We left on December 29th in the laziest possible fashion — packed early, then spent the rest of the day horizontal on the couch with Dyami and Tosh, TV going, burning through the last of the ketamine and keeping the klonopin close. Freddie showed up exhausted and unannounced and drove us to the airport anyway, because that’s just what Freddie does.
December 30th was technically a day that happened, but the airplane ate it. I slept on a poor unsuspecting Asian woman the whole way. The klonopin worked beautifully.
We landed in Hanoi on New Year’s Eve and immediately bought vapes, obviously. That night we had the kind of dinner that makes you feel like the trip was already worth it — a fish hot pot situation, fresh herbs we absolutely should not have eaten raw, chicken pho, summer rolls we learned to make ourselves, and somewhere in the middle of all that, Negronis and margaritas, because why not. We ate everything. Our digestive tracts held firm.
Then we went to Beer Alley and had a shitload of Hendricks and soju, which felt appropriately unhinged for New Year’s Eve. There was a server named Han who may or may not have been flirting with me — the jury is still out — and then the crowd got big and loud and honestly a little scary, so we retreated to the hotel by 10 and slept straight through the fireworks like the cosmopolitan adventurers we are.
New Year’s Day breakfast was surprisingly decent. Tried the local guava. Had pho. Recovered.
The city was full of flowers — we walked around the lake and the temple, and somewhere along the way a group of young Vietnamese people materialized and asked to take photos with us. They wanted us to cross our arms and flex. We obliged. Later, at the train alley, we drank three liters of beer between us and got pulled into increasingly unhinged selfies with a Chinese tourist. A Vietnamese driver picked us up, found out we were American, and delivered the best pitch I’ve ever heard: “We used to be at war, but — “ “Now that’s all over!” I said. “Yes,” he said. “So hire me to be your tour guide for the day.” Didn’t hire him. Still think about it.
We ended the night eating weird stuff from 7/11.
January 2nd we took a limousine to Ha Long Bay, stopping first at a pearl factory that turned out to be a sales labyrinth you had to escape like a video game level. On the boat, we met the full cast: a Polish couple, an Indian couple, a waiter who was probably gay and very sweetly worked his way from “brothers?” to “friends?” to “father and son?” — at which point I said, “Wait, which one is the dad?” and he tee-heed and fled. A French couple made homophobia faces at Tosh. The Polish guy talked about POW camps at dinner. The wife had fuchsia, bejeweled nails like a drag queen’s talons and I couldn’t stop looking at them.
We saw monkeys from a wooden boat we nearly capsized. A rose was left on our cabin door. I gave Tosh a fraudulent and violent AI-generated monkey encounter, for good measure.
Jellyfish salad. Sea bass. No fresh pepper, which felt like a personal affront.
The next day we biked to a small village that was inexplicably blasting techno music — including, at one point, the Vengaboys’ We Like to Party, which is a detail I will carry with me until I die. Before the bike, we stopped and let tiny fish eat the dead skin off our feet. None of the other adults on the tour tried it. Their loss. It was ticklish and wonderful and I would do it again immediately.
Later: kayaking, a floating restaurant, some angry South Asian tourists shouting at each other, and then a long peaceful stretch on deck reading while goats bleated and played on a nearby island and the sun broke through the clouds and turned the water into something almost embarrassingly beautiful.
Happy hour martinis. The girl behind the bar learned our order after one round and just smiled knowingly when she saw me coming. We got coerced into making fried spring rolls with the crew. They asked if we’d tried dog meat and said that we really should. This conversation happened while Love Story by Taylor Swift played in the background. I don’t know what to do with that.
January 4th, Trump started a war with Venezuela. Tosh and Dyami were worried. I had pho for breakfast and tried to hold it together.
We went on an excursion with our guide Mei, who was wonderful — full of cultural exchange conversations, patient with our questions, willing to discuss everything from Tiger moms to the jar of preserved monkey and deer we found somewhere along the way. At the fish market, everyone went crazy over our nose rings. Mei later told us they thought the rings were real gold and that we were wealthy. We were not.
Tosh swam in the bay while Mei and I talked about freedom and family expectations. On the way back, I mentioned the dog meat thing. She looked surprised. “Who told you that??” We all laughed. I told her I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.
Tosh paid $57 — one and a half million Vietnamese dong — to a lady selling snacks from a boat drifting between the ships. Mei said they call those boats “7/11.” We ate the chips on the bus back to Hanoi.
The hotel staff all remembered us and asked about our cruise. We ate bánh mì in the park. A group of Vietnamese students asked if we were twins, Tosh said yes, and they completely lost their minds. He had to take the selfie himself because their arms were too short.
The sky bar bartender welcomed us back and made excellent martinis. The water puppet show was semi-memorable but the real entertainment was watching the live musicians performing to the side, slightly ignored by everyone. We ate duck at a local place that tasted exactly like pork, navigated a toilet that required passing through what I can only describe as a Narnia-style labyrinth of hallways and stairwells, and found a dirty waterpik on the shelf next to the shower. Ten out of ten.
Went back to the hotel, but I was buzzing. Went back out to Beer Street. A server girl asked if we were a couple and I said yes. Tosh said we were twins. She giggled with absolute glee.
