A single fact

 I miss a lot of posts and here's the reason:

I just spent an hour writing a post for today and the app lost it. Just fucking lost it. Besides the aggravation of trying to type on a good damned phone while on the train, the shitty Google software can't even auto save. Something computers have been doing for over twenty years. I can only post from a computer. And only add photos from the phone. 

So nevermind. I'm going to stop feeling like this is me. I always feel like I haven't kept up with posting regularly because of this, but this shit happens a lot! Their stupid app isn't worth a shit so I'm not fucking with it anymore. I will post when possible from my computer. 

Just wanted to let you know. 

Feeling a bit low

Okay, I'm making a quick late-night post which I will probably have to edit later but I wanted to just get some honest thoughts down on the night before I try to fly to Singapore. In a last-ditch effort to avoid overstaying my Visa here in Cambodia, I booked a rather expensive flight to Singapore. This seems to be the only option for getting out of the country since all land borders are closed and all the adjacent countries which have reasonably priced flights have rejected me personally for a visa, a covid pass, or have simply not started reissuing visas to anyone. So the flight to Singapore seems to be the last option. In retrospect, with the amount of money I spent trying to do all these things it would have been easier to simply pay the hefty fee here in Cambodia to get the longer stay Visa. But of course, if I did that I would no longer have any money to live on or to search for the job that the visa is supposed to be for. In any case, the decision is made now and I'll be heading to the airport tomorrow to try and get on the flight. Unfortunately, after booking the flight and reading through the many, many rules and regulations on getting into the country, I believe that my covid test, which I took Friday, will not be sufficient because it was not close enough to departure time even though it is within the standard 72-hour window used by all other countries and stated on the form. Both Singapore and Malaysia however require a shorter window of two days. Upon realizing this all the dominoes started to fall in my head and I realized that I would be out of money, unable to board the flight, and unable to avoid visa overstays which I now can't afford to pay. Nor can I afford to get the work visa that I had hoped to get when I originally came to Cambodia. All of this together means that I'm quite trapped here and since my father has notified me that he's not going to help anymore and since I'm sure I'm at least a month or more away from getting into China for the job that I've been waiting for, I don't see an out for myself. 

Need... needless to say this was depressing. I know there are much worse situations to be in than the one I'm currently in but that doesn't stop me from feeling like there's no solution to this. I got really low today and I think I was able to communicate that to Erica who managed to talk me back to sense. But the truth is when the inevitable does happen tomorrow and they refuse to let me on the flight and I lose that money plus any ability to remain in legal status, every fear that made me spend half the day thinking about the best way to commit suicide without enduring too much pain today will come back. I'm sure that sounds extreme but the reality is that you do go to prison for overstaying your Visa for more than a certain number of days. The fee is not high at first but it doesn't climb indefinitely. Eventually it becomes incarceration. Without money to rectify the situation, that is the result.

Anyway, I decided on the roof. Without blades or firearms, I don't have the brute strength to do it. I would have to jump off the top of something and the hotel that I've been living in is under construction. I went up to the roof the other day to check it out and it's kind of a nice area. It would make a good open-air suite.

 Well, it's worth it to see if I can get on the flight. Maybe all this worry is for nothing and they won't notice the dates on the test. That seems highly unlikely though.

Given any luck, I'll post again next week. Although if I'm being honest part of what's causing the most distress is that this is just a way to get through the next few days. Even if I find myself in Malaysia by midweek there's still no way I can survive until the Chinese paperwork comes through. Whatever chance there was of that went out the window when I figured out that there was no way to get out of the country without spending hundreds of dollars and no way to stay in it without spending hundreds more. So everything I do from this point forward is just delaying the inevitable. Running out of cash and being stranded wherever I am at the time. To be fair I still think that the best place is Malaysia. They have a very generous entry policy for Americans and so does Singapore. Technically I could wander back and forth between the two countries without a visa indefinitely. Of course, I wouldn't be eating or sleeping indoors 😃😅

Triple visa fail and a lot of uncertainty next week.

