I made a massive handwritten list of ‘Fings Wot I Av Learnt’ over the last four weeks. Here’s some of them, with colourful pictures to keep you enthralled.

1- You can’t run away from your problems, or run away from yourself, but you can be a confused mess in a warmer climate where pots of offal in neon orange soup by the roadside are commonplace and delicious.

2- Your faults are almost entirely down to you, and making the assumption that it’s your circumstances causing the problems suggests a refusal to acknowledge the reality. As evidenced by the cleaning product staring at me, whispering, ‘Max, Max,’ in a toilet, somewhere in Tay Ho, Hanoi. Maybe.

3- Affordable lifestyles can make people happier, especially me. I guess I’m one of those awful, ‘I go there ‘cuz it’s cheap’ kind of tourists, but I am genuinely fascinated by other places and I enjoy learning about and assimilating myself into other cultures. Someone made a tray of ice water for these pigeons to drink, as it was 35°C in Ho Chi Minh. I think it was a nearby fruit juice stall that did it. What lovely people. No relation to the original point, just wanted to get the pigeons in.

4- Nightclubs are the absolute best. I didn’t take any photos inside because you just don’t, although many young whippersnappers in Saigon (quicker to write than Ho Chi Minh, nothing political, simmer down) didn’t get the memo. I do have a video of a man on a speaker stack with a flare between his buttocks, showering sparks into the crowd, which made my own buttocks clench in an ‘only you can prevent nightclub fires’ kind of way. The DJ name in focus is ‘Mess’, who played a glorious mess of music, including Celine Dion, banging Vietnamese techno, Disney tunes and ragga jungle. 10/10.

5- ‘Social’ countries (note, not necessarily ‘Socialist’) countries are great. The climate here helps, but every night, Friday, Sunday, Wednesday, it doesn’t matter, thousands of people sit and eat by the roadside, gather in parks and social areas, play badminton, practice dance routines on stages set up for the weekend, and wander around the lake as an enormous stage with no one performing on it pumps out techno-pop and children gawp in awe at the flashing spectacle. Wonderful, really bloody wonderful. Note the TP Bank insignia, the ’embracing capitalism but on our terms’ policy of doi moi was introduced in the late 80s and has transformed the country into, essentially, a free market economy with elements of one party control over the decades. Just out of shot, rows and rows of red flags with golden star insignia. Confusing? I don’t know, I just got here.

6- I’ve found it very easy to connect with the Westerners I’ve met here, most likely because I am good company. I am amusing, insightful, knowledgeable to a point and generally interested in others. Just being me has worked out great. Ugh, it pains me to say that. Plus, I’ve thus far avoided any complete dickheads. Amazing stuff, kudos to me. No idea who any of these people are, but it’s a nice shot.

• I don’t like cricket. I love it. No? Fine, suit yourself. Ungrateful.

I’m sat, ‘airside’, waiting for my flight to Osaka, and I’m wondering quietly to myself, ‘Why?’ Why choose Osaka over Cambodia, my originally intended destination? It’s a complex question, with even more complex reasoning. I could sit here and delve into the whys and whatnots of every action, considering, bleakly, the path of disarray that has led me to this point, eventually drawing an already obvious conclusion.(1)

But I won’t. I’m going back to Japan because I love it. I’m rusty. I’m overhearing many conversations in Japanese from fellow soon-to-be passengers and I’m struggling to understand a word. Perhaps it’s the fault of the pandemic, isolating me from the place I adore. Maybe it’s because I am a lazy student. It’s most likely a combination of the two. Who cares, not you, I’d wager.

The post grows long. Thank you for making it this far. You may contact me directly for reimbursement if you feel somewhat short-changed by this dreary rambling monologue. Expect a polite response. Now leave me alone.

Havana? I’m Havana good time, does that count?

(1) The reason is that Cambodia is, thanks to its incredibly tragic past (nice one Nixon, and screw Kissinger too, lousy pair of ratbastards), not an easy place to travel around. You have to be on your guard and it’s potentially not an ‘easy’ bit of travel. No judgement, total sympathy, and I will go there soon, but I am ready for the steady, largely predictable and generally completely safe, if sterile, warmth of Japan at this point. I’ve got a lot more navel-gazing to do and Osaka feels like the ideal place to find my head. There’s an onsen ten minutes from my guest house. Plus, it’ll be nice to not have eight thousand bikes careening towards me every time I cross a road.

Love to each and every one of you. X