Wake up. 11:40.
But my head still wants to sleep. There's only 20 minutes left until checkout.
Just to try, I asked the manager Huy on Facebook.
is it possible to postpone my checkout time for 1 hour?
Then,
why not? I will give you 1 hour for free!
that was the reply I got.
I really think it's important to at least ask.
It's common for us humans to decide the result before we try and make excuses not to challenge ourselves. It's easier that way. But when you actually ask or request something of someone, you sometimes get answers different from what you expected, or things you thought were impossible turn out not to be.
Conversely, often when you think it's going to work is exactly when it doesn't. So don't expect too much. Still, I want to have expectations. I guess that's just my personality.
Anyway, I got permission, so I decided to sleep until 12:30. Then I took a shower, brushed my teeth, got ready, and left the room.
Huy was there, so I said, "Thank you!"
They told me they only accept bank payments, and I said, "I don't have a Vietnamese bank account, do I?" and laughed.
In the end, I paid cash: 1,400,000 dong.
Stayed four days for 7,000 yen. It was ridiculously cheap, really.
I thought about it again.
When I first arrived here, there were only locals and I panicked so much that my sympathetic nervous system kicked in and my hands and feet went numb. But now, I've come to feel a little bit nostalgic for it.
Precisely because it's a place with nothing much, there were a lot of things to feel.
When saying goodbye, there is definitely a sense of loneliness.
A place twenty kilometers from the mainland that you only reach after riding a bike.
That hassle and inconvenience might actually have been what made this town shine.
The joy of riding a motorcycle is also something I wouldn't have experienced if I hadn't stayed in this town.
I can only be truly grateful.
And so, I rode the bike back to the mainland.
I checked into another hostel and today is a work day. I have a ton to do, so I'll just go through tasks one by one, calmly.
Lunch was KFC.
After that I worked at a café for about four hours.
While working I felt feverish and was sweating even though it should have been cool, so I felt something was off. After looking into it, it seems that stopping steroid medication has left my adrenals slacking. I'm in a low-cortisol state, which can cause temperature regulation to malfunction and attacks of anxiety.
I realize again: medicine is really powerful.
How great it would be if I could recover naturally, I wonder.
I even think maybe I didn't need to take medicine this time. But I'll take it as an experience.
By the time I left the café, it was already 8 p.m.
It seems everywhere closes by 9 p.m., and I didn't have the energy to eat out, so dinner ended up being KFC again.
But it was a teriyaki chicken bowl, salad, and wakame soup.
It was surprisingly decent, and I thought KFC in Vietnam is pretty good.
And with that, back to the hostel.
Tonight is my first hostel stay in Vietnam. It's the first since the Philippines, so I'm a little nervous and in a "if I meet people I'll have to talk and get tired" mode. I'm probably just plainly tired.
With that in mind I enter the room, and everyone is quiet and mostly Vietnamese.
There are no foreigners.
Somehow, it's completely different from what I had imagined.
But I think these kinds of mismatches are what make travel interesting.
And so, another day has ended.