 Well, it seems It's been another 2 weeks since my last post and I don't even understand how that happened because I didn't realize 2 weeks have gone by but apparently they have. In any case, last week when I didn't post with basically a lot of waiting and not knowing what to do until the end of the week when I finally decided along with some others in the Stream that the questionable job situation here in Cambodia was not a good deal. In short, it was $500 for a Visa so that I can work at a job that pays $400 a month. Additionally when I finally got the photos of the accommodations that would be provided they were substandard, to say the least. And I feel like the nail in the coffin was that the way I was supposed to get the visa was to hand my $500 and my passport off to a guy on a motorbike. he was going to come by the hotel and then disappear with them and I was just going to sit here and cross my fingers and hope for him to return. He probably would have but considering I have never met any of these people including the owner who is hiring me and charging me the $500 for the work visa. I and the others on the Stream decided this was not a good set up the risks were too high and the rewards too low. So ultimately what I've decided to do is go to Thailand. well, actually I skipped a step. What I decided to do is go back to Vietnam since they've been advertising for well over a month that they have reopened and the world can return to Vietnam for tourism. but when I went to the Embassy they quickly informed me there were no tourist visas for Vietnam meaning they were not open. so after all of that, I had to turn back to Thailand. Thailand has more than a few Requirements for getting into the country. Honestly, I'm not sure that I can meet all of them. at present, I'm not sure I have submitted my paperwork in time to get the 60-day visa which means I will have wasted the money that I put towards getting that Visa if it doesn't come back but more worryingly than that is that they have a requirement that you have $1,000 in your bank account if you want to get into the country and I don't have anything in my bank account I took everything out in cash because I had trouble accessing my money. After all, my Visa card was not here. More on that later. Let them look at an empty bank account and cash in my hand which shouldn't be too much of a problem except I'm having to spend so much of it 2 get into the country that I don't think I'm going to have $1,000 left in total by the time I board the flight with when they will also check to make sure I have $1,000. just a quick rundown I've also spent money on a flight that I am not going to use because they want to see that you have a flight out and I spent money on the flight there which I didn't even want. I would rather take the train but as I said all land borders are closed. I spent money on a fancy hotel which I don't need because that's what they required for one night how to do the covid test even though the test itself shouldn't cost more than $30 and could be done the day before you leave. that's not the way they want you to do it. quite a bit of money already to try and get to Thailand and I'm not entirely sure they're going to let me in when I get there or let me board the plane when I get to the airport because I won't have any money left and I will still be stuck here in Cambodia. So yeah, kind of stressful. anyway, that's all for the post. This week I've been spending so much time trying to deal with this and mental energy trying to deal with this and I'm just exhausted and emotionally exhausted. oh one thing I guess I should go back and explain the Visa issue after waiting several months to get my Visa debit card mailed to me it arrived a week or so ago which was great and I activated it and it worked for a few days and then the bank seems to have deleted it not deactivated not blocked it or you know put a caution on the card but to simply delete it just does not appear in my bank information anymore. Oh, and one final thing: we've increased the number of streams in the last couple of weeks and I'm quite pleased with the results. also turned away from doing little activities that I thought would be fun or interesting and just focused on seeing the sights in the city the most humdrum the ordinary you know museums and sites and I feel like it's been really good maybe this is the direction we should be taking the channel. All right, that's all, see you guys next week. Hopefully, I'll have more time to dedicate to this and hopefully, I'll be somewhere in Thailand at that point.

All or nothing! Or, failing that, a moderate amount.

I'm on the ferry coming back from whatever the name of the village across from the capital is. I just made a fairly short post to the channel.  That's something I don't normally do. I'm beginning to think maybe it's what I should be doing. I have to believe, on some level, that people don't click on hour or two hour-long videos. That's also why I started by making very short videos, but they were without content. They were just little compilations of shots I had taken in Hanoi set to music. I'm hoping the answer to getting people to click on videos is shorter videos with some content. Today's video was just a crossing of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers on a ferry boat. it was rather impromptu and I could have made a higher quality video by planning a little. It's just been bothering me that the videos that I make may have some entertainment value and some educational value but they're not highly watchable. If, for no other reason, because of the length. So I'm hoping this will help fill in that gap between the super short videos that get watched if they're on the shorts reel and the super long videos that I think have potential for anyone interested but are not highly clickable.   Not just because of the length but certainly, but the length is not helping. So a 15-minute video seems to be a good cap for putting in more frequent videos that are still live streams but are not as long.

In other news: I'm highly stressed about finances once again. I know. big shock. Two friends just sent some money and it was very nice of both of them. I'm hoping I can somehow stay legal and get back into Vietnam or some other country whenever that time comes. I'm less than a month away from that at the time of writing. Just to put a finer point on my financial situation: before my friend sent money today I had $50 and I owed $150 for the hotel I'm living in. The unfinished hotel I'm living in. It's not so bad but there are frequent problems like no electricity and no water. To be fair, I've stayed in parts of the world where that was normal when the hotel wasn't under construction. But here in the capital, it's a little unusual. Anyway if I can get by cheaply and get some small contributions from some other people I should be able to make it to the last day here in Cambodia and be able to cross over into Vietnam. That's also with a little luck.

