Vietnam - Want to travel for three weeks?
Want to travel across Vietnam for three weeks? I remember these words from my conversation with Mayur a few months ago. I had just heard about my Australian visa being approved and I was deciding on when to book tickets to make the first entry. But here I was in January booking tickets to visit Vietnam in June.
Anthony Bourdain’s list of recommended places from the TV show No reservations was the theme of the trip.
“Want to do Cambodia as well?” There were so many place in Vietnam we had planned to cover, three weeks seemed about right amount of time to cover these places, so we decided against visiting Cambodia. We also decided that we will cover most of the journey on motor bikes.
Visa
Internet seems to have different opinions about how to go about getting a visa to Vietnam. From India, most European countries have a VFS centre one can visit to get visa, but Vietnam was not on the list. We asked around and a friend recommended that we visit vietnamvisapro.com. Fill in some basic details, pay $6 and wait to get a letter which lets you board the flight from your country to Vietnam.
I was a bit skeptical about the whole process. I have never not had a visa to the country before I left the port of origin, unless the country offered visa on arrival to Indian citizens. I remember telling my flatmates, either I am back after three weeks or in two days.
The letter from the website worked and Vietnam as it turns out has the most efficient visa process. I had my visa in 6 minutes after handing in the documents at the visa counter after arrival.
Yes!!!! We were in Vietnam. Cám ơn! Vietnam Immigration department. Xin chào Vietnam!
The trip
We landed in Hanoi and made our way to the hotel. Hanoi as it turns out is really crowded and not at all how I imagined it to be. Not having looked at pictures but relying on how the place was described by people was a blessing in disguise. Hanoi surprised me by how beautiful and well organised some things were.
A quick walk around the town on day 1 and the first stop was Bun Oc – Snail Vermicelli RiceSoup - – 36 Luong Ngoc Quyen, Hanoi . We must have been lucky to get to eat at this place on the day we landed, cause we did not see the lady at the same place the next day and on the last day of the trip.
Next day, we rented some motorbikes from the place our hotel recommended and made our way to Cát Bà Island. The fun part, not one of us checked the weather report and that was not a good thing. We got to experience heavy rains and got completely drenched. After taking shelter below a few cross over bridges, we had to decide between travelling back to Hanoi or find some rain ponchos. Four rain ponchos later, we had ourselves and the bags covered. Made it in time to not miss the ferry to take us to Cát Bà Island. Had to say bye bye to my favourite shoes.
Cat Ba was great. A touristy island with the town centre filled with people enjoying karaoke after sunset. The weather was not so kind though. With heavy rainfall the next day, we decided to get the rain ponchos back on and ride back to Hanoi.
An overnight stop over in Hanoi to enjoy Pho at a local recommenced place, we were off to Ho Chi Minh City the next day .We hit the jackpot in finding the perfect hotel. “It does not get better than this” is what we kept telling each other. If you are looking for a place to stay during your visit to Ho Chi Minh, please give Saigon Domaine Luxury Residences a try. I for sure am staying at this place, if I ever plan a trip to Saigon again.
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Proof reading the above paragraphs, I already feel like this post has gotten too lengthy.
Vietnam is definitely worth a visit. A few more days in Hội An and Saigon would be great. The food is excellent and so is the coffee culture in Vietnam. People are extremely friendly.
My friend shared a lot of Anthony Bourdain quotes with me during this trip. The one I liked the most has to be.
“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”
Anthony Bourdain’s Vietnam Restaurant List - What and Where to Eat
It doesn’t have to be forever
And there’s the forever of never. The dominant narrative of society is that you’re stuck with what you’ve got. Stuck in your status role, stuck in your skill set, stuck in your situation.
If you believe it, it’s probably true.
If you believe it, you just let yourself off the hook, which is comforting indeed.
And if you believe it, you’ve made life easier for the systems that would like to pigeonhole you.
But, even though it’s certainly harder than it ought to be, it doesn’t have to be forever.
VS Code
I have been a long time TextMate user. TextMate was the first app I installed when I bought my first Mac. All software written thereafter was written using TextMate as the editor.
Stackoverflow released their developer survey results and Visual Studio Code was the editor of choice for a lot of people. It made me want to have a look at Visual Studio Code again.
I have used Visual Studio Code before and it always felt like a “slow” text editor. It did not feel like an app built for the Mac and things just took too long to load. I must have installed / uninstalled it three times before last week.
