7 thoughts after 7 days: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The. Last. Month.

So the “year” part of Remote Year is a real thing. It’s only a year. Just 12 months. 365(ish) days.

As real as it is, it feels surreal as hell.

I don’t believe it.

I don’t believe we’re here, in Vietnam, together (for the most part), doing things together for the last time. We’re planning things for after this ends and even just typing that out makes me feel like someone is pinching my heart and pulling outwards.

1. Speaking of which — the anxiety is real.

There’s a lot on my mind and it’s manifesting itself into my body.

In high school, I went through a period where I was having heart palpitations and irregular heartbeats. I went to the cardiologist. I went to the neurologist. They told me there’s a chance I might have MS. (Pro tip: Don’t tell that to a 16 year old!) I didn’t. But in the end, nothing really came out of it.

If anything, it was just anxiety. Anxiety about high school things.

Well, the heart palpitations have started up again and I have a hunch it has to do with the fact that my life is about to be flipped upside down — again.

That, or I’m drinking too much Vietnamese coffee.

With this flip of my life, I’m anxious because there’s a new unknown. A new dream to find. More to discover, about myself, others, and the world. And I don’t have a path to all of that discovery — yet. I have a plan that circles me around the world from Vietnam to Bali to Australia to Hawaii and then finally to California, but that only goes as far as April 30th.

There’s excitement around this new flip, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be heart palpitations and bumps along the way.

2. Ho Chi Minh is the perfect place to spend this kind of month.

I have no interest in leaving the country of Vietnam this month.

I want to maximize time spent with these beautiful people and I think that Ho Chi Minh facilitates great interactions between everyone in the group.

Factors like the below all contribute to what seems to be the makings of a great month:

• We’re all living in the same building.
• There are awesome cafes everywhere.
• The city is full of western luxuries, but also Asian weirdness.

It gives us an intriguing place to explore, while still letting focus on the matter at hand — the end.

3. Arriving into a ghost town.

When we first arrived in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam was celebrating the lunar holiday — Tết — and most locals had retreated to the countryside to spend time with family. Locals and expats all told us that the city was dead, which we found hard to believe since it was still hard to cross the street due to flying motos.

A week later, the city is returning to normalcy and I can now see the distinction between the ghost town that was Ho Chi Minh City and what it is now.

Even though we kind of lost a week since most places were closed, I am grateful to have had the time to ease into our new home and get comfortable more craziness ensued. I feel like I know the city like I knew Córdoba and I’ve only been here a week and change.

4. Conversation themes.

As an American finishing their Remote Year, there are a lot of things on my mind. The political situation happening in my home country seems to get crazier and crazier by the day. Meanwhile, my days are dwindling with the people that I’ve called my family for almost a year now.

Every dinner I go to, there seems to be a theme of what we talk about:

1. Trump.
2. Remote Year ending.
3. The personality test we all took last week.

It’s interesting to have these conversations with people outside of my closest friends, as the post-Remote Year chatter has gone from “so, what are you doing in March?!” to “holy shit, what are we going to do without each other?!”

The themes have allowed for deeper conversations to arise and I am grateful to be able to have an intellectual network of people to discuss these things with.

5. This is so goddamn hard to write.

The tears have started.

I am honestly having a lot of trouble putting the past week into words and I feel like I’m not doing any of it justice. It’s all word vomit.

There’s a lot to process.

I just went through a full life of experiences in ONE YEAR.

I need five more years to even realize what this journey, these people have done to me.

6. On regrets.

Did I do it all? Did I do it right? Did I make mistakes?

You know, those kinds of thoughts.

You just can’t have ‘em! Because you didn’t know what you know right one year ago and that fact right there is not going to change.

7. Your life should be filled with your people.

I think that the saddest thing about this ending is the fact that getting every single one of these beautiful humans in the same room again is going to be a nightmare in a happen.

First of all, because we “live” all over the world. Second of all, because we clearly can’t sit still for more than a few weeks at a time.

I’d like to imagine that my life moving forward is just me, surrounded by these people and the other people who I know and love, and who know and love me.

But the reality is that they won’t be physically surrounding me. And that sucks. But you know what? That’s ok. Because there’s FaceTime. And WhatsApp. And Snapchat. And technology is awesome (even though it sucks sometimes) because it means that all of y’all are just a few clicks and swipes away.

Check out my recaps of Còrdoba, Buenos Aires, La Paz, Cusco, London, my Remote Year hiatus, Prague, Belgrade, Split, Kuala Lumpur, Chiang Mai, and Phnom Penh. Follow along on Instagram for my daily adventures.