As you likely ascertained from both our blog and episode 201, money is and will be a big issue in Tokyo. Before launching into that discussion, I’d like to catch everyone up on our financial situation, and I should start by summarizing the cost of Season 1.

A core thesis of Jet Set Zero is that a lifestyle of travel is possible on poverty-level wages: we started with $0 cash and have funded all our travels with easily accessible jobs. After a summer of suffering, we had saved enough to land in Vietnam with $3,859, to support us until we had steady income. We actually found teaching jobs within weeks, and while it took some time to accumulate a sustainable set of teaching hours, we did manage to refill our funds. So our travel-budget thesis was proven for Vietnam.

Dan used his teaching income to journey back home, so all the numbers I’ll include here are just for Rob, Brian, and I…

From Seattle: + $3,859
In Seattle, we lived as spartan a life as possible, eating on less than $1.20/person/meal, utilizing the public bus system, and foregoing restaurants, movies, long trips, even decent beer. It was hell, but it was only 3 months and you’d be surprised how far camaraderie can carry you: being poor is brutal, but being poor with your friends is a lot less miserable. In total, we pulled in $12,451 on 11 weeks of work. We managed to spend only $4,140 during the summer – food, utilities, transportation, phones, insurance, and 5 outings. Our total preparations for travel–tickets, VISA’s, vaccinations, expat insurance–came to $4352. So we survived the summer to land in Vietnam with $3859.

Teaching Revenue: + $6,788
In three months, for a combined total of around 450 hours of teaching, we made almost $7,000. We would have made more, but because we were only in Vietnam for 3 months, our school gave us limited hours. When YOU go to Vietnam to teach, you’ll stay for 1 year, so you’ll make far more money in 3 months’ time…

So in three months, our positive net assets were $10,647.

Accommodations: – $1,940
In our first guesthouse, we spent about $15/night for 2 doubles for a little over a month, but then Brian, Rob, and I moved to a new neighborhood, where we paid:
* $240/month for Brian’s single
* $280/month for Rob’s and my double, pictured to the left
* All in all, around $230/person/month is pretty damned good.

Food: – $1,652
Our eating adventures took us from 25 cent donuts to $30/lb fresh lobster, but we ate almost exclusively at local (non-western) food places, so we generally didn’t pay much. This food budget amounts to $6.12/person/day, which treated us to fried noodles, numerous hotpots, fresh avocado shakes, bird head and goat’s penis, dog, beating snake heart, small Vietnamese sandwiches, the occasional egg omelet, and of course, tons of Pho.

Coffee (Cafe Sua Da): – $102

Given that each coffee is roughly 55 cents, I thought it would be worth acknowledging that we purchased around 200 coffees in our time in Saigon. This also doesn’t include the innumerable coffees Rob and I made in our room in an attempt to save money, using a simple single-cup coffee drip. I suppose it’s a sad state of affairs when you’re making coffee to avoid a 55 cent price tag…

Beer: – $150
I know this may not seem like an intimidating number, but it doesn’t include the many beers our friends bought for us…and considering that beer costs about 50 cents for a big bottle, Saigon may have been harsh for both our lungs (pollution) AND our livers. Our favorites were Saigon Green – the domestic rice beer – and Bia Hoi – the fresh local beer on tap. We had to adjust to drinking beer with ice, but after awhile – eh, it’s beer, get used to it. Some of my favorite memories were sipping beer with friends, watching the lifeblood of Saigon flow through the streets, listening to the chorus (cacophony) of sounds, and letting the worries of the day slough off my shoulders.

Transit around Saigon: – $470
Lyhn (a.k.a. Bonus Hog) cost us $125 to buy and probably another $30 in repairs – she was a demanding mode of transit, somewhat like a sleek sports car…somewhat. Our rental bikes cost $50/month each, but we didn’t actually rent them until October. Gas cost us 60 cents/liter ($2.20/gallon), so we only spent around $45 total. Helmets were $10/each. Finally, there were some times we couldn’t motorbike, so we spent another $90 in taxi rides and Xe Oms (motorbike taxis).

Random Adventures: $100
Riding ostriches, grass skiing, amusement parks, waterslides, a couple dates, a LAN party, a movie or 2, a Thanksgiving celebration, some Karaoke mishaps, and a couple other rounds of fun at Saigon prices. Also, despite our best efforts, we didn’t actually pay for lots of this stuff due to our friends’ overwhelming hospitality, so the number above doesn’t necessarily reflect actual prices. It does, however, further demonstrate that our friends made our time in Vietnam what it was.

