Overall the cost of living in Ho Chi Minh City is cheap and if you can stay away from Western restaurants and use just local products in your everyday life it's really cheap.

Ho Chi Minh City is crowded, noisy, untidy and chaotic. I miss the orderly life of suburban America and the comfort of my apartment and my truck when I'm here, but when I get back in the USA I miss the craziness of Ho Chi Minh City or Bangkok.

Why Ho Chi Minh City? It is crowded, noisy, scruffy, crazy, but always interesting and things are happening all at a break neck speed.

Overall the cost of living in Ho Chi Minh City is cheap and if you can stay away from Western restaurants and use just local products in your everyday life it's really cheap.

After high school and a year of College I made a half-hearted attempt at professional skiing in Aspen, Colorado and then found myself back in Flint.

Some 30 years later I found myself back here again [in Vietnam] on what was to be a short visit that lasted months, and since then I've been living my life with one foot in Ho Chi Minh City and the other in Fair Oaks, California.

On my discharge, I had the challenge of putting my life back together but Vietnam stuck in the inner recesses of my mind.