13 – Thursday, July 19, 2018

Today was my last real day in Plum Village–I depart tomorrow after lunch. The close of my stay here inevitably comes with mixed feelings. I’m nervous about whether or not I will succeed in my endeavor to bring my learnings here back through the shroud to the real world. I’m sad to say so many goodbyes. I’m confused by how deep yet how shallow my relationships here are–many of these people have touched my life and I feel that I have touched theirs, and yet I’m truly not convinced I’ll ever see any of them again, or that I’ll succeed in meaningfully keeping in touch. I’m grateful for everything I learned, for joyous moments with friends, for renewed courage to face my challenges with integrity. I’m ever restless despite learning here to slow down and really enjoy the moment.

Group shot of the “Right Action” Dharma sharing family after the ceremony.

In the morning I participated in the ceremony to receive the transmission of all 5 Mindfulness Trainings. At the end of the ceremony I was given a certificate and the “Dharma Name” “Graceful Action of the Heart.” I can’t help but feel funny about how much like a baptism this felt, but I find myself oddly pleased with this name. I very much hope that my actions and my character will live up to it.

Aside from the ceremony, I skipped most of the day’s events, including the Dharma Talk. Instead, I opted to do some writing. I wrote a letter to my ex to whom I owe some gratitude for finding myself in Plum Village at all. I also started to write some things about my parents. There’s much to explore there and I am far from finished, but I think I have a good mental framework to follow.

I’m starting with gratitude. First I’m acknowledging all the things about myself that I appreciate, and then drawing a line between each of these and a similar attribute in my parents or ancestors so that I can express my gratitude to them for my gifts and see that they have them, too. After, I will acknowledge other things I admire about my parents or ancestors which I don’t find in myself but nevertheless appreciate. By starting with gratitude, I ground myself in the knowledge that my parents and ancestors have many wonderful strengths.

Next I’ll approach compassion. I want to acknowledge all the ways that my parents and ancestors suffer so that I can begin to feel understanding, love, and forgiveness for how their suffering has manifested. I will do this generally first, then zero in on how I specifically have caused my parents or grandparents to suffer. I will express my regret that I have caused this suffering. Then I’ll approach my own suffering and try, without blaming, to give voice to how my parents’ or ancestors’ actions or suffering have hurt me. It is important that I do this so that they can understand and have compassion and awareness as well.

Last, I’ll ask for support via specific actions that might help me suffer less and I’ll offer similar support the other way. It’s above all important that all of this come from a place of deep love and acceptance. I must not do it because I hope it will somehow change my parents or my relationship with them–I must truly do it for no other reason than that it’s the loving thing to do to acknowledge their strengths, express my gratitude, and take responsibility for the pain I have caused. This will all take time to get right.

The squad after our successful transformation into mud monsters and trolls in the Upper Hamlet lake.

In the afternoon, I went swimming in the lake with a few friends. We enjoyed fooling around and caking mud on ourselves in the hopes that (maybe) the mud would be good for our skin. I don’t enjoy swimming in murky water, but I must admit that it was quite a bit of fun and that I was glad to be peer pressured into it.

Not long after I got back from swimming, we had our last dinner in our Dharma sharing families. It’s sad to have to say goodbye, but I’m very much glad that I stayed in this family a second week rather than attempting a switch to a French family (which would have been a complete disaster). Someone passed a contact sheet around, so maybe I’ll get to stay in touch. I forgot to take the time to personally thank our facilitator, Thay Phap Dung. He’s been a really integral part of my experience here and has been a source of strength, joy, and wisdom. If not for him, I’m not sure I would have stayed a second week. He joked with me at dinner that I should stay a third–apparently that sort of thinking is how he “accidentally” become a monk himself 20 years ago–though doing so isn’t possible at this time. I told him I’ll try to visit the Plum Village monasteries in Asia instead if I end up heading back out that way this year.

There was a beautiful ceremony after dinner called the Rose Ceremony. It’s apparently a tradition for appreciating one’s parents that Thay stole on a trip to Japan many years ago. There was a recitation of what Thay wrote when his mother died, and an opportunity for children (and adults) to read love letters to their parents.

The tradition is sort of like mother’s or father’s day except that we pin a red rose to our shirts for each living parent we have and a white rose for each deceased parent. Walking around the hall realizing how many people I had gotten to know had one or even two white roses was a powerful moment of mindfulness for me. I shed a few tears of compassion for their loss and reflected on my gratitude to still have two living parents.

The Rose Ceremony ended with hugging meditation, a wholesome experience where we all went around hugging our friends and loved ones for 3 deep, mindful breaths each, really enjoying and appreciating their presence. I had many nice hugs with friends I made here, but the one that really touched me the most was the little French boy who I had promised to teach to play chess and for whom I went out of my way to keep that promise. He had such a happy and joyful look on his face when we found each other in the crowd and he offered me a hug. I knew in that moment how much my doing that had meant to him. I’m really glad to have touched his life.

I also had a similar experience a few minutes ago when a Mexican teenager to whom I had taught some opening- and mid-game chess strategy noticed me writing this by the light of the bell tower and came up to personally thank me. I offered him a hug and asked him to keep playing and maybe even win a few games for me.

It’s time to sleep now as I need to pack and depart tomorrow. I’ll be returning to Bordeaux for a few days of sightseeing before 5 weeks in Lyon. My experience here in Plum Village was powerful and memorable. I understand now why so many people here have come back year after year. Perhaps one day I’ll be the same. Perhaps I’ll meet these friends here again.

Day 14 – Friday, July 20, 2018

(This entry is written after the fact based on some memories and conversations I had before leaving Plum Village on Friday, but which I felt were an important part of this narrative.)

I left Plum Village today and am now back in Bordeaux. The morning went mostly as I’d have expected: lots of goodbyes with friends as people left throughout the morning. Then lots more goodbyes as I prepared to leave myself.

I’m going to miss many of my friends from Plum Village, especially the ones that I know struggle more with certain things that either I’ve seen myself struggle with, or that I’ve seen people I love struggle with. Many of my friends here have expressed hardship with difficult human emotional experiences like anger (towards self, towards others, towards the world), anxiety, depression, self-confidence/self-love. I am at least grateful that I had a chance to be in their lives, however briefly, to listen compassionately and offer my love and support. Many of them are staying in Plum Village longer-term, either for the entire summer retreat, or even longer as volunteers. I can’t think of a better place for them to heal.

Before I left, I had a really fruitful conversation with one of the aspirants, who came to find me and follow-up on the question I asked during the Q&A about the tension between love/acceptance and action/change. I always enjoy chatting with this particular aspirant because he and I actually share a very similar background–we both graduated from Stanford, I think not too long ago; we both graduated with technical degrees that led us to work for the US government for some time; we both got involved in tech in Silicon Valley. I’d be surprised if he and I didn’t actually already have some mutual friends. It’s one thing to meet someone who aspires to become a monk but is completely different from me, and quite another to meet someone who I realize could very easily have been myself.

Anyway, he asked me what I thought of the answer I received during the Q&A. Apparently he recognized the somewhat crestfallen and dissatisfied look on my face at the end of the answer–a feeling I’m sure he’s shared more than once during his long stay in Plum Village. We ended up having an interesting discussion, grounded first in concepts we had both learned about self-love, self-acceptance, and self-growth and then generalized from there to see if we could understand how those concepts relate to loving and accepting the world while also potentially transforming it.

One of the large conclusions we drew was that both in self-love and in loving the world a sense of total love and acceptance does imply letting go of the need for uglier things to change or disappear. We both agreed, however, that the act of total acceptance in this way has a very meaningfully and very powerfully changes those things, so acceptance itself is an action of sorts. The difficulty here, however, is that one cannot choose to love and accept themselves with the intent that doing so will effect change because that very intent carries with it a lack of true love and true acceptance. I think the same can be said of loving the world.

The other thing I took from our conversation is that this love and acceptance for the negatives need not necessarily conflict with our positive aspirations. Often, getting to where we want to go involves accepting and transforming what’s already within us while simultaneously cultivating something new.

Me with Thay Phap Dung, an incredibly light-hearted and wise Buddhist monk living in Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

I was very appreciative of our conversation. I felt like it gave me the resolution I had hoped for in the Q&A. I should admit also that this was the first conversation after which I had the serious thought that perhaps the idea of becoming a monk could be appealing for someone like me. After all, someone who thinks very similarly to me is doing it and I now see that his commitment to monkhood has given him access to helpful things like a mentor who reads his journal and helps him to see where he is struggling in his development. It’s also clear to me that he, like I, is interested in understanding what the concept of enlightenment might mean in practice rather than just in theory. Becoming an aspirant and, ultimately, a monk effectively makes pursuing this understanding his full-time job. I am, however, not yet convinced that becoming a monk is the only way to create the space and time to pursue this understanding. For now at least, I think becoming a Buddhist monk isn’t in my cards.

I said goodbye to Thay Phap Dung today. I caught him on his way out of the dining hall with his lunch. I just wanted to tell him how grateful I was for him, for his kindness, for his compassion, for his joy, and for his teachings. He invited me to eat my last lunch in Plum Village with him. I hope to meet this man again somewhere and someday, and I aspire to learn how to exude joy and compassion from a place of deep centeredness the way he has.

