Vietnam 🇻🇳

Here we go, after two weeks in Bali I went to Vietnam for just about the same amount of time. What I discovered was that Vietnam is supposed to be the new hot spot: for entrepreneurs, for traveling, for doing it all. And apparently Vietnam is even cheaper than Thailand and other surrounding Southeast Asia locations. The conversion I used was one US dollar to 22,750 Vietnamese đồng, VND. Needless to say, lots of calculators were used on this trip.

Housing was $380 total, split among eight days in Hanoi and five in Saigon. Seeing as we had three people, we AirBnb-ed whole apartments, one for $65 a night and the other, located in a fancier high rise, for $80 per. Overall both living situations were lovely, as each of the three of us had our own bedrooms and all the amenities we needed.

A non-stop flight from Taipei to Hanoi -- but back from Ho Chi Minh -- was roughly $300, plus we added an intra-country flight from Hanoi to HCM, which cost $120. (Who knew Vietnam was so tall!) Overall flights back and forth cost about $400. Taxis to and from all the airports cost $140 total, with most of that cost coming from Taipei, as a cab to the airport is about $40. Going from airport to AirBnb in Vietnam cost an average of maybe $12, even with generous tip. Total housing and travel expenses: $920.

Oh I also Uber-ed quite a bit, and took taxis, as it was most necessary in Saigon and partially necessary in Hanoi. Uber trips in Saigon averaged $0.90 to maybe $1.40 and that made coming back and forth between places super easy. Cabs in Hanoi were actually pricier, probably due to longer distances traveled but even with taxi-ing everywhere, the total cost was probably about $60. And oh right, SIMs were $14 for 10GBs over thirty days. So, about normal.

In contrast to Bali, the food in Vietnam was delicious and it was hard to go wrong. We lived on a beautiful street that served chicken pho right across the way and it was $1.50 for a glorious bowl. Overall the food in Hanoi was roughly $2-5 dollars, and to honest, my daily boba was probably more than most of the meals we had. Oh yeah, I found boba in Vietnam and lots of it! The Gong Cha in Hanoi was about $2.50 per cup and I went like every other day. I think I drank more boba than Vietnamese coffee this whole trip, easily.

Meals down south in Saigon got pricier, as we moved away from street foods and more into restaurants and such. Prices were roughly double for everything, and there were a whole lot more non-street options to explore. Overall I spent about $250 dining out — with caveats below — and roughly $60 on various snacks and boba. The biggest single dining expenses were about $12-18 for more upscale dinners in Saigon such as a catfish place, a vegetarian restaurant, and stuff like that.

I did do one big dinner for everyone in Hanoi, at Ưu Đàm Chay, which was $60 for four of us. I reaaaaally wanted the pineapple fried rice so I made us go to this fancy spot. Delicious and lovely presentation, but also ultimately disappointing from a pineapple fried rice perspective. Lesson I'll never learn: Don't order stuff in fruits just because it's in a fruit...

We watched one movie in Saigon, at about $5 per person. I'm happy to report that there are four popcorn options, and they can all be half/half-ed! We also went karaoke twice, once in each city, for a total of $250. I forgot the hourly rate but I think mostly the bill was drink related. Either way, singing is priceless and the decked out rooms and not-too-horrible electronic interface were doable.

And other than a Bavarian rose showcase we randomly went to that featured a nine-dollar entrance fee, it was just museums, museums, museums, which were about $2 per. In theory we went to some night clubs but Vietnamese night clubs apparently have no cover and you just waltz right in. You basically have to buy a table -- I have no idea for how much -- but we mostly just stood in the back, with the penned peasants, and then left quickly. Overall “play” was super cheap. Keep in mind that I didn’t actually do that much some days except stay-in at the AirBnb playing League and only emerging to eat... So take what you will out of that.

What I did do more in Vietnam than in Bali was shop! I bought a fantastic striped Faguo duffel at L'Usine Dong Khoi for way too much, used some hard American cash to buy bowls for my house, picked out some plastic jewelry and a trinket or two, plus some baby clothes for the nieces. Oh, and a  book I figured I could get nowhere else called A Summer in Sapa, which was located in the War Remnants Museum gift shop. Gotta support local writers you know. Oh wait, she's a white expat... I also got a haircut in Saigon, at a salon, for about $18.

