Coffee cools down. Motorbikes don't. Two million motorbikes, and me—the redundant one.
Vietnam Residency Notes · 2025 Summer
From the landing shock in Ho Chi Minh, to the stillness of Da Lat, the sea of Nha Trang, the presence of Hoi An, the impermanence of Hue, and the narrative of Hanoi—this book records not "where I went," but how a person rediscovers the feeling of truly being alive in the world.
This is a book about "weight." Not anti-AI, not anti-efficiency, not romanticizing distant places. It simply asks one question seriously: When everything keeps accelerating, how does one avoid living as mere functional modules?
"Coffee cools down. Motorbikes don't."
"Two million motorbikes, and me—the redundant one."
"I don't care about AI. I care about people in this era."
Ding!
Another push notification on my phone.
A company released a new model. A tool disrupted an industry. Someone used AI to do in three days what used to take three months. 99% of the official accounts I follow, the bloggers I read, the links friends forward—they all say the same thing: Keep up, or fall behind.
I kept up.
I've used many tools, read many reports, written many prompts, built some products, organized my own workflows. As someone working in the AI field, I encountered this wave earlier and deeper than most.
But one day I suddenly realized: I have no fucking idea what I'm anxious about.
Not anxious about falling behind. Not anxious about unemployment. Something deeper—the feeling of a spinning top turning fast but not knowing where it's turning toward. A person suspended in mid-air, feet unable to touch the ground, grasping nothing real.
I later gave this state a name: Suspension.
Not in a bad mood. Not confused. A concrete bodily sensation—like standing between two systems, the Tokyo order failing, the new logic not yet entered, you're suspended there, seeing everything clearly, grasping nothing. Like opening your eyes underwater: you can see everything, but touch nothing.
On July 14, 2025, I bought a plane ticket and went to Vietnam.
Not to find answers. I later understood that travel cannot heal you. I just needed to stay somewhere different, to see what would happen to myself after leaving the usual track.
Coffee cools. But motorbikes don't stop. This is the first paradox Vietnam gave me: internal time and external time are never synchronized.
Written in Autumn 2025 — Spring 2026 · cubxxw