I’ve been able to maintain my mindful state today, even in the outside world. I found that on the train and on the tram to get to my new accommodations I was very calm, very unhurried, and actually just happy to sit and enjoy the ride rather than feel the need to automatically pull out my phone and occupy myself in some way. Hopefully I’ll continue to be mindful in the coming days, weeks, and months.

In leaving, I am not the same person I was when I arrived and in subtle ways I see the world differently now. I didn’t love everything about my experience in Plum Village, but on the whole it was incredible and I very much want to continue practicing what I learned. It’s hard to say how the future will unfold and where I’ll go, but I think it’s likely that I will be back to Plum Village, if not to the monastery in France then perhaps to the affiliated ones in Asia or America. As Thay Phap Dung joked before I left, perhaps my stay in Plum Village wasn’t a break from the outside world as much as the outside world is now a break between stays in Plum Village.

Footnotes

The last few months since my last entry in this series have been eventful, though, perhaps not terribly productive in a traditional sense. After a month of respite in California and then New York City, I have, at long last, made my way to France where I am endeavoring to reach conversational fluency in French while also making progress toward business profitability.

In the intervening months I have:

  • Become a licensed motorcyclist in the state of California

    A view of Half Dome in the distance in Yosemite Valley.

  • Organized a trip to Yosemite with many of my friends from Silicon Valley
  • Attended my sister’s graduation from NYU
  • Explored the wilderness in rural Pennsylvania
  • Stayed in Marseille, France for 2 weeks
  • Mastered driving a stick shift while driving thousands of kilometers across France to visit Lyon, Haut-Jura, Auxerre, Beaune, Dole, Dijon, Fontainebleau, Paris, Mont Saint-Michel, Tours, Amboise, and Chambord
  • Lived in Bordeaux, France for nearly 2 weeks
  • Taken on two small consulting projects with a potential third on the horizon
  • Attended 2 weeks of the summer mindfulness retreat at Plum Village
  • Gone from absolutely terrified to speak to anyone in French to being able to hold a reasonable conversation provided some effort on both sides

As is the nature of things, along the way many things have gone wrong including:

  • Having my prized Google Pixel 2 smartphone stolen while I watched the sunset in Marseille
  • Enduring a difficult and complicated breakup with my Vietnamese girlfriend (the circumstances of which, both for my privacy and out of respect for her, I won’t be elaborating on at this time)
  • Having my expensive and supposedly high quality Samsonite suitcase completely break in less than 6 months of—admittedly heavy—use

France

Fallingwater, a Frank Lloyd Wright house in rural Pennsylvania.

I, of course, have much to say about France in general, and the cities I’ve had the chance to get to know, but for concision—and for SEO :P—I’ve decided to separate these thoughts into a yet-to-be-written series of posts about what it’s actually like to be a nomad in different cities. In these posts I’ll aim to answer questions about the cost of living, finding internet and good places to work, securing housing, social outlets, and just cool things to see and do. I’ve found that there are lots of high-level resources like NomadList for nomads to choose new destinations, but there are never enough narratives to give life to the statistics, especially in less common and ostensibly less affordable destinations like the vast majority of Europe.

For now, it suffices to say that France is expensive and good internet is surprisingly hard to find. It doesn’t even begin to compare to how expensive it was in Silicon Valley, but it’s certainly 3-6 times more expensive than Southeast Asia, which I’m increasingly realizing has completely spoiled me. From a lifestyle perspective, I’ve found that since I’m not willing to pay 10€ for an average meal out, it’s advantageous to cook or buy simple picnic ingredients from grocery stores. In a funny way, I’ve been really pleased to find how much joy I can get out of a simple meal of bread, cheese, fruit, and a little bit of meat (<3€/meal). I find it liberating to learn how little I really need to be happy, which leaves me yet again questioning the typical American ethos of working hard for the sake of work or for the sake of money to purchase possessions which we often become convinced will somehow magically produce happiness and joy.

The view approaching Mont Saint-Michel during low-tide.

Despite its status as a first-world nation, internet infrastructure in France is surprisingly pitiful in comparison to Thailand and Vietnam. Perhaps this difference is more cultural than anything, but most French cafes are not very accommodating for those seeking a nice environment to hangout with coffee, power, and a good internet connection. Even those cafes which are more stereotypically configured for this use case (i.e. pretty much just Starbucks) have laughable speeds and questionable reliability. The coworking spaces are also typically much more expensive here (200-300€/month) than what I’ve become accustomed to finding in Asia (70-150€/month).

Learning French

I’ve spent much of my time on the ground here in France trying to take advantage of the immersive environment for learning French. On good days, I’ll find myself spending nearly 4 hours a day learning French with a mix of book studying, language exchange meet-ups, reverse and ladder trees on Duolingo, reading on LingQ (affiliate link!), listening to French podcasts (e.g. Coffee Break French), and re-watching my favorite Netflix series in French audio (sometimes with, sometimes without French subtitles).

Sometimes it’s hard to see the difference day-to-day, but reflecting on it I’ve realized my French has come a long way. When I got here, I experienced a sort of social anxiety around speaking to anyone because I was pretty terrified of embarrassing myself in French but didn’t want to speak English either. It used to be a big deal for me to even buy something small from a store in French and not go deer-in-headlights a little when someone asked me if I wanted a bag using a word for “bag” I had never learned before :P.

Now I’ve had a bit more experience and, though fast-talking native speakers still give me a lot of trouble, I’m finding I understand enough to hold reasonable conversations. I often have to stop and ask for a repetition or the meaning of a word or ask how to say a word in French, but I can do all of these things in French at this point. Sometimes I also still struggle with piecing my sentences together, but I’ve noticed that some sentences and sentence structures have become surprisingly fluent.

There’s a long way to go still, but I’ve been able to accomplish things like getting tourist information about a new city, teaching a child how to play chess, and holding a 45-minute introductory conversation with a fellow software engineer using nearly nothing but French. People are generally finding me understandable even when I struggle to express complex ideas. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve moved into a phase where I can now truly learn new words and phrases from real conversations with native speakers where we’re actually trying to get to know each other.

Plum Village

A close-up of the lotus pond in the Lower Hamlet of Plum Village.

I’ve just returned from 2 weeks at Plum Village, a Mindfulness Practice Center and Buddhist Monastery founded by the famous Vietnamese Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh, a Nobel peace prize nominee (nominated by Martin Luther King, Jr.!) and an important advocate for peace during the Vietnam War. I was fortunate to find space at Plum Village—when I had checked originally it was completely booked. I ended up finding a way to nab a one-week stay in Plum Village, and then once I was there I found a way to extend my stay by an extra week.

A full accounting of my experience at Plum Village is also going to have to wait until next week. For now I’ll say that it was one of my goals this year to deepen my mindfulness practice, which is the primary reason why I made my way to Plum Village in the first place. All-in-all, my experience there was magnificent and I feel as if I view myself and the world differently in subtle but very important ways. I feel as if before I had only just scratched the surface of what mindfulness could do for me and now I’ve been exposed to its full potential. I’m more focused, more mindful, and more present than I ever was before. I’m increasingly aware of my own unmindful and potentially self-destructive habits and aware of important sources of unhappiness in my life which I’m now committed to resolving rather than perpetually avoiding. I feel more competent in handling my emotions and anxieties, including the stresses related to my current occupational choices. Time will tell how long these effects will stay with me.

Where I Am Now

The obelisk at the Place des Quinconces, near the center of Bordeaux.

I have returned to Bordeaux for a bit of sightseeing before I take a train to Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France, where I intend to spend my remaining 5 weeks in France before my Schengen tourist visa expires and I’m forced to migrate elsewhere. I’m excited to have my own apartment in Lyon after successfully negotiating the price down by ~25% from its listing price on AirBnB.

I haven’t made much progress on my own projects of late, and my lack of a live product continues to be a source of frustration for me. In the States, my time was focused on things I could only take care of while there or spending time with family. Since coming to France, much of my time initially was spent on dealing with the emotional fallout of my recent relationship or on learning French. The few times I’ve taken the time to open my code editor and start to work on Serenity, I’ve found it overwhelming to consider the amount of remaining effort to launch the product along with the potentially low likelihood of a successful outcome.

I must admit that prior to going to Plum Village, my mood had been fluctuating and occasionally visiting some deep lows. The combination of emotional stressors from my recent breakup along with the anxieties involved with having to speak French and starting to get back into my own work was a lot to handle, and I’d guess that I came the closest I’d ever been to wanting to abandon my present course. I knew the emotions would pass however, and, somewhat serendipitously, in my lowest week I had two people reach out to me in the same day asking if I’d be willing to consider some short-term work on a consulting basis. I’ve agreed to one, and am still working out the details of the other, which may involve my returning to Asia later this year. I’m also currently helping my little sister implement an online portfolio for her creative work so that she can use it as a resource to send to potential employers. Helping her get situated in her post-graduate life in this way was one of the gifts I offered her upon graduating.