The last thing I wanted to talk about today was also about the channel: on the content to go along with the idea of posting shorter videos I think I want to start posting more frequently. I know I tried this before and decided it didn't work out and I don't like posting hour-long videos with just me in them but I think a shorter video with just me might be okay. If Scott can't join me and no one else cares to, then posting a video that I just host that's got a tentative cap of 15 minutes might be a good plan just to be able to produce some content of a watchable length that can draw in some more viewers. Another thing I thought about in terms of content is that maybe I need to be less structured and less attempting to show an episode of something for the show and more in the vein of showing how I travel. It never really occurred to me that I have shifted my thinking but I did start to plan things out in an episode format and try to show things like that but that's not actually how I travel. the show should begin with the great stuff I find when I travel, traveling the way I normally do which is to say a lot of wandering around aimlessly. Now I don't want it to be aimless for the show so there would be a little shift in that. like I would want to know where I was going but the episode should be more just an idea of what we're going to do and then we just start the stream and see what we find. I've had a lot of episodes where I had plans for the episode and then when the plans don't pan out I freak out and don't know what to do. That means the result is not very entertaining whereas if it were just me traveling I would just kind of shrug my shoulders and move on to the next thing. So I'm going to see if I can incorporate that kind of thinking in future planning. Assuming I don't get stranded in Cambodia in the next few weeks.

Kickstarter has kicked my ass

For the first time in years, I find myself sitting in an ex-pat bar in a relatively unfamiliar Asian City. I've been working for days now on creating a Kickstarter campaign with the hopes that I'll be able to fund the project in Ho Chi Minh City starting next month. Those hopes were dashed today when I find out that you have to have a credit card to use Kickstarter. It wasn't entirely a surprise but I thought that a checking account alone would allow you to do it, which I have. Unfortunately, that was not the case and without the Visa debit card that had been sent from the United States weeks ago, I'm not able to start the campaign. Furthermore, I reached the end of my stay at the guest house. Did that two days ago. And even though the guy is offering a great rate of $10 a night, I just can't afford it. The unfinished hotel is around the corner where I will be the only resident. The owner has assured me that the room will be finished. He said it will have AC, Wi-Fi, and running water. So, hopefully, that will work out. The guest house owner has told me I'm welcome to come back anytime and get the $10 a night rate. Of course, a lot of worries would go away if I came across some money.

For instance, I'm currently waiting on information about a Vietnamese Visa that I need to get next month. I'd like to get it as soon as possible but since that costs money that also won't be happening. At present, I'm not completely sure that they're going to allow me in. They were advertising for a long time that Vietnam had reopened and was and now welcoming visitors but the truth is coronavirus is still going pretty strong around the world and I know they're going to be cautious about whatever wave is happening, whether it's omicron or omicron the revenge. I'm not even sure honestly.

Other than the lack of certainty about whether I'll be able to enter Vietnam next month, the lack of certainty about whether I'll have a place to stay for the next month, and the fact that it doesn't seem I'm going to be able to use the online 'begging for money' service because I'm not rich enough, I'm doing good. 

I can say that it's been a long time since I've been this uncomfortable in a bar. To be honest, I'm not used to being around this many white people. They're creeping me out. I know it's not necessarily a one-to-one correlation but there is a relationship between the countries in the world that are whitest and the countries that have gotten and spread the most covid. It just does not seem like white people are taking it seriously. So now that I'm here in a bar with them, I'm not comfortable. I'm going to leave as soon as I finish this beer and just walk the riverfront until I hear from the guy who's supposed to be giving me the key to the new room.

Thanks for reading I'll try and make another post next week. 

One month later

 Forgive me Father it's been 1 month since my last post. a lot has happened and I'm not exactly sure where I was at when I made the last post but I assume I was waiting for the visa to depart Vietnam. That sounds about right.

Since then I've left Vietnam and arrived in Cambodia. I still have another week before my initial visa here runs out and I’ve renewed for another month so I’ll be here until April. then I believe I will be headed back to Vietnam but to be honest, I'm not making long-term plans at the moment. 