Overall, two weeks in Vietnam cost $1,800 give or take, with half of that going to transportation and housing. I guess overall the bill is more than Bali but it definitely felt like there was more to do. And plus, the food was way better and a lot cheaper. Pho dreams!

Next up: Japan, aka “the place that will take all my money…."

Bali: 🏖, 💩, 🐦

What does two weeks in Bali look like? Let’s take a look… The exchange rate for Indonesian rupiah is currently IDR $13,680 to one US dollar. For the purposes of my trip I just divided everything by 13,500 because big numbers are confusing.

Flights cost a total of $650, with tickets being bought a week beforehand on the way there and then three days before on my way out. We flew Air Asia there, and I was wary of the budget airline, but it was fine even with a layover in Kuala Lumpur -- and overall cheaper even with the extreme baggage fees. On the way back though, I opted for China Airlines and a direct flight, which was about $400 one way. (Just had to get home!) Tack on about $100 for getting to and from the airport six separate times, and the total cost of getting door to door from Taipei to Bali was about $750.

Housing was cheap, as we had two people and opted for hostel-like conditions. The first AirBnB was bare bones and clean, and the second one was very nice, with daily breakfast and cleanings. The first one was $23 per night and the second $17. Split that between two people, plus tip, and all our housing costs came out to about $150 each for two weeks.

We didn’t scooter around, as recommended, so mostly it was walking around. But there were still taxis needed to go from Canggu to Ubud, about an hour's ride away, and that was roughly $18 one-way. Overall I spent maybe $40 on taxis and a handful of Ubers, but really didn’t ride in a car unless it was to another town.

SIM cards were easy to acquire, and even though I ran out of 10GB data three days before I left, I just got anther one, to the tune of $16 total, so about a dollar per day for 3G/LTE action.

Food was a problem, as we were in pretty touristy places and the options were limited to Westernized sit-down spots, or warungs, which were local road side restaurants (that mostly served the same thing). We avoided most of the upscale/midscale dining places, and shied away from all the "amazing fusion" food Bali is apparently becoming known for. Also, keep in mind I basically eat once or twice a day, so my food bill was pretty low.

Food in beachy Canggu was more expensive certainly, but overall a basic meal cost $4-7, with prices scaling up by a dollar or two either way. Portions were large, acai bowls and healthy type smoothies were plentiful, but finding cheap decent local food was mostly a bust. We did splurge for big dinners at La Favela ($65 for two), Room 4 Dessert ($60), and an Indonesian tapas place ($17) but otherwise most of the food was around ten bucks. Oh, except for my airport hamburger on the way back, that was a whopping $16 by itself. Also the one local chain I tried, a fried chicken place, gave me diarrhea for two days. So there's that...

Snacks of all kinds were consumed, to the tune of $25, plus $7 on groceries which probably means water and drinks, and maybe another $7 on laundry, extra paper towels, and toilet paper. I paid $6 for two packs of cigarettes, which came in just about the same for my drinking costs, since I don’t drink. Also, I didn’t really shop/buy anything, aside from $6 worth of trinkets at a gift store and $20 for a pair of big poofy pants that I'm very excited about.

“Play” in general cost $65 and that included $30 for the Bali Bird Park, $6 for Agung Rai Museum of Art, and about $20 for beach chair and surfboard rentals. (Standard beach rates were $7.50 for a chair and $3.50 for two hours with a board.) I actually did very little, so that represents the low end of what could be possible. There were no temples, shows, or much of anything else on my play list, so mostly it was just birds birds birds!

Overall the two weeks in Bali cost $2,000 all inclusive. As you can see, most of the cost is in getting there, but once in paradise you could live there for semi-cheap -- although not as cheap as you'd expect. Was paradise worth it? Well, I came back two weeks early, skipping Gili Islands and more surfing at Uluwatu, so you tell me!

Moving On...

