I sat down on a restaurant stool in the Hanoi airport. A pretty digital nomad was on my left. I couldn’t tell if she had more tattoos on her body or electronics on the table. Her fingers fluttered and swiped across screens: phone, laptop, and tablet. I leaned back, trying to peak at what she was doing, hoping she was writing, as I’d dreamed of having a travel fling with a writer. I wanted to make love and poetry in between rising and falling suns, inside and outside a beachside bamboo hut. On her tablet, I saw a GIF of The Bachelor. On the laptop was a page full of jean shorts and their prices. I assumed that she wasn’t a writer—or my type.

The waitress slid a Bulgogi Ban-Mih beside my phone cord. Upon first bite, I recognized the irony. The meal was a fusion of Korean and Vietnamese food, my old and new home. This sandwich represented my transition! Both of them were tough, they took me a while to chew, they weren’t easy to swallow—CRUNCH. Metaphoric thought drained. There was something hard in my mouth.

I spat the object into my palm. It was white, ant-sized. At first, I thought it was plastic, but when I glided my tongue across my premolar I felt the dent. I went to the bathroom, opened my iPhone flashlight, and stuck it into my mouth. I cleared away small bubbles on my premolar and saw the dent. It was small, but it was there.

For the next five days, I pressed my tongue against my premolar at least once a minute.

Before my flight to Singapore, I bought a bag of cashews in front of the gate. When the flight took off, I went to get my laptop so I could write. As soon as an attendant saw my Macbook, she asked me what year it was made. I said, “I’m not sure. Maybe 2015?” Her face dropped. “Sir, you need to put your laptop away immediately. Some Macbooks made between 2015 and 2016 have batteries that could explode on the plane.” I widened my eyes and said, “Explode?” with a smile. “Yes, sir,” she said. “OK…” I stood up and put my laptop back in the overhead in front of an audience of concerned stares.

Annoyed, I tore open the cashew pack and tossed a handful in my mouth. I felt a loud crunch. I immediately knew it was my tooth. This time the piece was twice as big. The dent had become a canyon, reaching all the way down to my gums.

Seriously? In the first hour of my trip, I lose half a tooth? This had to be some sort of karmic payback. This was because I didn’t go to the dentist before leaving Korea. This was because I didn’t plan anything for my trip. I’d escaped the Visa situation in Vietnam, but now I was screwed.

I was ready for everything to be terrible. I was ready for the Singapore Airport to be terrible. But it wasn’t. The carpet was soft and clean. The high ceilings were lined with windows. I got my Visa in no time. In the bathroom, I looked at the back of a cardboard slip I’d gotten from customs. It said that Singapore would kill me if I had drugs.

When I got out the bathroom, an airport employee spotted my swiveling head and directed it to a transportation hub. After selecting the bus option on a touch screen, I typed in my hostel name, tapped my Visa for 9$, and then got my ticket. Then I withdrew some plastic “sing-dollars”, purchased a SIM card, lounged on a horizontal-DNA-strand couch, and made an appointment with a dentist.

The bus had Wi-Fi and outlets next to every seat. I hugged my bag and watched the endless stream of geometric shrubs and flowers that bordered the highway. There was no trash. All the signs were in English, and many of them said that if you drink and drive you would die. As a former road painter, I noted the excellent line work: sharp edges, no blots, even thickness. Singapore was manicured down to the detail.

My hostel was in Little India. The Dutch desk guy checked me in then warned me about Singapore dental prices. I said I didn’t care and asked for a restaurant recommendation because I hadn’t eaten anything but those goddamn cashews all day. He pointed me to Komala Villas, which turned out to be the most delicious Indian food that ever graced my tongue. Imitating those around me, I lifted rice bunches with my fingers and dipped them in the array of plastic cups containing varying consistencies of curry. I chewed exclusively on my left side. When I was finished, I made eye contact with a waitress and helplessly put my curry, yogurt, and rice hands in the air. I couldn’t see any tissues. A woman pointed me to a sink in the back.

I used my newly clean hands to fill out personal information on an iPad at the dentist. I went into a small room and sat on a big dental engine. A big dentist with an even bigger smile and voice asked me what happened. I told her about the cashews. She stuck two metal pieces in my mouth and asked if I had travel insurance. I said no. She told me I should get travel insurance. Then she was nice enough to inform me that if she took an x-ray of my tooth she would be required to tell the insurance companies I had this tooth problem BEFORE I became insured. And, in this case, I wouldn’t be covered. She broke down the possibilities:

1. 1. If she took the x-ray (80 USD) and found that it was just a chipped tooth, the filling would cost 1,500.
   2. If she took the x-ray and found that my whole tooth was decayed, a root canal would cost 3,000.
   3. If this was too expensive, I could wait until I got back to Vietnam.

I chose option 3, thanked the dentist, and then hung my head and dragged my feet back to the hostel. I lay down on my bottom bunk with my phone and impulsively bought travel insurance. Then I closed my eyes and the darkness hosted many self-loathing thoughts. I seriously contemplated flying back to one of my homes: Toronto, Korea, or Vietnam. Before I could pull the trigger, my worries were distracted by a soothing female voice in the next room, chatting about plastic waste in backpacking culture, and I fell asleep.