Tina's wanderings around the world

  This was the start of our transit from Hanoi to Hoi An. Across many travels in many countries, this fog thing is not something I've encountered before, and I found it disconcerting. Extra so as the plane felt like it was 30+ years old. On one of our most recent flights, streams of water came down from the overhead bins during take off and landing. These things may or may not be related to the pandemic, but air travel is feeling a lot weirder as we emerge from the last few isolated, non-traveling years.  To complete the scene, picture a thunderstorm overhead and rain pouring down outside. Imagine sitting in outdated plane seats with the row in front of you uncomfortably close, so close you have to either choose to point your knees in one direction or splay your legs out. Then imagine the worst waiting music you've ever heard which consists of only two songs, playing over and over again, the worst kind of earworm that gets stuck in your head for days. Then picture being stuck ...

When we were traveling through southeast Asia nine years ago ( nine years ago! ), one of the highlights of our trip was Vietnam. The punchiness of the coffee. Drinking bia hoi out on the streets in tiny plastic chairs along with hundreds of other people. The banh mis. It's a place we've been eager to travel back to. So after getting back from our trip to Italy, we talked about where we should go next and Vietnam was at the top of the list. With my birthday just around the corner, we figured that was as good an excuse as any for a trip. As a serial contract worker, my vacation days are limited. And as a fully fledged corporate executive, Marcus doesn't really get proper vacation despite having an overwhelming amount of vacation days. But given that my job is fully remote anyway, and that Marcus still frequently works from home, we decided to do the travel + work thing. And so commenced our first workcation of 2022. We flew into Hanoi on a Friday night, a fairly casual three-...

We've been on this assignment for over a year and a half now--at least halfway through. Thinking about day-to-day life right now, a lot has changed since we first got here.  Covid. Two weeks of quarantine on arrival. There were zero cases in the country on some days, and there were things we could do in Singapore that we hadn't been able to do back home. We could go to the movies, the theater, mini golfing!! There were other restrictions, though--signing in and out on the Trace Together app, our temperature had to be taken when we went inside buildings, we had to mask  everywhere , and there were caps on group sizes. A few freedoms in exchange for a lot of restrictions. And a constant barrage of changing rules and restrictions. You can only go out in groups of 2. Then 4. Then back to 2. Eating out allowed. Eating out not allowed. Eating out allowed in groups of 2. You're allowed 2 people over to your house a day. Now 3. Now 5. Spikes up to cases of 10,000-20,000. PCRs requi...