So I'm moving on to another blog! Same programming, different address. Actually maybe I'll be back here for Ways and Means, but otherwise it'll be at "Atelman, Nooooo!" Mainly I wanted to test out Blogger's new responsive themes and it made more sense to switch than to retrofit this one. Plus Jon Wow has been around since 2010, which is incredibly long for me! So yeah, here: atelman.blogspot.com

Ways and Means: 2017 Recap

Woohoo, my favorite post to write all year because it captures everything that I did the whole year…in money! Unlike other years, my ass was here in San Diego for most of the time, excepting a weekend in Oakland, a brief jaunt to Joshua Tree, two two-week trips to New York, and literally one trip to Los Angeles for New Year’s Eve weekend. Needless to say, that’s the least traveling I’ve done in years. Should have saved a lot of money right? Well, yes and no. Yes I saved a lot of money but no because all that saved money — plus more — went toward outfitting a house. How much does it cost to go from zero house belongings to (almost) full house belongings? I’ll tell you in another post. For now, let’s look at 2017, the fiscal year in review.

As always, below is my month-to-month variable expenses, and let’s just say that it started off swimmingly. I basically did nothing for the first two-and-a-half months of the year and came under budget in January, February, and March, which is a trifecta I don’t think I’ve ever achieved. I even cockily slashed my budget way down after January, thinking that I was doing a great job. By Apr-Jun though, my spending ways were back, and I slowly crept up in both over-budget percentage and actual numbers, all the way to a filthy November which cost me almost triple what January was, for some reason. I did finish up nicely thought, with a December, coming in at 92% on budget, but that was mostly due to being away for two weeks. And vacation, as we all know, goes under the annual "vacation" tab. Write it off!

• Jan: $1,100
• Feb: $950
• Mar: $1,050
• Apr: $1,450
• May: $1,500
• Jun: $1,600
• Jul: $1,900
• Aug: $2,050
• Sep: $2,300
• Oct: $2,250
• Nov: $3,200
• Dec: $1,550

The big four category breakdown goes like this:

• 🍜 Food: $11,600
• 🕹 Shopping: $5,400
• 🎡 Play: $3,700
• 🚗 Transportation: $3,400

As you can see, compared to last year, everything was way lower, excluding food, which remained about the same. On the year I spent about $42,650 including fixed, variable, and annual expenses. That’s almost exactly the same as last year. So again, I was living about a $55k lifestyle. However, I was living basically rent free from January through June, as we were remodeling the new/old house, so if I take into account what would have been the normal estimated fixed expenses for those months, including the mortgage/rent, it would be more like $55,250 and then a $72k lifestyle. Guess who needs to change everything when the house fully kicks in?!? Is it time to write a book?!

The goal of “tags” is to flag down everything you’d want to take a look at the end of the year, and to that effect I added quite a few detailed tags this year — inspired by Ameer’s “Mexican food” tracking tag. I wanted to see how much I spent on boba, on cigarettes, on popcorn, on karaoke, etc. With those numbers now in hand, I present you with the shocking numbers...

I spent about a thousand dollars on movies, $500 for various “events” (which include concerts, dance shows, plays, anything that requires a pre-bought ticket), a spiffy $775 on karaoke for the year, and most shockingly — although not that shocking really — about a thousand dollars on boba. Yes, boba! Compared to $400 for cigarettes on the year, let’s just say that it’s clear what my real addiction is. Also, I recategorized popcorn to category “play” under its own tag 🍿, since I consider popcorn to be part of the movie going process, and that totaled $250 for the year. In comparison, I spent a piddly $180 on drinks for the year.

As for shopping, I bought a PS4 this year, plus controllers and games, and then add in various iOS and board games I bought and we were looking at a $800 bill for “games” this year. Probably $100 of that probably went to Riot to feed my League of Legends addiction. For a game that I spent probably hundreds of hours on, this was the sweetest ROI of all.

Let’s see, what else... I spent $975 on clothing or clothing-related items, $450 on forty or so books, $425 on whatever comes under “beauty” (haircuts and contacts mostly), and I actually went to the doctor this year, to the tune of two visits each at $75. Car expenses came out to $150 for DMV registration, but that doesn’t account for car insurance.