I don't know whether I'll need to fly or take a bus or whether there’ll be another surge in covid cases as there is currently a new Omicron variant. This isn't Omicron. This is the new Omicron. Who knows where that's going to be at.

Since I've been here we've been doing a really good job of doing regular streams and we've gotten two friends watching most of them. 

Before I leave we'll do a couple of weeks at three episodes per week. Scott has agreed to that, so that's great. I feel really good about the channel right now but not so good about my visa and financial situation. I'm still waiting on a work visa from China. The paperwork has many stages to go through. I guess I'll start you guys off by telling you about that. I've done it before and it took 5 months. I'm hoping and praying that it doesn't take five months this time because I have no clue how I would make it in the meantime. I'm not sure how I'm going to make it in the coming month but that's a month away so why worry about it now? To start the paperwork, I need a criminal background check.

There's always a question of where you get it from and how you do it. It never changes but there always has to be many weeks of back and forth, trying to figure out the right one to get because if you get the wrong one and submit it, then you have a lot of time and money invested in something that has resulted in nothing. You’d think that you need to get one from the FBI because it should cover the entire United States. However, the CYA policy of the federal government means that they write on the document ‘not valid for employment.’ The Chinese government looks at that and says ‘oh we can't use this. it's not valid for employment.’ The federal criminal background check in the US is useless because they won't give you one that does not have printed on it, ‘not valid for employment.’ The only option is to get one from your local police station. the local police station will do a computer check that will be valid for every Police Department in that state. The problem, of course, is that you could have murdered and eaten a family in Tennessee and as long as you get the criminal background check done in Georgia you are just fine. don't worry about it. But whatever. I’ve gotten the Georgia check done.

It's now at the state department in Washington. when they put their stamps and official signatures and everything on it, it will come back to Atlanta, and then they will send the thing off to Houston where the Chinese Consulate is, and they will put stamps and signatures and official mess all over it and it will be sent back to the Atlanta. Then they'll send digital photos back to China and start the paperwork process there. Atlanta will physically mail the stuff to China and when the school in China gets the paperwork back I will be able to apply for the Visa where I'm at. wherever I am. unfortunately, I have no idea where I will be. In April I’ll head back to Vietnam on a 3-month visa and that should cover the whole time. I can just stay in Vietnam and substitute teach.

As far as the channel, I am planning to keep doing episodes if we cannot find any alternate funding will just go with the two shows a week that I've been doing since I've been here and stretch that out while we're in Ho Chi Minh City. if we can find alternate funding we will 

try to increase the number of episodes per week. It’s partially up to Scott. I don't want to do any episodes without him. I think they're much better when he's in the episode but if I get more funding and he isn't willing to do more…

 

we're going to do a live stream to edit into a video and the video is going to talk about a Kickstarter Campaign that we're going to use to raise a little cash for the series in Ho Chi Minh City. 

If we can get the Kickstarter funding then I think it's going to be worth it to do 5 episodes a week. we'll see how that goes. another source of funding that will probably take more time is a program where YouTube provides loans to new channels. Not sure what they're willing to give or any of the details but I'm going to look into that.

 so anyway that's what's going on with the channel. it's mostly about my struggle to find somewhere to hang out while I wait for paperwork to be completed. if I had started this paperwork 6 months ago I’d already been there this has been 2 years of constant surprises. the good news is I feel much better about the channel than I have since I started it.

I feel confident that I'm going to say this at the end of every post but I'm going to try and post more frequently. a lot of action this time between the last post and this one. that's why I want to post more frequently. I'm going to try to do it again next week. I'm going to post a link to the blog on the channel so that people can keep up with the behind-the-scenes goings-on.

My time in Vietnam is complete, but the channel is still in a larval state.

 alright, well It's been some time since I tried to post anything to this blog. Honestly, I'd forgotten I'd started it for a while. The lockdown technically ended, but many things did not reopen. Most importantly to me, schools. Before I was able to restart work and get a current contract offer from the school I was planning to work for in Hanoi, the automatic visa extension program ended. That meant that I had to get out of the country quickly. In fact, I was only given a week to leave. Considering land borders were closed, flights were scarce (they had only authorized a few flights to resume service), and the distance between Vietnam and the United States, I was not able to return to the US. That wasn't what I wanted to do anyway, but any option would have been preferable to what happened, which is that I overstayed my visa. That caused me to need to get an exit visa and a Cambodian visa (the cheapest flights were to Phnom Penh) just before the Tet holiday, the Vietnamese holiday celebrating the lunar new year.

