Night Two in Nha Trang: Empty Streets, Then a 2.8 Kilo Watermelon

I got lost on my second night in Nha Trang. Not scenic lost. Supermarket lost. The kind where you leave to buy water and come home two hours later with a watermelon the size of a personal decision you cannot explain.

Quick rewind. I am a Korean designer, I moved here this week, and I know exactly three Vietnamese words. That night I stood under the trees outside my building at 8:04 pm, chest camera on, telling myself I was going exploring when the truth is I was nervous to be out alone and just wanted an errand with a clear ending.

Water. That was the whole mission. Remember that.

The street built for nobody

Past the parking lot the city just stopped pretending. I rolled out of the complex and within minutes the streets went quiet in a way that felt staged, wide fresh asphalt, streetlights on full power, and no one under them.

On one side, rows of tall yellow shophouses with balconies and not a single light inside. On the other side, empty lots going black all the way to the glow of the city center. Someone built a whole neighborhood, switched on the lights, and forgot to add people.

I rode down a six lane boulevard at night as effectively the only customer of the entire street. My headlight and the streetlights had the place to themselves. It was the calmest traffic experience of my life, which for Vietnam feels like a clerical error.

The store that spoke my language before I did

Then the errand found a boss level. I ended up at a Lotte Mart, which for a Korean fresh off the plane is less a supermarket and more a hostage situation with fluorescent lighting.

I walked in for water. The store greeted me in Korean. The beef fridge said Wagyu in English, Bò in Vietnamese, and 와규쇠고기 in Korean, with a 179,000 dong tray sitting above a 66,900 dong one like a test of character. I passed. Barely.

Somewhere between the meat aisle and the snacks, the mission quietly changed from buying water to furnishing my entire new life. There was Jeju Samdasoo water at 11,900 dong a bottle, which is water from a Korean island I could see from my old life, now imported to my new one. There was Korean seaweed at 33,500 dong a pack. There were CP frankfurters on promotion at 30,900 dong, wearing a sale tag like they knew I was weak.

I caught my own face in the frame at one point, under the store signs, wearing the expression of a man doing dong to won conversion math and losing.

The trolley filled itself

I want to be clear that I did not fill the trolley. The trolley filled itself. I was merely present.

Looking down through the chest camera at the basket is like reading a confession. A ten pack of ChocoPie. Meiji yogurt drinks. A tray of eggs. Bottled water, plural, at least the original mission survived. And underneath it all, the watermelon.

About that watermelon. The scale said 2.888 of what I assume were kilos, at 39,900 dong per kilo, which produced a line item of 115,231 dong, because apparently I bought the melon equivalent of checked luggage. I live alone. I do not own a knife big enough for this. These thoughts arrived at the checkout, which is famously the best time for them.

By 9:37 pm I was watching the checkout screen count my choices back to me, twelve lines of them, with a 96 dong discount thrown in like a small act of mercy.

Total damage: 639,800 dong.

That is about $25. For a full trolley including a structural watermelon, that number did a lot to calm the part of my brain that had been screaming six digit prices at me all evening.

If your second night looks like this

Here is what I actually learned, priced in dong and mild embarrassment.

If you move somewhere new, give yourself a dumb errand on night two. Water, eggs, anything. A small mission with a clear ending turns a scary unknown city into a place where you simply have to find the milk aisle, and that is a much easier game.

If you do the math on prices, pick one anchor item and stop there. I anchored on the 11,900 dong water bottle, and everything else got judged as "three waters" or "ten waters" instead of raw six digit numbers. Pro tip from someone who learned it the dumb way, converting every single tag will ruin the trip and the fun.

And if a supermarket sells fruit by the kilo, look at the whole fruit before you commit. The label does not care that you live alone. The label is not your friend. The label charged me 115,231 dong.

The empty streets scared me on the way out and felt like mine on the way back. Same asphalt, same lights, different rider. That is the whole trick of a new city, I think. You do not conquer it. You just run one errand at a time until it stops being a stranger.

So tell me about yours. What is the dumbest thing you bought in your first week somewhere new, and do you regret it or defend it? Write me back by email or find me on Threads, I read everything, usually while eating watermelon.