Last morning in Hanoi. I had a dream about kittens with magnetic noses that could melt glass, and about Tosh being mean to me. The hotel hostess asked about the fruit and welcome message they’d left in our room and wished us a happy return home. The bellman complimented our beards. The taxi driver complimented our beards. The concierge came outside to say goodbye, gave us a small gift, and — while I was in the bathroom — told Tosh we looked like Vikings. “We thought, wow. What a strong look.”
At the airport I had a minor panic spasm, vaped in a smoking lounge that smelled terrible, found a restaurant, ate a bánh mì, drank some gin, drank a liter of beer. An Indian guy from Mumbai in another smoking lounge asked if we were twins. I said yes. He complimented our beards.
Cambodia was easy. The driver was nice but neither of us had much to say. Tosh was in a bad mood; I was just tired and spent the ride learning the history of Cambodia from Gemini. Cocktails across the street for $2.50. Dinner for four people and cocktails for three came to $25. The streets were full of people offering us prostitutes and beer and cab rides. We walked around scouting the night markets. The AC situation at the villa was precarious — our host asked us to only run it for ten minutes at a time — and I was deeply, privately worried about my sanity over the next several days. The pool looked like a good friend.
Angkor Wat day started at 4am. Our guide was the sweetest man, full of history and personal stories about his family and the country. We watched a small monkey chase down a cat, hump it, and then groom its fur, which is a sentence I never expected to write. He dropped us in hammocks behind the lunch restaurant to nap. Monkeys everywhere, mostly adorable, one of whom stole a woman’s purse, phone, and money before the situation was resolved. We watched the sunset from a hilltop surrounded by silly tourists and talked an impressive amount of nonsense to pass the time.
The next day I did a quarter tab of acid and went back for more exploration. More peaceful, more beautiful. Dyami’s digestion staged a revolt and he rickshawed home early. We walked more, took our own rickshaw back, came home and drank a bit too much in the pool, a bit too much at the dinner show, and then more at the gay bars on pub street, which were simultaneously a little crazy and a little sad and very local. Someone had written extensive things about God and about a person named Adam on a wall. We came home wobbly and had a dark conversation about the future of humanity. I don’t remember how it ended.
Khao Lak was where things got slower and harder and also, eventually, better.
I woke up the first morning overwhelmed and couldn’t shake the feeling that I was seeing places for the last time — that I was somehow viewing this whole trip through a lens of finality I didn’t want and couldn’t quite explain. Tosh took me for a walk. I talked it out. We went to the beach and I slept for hours on a chaise and let the sun do what it does.
Acid on the beach one afternoon cracked things open in the right direction. The ocean was enormous and beautiful and didn’t care about anything I was worried about, which helped.
The elephant sanctuary was a whole day of gentle magic. The resort bar was peaceful and easy and Tosh sat with me through some feelings I was having trouble naming. A waiter at dinner tried to teach us to make fancy napkin origami and Freddie turned out to be the most gifted among us.
I cancelled a big excursion to keep Eyan company and lost $450 without minding too much. Some things aren’t really about the money.
The dive cruise: I was nervous. It turned out to be wonderful.
Gerben was our divemaster — calm, experienced, had worked with a lot of American celebrities, which he mentioned with appropriate casualness. I went down eight times in total. Tosh seven. First dive: no issues, no wetsuit needed, comfortable in the water immediately. Second dive: deep, part of the advanced certification, also fine. Third: my ears started blocking. I dropped a flashlight on the sunset dive and someone named Ethan retrieved it from the seafloor. I offered him ice cream and beer. He accepted neither.
On the morning Tosh’s sinuses gave out and he stayed above water, Gerben and I dove alone and a white-tip shark appeared and reappeared several times and gave us an actual show. I didn’t panic. I just watched. It was one of those quiet moments where everything feels exactly right.
Packing up to leave, I found my nicotine gum in my bag and realized I hadn’t thought about vaping in days. How long had it been? Long enough, apparently.
The speedboat home. Eight dives for me, seven for Tosh, and something that felt distinctly like accomplishment — the tired kind, the good kind. I was excited to sleep in my own bed, excited for a private bathroom, excited, honestly, for a bidet. The wheel on my suitcase broke during the shuttle situation. I overheated a little and acted a little crazy. Cooled down fast enough. Vodka and a meal at a Thai restaurant with friendly, possibly flirty male waiters who asked if we were brothers. Tosh said yes. I said yes, but his beard is grayer from stress.
Bangkok was brief and good. Easy flight, tiny streets, wagyu and salmon and salmon roe for dinner. Tosh went to look at temples alone. I went to 7/11 and bought booze and took a nap, which feels like a fair division of tourist activity. We got drunk and went to the night market to find bugs to eat. The bugs were okay.
We stayed up almost all night, showered at 5am, and got in a car with a driver who seemed to be nodding off at the wheel. We made it. The flight was long. Half a klonopin and some sleeping pills. Fourteen hours. I slept for maybe eight of them.
Vancouver. American security: annoying, slow, both stupid and overcomplicated. Everything in the Bay Area is too expensive again. I took BART to Balboa Park and a Waymo the rest of the way home, feeling irrationally grumpy that Dyami hadn’t come to get me — even though I hadn’t asked him to.
Got home. Cuddled the cats. Talked to Dyami. He understood the grumpy.
I found all my old almost-empty vapes and put them in a bag for the trash. Took one final puff off one of them and nearly fell over. My tolerance was gone. The part of me that wanted to keep going was there, but quiet. I listened to the quiet part.
All is well.
You really can keep worrying less. Worry is worthless.