La Cité du Vin, an ultra-modern museum all about the history and culture of wine in Bordeaux.

Having outside work recently has helped a lot to remind me that I have a valuable skill set in high demand and that I’m good at what I do. I’ve found it comforting to have a few more concrete and complete projects to show for my time (now almost a full year!) being self-employed. Combined with the emotional bolstering of my experience in Plum Village, I’m back in a good place and am excited for the challenge of learning to apply mindfulness to my unorthodox lifestyle.

The “Plan”

In my remaining 5 weeks in France, I’m hoping to wrap up work for my sister (her dream job was just posted, so we’re now operating on a clock), potentially take on another small project for an existing client, work out details for another potentially larger project for a new client, and attempt to launch Serenity to at least friends and family if not to public beta. All the while, it will continue to remain a high priority to make use of my time in France to improve my French.

I’m still exploring the possibilities, there’s a possibility that an opportunity will bring me back to Asia after France in mid-September or early October. I’m thinking that in the intervening time I may go to Morocco as originally planned, though I haven’t chosen a city yet (Essaouira maybe?). If I end up back in Asia, it probably makes sense to stay for a number of months, so I’m considering returning to Thailand, visiting India and Nepal, spending some time in Hong Kong or Malaysia, or even living in Taiwan or rural Japan for a few months to learn languages. If the opportunity doesn’t shake out the right way, I’ll likely spend 3 full months in Morocco continuing to work on my French before considering a return to France or moving on to South America.

I’m finding I plan less and less far ahead travel-wise, and this no longer makes me anxious the way it would have last year. In fact, the flexibility this sort of seat-of-pants traveling has afforded me seems to have far outweighed the possible price increases from last-minute bookings (at least on everything other than air travel).

Vietnam is a country with a rich but turbulent history. It’s lived through occupation by the Chinese, the French, and the Americans as recent as two generations ago. Foreign cultural influence and scars from not-yet-forgotten conflicts blend to make Saigon, known at its peak as the “Pearl of the Far East,” a complex and deeply interesting city.

Amongst digital nomads, however, its southern capital, Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City), is a polarizing and controversial place: some love it enough to settle here for months or years at a time, while others leave quickly and never give it a second thought. A short walk down any street obviates the reasons for this: one’s senses are swiftly overloaded–motorbikes whiz around, narrowly missing each other and any uninitiated pedestrians who dare to cross; the sounds of horns and honking are present at all hours of day, as are the clarion calls of street side vendors; smells of delicious meals from any number of amazing local joints waft through the air, mixing with and ameliorating the common odors of waste, vomit, and urine; heat and humidity compound with dust and debris to create an often hot, dirty, and uncomfortable environment.

To an outsider, Saigon can look and feel like untamed, unfettered chaos. And yet, in the time I’ve lived here I’ve found myself mesmerized by the energy of this city. It’s chaotic, yes, but it makes me feel alive. So much so, in fact, that I decided early in my stay here to skip spending the month of April in Penang, Malaysia, and instead extended my time in Saigon to two months. (There are, of course, other good reasons for having done this: the time, financial, and mental costs of switching locations every month turn out to make 2-3 months a more ideal amount of time to spend in each place when also trying to get work done.)

Unlike Chiang Mai, which, despite being the second largest population center in Thailand, had a distinctively “small town” feel to it, Saigon is a true, full-blown city, and it turns out to be the first city I’ve ever lived in for any real amount of time. I’ve been surprised by how much I enjoy the city lifestyle here–in the past I’ve always preferred sleepy college towns and quiet suburbs with easy access to nature. While Saigon doesn’t have much to offer tourists passing through for

Bánh xèo–a savory crepe-like Vietnamese dish

just a few days, it does have a slew of interesting coffee shops, bars, and live music venues for the slower-paced traveler or longer-term expat to experience. There’s also a lush variety of foods to sample from all over the country–Vietnamese food is, as it turns out, much more diverse than the typical phở and bánh mì sorely under representing this cuisine in the States–certainly more than one could experience in weeks, months, or even years here.

 

Contents:

Cost of Living

Despite being a city, Saigon is quite affordable, making it a prime location for potential expats and digital nomads. A month’s rent in a serviced apartment close to the city center runs typically between $300 and $400/mo, while meals can be found for anywhere between $.75 (street food) and $30/meal (an upscale restaurant). A membership at a good coworking space with a flexible desk runs $90/mo. Braver travelers can rent a motorbike for ~$60/mo or purchase and re-sell for around $250. By my estimation a nomad really looking to save, or an entrepreneur seeking to extend her runway could live a decent life in Saigon for under $700/mo (less, even, if you’re willing to pinch pennies).

People and Community

Frustrated and angry bloggers sometimes give Vietnam and the Vietnamese people a bad wrap. Personally, I’ve had a lot of great experiences with both Vietnamese locals and the expat community in Saigon, so I feel I have a responsibility to set the record straight.

Locals

Some people hear stories about swindlers and hustlers in Vietnam–people who will overcharge tourists because they don’t speak the language, for example–and imagine that all Vietnamese people are liars and cheats. Of course, as is the case anywhere one might go in the world, these people do exist, and one should exercise caution and common sense when traveling. These people are, however, far from a majority. Most Vietnamese people I’ve met–business owners, students, Viet Kieu–have impressed me with their kindness, their generosity, their work ethic, and their optimism. One student even befriended me, showed me around, and came back to help me when my motorbike broke down during a long road trip back to Saigon. I would honestly not have known what to do without his help.

As an American, I find it especially encouraging how little animosity anyone ever showed me despite the fact that the Vietnam War (known in Vietnam as the American War) happened so recently–if anything there was a distinctly pro-American sentiment, especially among the younger generation. Though war is terrible, I find myself hopeful knowing that in just a few generations two peoples that were previously in conflict can so easily forgive and forget the transgressions made by their forebears.

To be fair to all involved, however, as an Asian American I likely have a different experience in Asia than other Western travelers do. Everywhere I’ve visited in Asia so far I’ve been mistaken for a local until I opened my mouth to speak, and since most Asian cultures have similar customs and values, my pseudo-Asian upbringing helps me relate to these people more naturally.

Entrepreneurs and Expats

One of the initial reasons I chose Saigon is because I read that it has more of an entrepreneurial community than some of the other hubs for digital nomads like Chiang Mai. Saigon is, indeed,  home to an up and coming tech scene in one of the fastest growing economies in the world. There is, however, still much room for the entrepreneurial scene in Saigon to grow and evolve–it doesn’t yet have the same energy, infrastructure, or prevalence as it does in Silicon Valley.

Nevertheless, there are at least a few pockets of very interesting people. In my opinion, Start Coworking Campus, where I chose to both live and work for the majority of my time in Saigon, is one of those places. Admittedly, I didn’t know much about Start when I booked my room there in December–I chose them because I wanted to try something new with coliving, and because their marketing promised a heavy emphasis on community, which can be hard to find while moving around. I was super pleasantly surprised by Start, and I honestly can’t rave about them enough. They deliver well on their promise of community, with daily community lunches and plenty of events throughout the month.

Most, but not all, of the people I met at Start were somehow related to tech, though not all of them were actually nomads. Saigon is home to quite a few long-term expats–sometimes former nomads–many of whom form a consistent backbone for community at Start despite a constantly rotating cast of travelers. After just a few weeks there, I really felt that I knew all of the regular faces, and after two months I felt that I had made some cool friends with whom I hope very much to keep in touch. Over lunch and during random breaks throughout the day, I’d often find myself engaging in deeply interesting conversations about a wide variety of topics, including political theory, global economics, philosophy, and current trends in tech. I can’t be sure because I haven’t yet seen that much, but I have a strong hunch that communities like this are pretty rare to find.

Dating

Just as I’ve been searching for a sense of community while abroad, I’ve also been experimenting with dating and romantic companionship. When I left the States to become a nomad, I expected that doing so meant I’d realistically have to put romance on hold until I settled back down in a single place. I felt that the odds of finding someone right for me while abroad, and the difficulty of pursuing something serious or long-term while moving around simply left real romance out of the question, but perhaps there was no reason not to experiment anyway. Much to my surprise, this turned out to just be the latest in what’s becoming a long string of false assumptions I made about traveling and the nomadic lifestyle–it didn’t take me long to fall in love with a beautiful, intelligent, and deeply reflective local Vietnamese entrepreneur.

When I landed in Vietnam, the differences in the dating scene struck me almost immediately–whereas in Chiang Mai and Silicon Valley I’ve often found dating frustrating, I quickly had four dates scheduled for my first week in Saigon. For the first time in my life I felt like I had more dating prospects than I could possibly have time to talk to, a complaint I normally only ever hear from my girl friends. It also felt easier than ever to open conversations and get dates scheduled.

Some of the difference could perhaps be attributed to me and a general mindset shift on dating: in the interest of putting myself in uncomfortable situations and learning more about dating, I decided to be more open-minded about first dates and made it a goal to quickly push for an in-person meeting with any girl I messaged back and forth with. Most of this, however, is likely attributable to Saigon and its particular dating pool: I tend to be more popular with Asian women, and densely populated international cities tend to have more young single women who speak English confidently enough to communicate. (By contrast, Chiang Mai was a much smaller city notably lacking in English-speaking confidence.)