Trips Out and About: – $744
In truth, the only major trips we paid for were the journey to Nha Trang and our trek to Phu Quoc island. $744 paid for the following:
* Trains to/from Nha Trang; transit to/from Phu Quoc
* Chartered boat around the islands of Nha Trang
* Guesthouses in Nha Trang and bungalows on Phu Quoc
* Sustenance, including food, beer, and coffee
* Motorbike rentals for ripping around Phu Quoc island

Miscellaneous: – $125
* Cell phones ($30 each), sim cards ($5 each), and a handful of minutes recharges ($3 each)
* Totally legit software and DVD’s ($1 – $7 each)
* Shampoo and soap (very cheap, and certainly not expensive enough to justify how little we bought)
* Laundry (50 cents/kilogram, also not expensive enough to justify how little we did laundry)
* Tailored shirts ($15/each)
* Odds and ends from various markets

So in 3 months’ time, we had $5,364, meaning VICTORY! Starting with $0 in Seattle, we made enough to travel to Vietnam and not go broke. Moreover, in our last month, our teaching hours were ramping up, our spending was going down, and were getting a taste of what a lifestyle would be like for 1 year in Vietnam. We proved it can be done in Vietnam. So if what you’ve seen on this blog and in our episodes intrigues you, go do it now – Vietnam is waiting for adventurous travelers. We did a lot in 3 months – imagine what you could do in 1 year.

Next, I’ll explain how much we landed in Tokyo with to restart our experiment.

In many ways, Hieu was our first solid friend in Vietnam.  We met him on our English-club foray, and he treated us to some unforgettable chapters throughout our 3-month stay.

First, he was the first to suffer patiently through my absent-mindedess and general ineptitude: when he learned that we were still looking for cell phones, he gave me an old Nokia phone…which I left in the cab on my ride back, losing forever a phone that had been in my possession for a total of 10 minutes.

Second, our LAN party.  Warcraft III in a cooled, crowded but clearly ramshackle internet cafe in Vietnam with friends?  That’s certainly not an experience from the guidebooks.  One of our theses is that our “international counterparts” probably live similar lives to us, and bonding over video games helped corroborate this.

Third, Hieu helped plan our trip to Dai Nam and served as a cultural guide, bringing to life our wanderings through the temple, the mountain replicas and the history of Vietnam arrayed in miniatures, and the 15 stages of hell.

Third, he introduced Rob and I to beef knuckles, fermented shrimp sauce, and boiled beef skin soup.  Apparently, “I know this great beef restaurant” means something a little different in Vietnam than in the US…but it was a great time, and it certainly expanded our palettes. 

Finally, he  taught me how to play Chinese Chess or Xiangqi, which can be seen played on sidewalks at 6am throughout the city.  Some of the pieces are reminiscent of Western chess, with a couple twists e.g. the “knight” (horse) can be blocked and the “king” (general) can’t move outside a little 9-space box .  I found most exciting addition to be the cannon, which captures by leaping over an intermediary piece to strike the next piece in its direct line of fire.  I actually wish I had a playing partner here in Tokyo =(

I think we would have spent more time with him, were it not for his 6pm – 6am work schedule at a landfill just outside of Saigon.  He works for a waste-management company, which currently processes most of the city’s trash.  I actually found it a fascinating topic – managing all the trash from the city is no small feat.  In many ways, the past 20 years have seen activity in Saigon rapidly outgrow public infrastructure.  Motorbikes have flooded streets once used to bicycles.  No solid wiring bring reliable internet anywhere in the city.  The street is usually an acceptable resting place for trash.  The gutters flood during and after a bout of rain, and a huge lake-like reservoir holds most of the city’s sewage and liquid waste…unfortunately, this reservoir rings half of District 1, in the middle of the city, making most journeys outside the city center a gauntlet run through heavy stench.  Needless to say, safe trash disposal will be a huge issue in the coming decade for Saigon, especially as pressure to develop a more eco-friendly city comes internationally and domestically.  But first, the trash simply needs a destination, and at the moment, landfills serve adequately. 

Well, anyway, LAN parties, general orientation around the city, discussions about the future of waste in Saigon – he was an essential ingredient to Vietnam and the underpinnings of Season 1.

As we near the end of Season 1, we’d like to take a brief break from blogging about our Tokyo adventures and share some of the untold stories from our time in Vietnam.  I would like to reserve a couple blog posts to pay homage to the people who made our experiences possible, who in effect gave us the material for the final minutes of Season 1.  One of our tenets is that we seek out local adventures, and foreigners can only accomplish such a thing through local friends.

