I’ve made my bed. I’ll lay in it. I’m here, I’ll likely never return to the US unless I’m forced to, and I’m absolutely okay with that. Assuming there’s no divorce and no national security issue, I’m here. I’m done with the endless angst that beleaguered me for so many years in Vietnam.

The reason I — well, we — left Hanoi is because the pollution was literally killing me and I began to feel disillusioned with the influx of plaid shirts, skinny jeans, and mustaches. But that’s on me. I don’t own a monopoly on Hanoi.

Quite honestly, I also started to feel like it’d be impossible to pay off debt, save for the future, and have emergency money living there. If I can say that about Tây Hồ then you can only imagine my sentiments about what a life in Texas, dollar-wise and stress-wise, would have meant for us.

We give mom 8 million to help. I spend around 1 million on BS, around 3–4 million on health and wellness, and the rest goes into my wife’s hands. Out of site, out of mind. And on the US front I pay $1,500 monthly on student loans that should be paid back by next December. I’m extremely well off where I live.

This rapidity would not be possible in the States, ever.

I do love my wife and mother-in-law, I do deeply love Vietnam, it will be 50% of my life in a few years, but it’s not romance and Lonely Planet and a magazine cover to me. It’s not even this, which I took last week.

Or this.

Or this (This isn’t to say that they aren’t my life; they are and I love them with every part of my being.)

Or the years and years I spent learning Vietnamese or the special feeling I get being different.

It’s just home now and it’s not that interesting to write about anymore. There’s the occasional mega-update on life here but no more of that here’s what life in Vietnam is like stuff. I’ll leave that to the travel writers who seemingly understand this place deeper than you or I do.

I’ve always enjoyed your non-overly emotional or romantic attachment to this place. It’s one of millions and this is simply where you find yourself now and likely later. The simplicity and lack of desire for attention only because you live here is refreshing.