Despite having more options than ever, I met the woman who would become my girlfriend on literally the second night I was in Saigon. In fact, she was the first date I went on in my new city, and probably the first local Vietnamese woman I’d really interacted with.

As is becoming more and more cliché these days, we met on Tinder. My expectations were pretty low, and our pre-date conversation barely had an ounce of substance to it, but I wanted to push myself out of the comfort zone so I asked her on a date anyway. To my surprise, she agreed to a hastily scheduled date for later that same night, and not two hours later I found myself walking anxiously to a craft brewery in the center of town.

I remember being terrified on my way to our first date–not because I felt nervous about impressing her, but because a couple of things she had said and done left me super confused about what to expect. Most of my pre-date anxiety centered around the fears that she wouldn’t look like her photos (this happened to me in Chiang Mai), that I’d get stuck in an awkward conversation with a weirdo or, worse, that I’d somehow get murdered. (Hey, I’m not proud of that thought, but I was in an entirely new city and my brain was running wild with catastrophic worst-case scenarios :P.)

When I walked in I was pleasantly surprised to find a woman whose beauty and personality would be hard to fully and accurately portray in still photography. She was funny and made me laugh easily (she’d later tell me that she thought I was laughing way too hard at her shitty jokes, but I honestly found them that funny). It turned out we’re both tech entrepreneurs–her as a designer and a product manager, me as a jack-of-all-trades software engineer–and could understand each other’s careers and daily job struggles. She shared a lot of my interests as well, and it quickly became apparent that we had extremely congruous mindsets, perspectives, and worldviews.

In short, I wasn’t sure what to expect at first but I was totally and completely blown away by the time I parted ways with her nearly four hours later. In fact, I was so blown away that I was almost scared in the opposite sense from before–things just seemed too uncannily similar and way too good to be true. I felt like either I had been super thoroughly stalked or the perfect woman had somehow just manifested before my eyes.

For awhile now, I’ve professed my belief in the law of “fuck yes or no”–if my gut doesn’t scream “fuck yes” about someone I don’t pursue them further. At that point, however, I’d never experienced a true “fuck yes” after a first date with a total stranger, and I’d been on enough first dates to begin to wonder whether or not the bar for going on a second date had been set too high–after all, maybe sometimes one just needs a couple of lukewarm experiences before a deeper connection can occur. My first date with this girl proved to me that the bar for second dates was, in fact, not set too high. She was a total and complete “fuck yes,” and now that I know that that’s possible I don’t think I’d ever want to settle for less.

Though I did go on dates with a few other women, I very quickly lost interest in anyone but her. She continued to be a “fuck yes” for me for many, many more dates and I’m now proud and excited to call her my girlfriend. She understands, challenges, pushes, and inspires me all in ways I didn’t know I could expect from a partner. Meeting her and choosing to enter a committed relationship with her has also tested some of my self-perceptions and my worldview.

Some of my past dating experiences left me questioning both my adequacy and my competency to meet and charm a potential partner through the silly, awkward dance we call modern dating. In particular, the last time I dated someone with serious intentions, through no purposeful fault of either party, it left me feeling like I didn’t know what I was doing, and like experiencing the kind of connection I hoped for with someone I found extremely attractive might be impossible for me without further growth. With my new girlfriend, though, I’ve come to realize that I am already enough, and that, with the right person, it should always feel that way. I shouldn’t need to feel like I have to constantly pursue someone to win their approval–the attraction can and should be mutual enough that a connection develops smoothly and naturally on its own.

Wanting something real and serious with my new girlfriend does leave me with new questions about where and how love fits into my larger worldview, however. Much of my personal philosophy centers around maximizing authenticity and growth. These are easy things to solve for independently, when one has no responsibilities or other people to consider, but they become complicated when a romantic partner enters the picture. Prior to coming to Saigon and meeting my new girlfriend, I thought that I might travel around the world and work for myself for a few years, chasing growth and adventure wherever it waits to be found. I thought I’d have at least a few years before I might meet anyone serious (I never expected to fall in love on the road).

Having found her though, I find myself faced with the serious question of returning to Saigon to spend more time with her in the near future. I know that successful relationships occasionally require sacrifice and compromise, so I find myself asking what I can and can’t authentically compromise on. If being with her means sacrificing some amount of travel and exploration, can I justify that at this point in my life? But even as I consider giving up on growth from exploration, I find myself wondering how our relationship might allow us to help each other grow and become even more authentic versions of ourselves. If we’re not careful, though, could it do just the opposite?

I also find myself asking questions about the implications of falling for a foreign woman in a land far away from where I previously called home, though I know it’s too early to be thinking super long-term about such a young relationship. Before meeting her I always just assumed I’d probably meet a nice American woman some day, and we’d probably settle down in the States. I never really had a good reason to think this, it’s just one of those assumptions that fills a space and goes unchallenged for a long time. Now, however, that idea is being questioned and replaced with a more globally inclusive idea of what it might mean to settle down with someone someday.

Some of these questions frighten me, and I don’t have great answers to most of them. I am, regardless, excited to find myself and my perspective being pushed in new and completely unexpected ways–ways they never could have when I was just an unattached solo traveler. My girlfriend and I are long distance right now, as I’m back in the States and still have plans to travel to France for at least 3 months before I might consider returning to Asia. Though I know the distance will be hard, and relationships are an art, I’m very much hoping that she and I will have a chance to explore answers to these questions together, one step at a time.

Exploring

Saigon is a large city, organized into 12 numbered districts and several more named ones–this sometimes gives running around the city an oddly Hunger Games-like feeling–but even so is less of an adventure-driven place than Chiang Mai, with fewer grand, iconic, and touristy things to do. It does, nevertheless, make for a great homebase to explore the South of Vietnam, and if you’re willing to dig a little bit there are fascinating and beautiful remnants of a culture extant in Saigon before much of its recent history, which hauntingly feels as if it is slowly slipping away as the younger generations forget. Since I spent a lot of time dating in Saigon, I also found that it can be a very romantic city, though many of the city’s best spots are hidden away off street level, and would have been very difficult for me to find without a local.

The many districts of Saigon

Live Music

Saigon turns out to be a city full of music, and there are quite a few cool places to go for different kinds of music. My personal favorites were the places where they’d sing old Saigonese songs from before the War. Most of the music in this time period is incredibly beautiful even not being able to understand the music, and really creates the sense of haunting nostalgia I alluded to earlier.

Cafe Vừng ơi, Mở ra

17 Ngô Thời Nhiệm, phường 6, Quận 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

In English, the name of this place translates to “Open, Sesame.” My now girlfriend brought me here on our fourth date and it blew my mind. To find this place, one has to walk through a pretty sketchy alleyway, then through a rather nondescript door and up several flights of stairs. I like to joke with my girlfriend that she brought me here to murder me, but then thought better of it and took me to hear some live music upstairs instead. Step through the door here and you’ll be transported to a different world, full of candle light and beautifully romantic music. The artists and the music here are top notch and they play a mix of beautiful Vietnamese classics and popular romantic songs in English.

Le Saigonnais

9 Thái Văn Lung, Bến Nghé, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam

This one’s hard to find because it’s not actually listed on Google Maps, but it’s in the same building as the Bâng Khuâng Café at the address listed above. This place is truly a window into old Saigon, even down to the furniture and decorations. Many of the patrons here are Saigonese people who either lived in the old days themselves, or remember them wistfully. There is almost an underground resistance-like vibe to this place, as if this is where people would meet to plan the second coming of Old Saigon. The music here is, of course, beautiful, and they play mostly classic Vietnamese songs from Old Saigon.

Craft Breweries

Saigon has a burgeoning craft brewing scene, which is heavily influenced by American expats and packed with loads of interesting, delicious beers. My favorites were:

Heart of Darkness

31D Lý Tự Trọng, Bến Nghé, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam

I’m biased because I also met my girlfriend here, and we went back to hang out a few times, but it does have the most cozy, intimate, and well-decorated vibes of any of the breweries I visited in Saigon. My personal favorite here is th Eloquent Phantom Imperial Stout.

East West Brewing Co.

181 – 185 Lý Tự Trọng, Phường Bến Thành, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam

I actually had their beers here a couple of times before I went to visit their brewery. The venue is nice–a well-decorated and mood lit warehouse with seating on the roof for those willing to climb the stairs. I’m not usually that into Belgian beer styles, but their Belgian Blonde and Belgian Darks are both very good, and their Independence Stout is fantastic.

Pasteur Street Brewing

144 Pasteur, Bến Nghé, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam

Pasteur Street is iconic in Saigon as one of the first craft breweries to crop up there. There beer is quite good, and they try some interesting things there–I tried a dark beer here with jalapeno and other distinctly Mexican flavors. The place itself, though, is, unfortunately kind of sterile, so I wouldn’t personally recommend hanging out here.

