Blog Subiektywno-Impulsywny X

December. It has a way of stealing warmth. A strange thief, one who, instead of taking, feeds dreams of spring.   In Saigon, it’s over thirty degrees, but I don’t have time to enjoy the atmosphere. Jet lag and a temporary sense of world-shift, this isn’t the food, these aren’t the hours, this isn’t the pace. Still, I feel like I’ve met more people in the first week here than I did all year in Europe. Foto IG @intuitive_venture_photo Some things change, some things stay the same like uncertainty. In the heart of the first district, in the lobby of one of the hundreds of hotels camouflaged in side alleys, I run into Naud again. The Dutchman’s been here for a year. He makes a living with remote translations and unleashes ADHD monologues in his interactions with real people. He’s swollen from local beers and is already mumbling something in Vietnamese. On the main promenade for drunk tourists, a woman grabs me by the arm. She offers something off the grill. Does she recognize me? ...

We turn off the main road. These endless trips to Saigon have started to feel like a jazz drummer’s snare—repetitive, relentless. One time for a new visa, another for a meeting, then just to escape the small-town routine and take a deeper breath in a city of fifteen million. This time, the bypass pulls us straight into urban hell. Traffic thickens, moving sluggishly through the city's clogged arteries. The road is wedged between rows of buildings—houses, cluttered shops, rusting corrugated metal, makeshift plumbing, excavator parts, scrapyards. Everything is slick with grease, reeking of gasoline. A lone three-story house looms over a sprawling market-warehouse, surrounded by a swarm of trucks. These guys don’t mess around. They barrel in and out, horns blaring, squeezing the already constipated street into an even tighter chokehold. We veer off onto a packed highway-market. The air is thick with the hum of Tết preparations. The Lunar New Year is just around the corner, a big deal ...