The most recent release of Visual Studio Code though did not feel as slow as before. It still does not feel Mac like but this time around I have started to like the features it offers in return of lack of speed.
Letting me know of unused variables, spelling mistakes, auto complete for variables, built in ESLint support, built in Terminal are a few things I like about the editor. Definitely worth a try for these features.
Week One 🇦🇺
How has your first week been in Australia? One of my close friends asked me this yesterday. He asked me to email details about week 1. I decided to write about this here instead. Hi Mayur! 👋
If I had to sum up my first week in Australia in one word, I would use the word “homesick”. I never thought I would be homesick having travelled and being outside India for an extended period, but the thought of being away for such a long period, had me missing my family and friends a lot.
I miss playing with her(Saanvi - my niece a lot. I never thought I would miss the playtime so much when I left home a week ago.
Sydney though has been great. The weather has been good, people have been friendly and the coffee.. boy, the coffee has been great. I love the fact that there are so many cafes everywhere around and people seem to be having a great time. I am also enjoying the food — so many options. The transport system and the connectivity is something I am getting used to, but thanks to the available apps and internet, getting around has not been a problem.
Ended up buying Ikea furniture for the first time and my flatmate and I had a great time assembling it. I think we even came up with the idea of being help available to hire if you wanted someone to come and join your Ikea furniture. Is somebody already doing this? Sounds like a fun side gig.
I am planning to join a gym and get back to exercise routine soon. “Once I get a routine set here first” is the reason I have been giving myself to not join the gym as yet.
Overall, love it here. Miss family and friends back home, but I plan to go back and spend time with them as often as I can.
New beginnings
As I write this, I am waiting for my connecting flight from Hong Kong to Sydney. Somehow choosing a 14-hour layover felt like a good idea when booking flight tickets — things I have to leave a note to myself to avoid from next time onwards.
Ever since I returned from New Zealand, the thought of wanting to return someday and stay long term in New Zealand has always been on the back of my mind. Not something I actively went chasing though. Things in India soon settled from the initial days of comparing things between New Zealand and India.
Every time I fell sick and thought I was about to die due to not being able to breathe because of Asthma attack, the thought of wanting to move to a place with cleaner air always cropped up. In 2017, during one such attack, I decided to pursue moving to a cleaner weather country again.
I love what I do and don’t plan to stop doing what I do anytime soon. Internet and web programming has been kind to me, and few things bring joy like creating software. From the sidelines though, I have been watching AI and Robotics grow in adoption and their real-world applications. I did not want to sit on the sidelines any more and wanted to jump in.
Combing the air quality issue with wanting to also work on AI and Robotics, last year I applied to move to Australia. Relocating there felt like a simple thought. Move. Learn. Do awesome things. What could go wrong?
As I sit here and write this, the thought of not being with family and friends for this long a period has already started to sink in a sad feeling. The last nine years after returning from New Zealand has been nothing but a joy ride. A lot of ups and downs. More ups than downs. I met some great people and made awesome friends and being with family and getting to spend more time with them has been remarkable.
Is this change essential then? This question is something I sit here at the airport and ask myself. The only way to find out is to take that next flight and spend time doing that I wanted to do when in Australia 🇦🇺
Change
Almost at the end of the first month and 2019 promises to hold a lot of change in store.
One of my closest friends moved to another state today.
Another closest friends are planning to move to the USA.
I am moving to Australia next month.
“Change is the only constant” a quote I read a while ago, are words I keep telling myself since last week.
Staying close to family and friends meant that I / we could drop by quite often, but across states/country means that visits will now be a few times a month/year. Now that this thought has begun to sink in, it makes me a bit sad.
But yet, we have all started down the path of changing the place we call home, and I hope we all continue to have fun, stay in touch, meet often and share stories. Things like these I hope never change.
Almost feels like phi phi islands has an “need to have visible abs” requirement to get in but me and my friend managed to sneak in during the security shift change.
Three Three
I remember being sad when I turned thirty. I was not looking forward to turning thirty, but having spent the last two years in my thirties, I must say I am quite looking forward to turning thirty-three. Each year has been better than the previous one and I also like the way thirty-three sounds.
I also wonder if I should start having themes for each year similar to Chinese horoscope.
Have I mentioned that writing this blog post is something I look forward to each year and as I start writing this post two days before 15th, the joy of writing this post remains the same as what it was five years ago.