Weekend Adventures

Some of my favorite memories from Vietnam are from riding long distances on the back of my trusty motorbike on my way to some weekend adventure somewhere. While I didn’t spend all of my weekends in Vietnam off on adventures, there were quite a few memorable ones.

Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta actually describes a very large region in the South of Vietnam. Many people, myself included, initially make the mistake of thinking that it’s a single place or attraction that one can visit. In reality, you could drive for nearly 8 hours from Saigon and still not reach the end of the Mekong Delta.

That said, one of the most popular attractions in the Mekong Delta are the floating markets–markets run on clusters of small boats in wide rivers connecting trade between villages that until very recently had no easy road access to each other. The most widely publicized place for tourists to see the floating markets is Cần Thơ, though many of the locals will express that they feel the markets here are overly commercialized for tourists.

I personally didn’t have time to venture further into the Delta than this–Cần Thơ is already a 5 hour drive out of Saigon–but I enjoyed both the drive there and the tour I took of the markets. I would love for my tour to have spent more time moving in and through the market itself so that we as passengers could participate in it a little bit more, but it was nevertheless a very cool experience to have coffee and phở made and then served to me on a boat.

If I had more time, I would have considered going to An Giang province, further into the Delta, in search of a more local floating market and the Trà Sư forest.

Đà Lạt

Đà Lạt is an old French vacation spot nestled in the mountains to the East of Saigon. It’s a ~7 hour bus ride to get there from Saigon, but it’s a worthwhile break from the city routine. Temperatures in Đà Lạt are usually quite a bit cooler than Saigon, and this time of year a typical day in Saigon is humid and hot (90+ degrees F). People are much more laid back in Đà Lạt, and if you plan for it there’s plenty of nature to explore.

Cu Chi Tunnels

The tunnels are an old remnant of the war located about an hour north on the outskirts of Saigon. It’s interesting to experience, and it’s one of those

A cramped entrance to the Cu Chi Tunnels

things that you “should” do while you’re in Saigon, but I honestly felt a bit

underwhelmed by them. I got the idea pretty fast after 20 minutes, did find the engineering behind the intricate tunnel systems fascinating, but then was quickly over it. If traveling on your own by motorbike, however, one can keep driving north to find more interesting and less staged things. I ended up at a very colorful buddhist temple overlooking a large lake and had a good time.

Work

Having fewer touristy things to do in Saigon did help to make it a more productive setting, though this was perhaps balanced out by wanting to spend time on my new relationship. My overarching goals have not changed much over the past couple months: the aim right now is to launch a functional product and create product offering that might net me recurring paid customers or money in the bank. As expected, my previous consulting engagements have mostly wound down, leaving most of my time available for my own projects.

On average,

Serious mode: engaged.

I spent about 6+ hours working each day, and though I do think I’ve accomplished some important things in the last couple months, I am feeling more and more behind on the actual feature development required to launch my initial product offering.

I had a Facebook Ads credit expiring at the end of March, so invested time in a marketing experiment to spend the credit on. My goal was to create the marketing site that I think I will use when the MVP of the product launches–past versions of the site advertised moonshot feature sets that likely would not exist for many months past my initial product offering. Doing this required me to think very critically about what will and won’t be in my MVP, and raised a lot of concerning questions for me about how I will differentiate my product from my competitors in its early stages. (I won’t have a mobile app for some time, and don’t plan for one in the MVP, and whether or not to include some of the cool differentiating features before launching the product has been a topic of some internal debate.)

In the process of doing research on my audience to improve my marketing copy, I concerningly learned that the potential market for my product is much smaller than I originally thought. Unfortunately, in total, the number of people interested in Getting Things Done on Facebook in the US is below 50k. For English-speakers globally, that number is still only about 200k. Unexpectedly, the largest market segment for my product appears to be Italian women

Facebook Audience Insights for GTD in the USA

(600k), so I may actually want to consider translating my product into Italian in the future. (For those wondering, I used Facebook Audience Insights to find this information.)

Given the success of Getting Things Done and David Allen, I previously just assumed that my total market was somewhere in the millions, which meant I hadn’t been thinking super critically about market saturation for my ads or other experiments. With millions of people potentially interested in my product, I didn’t care much if I alienated a few thousand in the process of refining my product offering. My thought has also always been that I would really only need Serenity to hit 1000 paying customers for it to be a huge success, a number which I previously thought would be a very small percentage of the overall market. Now that I know the market is an order of magnitude smaller than I thought it was I need to think more carefully about how I expose the product to the market at every stage, and I’m a bit more pessimistic about the lower and upper bound earning potentials for this project.

Regardless, once I had a pretty a good idea of what my product roadmap looks like, I completed a design overhaul of the Serenity marketing website, split tested some of the information on the page, and added pricing information to the email sign-up page to loosely validate the price point I’ve proposed for my product. I wish I had thought of enticing people to give me their email addresses in exchange for a free month of hypothetical product usage before–this has turned out to be the simplest and most effective way to test my early pricing model.

The results of this experiment were positive–the ad click-through and on-page conversion rates were very reasonable, and I collected a fair number of email addresses despite the inclusion of pricing information. In retrospect, however, since Serenity is a product in an already crowded space, I could probably have just trusted my competitors’ pricing models (most of them do have recurring paying customers) and foregone explicitly validating pricing myself.

At this point it’s clear to me that I can make some money off of Serenity, but it’s not clear how much money, and it’s also not clear how much time I’ll need to invest in the product before the cash starts to flow. Even so, I’ve decided to move forward with the product for a few reasons: 1) the main investment I’m making in the product is my time and runway, both of which are still abundant 2) even if Serenity can’t get me to my income goals by itself, some relatively passive income is better than none and 3) I am actually very excited about the future of the product, and think it could have an important role to play in a larger suite of products I hope to create to help people set and achieve their goals.

My next milestone is to launch the product in public beta. Since the market is small and I don’t want to alienate potential customers, but I do want to start collecting signal about what is and isn’t working, I’ve decided that positioning the product as a free beta is more prudent than just slapping a payment portal on the thing and letting the market decide when it’s worth something. I will, however, be offering beta users the chance to pre-purchase subscriptions for the product at a significantly discounted rate, which should help me detect when the product is truly providing enough value that people are ready to pay for it.

By my current estimates, I’m a few weeks away from being able to launch the first beta version of the product in production. This month is going to be hectic, since I’m taking care of administrative things and spending a lot of time with friends and family while I’m briefly back in the States, but I am hoping to find a way to push to this milestone before the end of May. I’ll probably start reaching out to close friends and family to try out the product and give me feedback soon–if you’re reading this and that sounds interesting to you, please reach out :).

Sanity

Things have been pretty good lately. For the most part, I haven’t experienced much fear related to self-employment in the last couple months. The low cost of living in Vietnam, has helped me to realize that if I live in the right places, I could continue working on my own projects almost indefinitely. While this revelation does wonders for any money- or survival- related anxieties I might have felt, it’s tended to have the opposite effect on self-discipline and self-motivation. Not having external deadlines and not having any real external pressure to deliver means that my motivation really has to come from within. Connecting well with my deeper, internal drive still doesn’t happen consistently, but I think it’s slowly getting better.

Meeting my girlfriend has, for the most part, helped here. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve certainly found myself sacrificing productive time to be with her, and she and I are trying to learn to balance that better going forward. But her belief in me does sometimes help bolster my belief in myself and, more importantly, some of the ideas she’s introduced me to–mainly the more secular sides of buddhism–have forced me to think a lot more about my fear of death.

It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of myself as someone who fears death, but when I really examined it I realized that my attitude towards the brevity of life is usually to shrug it off in a way that’s so dismissive it’s almost denial. In truth, I think that this is probably how most of us deal with the question of death, but it’s not necessarily the most healthy. Through buddhism, and to some degree through stoicism as well, I’m learning to embrace and accept the reality of my own impermanence, and the reality of the impermanence of any ego-driven legacy I might want to leave behind. While it is terrifying to remember that life is short, and that my stay here on Earth is really just a blink of an eye, it does provide a sobering reminder that, while I am still young and there is still time, there is no time to waste. There is a very real cost to spending my time doing or not doing something even if my savings could last me a decade or more some place in the world.

I’d say I’m optimistic. Most days, fear doesn’t visit anymore, and I do have some good tools for kicking myself back into disciplined focus when I find myself goofing off. Hopefully I can build that into a habit and use it to deliver my first product, and maybe many more.

It’s been about a month since I left the States, and, though I expect there will be many more twists and turns on my journey, I think I can already confidently say that leaving to travel was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Learning to balance work, tourism, and new friends has, indeed, been challenging. While overall productivity has slowed a bit, I can’t help but feel that my sense of growth and fulfillment have both accelerated.

Despite being on the learning curve, I think I did decently on my goals for the month. My consulting engagement has, unfortunately, stretched on a little bit, and I’ve only just recently reached a point where it no longer needs my focus full-time. I had hoped that I’d get back to my own projects and start making some non-consulting income in February, but alas that hasn’t been the way of things. I did, however, make a lot of great friends and a lot of great memories in Chiang Mai. Here are some of my favorites, pulled from my vlog:

Meet Squeaky, my trusty pink steed. See us in your rear view mirror and be afraid.

