Decorating is a footnote to real life for me, a means to an end: Living well.
For the most part Ho Chi Minh City is safe but like any large city you need to pay attention to what's going on around you.
If, at the end of my days, the sum of what I've taken exceeds the sum of what I've given, then I have lived in vain.
Born in the Flint, Michigan, big boat sailing on the Great Lakes and skiing in the winter was how most of my youth was spent.
For me making friends with locals is hard, mostly because my lack of Vietnamese language skills and being retired I have limited access to locals in the work place. Though for me it is hard meeting expats as well, as most expats work here and make friends through their jobs.
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.
Thailand has good medical care and even though I haven't tried it, Singapore is said to have high quality care also.
That's the mentality - don't just play it, win it.
If you make a Star Wars reference, everybody's familiar with that. It's a common reference that most people can relate to - Bartleby, The Scrivener, probably not so much.
I think it's a great city. I think it's a fabulous city. But in my young juvenile days, I was an idiot, and I bought 30 cars. And I need to drive those cars, and New York isn't really the place you can do that.
You have to stand outside the box to see how the box can be re-designed.