This year has been great. Got to spend a lot of time with friends and family and overall I think I did some of my best work professionally.
From my goals for 2018, I managed to tick these boxes.
- Continue learning new languages/tools.
- Exercise and swim more often.
- Launch and maintain one web app and one mobile app.
- Spend more time with family and friends.
Things I failed at :(
- Move/stay in another country for some time(more about this below)
- Write at least eight blog posts every month.
- Travel to at least four new countries(I only visited Singapore again this year. No new countries.
- Make time to date someone seriously(Failing at this goal for two years now)
I spent a week this year being very sad about losing a good friend. Magesh you will be missed. How I wish I had planned for the trip together to Thailand in the first half of this year instead of planning for it sometime next year.
Work
“The year of exciting work.”
I spent a major part of this year getting better at React Native, serverless programming(node.js), improving the performance of existing apps and continuing to be better at building API with PHP(Laravel).
Brightpod’s mobile app which I worked on in 2017, was launched this year. Was really happy to see the app on Play / App Store.
Serverless is the new hot trend and I was able to successfully deploy two cloud functions in AWS and Google and they both are working well. Will continue to work on more serverless programs next year.
Maintaining software is still something I continue to be excited about rather than building something new.
Tools I spent the most time with this year: React Native, Node, Laravel, Heroku, AWS Lambda, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Google Cloud functions and Redis.
Personal
This year has been great in regards to getting to spend time with friends. The highlight was that I got to spend quality time with most of them this year. Something which I will cherish forever. I consider myself to be very very lucky to have some really good friends. 🤗
I also got to spend a lot of quality time with family too this year. More years like this place. I am a bit sad that I did not travel a lot with family this year, but hoping to rectify this next year.
Getting to spend time with my niece is something I really grateful for. Its been a great to see her grow up, make friends, teach me about colours and fight with me. I don’t think me and my sister ever fought as much as the fights I continue to have with my niece.
Fitness was a priority this year and I am happy that I got to exercise regularly. Reached my target weight and then went below it by a few kgs. 6 pack abs though continue to remain a goal I target to achieve someday.
I joined WeWork co-working in Goregaon(Mumbai) this year and had a blast working from there. Got to meet some really really interesting people and was amazed at the different kind of work/industries people were involved in. I also got to concentrate and get a lot of work done from WeWork. WeWork community team in Goregaon organised some really nice events which I got to attend. Will miss not being a part of this community next year.
Travel
I did not travel a lot this year. Work wise this year was quite busy and that meant I did not think about travel as much.
Travelling around Singapore with friends was great. I have been to Singapore before, but travelling to a place alone vs being there with friends has been quite a different experience. I enjoyed Singapore a lot more this time around.
Few others places I visited this year: Goa(5 times.. I am Goa as I write this post) Pune Nasik Singapore Hyderabad(twice) Udupi
Life update
My residency application to Australia got approved yesterday. I am looking forward to moving there early next year. Will be a big change. I am excited and equally scared.
Goals for 2019
- More road trips.
- Pick up a new hobby/activity to do.
- Write/share more often on this blog.
- Continue learning new languages/tools.
- Travel to at least three new countries.
- Make time to date someone seriously(Hopefully this is the year 🤞🏻)
- Spend more time with family and friends.
Hope you all have a great 2019.
The new iPad Pro looks so so good. Can definetly see myself using one in future. Now I wonder what the new Mac Pro would look like next year.
LetsEncrypt + Cloudflare Certificate Renewal
I spent a lot of time today trying to renew a SSL certificate which used LetsEncrypt.
The command as per LetsEncrypt documentation to renew SSL certificate is simple.
certbot renew
Running this command though, returned this error. unexpected error: Failed authorization procedure. {{DOMAIN} (tls-sni-01): urn:acme:error:unauthorized :: The client lacks sufficient authorization
I tried a few other methods to renew the certificate, but they all failed.
The solution which worked:
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service apache2 stop
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certbot certonly (double dash)manual -d {{DOMAIN}} (double dash)preferred-challenges=“dns”
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Certbot will suggest a TXT record to add to DNS. Add the suggested TXT record in Cloudflare DNS and back on the server, press Enter to continue.
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Certificate is renewed.
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service apache2 start
Server: Ubuntu 16.04. Software: Apache
🎉