Hi, I’m Ben.

I’ve been in Saigon for almost three weeks. Was in Korea for a couple of weeks before that. Japan for a week before Korea.

I need to start writing regularly. It’s hard without the habit—just like anything, right?

I stayed mostly at a place called Sen Boutique in Thảo Điền. Cool balcony view. Nice room—especially the big, comfortable blue chair with a little table pulled up in front of it where I could work. Although, honestly, not a lot of work happened there.

My current place is adequate. I spent yesterday getting a few things to make it more tolerable. Bought my own phin set. Still need one of those tiny spoons. Grabbed a pack of incense to burn away the weird milk smell—if that’s even what it is. I’m not sure.

But I’m paying about a hundred bucks for the week. What do I expect? This is a budget sabbatical.

I’m not into nice fancy things. I like dirty ugly things. I like dirty ugly people, too—which is to say people. We’re all dirty ugly people, aren’t we? Some of us just have the money, time, and bandwidth to put a convincing veneer over it. Some don’t. Some choose not to.

It isn’t lack that I find beautiful. It’s the lack of audition—the moment a place or a person stops trying so hard to pass as cleaner, richer, happier, or more resolved than it really is. That’s where I find some of the greatest beauty in this world: in authenticity and lowered pretension. Not lowered hope.

Of course, I romanticize the hundred-dollar room partly because I can leave it. Choosing cheap is not the same thing as having no choice.

Still, I take my hundred-dollar room with its frosted windows and make it my own. What view beyond the glass could be so bad that they needed to frost the window? I would much rather look at the ugly backs of buildings, garbage, tangled wires, and air conditioners than frosted glass.

Yesterday I spent some time getting familiar with the neighborhood.

My friend Henry is a coffee fiend and has taught me a few things about coffee culture here.

So, in his honor, I found a cheap coffee stand and ordered a round. One coffee. 17,000 VND. Well under a dollar.

Across the street, along a very narrow stretch of curb, sat a few tiny lawn chairs—tiny, at least, for this lumberjack of an American—and a couple of little tables. I wasn’t sure if they were part of the coffee lady’s operation, so I asked if I could sit over there with my coffee.

She obliged. She also seemed a little surprised that this was what I wanted to do.

It was one of the first things I noticed when I came to Saigon. I stayed in another part of town where I rarely saw another Westerner. On my second morning there, I woke up at about 5:30 and went walking.

I saw groups of mostly men, with a few women, sitting in tiny lawn chairs or on plastic stools around little tables, coffee dripping through their phin filters. Talking. Chilling. Letting the morning happen.

One man even invited me to join his group for coffee.

I should have. I told myself I didn’t want to interrupt their morning ritual, which is a strange excuse when someone has just invited you in. Really, I was probably just being cautious.

Next time: go with the flow.

Coffee, as Henry says, is not a thing you consume. It’s an event. Or at least it should be. For a lot of the older crowd here, it still is.

I write this while sitting alone beside the coffee I just finished. To be fair, I made it with my Vietnamese phin set. But alas: still alone.

I have no friends in this neighborhood. So sue me. I’ll work on the friends thing, I guess.

Anyway, back at the coffee stand, I sat beneath a big tree that hung over the wall behind me, drinking my iced coffee. Across the street, a bunch of old men had dragged a karaoke system into a wide-open garage and were blasting the neighborhood with music that, to my ear, carried the emotional weight of American country music.

This was upper-tier neighborhood karaoke. Overall performance: 7.5 out of 10.

I watched people, cars, and motorbikes go by, taking in the vibe of the neighborhood along with the motorbike exhaust. Lots of that here.

Eventually, the coffee lady started closing up. I could see what was happening, so I saved her the “time to go, mister” awkwardness and packed it up.

I’ll probably go back later today and do a proper lawn-chair session.

Maybe I’ll even make a friend.

No promises.

Two days ago, I found a little corner store in the neighborhood and bought ten eggs.

I went looking for it again this morning, and it had vanished.

So I preloaded my question into Google Translate and went looking for someone to impose upon. Near my place, a guy was putting together a shelf, so I decided he would be my first—and hopefully only—victim.

I showed him my message, and he kindly stopped what he was doing to show me where to go. I thanked him and signaled with complete confidence that I understood his instructions, despite my considerable uncertainty. No reason to consume any more of his bandwidth.

I marched off in the direction he recommended.

After a bit of walking, I realized he had sent me to the main open-air market near the river, where I’d been a few days earlier, and I reconsidered the trek. The little store I knew had existed two days ago was much closer.

Somewhere.

Just as I started turning around, my guy came rolling up on his motorbike and told me to hop on.

Okay. Now I’m feeling like the dumb tourist everyone needs to take care of.

I made a vain attempt through Google Translate to explain that I didn’t want to take up any more of his time. He had already helped me enough. I was okay. Etc.

He was pretty set on helping me, and I started to feel bad denying him the chance. So I hopped on the back and played dumb tourist.

