Hello from Ho Chi Minh

I realize I've been slacking on the posts but when days on Remote Year are dwindling down and you suffer from a severe case of FOMO all the time, blog writing takes a backseat.  We've been in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for almost three weeks now which seems crazy.  It's a hectic city where the streets have more scooters than ever and banh mi is a religious experience.  For those of you who don't know, banh mi is a delicious sandwich filled with all sorts of meat (or egg in my case), pickled veggies and mystery sauces inside of a super crispy bun.  If you ask for cheese you get the that super spreadable laughing cow cheese that we all pretend is tacky but secretly love.

Per usual I've been keeping a busy schedule and took a night time scooter tour around the city, spent a few days in Hoi An (middle part of Vietnam), and familiarized myself with the local bars.  Hoi An was the highlight so far as it's known for its tailoring business and the ability to turn around custom clothing in 24 hours.  As I'm about to make my triumphant return to first world countries I bought a few (or a few too many depending on how you look at it) new things.

Due to my computer running on fumes after a year without an IT team, the photos are in reverse chronological order.

Scooters are everywhere and so are puppies. Tell me this
isn't reason enough to love a city?

An Bang beach just outside of Hoi An.  We found this little
beauty because my friend used to live here.  He took us
around some local spots to eat pho and see this gorgeous
beach. Pretty sure nowhere in the world has beaches as
gorgeous as Asia.  Fun fact: those little scoops are not cute
beach beds so don't get excited. They're called basket boats
and they're used for fishing.

Our trip happened to coincide with the Hoi An Lantern Festival which was
beautiful.  We lit lanterns to sail off in the river and the whole town shut down
power so only lanterns shown.  This was also probably the only thing I didn't
purchase.

Setting my lantern off into the river!

The lantern filled streets of Hoi An.

Walking around the citadel and found this beautiful little garden.  The
majority of the middle of the citadel was bombed by Americans during the
war.

Another form of weird Asian transport - wheelchair bikes.  He SWORE this
bike had two seats.  Maybe for the 40lb Asians but for us it was a tight squeeze.
Note how photogenic he is.  He didn't miss a snap chat or a selfie all ride.

We crossed through some of the old American bunkers
on the way back to Hoi An from Hue.  It was super foggy
and creepy but there were really cute dogs out front.

And getting back to week one, this was our welcome event views. We took
a dinner cruise down the river and had views of HCMC from the water.

During the aforementioned scooter tour, we stopped at
a local street market to cook some steamed rice
thing.  Literally no clue what I ate but it was delicious.

Another stop on the scooter tour was the monument of the
burning monk. It's in memory of a monk who doused
himself in gasoline in 1963 and lit himself on fire outside
of the Cambodian embassy to protest the persecution of
Buddhists.  He meditated through the whole process and
didn't leave the lotus position the whole time.  Bad ass.

The start of the scooter tour was on a rooftop bar and had amazing views. 

And finally, we started out on NYE in HCMC and my friends are babes.