iSpeech
Do you know that these Swabians are talking a lot about Hanoi?
Hanoi? That Can't Be True!
The Swabians live in the region around Stuttgart.
That's where I used to live before I moved to Bali.
"Hanoi" is a word in their accent, in their dialect, and it means "that can't be true."
So they express themselves with the word "Hanoi," but they are surprised by something they learned from reading.
In this chapter, I want to tell you how life in Hanoi developed.
So together with Becky, I lived in her house on the West Lake of Hanoi.
It was right on the shore, so we had a nice look from the balcony over the water.
We found Hanoi to be very pretty after sunset.
Hanoi has a lot of lakes, and all of them look very green.
It actually looks rather dirty.
But as soon as it gets dark, you can see the lights shining over the sea.
They mirror from the other side, and it becomes a really pleasant picture.
While I was in Hanoi, I got the screws and the plate removed from my foot, and I started walking again.
And I started riding the bike, usually for my morning training around West Lake.
And yeah, we enjoyed life, love, food, and travel.
We traveled together to Japan or the Philippines.
During that time, I also organized my first workation in Bali, and I kept inviting people.
And my sister, her daughter, and her son joined it, plus a friend of hers.
The workation took place at Villa "Mimpi Manis,"
where we stayed together for three weeks.
As an outcome of the workation in Bali at Villa "Mimpi Manis."
Petra has become a digital nomad.
She founded her own business, and now she lives most of the time in Cape Town, South Africa.
She keeps traveling a lot and organizing her life as a self-employed entrepreneur on her own, something I never expected her to do.
Her son used to work as a graphic designer as an employee, but nowadays, he is a yoga teacher.
So he's also taking his first steps toward his own entrepreneurship.
During the time of the workation in Bali, Becky also came to Bali, but she went to Ubud and stayed there.
And we both realized during that time that we were good friends but haven't been a good couple anymore.
Well, we gave our love one last chance and met a couple of times when we were together in Bali.
But due to the fact that we both realized our love had disappeared and it turned just into a good friendship, we both were willing to give up that.
And it was a very harmonic split of a relationship, something I had never experienced before.
And yeah, after her booked holiday in Bali was over, we had a nice farewell and said goodbye, and it was almost completely without pain or sorrow.
And yeah, even if this relationship is over now, I'm very grateful for the time I had with her.
And I'm especially grateful that she paved the way for me to make it to Bali, where I've been living ever since, for the most part.
For the next three years, I traveled extensively.
I had to go back and forth between Germany and Bali to organize the few things that were left for which I had to be on site.
I also became a seminar junkie.
I attended, say, four or five different seminars per year and traveled around the world for that.
To Australia for "A Date with Destiny" and to the US for "How to Buy and Sell a Business Seminar."
And I participated in the entire Tony Robbins Mastery Program, which also brought me to Fiji.
I calculated that I flew about three times around the world in 2018.
So I put quite a bit of money into seminar tickets and airline tickets, but it was well worth it.
And my business was running well, so I was able to pay for all of that.
And during that time, I stayed most of the time in Pererenan, near Villa Mimpi Manis.
This is about two kilometers north of Canggu, which is better known then.
And during the Visa runs and while visiting the seminars, I always experienced a feat of development in construction that deeply impressed me.
So whenever I left Bali, I saw a construction site.
And four weeks later, when I came back, the building was ready, and the shops were open.
And I thought, "How do the Indonesians do that?"
If you get to see the workers during the day, they are sitting in the shade and smoking Sampoerna cigarettes.
And four weeks later, they are ready.
Even though they do not have any big machinery in place to do the construction work, they all do it by hand.
I haven't found out yet how they do it, but I'm more than happy to learn.
Actually, in Germany, they wouldn't even have begun the bloody paperwork for new construction!