Somewhere on TikTok right now, someone is packing a bag. They have watched enough videos to know that Vietnam is cheap, beautiful, and full of people living their best lives on a thousand dollars a month. They know this because the person in the video told them so, usually from a rooftop in Hội An…
Picture a billboard in the middle of Phnom Penh. A foreign face, probably white, probably smiling in the way that suggests enthusiasm and approachability in equal measure, advertising a summer camp at a local language center. The copy is in Khmer. The face is not. That image is the honest version of what a foreign…
Scroll through any major Vietnam expat group on Facebook and you will find them. Barely used laptops. GoPros with one or two trips on them. Ring lights still in the box. Bluetooth speakers, smartwatches, portable hard drives. The listings are polite and the prices are reasonable and if you read them in isolation they look…
The bus dropped me somewhere near Tay Ninh and the husband of the center owner picked me up. He drove me to the hotel, helped me with my bags, and left. I looked around the room. There was a particular kind of sofa. There was a heart shaped bathtub. I messaged Robby, my agency handler,…
By day five of a twelve-day trip back to South Africa, something shifts. The weather is good. The food is familiar. My mother’s cooking is exactly as I remembered it. We sit in the garden in the cool evening air and talk until the night sky fills in above the trees. There is genuinely nothing…
It’s Monday morning in Sóc Trăng. Yesterday I sat through 18 IELTS mock speaking tests and a round of primary level exams before that. This morning I cleaned the air conditioner filter, put washing on, walked next door for a banh mi and a coffee, and came back to my laptop. The week’s schedule is…
Midday, Saigon. Nobody’s filming this. He was proud of the apartment. Showed the camera every room, every balcony view, every detail that confirmed he’d made a smart life decision. Then, a few minutes later, he was haggling with an elderly street vendor over fifty cents. A conical hat. Handmade. The kind of thing that takes…
People ask this question and expect a simple answer. Vietnam is safe. Thailand is safe. Cambodia requires more attention. That’s the short version, and it’s not wrong. But after seven years living in Vietnam, not visiting, living, I’ve noticed something the safety indexes don’t capture. Vietnam looks the least safe of the three. The traffic…
There is a particular kind of conversation that only happens over dinner, late, when the food is finished and neither person is in a hurry to leave. I was sitting with a friend somewhere in Sóc Trăng, the kind of evening where the ceiling fan is doing its best and the street outside has gone…
Why I Skipped the Brompton for a Bike Half the Price I’ve spent the last few weeks in a bit of a research loop. If you’ve ever looked into folding bikes, you know exactly where that road leads: straight to the Brompton. They are beautiful machines—compact, iconic, and holding their value incredibly well. For a…
