Failing at Vietnam, or: When is a city not a city, or: How I learned to stop worrying and accept the Schengen Zone

Sitting here in my cute Saigon bedroom, balcony door open to the street, I am trying to decide which is harder: Writing a blog post after an extended absence (the weight of it after learning to travel with someone, after years of not travelling alone, after forgetting the ways in which solo travel can expose you) or plotting a course for an extended period of time with incomplete information and conflicting emotions. 

After choosing an impractical way to get to the other side of the globe (to avoid Iranian airspace while visitng a friend who is much too far away), I now find myself in Vietnam with a health crisis swirling around me, failing to eat well in a sleepy, closed up city, trying to chart a course forward. 

One thing that has become clear (to be fair, it was already glaringly clear; it's just been cast in very stark relief since being here) is that I don't thrive in a completely unstructured environment. A monthlong holiday, sure, fine. No problem. That's relatively small. A contained thing. Relaxation and distance and a little bit of discovery. But ten months - that's something else. 

So is it the time stretching out before me? The health concerns? The mediocre food? The shuttered commerce? Hard to say. But I have found myself shopping for tickets to Rome and downloading the Schengen calculator app.

My original plan for this trip, after all, was to spend five months in Italy, learning Italian and seeking out nonnas. And I have a hot date in Venice at the end of March...