So here I sit in a hotel room in southern Vietnam, about 2 1/2 hours outside of Ho Chi Minh City. It's been a month since they announced that the automatic visa extension program was ending and I've finally gotten flight, exit visa, entry visa tomorrow I'll go to get the PCR test, which is currently required to fly because of COVID-19. That should be the last step before my flight on Saturday to Phnom Penh Cambodia.

I started this blog to talk about the YouTube Channel I started, Untethered. That now seems like a downright silly concern, not that I'm not still trying to get the channel off the ground. In fact, this whole thing has provided quite a bit of content for the show. Both in terms of things to talk about and having traveled the country in an attempt to get together all the things I need to get out of Vietnam and into Cambodia. 

But what I really meant to talk about here is the channel's progress. Since I haven't posted in a while, there's been quite a bit. Scott is now the regular co-host. We've literally had only two other people call into the show and no one with any regularity. I'm hoping friends will want to join at some point, but I'm also aware that this just isn't everybody's cup of tea. I'm just a little surprised that it isn't anybody's. 

In any case, It does lead me to think that perhaps in the future I'll be in a position to have guests on the show that Scott and I can interview and who can educate us on what we're seeing and what we're doing. I suppose, given the nature of streaming, they could be anywhere but I'd like to find people in the places where we're at who are willing to join the stream. I think that will generally require an audience before it's worth their time, though, so that will have to be a development for some time in the future.

I believe I'm getting a bit better at using social media to draw in subscribers. I've got accounts on most of the major social media sites, including TikTok, which I generally see no use for at all, but the short format videos are perfect for one thing: food. Since I lake the screen presence or culinary expertise of someone like Anthony Bourdain, the only way I can really show what I'm eating without wasting the viewer's time is to literally just show it. Tiktok also makes it easy to pair that with whatever music is topping the charts wherever I happen to be when I make the video, which takes care of two important cultural elements that I am completely unqualified to try to educate people in food and music.

The short videos have been fairly successful so far. Currently, I'm making the video on TikTok, posting it, then re-posting it on Youtube shorts. Youtube Shorts has a subscribe option on the video, which is a great way to get new subscribers to the channel, even if it doesn't do much to increase view time. I'm already up to 43 subscribers. That's a small number, but it does mean that the channel is getting some exposure that it wouldn't be getting otherwise. More importantly, I'm documenting something about my travels that I really wouldn't be able to work into a live stream without blatantly exposing my ignorance in these matters.

A friend, Russ, called into the show for today's episode and two bits of obvious, but nonetheless spot-on advice:

1. Explain to the audience what we're seeing. I've been relying heavily on a bit of research I do before the episode and hoping to remember it during the stream. The truth is: I don't think that's working. As I'm already holding the camera and shooting, navigating the real world in various ways, operating the software, and doing what I can to hold up my end of the conversation, I may not also be able to remember facts, figures, dates, etc. Given this, I've begun sending PDF fact sheets (Wikipedia printouts, if I'm being honest) along with the show invite. I was hoping Scott would download them and provide me with interesting information about what I'm seeing as we go along. I'll provide updates on that as it develops.
2. Don't giggle when I ask for money. Or subscribers, or whatnot. It's so true. I'm still in the mode of wondering why anyone would want to watch this show or support my channel and I'm certain that's not the right attitude to have. My rational mind thinks what we're doing is a good idea. At least good enough to try. But there's still the voice in my head telling me that of course, it's going to fail and that it isn't worth trying. The rational mind has won out, but the darker thoughts are always there to sabotage what I'm doing if I'm not careful. Solution: ask viewers seriously to like, subscribe, and contribute to the channel. It's not a joke, and it really helps the channel. I need to learn to convey that.

Well, honestly, there's more to say about Scott but I'm not sure I have time for it all in this week's post. He's been enormously helpful and without his contributions, there really wouldn't be a show. There's more I'd like to ask of him, but he's already been so generous with his time that I'm not sure it would be appropriate to ask at this point. Furthermore, I'll soon (hopefully) be employed with a full-time job myself, so it may not be practical for me to dedicate much more than the two hours a week it takes to do the live streams, much less anything extra. At least until we get enough subscribers/ watch time to become monetized and pursue different revenue streams.

And that's really at the crux of all my current concerns about the channel. We need to get more viewers, more subscribers, and to do that, we need to produce more and better quality content. The secret isn't secret at all, but neither is it easy.