Oh, subscriptions. I finally cancelled my Citibike Pass after years of not even living in New York, signed up for and then cancelled a rarely used Marvel Unlimited account, and am still subscribed to the usual assortment of URL and hosting services for web life, a couple of iOS subscriptions, NBA League Pass, Spotify, Netflix, and Stitcher. Biggest adds were subscriptions for 1Password (a lifesaver), YouTube Red, and recurring charges for the new camera monitoring set-up in my house. That all came out to about $110 a month. The saddest thing is that MoviePass never got back to me and with the huge price drop, I never even got my MoviePass to work out. So much for customer loyalty!

And let’s tackle the huge food category, which I smartly separated out this year into dining, dining shared, grocery, and snacks. A full 32% of my entire variable budget was spent on food, of which 22% of that was spent paying for myself and others. I’d been wondering how much I spend on just my food versus when I eat out with others and here was the answer: about two-thirds. It’s a small price to pay for good company and shared plates. Add in snacks and groceries and we have food all the way up to 46% of my variable money spent. Even with a healthy diet of Soylent, most of my money went to food, as per usual. Can we just, like, not eat already?

Travel wise, again, I didn’t go too many places and so we’re looking at a total of $1,800 on flights, $625 on hotels, and that encompasses a weekend wedding in Oakland ($450), a few days in Joshua Tree ($175), ten days in New York ($1,175) and another two weeks there ($1,750). Oh wait, flights is super high because I bought a ticket to Taipei for $600 that doesn’t deliver until January 2018. And somehow taxis cost me $975 for the year, which I’d guess is trip related, and public transportation was a piddly $75 in total. Let's hope that number goes up next year as it means I'll be scooting around in foreign subways.

Also, an unexpected expense was a new passport and visas for my upcoming Asia jaunt. Apparently you can’t just add new pages to your passport anymore so a new passport, two visas, and finally getting on the Global Entry program set me back $1,450. Such is the price of escape right? Oh and most importantly I racked up 64,500 reward points on my Chase card — remember my newfound obsession with reward cards right around this time last year? — and am now armed with almost one "get out of jail free" card to anywhere. Whew!

As always, if you want to start a budget club of your very own, here's the open template, and if you need help customizing it, do tell!

Super Bloom

Shoot, a whole three months has already gone by and no blog? What’s the reason! Well, simple: I haven’t done anything. It’s hibernation time for this bear and let me just tell you that my video game intake is way up, along with my TV, books, and just about everything else intake. Strangely, I haven’t watched that many movies, but mainly because most of the movies out in January and February were pretty trash. Straight up, the only strong recommends I can give for the past three months of movies is 20th Century Women, the ESPN O.J. documentary, and Logan starring Dafne Keen. Killing the books though, as I’m well on my way to breaking fifty, a goal that will become a top five moment for me this year.

Top one worst 2017 moment: Remember when the Atlanta Falcons made the Super Bowl? Remember when they scored three early touchdowns and was killing the Patriots and I was on the ground just ready to burst with joy? I hate watching big games with other people and in a game of this magnitude I could only survive if I was surrounded by loved ones. Of course, AMR was cheering for Brady (I hate him, Brady and AMR both), George fell asleep right as the Falcons were falling apart, and Greta, who can blame anything on wonderful Greta, who sat in my lap for a few moments during the crucial Green Bay game that launched Atlanta into their second Super Bowl? Of course, Greta was sleeping as the greatest collapse in Super Bowl history was happening, so at least she was spared that destruction.

I give up. Football, I’m over you. Coming two or three minutes away from a championship is going to be as good as it gets and the pain’s just not worth it. I had been planning to message a friend from middle school — the only other Falcons fan I’ve ever met — and congratulate us for our journey (we haven’t talked since high school), but alas I guess that won’t be necessary.

