Da Nang #
I’d arrived in Da Nang on Dec. 19, having spent the bulk of 24 hours on the bus from Saigon. My job there was to teach English, which was a first for me, however the party hostel in Hoi An turned me down, and I badly needed a place to go.
That place to go turned out to TiPi - an English Talk cafe in Da Nang. I figured it’d be a grand time, Da Nang being by the coast, and that I’d be spending my days lazing about on the beach. I did, in fact, go to the beach, but it was “cold”, and rainy. The weather reminded me of Vancouver, though warmer than a Vancouver winter - more like the spring.
Of everywhere I’ve been, this turned out to be one of my favorites. Unlike in Malaysia, where my friends were all locals (largely out of necessity, as what I’d guess to be islamophobia tends to keep people away), I found that Da Nang has a thriving expat community. It’s a “small” city, with roughly 1 million people, which for me is a nice size. It’s large enough to have everywhere that I need, but small enough that the number of choices for such things as, say, going out, are still of a managable number. I like that.
Christmas #
This is where I spent Christmas, which was wonderful, because my family back home is broken, and there’s been an alarming number of years without warmth, substance, family, or community. The only solace i had in those years was whatever I bought myself. I often couldn’t afford whatever it was I was buying, which tended to make January fun.
One year it was my Nintendo Switch (which I still carry with me to this day).
One year it was my guitar (which I paid to have professionally setup while I was in KL, and carry with me on a hardcase).
Most years it was garbage, though, aside from that. The only things good about Christmas was whatever material goods I could maybe afford, and that was it.
It’s been like this for the past several years, save for the one in 2019, when a family tried to adopt me, and give me their daughters hand, so that perhaps I (and she) would stay. Alas, in that year I’d yet to have told my story, and in lieu of its substance, I felt shame. Every year since has been punctuated by it.