Vacation over: I'm exhausted and ready to chill with my dog

So I guess you could say that I am glad I went on the first vacation I have had in 3.5 years because I learned a lot about myself as well as lined up my in and outs of Vietnam so that the next visa run that I go on will be the last one that I have to do for hopefully a year. Prior to this I was actually overstaying illegally or I was going on monthly visa runs that cost me about $125 per month including airfare.

This vacation lasted a mere 12 days and while I was on it I tried to not think about how much money I was spending and wasn't trying to take the cheap route with almost anything. I was there to enjoy myself and I had saved up enough money over the past near 4 years that I could afford it.

I learned that I have become more set in my ways though and I don't really want to travel for that long anymore.

The main reason being this little thing that I missed immensely while I was away.

Nadi has lived the life of a dog princess for the most part and has never had to rough it at any part of her life. She has 4 different beds in my condo and still she chooses to lie down on the sofa or a chair near the door rather than these rather expensive dog specific beds that I have procured over the years. She is a fussy little thing, that is for sure.

While I was away she didn't really get any of those luxuries and instead hung out in a house with 2 other dogs which thankfully were OK with her being there after a few days. I think that most dogs are like this in that they will accept a new member to the pack provided they too are domesticated. I was concerned about this because Nadi has never been in danger at the hands of another dog and therefore she talks a big talk to any dog that we encounter and this can result in disaster if she says something insulting in doggy language to another, tougher dog.

After 4 or 5 days I was informed by the people who were looking after her that the dogs were getting along and one of them, named "Tilly" was actually trying to play with her. Nadi does NOT like to play and would bark at Tilly and she got the message.

I am very grateful to the couple that was looking after her that they sent me daily photos and I knew based on their love for animals that nothing bad was going to happen to Nadi. She actually got spoiled a little as far as food is concerned because I almost never give Nadi any larger portion of human food but at "grandma's" place she was getting cooked chicken and rice on a regular basis. I DID tell them to not give her human food but since they give their own dogs a lot of it they said that "Nadi looked so sad that we weren't giving her any and started to whine" so I gave them the greenlight to go ahead and give her some.

I wouldn't say that Nadi and these two other dogs ended up being best buds because I know that left to her own devices that Nadi would very much prefer that all other dogs just leave her alone but it was probably good for her to socialize a little bit because she had no choice but to be around the other dogs since nobody in Da Nang has a large garden. The land is just too expensive.

I did notice that when I picked her up from there that she was very excited and just kept jumping on me and really wanted me to pick her up. This made me happy because unlike other small breed dogs, Nadi actually doesn't care for snuggling nor is she a face licker. Well, at least for the first 5 minutes she was perfectly ok with both of these things and initiated them on her own.

_{There she is next to my fat head}

She was also quite stinky while her two roomates were not. I think this might have something to do with her being a non shedding breed but who knows, maybe she is just a stinky pup! I normally give her a bath every week because of this and it has been 13 days since she had one so as much as she hates them we are going to have to do that today.

When I got back last night I was pretty tired because I find it very difficult to relax or sleep on planes and the night previous I knew a lot was riding on my ability to get to the airport at 730AM and even though it has literally never let me down I still don't trust my phone to work properly as far as alarms are concerned. Therefore I slept rather restlessly and likely only got an hour or two of actual sleep.

When I returned to pick up Nadi the couple that had been watching her offered me a beer and I accepted and then I just went home with Nadi, made some food and was in bed by 8pm just like a good old man. I proceeded to sleep without the assistance of drugs or alcohol (other than the one beer) for the next 13 hours.

I am refreshed and have a new appreciation of my life here in Da Nang. I had previously posted about how an "anti-vacation" might not be a terrible thing to call what I just did because now that I was "free" for 12 days to go and do whatever I wanted, I realized that I don't actually want to go anywhere. Well, at least not without my dog.