Instead, I have funneled my emotional well-being into inanimate things like my new $200 Muji toaster, my new 4k computer monitor that invites me into the Netherworld of the internet (apparently not capitalized anymore) where I can hang out with my own kind. I caress joy in reflecting on the infinitesimal odds of finding a mostly exact replica of my beloved denim jacket, but in a perfect lighter shade. What are the odds?! (Thank you Forever 21 for being so good at copying.) Also I bought a PS4 because you can’t spend all day staring at a screen — gaming on a TV doesn’t count right? In-between bouts of Call of Duty: Black Ops I make friends online with gamer tags, aka strangers, whom I only communicate with via brief in-game chats or moving my character around in various expressive patterns. It’s a life my friends. It's the future.

How well does this all dovetail with the grand plans I made for 2017? Well, you can figure that out for yourself. Above is my mind map, which outlines everything I hope to accomplish and focus on this year. It’s semi-tiered, because things should be prioritized and arranged. The most important categories on the map are: House, Job, Writing, Adult.

So far the house thing is looking great, as we’ve vacated the old tenants and I sort of know how to drive there without consulting Google Maps. People have been asking me if I’ve moved in yet but the truth is we haven’t even started on solid remodeling plans. So I won’t be moving in for a few months at least. Also I am learning about the tyranny of “future buyers” and how that impacts house decisions. Like apparently people won’t buy a house if you don’t have a bathtub. (I don’t take baths.) Or how it’s important to keep the value of a house up by not converting a bedroom into a glass enclosed office. Or how it would be bad feng shui for me to not sleep in the master bedroom but instead turn it into the ultimate movie and karaoke room. Basically I want to transform the house into a combination diner / cafe / theater / board game / office / collectibles monstrosity that wouldn’t sit well with other home owners. You know, strangers who may want to buy my house in a few years.

Newsflash: Once I get into this house I’m not leaving it, so I feel like I should just design it for me, and not some prospectives who will need to wash their dog in the non-existent bathtub. Also, no dogs allowed.

So yeah, there will be lots of house talk in the coming days. But then what? Well, I’m getting itchy already. For example today I deep dived into Remote Year, which is a program where you travel with seventy-five strangers for an entire year, staying one month each in a new city and working from the road. It seems ideal for me, and the cost is not prohibitive. Upon further investigation though, I would probably hate it. Too many (white) Americans, too many bad accommodations, too many headaches, and from what I can tell half the group ends up leaving by the end. Still, it’s got a certain romance to it doesn’t it? Twelve months away with a group cohort, globe hopping, having adventures, laughing about all the bad things that will inevitably happen. And think of the moblogs, it would be a moblog explosion!

Interestingly, Taiwan also has such a program, but only for one month. Maybe this is a thing now, an all-inclusive travel experience for digital nomads. It sounds great right? I was also thinking maybe this should be my summer to summer in Amsterdam, as I have always said I want to do that. But really, who would I go with? I have a few unemployed friends at the moment but they seem to be mostly concerned with finding their next employment — a responsible, solid idea — and there’s no way I can go hang out in a foreign country by myself, right?

Instead I’ll likely, steel yourself...join a gym soon (somehow according to the weigher thing closest to me, I've dropped weight recently). I'll continue to explore the world of “pizza on demand,” and generally just hang out around Poway and Rancho Bernardo, with the most exciting thing being a ride down to Convoy for boba. Let’s not underestimate that by the way, this ShareTea boba is pretty freaking good - my new thing is the "Okinawa double boba."

I guess I knew this is what this year would be like, and I am thankful for the company I have and how mundane everything has gotten. There is a quietness in the mundane. My focus is able to turn internal, and this is a nice Reset Year (patent pending) and toward that end I have had expansive time to fall into my old do nothing habits, which has forced me to become mentally productive, at the very least. And even some writing has been accomplished (!), as I kicked out a few chapters of a project as well as version one of a non-fiction book proposal.

Plus in an effort to get myself out there — out there! — I’m volunteering as a programmer for Pacific Arts Movement, which throws the annual San Diego Asian Film Festival. The people already seem culturally a cut above (what is usually in San Dieog), and it’ll be a change to be involved in something that is so far in the future -- SDAFF is in November. Also I just returned from the Bay and Joshua Tree, so I can also legitimately say I’ve been out of the house this year.

To spring.