You might recognize these hooligans from Episode 5, where we crashed the Vietnamese wedding in Buon Me Thout…or rather, where the Vietnamese wedding crashed us.  Rob and I shared the pleasure of teaching English classes with them, and Buon on Me Thout was just the first chapter in a long epic of good times and good people.  There were dinners and drinks, and drinks and dinners, and unsurprisingly, almost every time involved multiple rounds of “100%.”

I know it sounds like our time with them was full of drinking…well, frankly, it was, and it was a past-time no one complained about.  I will never forget when Mr. Hanh (below top), one of the primary instigators, exclaimed at the end of one of our big dinners together, “This is fantastic – 2 cultures, with different languages, coming together to laugh and drink.”

But drinking beer isn’t *all* we did.  Mr. Trung (above bottom) treated us to whiskey!  We also went bowling, rode elephants, sang karaoke, and played soccer.   They taught me how to play badminton; I taught them how to play soccer.  We tried to throw a Thanksgiving party; they ended bringing cases of beer, ordering extra food, and even giving us goodbye presents.  Check out our flickr collection for highlights: Students from the Bank

I think Mr. Trung, the owner of both the Bank and the bottle of Macallan, said it wisely and said it best: “Learning English is important, but friends are more important.  You will always have friends in Vietnam.”

It is my sincere hope that they travel to the United States when I am home, and I can show them the time that they showed me.

I’d like to give a special thanks to Space Captain (or as I like to call them, “Mike Stitsinger and the Stitstones”) for letting us use their awesome song “Adventures in Apprehension” in Episode 9.  I dare you to get the tune out of your head in the next three days.

You should check out their site at www.spacecaptain.net — if you live in the North Eastern United States you stand a good chance of seeing them play, and, as indicated by the above candid, they do a pretty killer live set.  And if you’re out of range from Northampton, MA, order up a copy of their new album Opposite Day.  I have it on my iPod.  Why don’t you?

While Rob flies back to America to finalize his divorce, Brian & Matt embark on a magical journey from Saigon to Tokyo.

And that’s all, folks.  Jet Set Zero Season 1: Saigon is a wrap.

It’s been a bizarre, eye-opening experience from the beginning of the pre-season to this huge milestone for me.  Considering that I had no idea what I was doing when I slapped Episode 1 together four months ago, the following 8 episodes fell in place with such a fluid blur that I hardly even remember assembling them.

Partly that could be the result of the bleary, coffee and beer filled all-nighters which have commonly constituted my Sunday night editing experience since September.  This final episode was no exception: as I watched the sun rise through the dirty frosted glass of our mostly unheated guesthouse common room where I’d spent the past 14 hours, I knew that as Season 1 drew to a close something else had begun:

Season 2: Tokyo.

While the cast and crew land and adjust to Tokyo, I have set out on a trip of my own– a trip back home. I simply couldn’t allow my marriage to end without seeing Sonya to say goodbye, no matter how painful it would be. So, on December 5th, I began the first of 72 total hours of travel, by air and land, that would take me from Saigon to Minneapolis, MN; Davenport, IA; Santa Fe, NM; and ultimately, Tokyo. I have already made it to Santa Fe, where I’ll be able to spend Christmas with family. I regret that the cast and crew cannot enjoy the same privilege, but with every day home I grow more and more ready to take on Tokyo and the world.

I’ll keep it simple. We made it to the airport. We made it onto the plane. And we made it to Bangkok.

It was an amazing and utterly overwhelming three months in Vietnam. Our first night outside the country already feels entirely different.

Two more days, and then we’re in Tokyo.

Our goodbye to Saigon has been a long and confused one. The past week was a carnival of final classes, farewell dinners, last-minute errands, and scrambling to wrap up our affairs in Vietnam. On Friday, Rob was going to fly back to the U.S. for 3 weeks, and we were going to fly to Tokyo. It’s been real HCMC, but our time here has ended…but then Saturday rolled around and we were still here. Sunday came and went, Monday melted away, and Tuesday saw us still here, twiddling our sweaty thumbs. We kept discovering final things that needed to be done, and in the midst of all, we simply forgot to book our flights. Yes, we’re stuck in Saigon because we didn’t book our flights. Now, I would expect such a plot twist from myself, the author of previous adventures such as “Locked my Keys in my Car 4,” “Slept through my Flight Home from England,” “Left my Car in Neutral and Woke up to Find it on the Neighbor’s Lawn (with a parking ticket).”
But, from an entire team of competent people? *shakes head*

The deeper story here is that we’re…absolutely…swamped. Concluding our affairs in Seattle was a similar ordeal – basically, everything shut down for 1 week. Here we are, 10 days into that final week, and we’re still overwhelmed. We apologize for the interruption – the story will continue with another episode and some blog posts that provide a little more detail on the debacle of this past week.