Duck Eggs, Dorm Rooms, and Building Apps by the Pool

I'm in Hanoi at a hostel called Wanderlust Station, two months into my Vietnam trip, and I've finally sat down to start telling the story from the beginning. I pick up where I left off last episode - touching down in Ho Chi Minh City with zero plans - and walk through my first real destination: a little coastal fishing village called Mui Ne where I ended up staying for two weeks through Tet (Vietnamese New Year). Along the way I meet a cast of characters who become fast friends: Norwegian kindergarten teachers, a retired Canadian cop and his Vietnamese wife, a Russian short story writer, and an Italian electrician who just walked into my dorm tonight.The highlights include getting completely overstimulated by Saigon's District 1 party scene and immediately escaping to the coast, learning about Vietnamese tones and why pho is pronounced the way it is, eating a fertilized duck egg at midnight that knocked me out for 24 hours, upgrading from a dorm with a water pump from hell to a private room with a pool view, and building a fully functional bug identification app overnight for two Norwegian teachers using my AI assistant AIMe. I tease the next chapter in Dalat, which I'm calling the real turning point of the trip.Recorded: April 10, 2026