I’m in Ho Chi Minh City–aka Saigon–now (though I’ll wait until next month to write in-depth about this wonderful new city), and my plan for March is to buckle down and finish releasing my first product into the world. I’d ideally like to have my first paid customer before I leave Southeast Asia at the end of April, and more ideally would love to have my first paid customer before the end of this month. As was the case in Chiang Mai, however, while work is a high priority, I’m also hoping to find time to really experience Vietnam, and discover new ways to push my comfort zone. In particular, dating, which didn’t end up being a huge emphasis in February despite some of my efforts, seems likely to be a focus area for me in March.

Moving abroad has done wonders for my morale. Before I left, I had a lot of fears about traveling, especially while still trying to get my business ideas off the ground. I worried that I’d be isolated without friends out here, that it would be impossible to form meaningful relationships with people on such small timescales, or that living abroad would be devastatingly unproductive.

The reality has been almost completely the opposite of my fears. Though I was nervous about meeting new people abroad at first, I found that my fear of isolation really motivated me to push my social comfort zone. I’ve never been the social traveler hanging out with strangers in hostel lounges, so I arrived in Chiang Mai with the self-perception that I’m not the kind of person who usually meets other travelers. When I left Chiang Mai, however, I did so feeling confident in my ability to start new conversations, and connect with new people everywhere I went. It’s become something of a habit to make eye contact with people when I walk into a room, to smile, and even to ask them where they’re from.

Despite my short length of stay in Chiang Mai, I got to know some people very well. I’ve left feeling like I now have friends all over the world, who I hope to meet-up with as I make my way through and around the world. My roommates, Richard and Kat, in particular, have become close friends whose company and counsel I value very highly. I’ve also met, and gotten to know, other nomads from all over the world, working on various interesting things. I’m beginning to open myself up to the idea that, even in a short length of time, it is possible to create a meaningful and valuable connection with someone, and that it is worth my time to invest in these relationships despite their semi-transient nature.

Productivity has been up and down while traveling. Since I’ve been consulting an hourly rate, I’ve been tracking my time very carefully, and have found that I usually work about 6 hours on an average day. At first, I found this number disconcerting: I normally expect that I’m getting at least 8 hours of work done each day. In reality, however, with all of the breaks modern knowledge workers take for lunch and other things, 6-7 hours is probably closer to right for a business day. For me personally, being abroad has definitely meant more time spent out at lunch, especially when meeting new and getting to know new people. It’s also meant less time spent working after dinner, which is also prime time to be spending with new friends. For the most part, I’ve been able to find enough of a routine to stay on task–usually I’d work out of a coworking space for the entire day, or out of a coffee shop for the afternoon.

I have, however, taken a good amount of advantage of the flexibility that being self-employed provides: where necessary to accommodate travel activities, I’ve taken impromptu 3-day weekends or half days off. Calibrating my balance of all of this is something I certainly want to continue working on going forward. I think that as an explorer, the first time I visit a new place, there’s likely to be some overhead in my wanting to really experience and get to know the place. At this point, though, I feel that if I ever return to Chiang Mai (and I really hope to), it will be easier for me to focus on work.

Through traveling, though, I’ve also been exposed to a wealth of new people and perspectives. Chiang Mai is, itself, a very laid back place–the locals tend to live simple lives and prefer it that way, and the nomads are often also a little more chill in their working mindsets than I’m used to coming from Silicon Valley. Many of the Europeans I’ve met have helped me to understand how the American work ethic is often perceived by the rest of the world: there’s a subtle belief that Americans are willing to commit kind of a frenetic and, potentially, ill-conceived trade-off in quality of life against the desire to be productive and accumulate wealth. Some have even considered moving to the States for work, but thought better of it after learning of the insane hours and work expectations often implicitly upheld by employers in places like Silicon Valley and New York City. To be fair, I’m learning as well that American salaries are also often much higher than their global counterparts, but I’ve also heard enough to begin to question whether or not our quality of life improves proportionally. In fact, I’d say that my early conclusions are so far that we Americans may actually have disproportionately low quality of life when plotted against our wages–an average worker making minimum wage in America is actually making more than some of the highest paying jobs in some places, but isn’t able to afford many of the basic amenities that some people value. This, among other things, has deeply challenged my perspective, my worldview, and my workview.

Of course, it hasn’t been all sunshine and roses abroad. On my third or fourth day in Chiang Mai, I experienced an extreme amount of anxiety around my situation and my decisions–so bad, in fact, that I felt it necessary to do some research on remote therapy solutions, so I might be able to unpack my experience with an expert. I couldn’t believe that I’d left the States. I couldn’t believe that I was in a new country. I was scared that I couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt, that I’d find myself alone in a strange place. I was afraid that I’d just bet my career against the house, and that I’d never recover.

By the end of my first week, however, the crisis had passed. Quite counter to my fears, as time goes on I’ve been finding that travel has produced many of the growth side-effects I had hoped it might. I can feel myself becoming more comfortable with uncertainty, in part because I’ve placed myself in more unplanned scenarios, and gained more confidence in my ability to figure things out. Meeting other people like me–nomads and entrepreneurs making a living while traveling the world–who share my values has also helped me internalize a deeper sense of acceptance and contentment with my decision to leave the normal bounds of society behind. I think much of this still has yet to play itself completely out, as I am also still riding on the stability of a cash influx from my recent consulting project, but I’d like to think that my fears have started to quiet themselves, and that the way is becoming clear to achieve some of my business goals for the year.

Saigon promises to be a very different experience from Chiang Mai. The energy here is chaotic and frenetic–frenzied, even–but it makes me feel very alive. This month, I’m trying a stint in a co-working and co-living space in the heart of the city called Start, sort of an experiment for me with a new type of living situation. My experience has already been very positive, and I’m looking forward to new friends, new foods, and new avenues for growth!!

The adventure begins! (Not that everything before this hasn’t been its own sort of adventure.) I’m actually writing this while en route to Chiang Mai, Thailand, the first of 3 destinations in South East Asia. I’m going to be in Thailand for an entire month, and now that I’ve actually had time to stop, think about it, and do a bit of research, I’m really excited. Chiang Mai sounds like an adventure-seeker’s paradise: scenic hikes offering both cultural immersion and physical challenge and a flourishing food culture complete with street vendors in bustling night markets. So many new things to see and experience!!

I have to admit, though, that the jump abroad is bittersweet–most beginnings are also endings. While I’ve never found it terribly sexy to say out loud, I lived at home with my parents for a full 6 months. I hadn’t originally planned to spend that much time at home, and I had also mentally prepared myself to go a bit insane moving back in with my parents. While it wasn’t always perfect, and it did occasionally test the limits of my sanity, I’m surprised to find myself incredibly grateful for the experience. A wise friend pointed out that most people have already spent the vast majority of the time they’re going to spend with their parents by the time they leave for college, so getting to spend another 6 whole months with my parents was a rare opportunity to build a deeper adult relationship with them, and really get to know them better at a time in my life when I’m starting to be able to contextualize their experiences and their choices. While I’m excited to forge ahead, and ready for a new chapter, I can’t help but feel nostalgic that my time at home has, yet again, come to close.

So, how did I spend my time in January? I obviously completed my travel preparations, as I’m (finally) safely on my way to Thailand. I set up an LLC, opened a business bank account, and took care of a bunch of other little logistics to make everything work. It was a bit of a mad dash, and I was honestly packing and prepping virtually up until the last few hours before I left, but I’m off :). I also made significant progress on my first consulting project. I unfortunately wasn’t able to finish it out completely in January, but I’d say it’s 80% done. Now I’m kind of just hoping the last 20% doesn’t take 80% of the time as they say. I didn’t get around to slapping a payment portal on Serenity, but I did spend a few hours setting up a couple of unrelated experimental projects that will exercise my long-dormant artificial intelligence expertise (I have a Master’s degree in AI and Computer Security, but haven’t done much with either in a few years). In all honesty, dabbling with some new projects probably wasn’t the most objectively smart way to spend my time, but I’m nevertheless feeling really excited about the discovery that my AI fundamentals are strong enough to teach myself more and potentially to apply to future products.

Consulting has had an interesting positive effect on my morale. Working on a project for someone else temporarily removes a certain amount of the uncertainty and anxiety around being self-employed: there’s no question as to whether or not I’m wasting my time since value for work has already been pre-negotiated with the client. Knowing for certain that I do have a way to make money if I ever need it is also very comforting–I knew that consulting was a possibility in theory before, but now it’s more tangibly true.

There are also some really useful processes I go through when consulting that I think could be useful for my own projects. I’m finding that the drive to complete a project quickly, and to impress a customer has naturally re-activated some of the skills that I honed at Palantir, but which I haven’t been disciplined about applying when working for myself. In executing at a professional level for a client, I have to be good about planning, designing, and estimating the various project tasks, and then need to execute high quality work and show progress on a regular basis. Going forward, I’m hoping to treat my own projects as sort of mini-consulting engagements where I am my own client–I’m curious to see if doing so enables me to produce higher quality products more quickly.

