If the alarm didn’t sound, it’s the rain that wakes me up. As foreseen, liters and liters of water are pouring from the sky. I linger a bit longer in bed and let this lazy day begin slowly.

I head out through the small streets around my homestay, and between an incursion into someone else’s home and showing off my jaywalking skills, I finally sit at a corner café. I need caffeine to properly wake up.

The situation reminds me of Coffee and Cigarettes: I’ve got the coffee, and the guy next to me has the cigarettes. I start a conversation with him—he’s from here and loves football. He asks me if I have a team, and we go through all the sport-related chitchat. His English is quite good, we get along pretty well, and by the end of the conversation, he says I look like Francesco Totti—quite questionable :)

The shade, the fresh wind, and the lack of heat keep me in this corner for a long time. I continue reading my book—only a couple dozen pages to go.

In front of me, a wall is protecting something that looks like a landmark. I notice a few buses stopping nearby. I check Google Maps and discover it’s the Temple of Literature, Vietnam’s first national university, created to honor the Chinese philosopher Confucius. It sounds interesting, so I decide to spend the next couple of hours walking around the place, listening to an Italian audio guide with a slightly Roman inflection. The place is worth it, and the story too—but after 20-something points of interest, I start to lose attention. And even here, I get asked for a group photo—two times in two days. I’m starting to feel flattered.

Time to test my luck and pay a visit to an analog camera shop I saw on Instagram. To my surprise, I finally find the camera I’ve been looking for for months: the Olympus 35 RC. I get a good deal—cheaper than the defective ones I’ve seen in Europe—and this one looks perfect, aside from a rather dirty viewfinder. They’ll clean it up by tomorrow, when I’ll officially pick it up.

I continue walking toward the Hồ Tây (West Lake) area. Along the way, I pass a multitude of open-air gyms where people of all ages hang out and exercise. Don’t imagine deadlifts or calisthenics bars—the machines you find here are simple, designed to improve mobility. That’s why so many elderly people enjoy spending time there.

The lakeside is lovely, even if the clouds are dimming the sunset. People are relaxing on low chairs, chitchatting, and just enjoying life. Curiously, while the older generation I’ve met along the way were often alcohol-fueled, a big part of the younger generation is fueled by tea, coffee, and soft drinks. I read about a similar trend in an article on the decline of the club scene in Berlin, and I wonder if this shift will keep spreading. It would be a blessing.

Speaking of blessings—that’s exactly how I feel after dinner at this family spot. D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S.

And while I enjoy the food, it’s time to test the app to select the photos for this missive. I don’t feel like heading back right away, so I take out the SD card, connect it to my iPhone, and start picking the keepers. The first round shows 26%—but that number will definitely go down. I'm quite satisfied with the status of the app and I plan to publish it to the App Store in the coming couple of weeks.

The scooter ride on the way back feels different from the ones in Ho Chi Minh. Sitting on the back of these urban cheetahs is a mix of excitement and fear—probably because the streets are much narrower here, or maybe because we spend more time driving in the opposite lane than I’d like.

Back at the homestay, I’m welcomed by the relaxing sound of my host’s acoustic guitar. Chitchatting before saying goodnight, I discover he’s a photographer with a studio on the fifth floor—and all the cool photos on the walls are his. What a small world.

Tomorrow I’ve booked a one-on-one session with Vietnam’s street photographer Chu Việt Hà, and it starts at 6 AM. So, good night!

Till tomorrow,
— M