Welcome back to another, and rather special episode. Tomorrow marks exactly one year since my first day outside of gainful employment, a flight to France, and the start of a very international period of my life. In honor of this monumentous occasion I wanted to give a bit of a situation report, share some updates on travel plans, plus an upcoming financial challenge. Lets get into it.
Last time I mentioned that I'd be returning to SE Asia, and here I am, back in Da Nang, Vietnam. When I was here last year things were very different (and to be honest pretty stressful). Being here now feels different, the weather is nicer, development in the city has progressed so it's generally a (very tiny) bit more walkable and organised, and having been here before everything is just generally less overwhelming which is a welcome change.
I'm in an AirBnB one street back from the promenade which is great, there's also new underpass so you can reach the beach without having to risk getting clipped by a moped; a major improvement for a delicate european such as myself. Plus after the hurricanes last year the sand which was totally stripped from the beach has returned. I've also had a first attempt at running in pretty serious conditions; 7.5km along the waterfront at midday in a sweltering 33C, which I'd recommend if only to feel that sense of 'shit I need to be careful here'. Now I'm not saying the end goal is the full 20km to Hoi An, but it does sound cool.
Anyway, outside of beach trips and extreme jogging I find myself in cafes with my laptop most days, trying out different language models, keeping up with the state of tech in the world, and building personal tech projects. Good times, which brings us to the financial challenge.
There's one small issue on the horizon which is my 2026/27 ISA contribution which coincidentally was my main motivation for remaining a British tax resident. If you weren't aware, my current asset distribution is roughly 50:49:1 in SIPP:ISA:Trading accounts, which is fine, but it means that there's no extra cash to deposit into the ISA to make use of this year's allowance - the first year of this being a problem. This isn't necessarily a disaster, but it doesn't feel great from a tax efficiency perspective, and so the challenge is to pull 20,000 great British pounds from somewhere in the next 10 months.
Outside of that there's not much else to report. I realised I never published my Bulgaria in Review piece, and didn't really talk much about Albania, but I think I can sum it up as; I probably won't go back to Bulgaria, and I would holiday again in Albania. In terms of future travel plans I'm currently thinking Japan after Vietnam in perhaps a month or two once the weather turns, and after that I'm not sure so as always I'm happy to take recommendations! Hope everything is going well wherever you are in the world, and see you next time, whenever that may be!
Thanks and all the best,
Oliver