February promises to be an action-packed month. With a little luck, this consulting project will only occupy me full-time for about another week, and past that will likely require my occasional attention as the project winds down. Once that’s done, my top priority remains slapping a payment portal onto Serenity and getting it out into the world. On top of all that, I have a hefty bucket list of things to do and eat before I leave Chiang Mai on March 4. It’s becoming increasingly clear that my biggest challenge in the coming months will be to successfully balance building a business with taking as much advantage of my exciting new surroundings as possible. I’m not entirely sure how this is going to work yet, but I’m excited to find myself naturally contemplating how to get things done more efficiently so that I can feel good about spending time adventuring. While there were sometimes troughs and crests of productivity at home, I think the call to adventure will apply constant positive pressure to make the most out of my limited time.

Should it interest anyone reading this, I’ve started to record some short vlogs about my adventures. My thought is that I’ll generally keep these short (~5 min max per day) and will do virtually no editing or post-processing on them. I’ll still be posting a broader update with reflections here on my blog once a month, and may start to do more in-depth travel posts about places or things I find really interesting, but for those interested in a video format at a (probably) higher frequency, consider finding me on YouTube. No hard feelings if not–both those videos and this blog are more a form of personal but public documentation of my journey for posterity than anything else.

Curry rice in the shape of a bear!

Today, life, laughing, said, “Close enough” and dumped in Tokyo instead of Taipei. Having always wanted to visit Japan, I laughed back and welcomed the opportunity to get a small taste of Tokyo before I return in 2 weeks.

I got back to San Diego from Greece around 11pm on 7/8. I left for the airport again around 4:30am in order to catch a flight to Los Angeles which then connected to Narita International Airport in Japan. I was supposed to fly from Narita to Taipei on a Singaporean airline called Scoot. When I boarded my flight to Narita, I was already a bit flustered, realizing that I’d only have about 15 minutes after landing to run through the airport and check-in to my flight before they close check-ins. Much to my surprise, when I landed in Narida after a 10 hour flight, I got a message telling me that flight to Taipei was cancelled due to bad weather conditions caused by typhoons. Rushed check-in problem: solved. New problem: how the hell am I getting to Taipei now?

After calling Scoot, it became apparent that my options were to: 1) fly out to Taipei on a Scoot flight the following morning or 2) swap my plans and spend the week in Japan and then circle back to spend my last week in Asia in Taiwan instead of Japan. I opted for the former, and since I my plane landed in Japan around 3:30pm, I decided it would be worth taking the train from Narita into Tokyo (takes about an hour on a high-speed train). I booked myself a stay at the Sauna and Capsule Hotel in Hokuo (I keep hearing that it’s a fairly uniquely Japanese experience to stay in a capsule hotel), and after an hour going through customs and immigration, I found myself on the Keisei Skyliner, a high-speed railway which take me to Ueno. I chose this in part because the first major name I recognized on Google Maps that was anywhere near one of the rail lines was Akihabara, a section of Tokyo that is very well known for anime and gaming. Since I love both anime and gaming, I knew I’d be making a stop to Akihabara at some point anyway so why not now?

When I got to the capsule hotel, I was asked to take off my shoes and place them in a locker. I then took the locker key up to the front desk where they fulfilled my reservation, and traded my foot locker key for a capsule locker key. The idea is that I trade my capsule locker key back for the foot locker key whenever I want to leave the building. This ensures that I don’t track dirt into the building. Makes sense—one of the first things that struck me about Japan is how clean everything is. Outside, the buildings and roads are very well-kept. Inside, you can almost always find some maid or janitor meticulously cleaning every little scrap of dirt or trash in sight.

Capsule hotel!

Rows of little capsules that guests can stay in.



 

Anyway, I went downstairs and found my capsule. The capsules are each about 3 feet high, 3 feet wide, and 8 feet deep. They basically contain a bed, a control for the light, an outlet for power, a small TV, and a screen that I can pull down over the entrance. I couldn’t find a good large place to keep my luggage, so I threw it into the capsule and pulled down the screen.

Having gotten myself settled into the capsule, I decided it was time to go exploring. I found my way to the MRT and followed Google Maps’ instructions for getting to Akihabara. Unfortunately, Google Maps had a very different of where Akihabara is than it should and I ended up walking 10 blocks to get to the actual Akihabara.

Looking at a map, you might expect to see more nature in Tokyo. The city has several rivers flowing through it, and I expected interesting views as I crossed those rivers (I suppose this expectation comes from the amazing bridges and river crossings I saw in Paris). Instead, however, it’s incredibly easy to miss many of the rivers in Tokyo, at least the ones that I walked past. It’s an extremely urban environment, and the scenery doesn’t seem to change very much even as you walk by. The river itself is closely surrounded by buildings such that there isn’t really a way to walk along the river so you only ever really notice it if you pick a particularly good place to cross.

Akihabara

My first glimpse of Akihabara

After a little bit of walking, I found my way to Akihabara. As promised, there were pictures of anime characters everywhere. Walking down the street, the music made me feel like I was trapped in the ending credits scenes of all my favorite anime shows. I made one pass around the entire area without going into any of the stores. The area wasn’t nearly as large as I thought it would be. As I walked around, I passed by a cafe called Maidreamin, which had a Japanese woman dressed in a maid costume standing outside of it. I instantly recognized this as one of the maid cafes that some of my friends mentioned I should look into. My immediate first thought was, “holy crap that’s got to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” And yet, as I walked around considering where to eat I became more and more convinced that the most unique dining experience was going to be at that maid cafe. I half knew what to expect just from taking one look at the place and I was incredibly embarrassed by the idea of walking in, but I summoned up the gumption to do it.

Maid cafe

A maid cafe as seen from the outside.

The maid cafe did not disappoint. It was absolutely one of the weirdest experiences of my life. Once I was seated, a Japanese woman in a maid costume came over, calling me “master,” gave me an overview of my dining options, then gave me a pink cat ears headband and told me to say “meow meow” while holding up my arms as if to imitate a cat whenever I was ready to place my order. I don’t know about any of you who are reading this, but I personally have never had the perverse fantasy of having an attractive Japanese woman dress up in a maid costume and call me master while I pretend to be a cat. In fact, I’m not even sure how they came up with the idea. At least I have to give them points for originality? Well, so long as I was sitting in that cafe and paying for the experience, I wasn’t going to cut any corner. I put the headband on.

Wat

Am I having fun yet?

A “meow meow” and a shake of my arms later, my order was placed. First they brought me a melon soda and I was told to repeat after the maid and make some hand motions. I’m pretty sure we blessed the drink by saying “delicious delicious” and making a hard shape with our hands. The maid looked at me and matter of factly said, “now it is delicious” and walked away to let me enjoy my soda in slight embarrassed horror.

Not too long after, another maid brought me the cutest meal I have received. I ordered a curry rice which came to me in the likeness of a bear with a piece of chicken katsu on top of it. The maid walked me through yet another ritual of making hand gestures and repeating after her, then she drew a cat face on my katsu using sauce. Sure, why not?

Curry rice in the shape of a bear!

The most adorable meal I’ve ever eaten.

The food was pretty decent. The chicken katsu was super moist. When I made chicken katsu, it was absolutely nothing like this. At this point, I’m fairly certain that I’m actually terrible at cooking food and my friends are all either lying to me or have just eaten entirely too much Stanford dining hall food and are completely sick of it. Whatever, I enjoy cooking so I’ll keep at it.

When I was done with my meal, I decided to walk around Akihabara a little bit and explore some more of the shops and buildings. As I walked around it became clear that I had evaluated the size of Akihabara completely incorrectly. For whatever reason, I just assumed that only the first floor of every building I walked by was in use for shops when in fact pretty much every building was a multi-storied department store with more and different wares on each floor. I explored one building which was full of plastic models of anime figures and gundam models.

Gundam models in Akihabara

Now picture 6 floors full of things just like this and 4 city blocks full of these buildings. Welcome to Akihabara.

They also had a floor full of trading cards, which contained a whole bunch of Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I remember playing with those back in elementary school…

I chose another building at random and this one turned out to be something of an arcade. I was very impressed by the sophistication of the games in the arcade and equally impressed by the dedication of the gamers manning each game. Even if I could read the Japanese well enough to play the games, I probably wouldn’t have gotten a turn. Some of these games involved trading cards which you place onto a mat so that the game can recognize them and introduce digital elements in the game that correspond to them. One particularly interesting game made it look like you press a card down onto the mat to create an army (presumably the type of army depends on the trading card that you’ve used), then the game tracks the location of the card on the mat so you can move the card around to control the positioning of the army. Seemed like an interesting way to control a real time strategy game.

Japanese arcade

An arcade full of interesting games in Akihabara, Japan!

Once I was done with the arcade building, I walked around a little bit, trying to get to a nearby shrine. However, since it was late and everything was pretty much closed I only succeeded in getting enough exercise that my feet started to hurt so I made my way back to the capsule hotel.