I’m pretty good at it.

We ended up back in our neighborhood at a little lunch place that smelled amazing. They sold me ten eggs.

So that’s my egg adventure.

I hate to stereotype, but Vietnamese hospitality remains undefeated. Again and again, complete strangers here have been extraordinarily generous with their time.

I went looking for ten eggs and got a personal escort from a man who had been trying to build a shelf.

The old man had to go but he didn’t want to use the toilet inside his daughter’s house. He wanted her to feel sad that he was not welcome in her home. He wanted her heart to break because he would have to relieve himself not within the comfort of an indoor facility with running water and the common luxuries of modern times but like the creatures in the wild that must be ever ready for a variety of violent interruptions.

Not like a surprise knock on the door from another civilized being hoping the room was empty, or perhaps a clogged drain, or even someone barging in while the bowel loosening was taking place. All these interruptions, however unfortunate, pale in comparison to the types of interruptions that can and do exist in the wild. Yes, bugs crawling on you and flies and let’s not forget wind. Getting caught in a gust of wind while emptying the pouch will surely render an undesirable outcome.

But let’s put these interruptions aside and talk about the elephant in the room. Predators. Predators that will eat you while you pee. It happens all the time in nature. And the man’s daughter would now feel the sting of knowing she turned her father out into the wild to tarry with the elements of nature and the beasts of the field.

The man rolled out of the hammock and stumbled onto the uneven root-rich ground as he eyed his surroundings, scanning the landscape for an ideal spot in not-so-ideal circumstances. He settled on a patch of tall grass not 15 yards from the hammock just off the path to the house. He would dip behind the grass and no one would see him mark his territory.

As he opened up he heard some barking and the old man turned to notice a group of dogs behind a fence. This pleased him and his benign bodily function turned into a primal statement. He arched his back to give maximum arc to his stream which in earlier days was something to behold but now, the arc did nothing to help the pathetic dribble of urine. But the man was caught up in his perspective and his lack of pressure didn’t discourage him.

He let his pants fall to the ground as he locked eyes with the dogs. The dogs were losing their minds. The old man laughed out loud at the powerless animals lurching at the fence. “This is my territory now, bitches! I own you!”

Just then another old man appeared out of nowhere. Or maybe this old man had been there the whole time and because the first old man was so fixed on the dogs and his primal statement, maybe he didn’t notice the second old man. But there he was. Standing firm and immobile, beholding the scene between the first old man and the dogs.

His dogs. On his land. On his grass.

Today we moved to Canggu. Overzealous me wouldn’t budge in my resolve to fit the spearguns in the Grab vehicle. Grab is another Uber here in Bali and the surrounding area.

I was the quintessential stubborn American when our ride showed up. And I won. I bring dishonor to my family.

“So what was the payout?” you might ask.

Benny sitting on my lap, cramped in a little space for an hour drive up to Canggu. And I paid a little less—when you add the ginormous tip I threw in—than I would have to have the dude come back and bring a second load up.

When we arrived at our little place in the middle of a rice paddy, it started raining hard. Kim, our landlord of sorts, hadn’t shown up, so the kids ran around in the rice field and got drenched. They were happy to be out of the sardine can.

After Kim gave us her thorough lowdown about the area, we unpacked our bags, had some downtime reading and then went out exploring. We went to a grocery and then a filthy, swinging outdoor eats joint where Ben saw a rat the size of his arm shimmy across the rafters and Nani freaked out and started crying.

So I kindly sent the two older ones home and David and I hung until our food was ready. This was the real down-and-dirty grubbery. Everybody eating with their hands. It was the poop. Literally and figuratively.

And it cost about seven bucks. For a poopload of food.

We met Ben and Nani at home and I was the only one who touched the food. So I guess so much for the cheap meal. It was a solid offering, I must say.

The kids ate cereal. Whatever.

If you come visit me in Bali and ask me to show you around, I will. But I’ll show you this Bali: the heart and soul of this island, in my opinion.

The beautifully flawed and dirty. The wretched ones. The dark corners. The stormy seas. The bowls of bakso brewed by the Muslims of Sumatra. Charcoal-charred corn that tastes strikingly better than any I’ve ever tasted. Seventy-five-cent haircuts in barber shops knee-deep in chopped locks.

The mangy dogs that roam the beaches; their own social scene more interesting than even the humans, I’d dare say.

And, of course, the poor and hungry children who smile bigger and better than differently poor children who have everything. The rich, dark, leathery skins of a people who are happy to serve the bule but who are weary of those who come to their home and try to fashion it after their own image.

When you are hungry, I’ll take you to the nasi goreng joint on the corner. Or maybe we’ll pick up some lamb satay and a bowl of curry soup the way the locals do. And maybe, if you’re lucky, we’ll go get a traditional Balinese massage afterward.

And you’ll like it.

We’ll go plant rice with a community. We’ll go worship with them in their temples. We’ll eat their traditional cake and burn incense with them.