Back at the capsule hotel, I realized that the bathrooms didn’t have any showers in them. Then I realized that this was because the sauna and public baths on the top floor of the hotel were included in the price of my capsule. So after reading a little bit about etiquette for public baths on the Internet, I decided to go take a dip (read: went to go get naked with old men). The baths were nice! Hot and very relaxing. I did something funny to one of my shoulders and the heat and the jets really helped to release tension. I also tried the sauna which was so hot that I literally couldn’t breath heavily through my nose without a sensation that I could only describe as “burning my nostrils.” I didn’t stay too long :P.

After all this, I was pretty satisfied that I made the most of my unexpected half day in Japan, so I hit the sack early in the hopes of being well-rested for an early-morning train ride back to the airport. Life lesson learned: when life throws you a curve ball, make an adventure out of it :).

Today we spent most of the day in Delphi before jumping on a bus back to Athens. In my opinion, we spent just about the right amount of time in Delphi.

Delphi is a small, but beautiful town nestled in the mountains. The town is built almost like layers on a terrace, with long parallel streets and alleyways with tall staircases that wind ever upward. Delphi is famous for its ruins. It’s marked as a World Heritage Site and is home to Apollo’s famous Oracle at Delphi, as well as a number of shrines to other gods like Athena.

We spent the morning at the Sanctuary of Apollo, which included ruins of a large amphitheater, a temple, a bank (?), and a stadium. For the most part, it was very hard to make anything of the ruins and I’ll admit I didn’t spend very much time reading the various placards in the sanctuary (nor did I do very much research beforehand). Mostly we saw stones marking where the foundations of buildings used to be. Occasionally we’d see a large column still intact from a temple or a building that used to stand here thousands of years ago.

As we climbed the many stairs to the stadium situated at the top of the hill, Mom stayed behind to meditate near the ruins of the temple. When we returned she claimed that she had been given a message by the Oracle and that she now thinks one of her purposes in life is to give voice to her mother. Mom is a little insane like that sometimes (I guess I don’t really believe in higher powers giving higher callings), but it’s a charming goal nonetheless.

After we were done with the Sanctuary of Apollo, we walked further down the road to another ruins site, this time ruins of a shrine to Athena, the goddess of wisdom. These ruins featured, mostly, a bunch of rocks in a loose grid-like pattern and a few columns in a large circular pattern. Some pictures on the plaques showed us what the shrine looked like many thousands of years ago. One can almost tell?

Having had our fill of ruins for the day, we walked back toward the museum associated with the Shrine of Apollo. On our way, we came across a little fountain and we all washed our faces in it just for kicks.

At the museum, we saw various artifacts and relics leftover from a time when the shrines were a little more whole. Again, I didn’t spend too much time reading the information in the museum, but I was struck by the choice of languages for translation. In delphi, some signs seem to translate into German, others into French, others into English. It’s as if they couldn’t make up their minds so they thought they’d just do a few for everyone :P.

The leftovers of a hollow silver-gilded bronze statue of a bull caught my eye at the museum. Bronze nails were tacked in to the top to seal the plates together. The plaque on the wall said that this statue was likely much larger than reconstructed here in the museum. The top of an ornate, Corinthian (?) column with some figures on top of it also caught my eye. I stopped to imagine what this would look like attached to a building or monument somewhere. Most interesting to me, though, was a 3D model of what the entire Sanctuary of Apollo would have looked like before it turned to ruins. It would have been quite a place to walk through!

After the museum, we walked back into town for lunch. Delphi has a whole bunch of hotels with restaurants that line the side of the cliff. We quickly learned that in Delphi you pay for the view, not so much for the dining experience—the food wasn’t very impressive anywhere we ate. While we were sitting, though, a lightning storm rolled over the valley and we saw giant lightning bolts streak down from the sky to touch the ground below. I thought this was super cool because I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a full lightning bolt before!

Once we paid for the bill, we spent some time walking around Delphi and browsing in the various shops. Just like in Athens, many of the shops were pretty standard and replicated over and over again, but one of the shops we stopped in had some interesting and unique wares. The shopkeep was a very nice and knowledgable man who tried to guess our interests, and then told us fun stories about interesting products he was selling. In this shop, I found to-scale models of ancient Greek ships, decorated circular chess boards with figures of greek temples in the center of the board, Spartan armor and helmets (Dad tried a helmet on for the laughs). The shopkeep also played a number game with us: he showed us a table of numbers created by Pythagoras and asked me to pick a number, then tell him how many boxes my number showed up in. Once I told him which boxes my number was in, he thought about it for a little while and then told me my number! Apparently the table is structured such that if you sum the first number in each box that a number appears, you get that number. Kind of fun :).

The shopkeep also showed me an interesting cup called a Pythagorean Cup. The cup is designed with a little hole in the bottom. The idea is that you can fill this cup up to a certain line marked on the inside of the cup, but if you fill any higher than that the liquid will spill out. I think the hole is created to produce a very specific amount of pressure which resists the pull of gravity on the liquid up to a certain volume.

When we were done shopping, we returned to our hotel, got our luggage, and went to be picked up by the bus taking us to Athens. On our way back to the hotel, the storm that we had seen crossing the valley came upon us and we were hit by deluge of rain. Our bus was nearly an hour late, but once we on, we were treated to the sight of rainbows on the road back to Athens. We even saw a double rainbow! Mostly I passed time on the bus by reading. Kristen and I watched The Mockingjay: Part 1.

We stayed in a little hotel in Piraeus, the section of Athens which houses the port where ferries and cruise liners come to dock. Tomorrow morning we’ll be boarding a ferry which will take us to Santorini in the Greek Isles!

For whatever reason, I couldn’t sleep this morning. I woke up at 3am and passed the time by reading and exercising. Around 5:50am, my parents woke up as well to find a good place to watch the sunrise at 6:05am, and I decided to go for an early morning run in a foreign place.

I ran straight down the road, being careful not to take too many turns lest I get hopelessly lost and not be able to trace my way back. The road forward turned into a dirt path which looked a lot like a hiking trail. I followed it for a little while, curious about where it led, until I remembered a passing warning from yesterday’s tour guide regarding wildlife (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) and decided to turn back since exploring the trail alone seemed imprudent. On my way back, however, I ran into my parents who had decided to walk in the same direction. Feeling more confidence in numbers (and recognizing that I’d only have to outrun the slowest member of our group, not a bear :P), I turned around and hiked with them up the trail.

The trail took us up to an old road then across that old road to another trail, this one a little less well-kept. At this point, my parents wanted to turn around, but I urged them on to go just 10 minutes further. As we walked, we crossed an interesting stone staircase/bridge and continued to wind our way up into the mountains. I imagined that maybe this path would lead us to one of the monasteries we had been to yesterday—I half joking thought since I had been under the impression that those were quite a ways up and not so close to the town. Yet as we walked, and the view got higher and higher and we approached the tops of the lowest rock formations, my excitement grew.

Again, my parents wanted to go back but I convinced them to keep going. A little further and we looked up and, lo and behold, not more than 200 meters above us, was one of the monasteries. At this point I could not be convinced to turn around until I saw what was at the end of this path. As we kept walking the path began to be better and better kept, and I realized that we must be close to the end. As we grew closer to the monasteries, we also started hearing a low humming noise. It took us a little while to recognize that this was actually the chantings of the monks high above us!

When we finally made it to the top, we found ourselves on a little landing below one of the monasteries. We had visited this exact same landing the day before and I recognized it as the area where they brought building materials to be hoisted up into the monastery via a great net connected to a rope. Now satisfied with my pre-breakfast adventure, we turned around and started the hike back down the mountain. Kristen was still soundly asleep when we returned.

A tour guide drove us once again up the winding mountain roads to the monasteries, this time giving us a chance to stop and look inside. We visited several monasteries today. The insides are typically rather austere—wooden floors, stone walls, minimal decoration except in the chapel, which is covered in paintings—but with beautiful and well-kept gardens. Though the exteriors are extraordinarily grand and their placement in the mountains is spectacular to behold, the insides of the monasteries felt very monotone after the first couple we visited. Some monasteries had winding stairways with many steps to their entrances. Other monasteries had museums (one had a war museum featuring soldier’s uniforms, swords, and pistols). One monastery had an ostiary—a room full of skulls and bones. When we asked our tour guide about this he said that it is tradition to exhume the bones of the monks after a few years, once the decay is complete. Greek Orthodox Christians believe that when Christ comes and resurrects the dead, there must be something of them still remaining to be resurrected. Thus, Greek Orthodox Christians don’t believe in cremation and, presumably, the monasteries keep the haunting remains of their dead in a small room. With the exception of a nun here or there manning (womaning?) the gift shop register, we hardly ran into a single monk or nun during our visits to the monasteries.

Feeling like we had seen everything to be seen in the mountains, we descended to the town to rest before our train to Delphi. We stopped for coffee and I ordered a freddo cappuccino, a cold coffee drink with a large cream foam head that Kristen and I had kept seeing at other cafes and restaurants.

Rested a little more, we departed for the train station where we boarded the same train that had taken us to Meteora and pushed away to Delphi.