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"It's happening!" went my e-mail to Rosie. "It's finally happening!"

A couple of weeks earlier I'd sent a rather random e-mail to the editor of one of Vietnam's biggest English monthly magazines. "I'll sharpen pencils, make tea, organise your contacts," I offered, keen to find a reason to get out of the house and escape the boredom. "If you want me to proof-read, I can do that. Maybe throw down a few lines of copy here and there..."

I clicked send and forgot all about it - I probably went off to mop the floor for the second time that day or something.

"Can you come down to the office for a chat?" came the e-mail back a few days later (shocked face).

With nervous, sweaty hands clutching at a brand new notebook, I rode a cab into the centre of town and found myself sat next to Nick Ross - chief editor for Word Vietnam - as he offered me the chance to write a sample article for them. "We'll start you off as freelance," he said. "So what would you like to write about?" Just like that. Word Magazine is the Vietnamese equivalent of Time Out and is distributed primarily in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City...it's a big deal.

Now, I'd arrived with my office-administrator head on. I'd also sent him one of my short stories on the off-chance that he'd see some potential in me, but the idea of actually writing for them was not on my radar. I hastily came up with a subject and in under a week bashed out 900 words on the "soundtrack to Saigon".

FIRST ATTEMPT

But it didn't work. After just over a month in the city, I was very, very green, and it showed in my writing. I'd overlooked glaring issues that were obvious to long-term residents and made assumptions that were highly contestable. I didn't really know what I was talking about. But they saw something...

"Can you do a food review for me?" came Nick's e-mail the following week. "It's a small ice-cream and pancake place in District 3. Not a big job, just 500 words. I have the photos already. They know you're coming."

"It's happening!" I wrote to Rosie that afternoon. "It's finally happening!... and we're going out for ice-cream tonight."

That night and we're eating hand-made ice-cream and crêpes with a couple of friends. I get to work the next morning.

My 500 word review is submitted and I don't hear anything for some time. Oh well, I think. I tried my best. Just not this time eh?

TRY AGAIN

Then came the ping of an e-mail in my inbox. I'm invited to the magazine's next monthly editorial meeting. Interesting, I think. Maybe they're giving me another shot. So kind of them.

I enjoy a second sweaty-palmed cab ride still not really knowing whether I have a position here or not. I find the restaurant where the meetings take place and take a seat at the crowded table. So there I am, surrounded by professional editors, photographers, writers and journalists. A stack of copies of the latest issue arrives from the printers and I casually flick through, pretty much expecting not to find my review, but you never know.

But boom, there it is. Top Eats. Below an arrangement of eye-catching photographs sit 500 of my words. My words, my review, my name at the end. My name. In print. I try to play it cool but inside I'm high-fiving the world. 15,000 copies distributed in bars, restaurants, hotels, cafes, gyms, schools, offices and apartment buildings in Vietnam's two biggest cities, Saigon & Hanoi. That's double the number of visits this blog has ever had since it began in January 2012.

But for now I sit there, mostly in silence, not sure what I, a former office-administrator, gearbox builder and wannabe short-story writer can really bring to the table. Nevertheless, ideas are bounced around me, opinions on the latest issue are given and suggestions for the next are raised. It's informal, it's creative, it's casual clothes - no shirts or ties here - someone's even drinking a beer, and somehow, it's me, and I like it.

(Full-size readable version below)

"Okay," says Nick. "Street Snacker..." This is the magazine's regular section focussing on a new street-food dish each month. He looks to me. "Simon, do you want to take it?"

I nod.

"How about bo la lot?" 

I've never heard of it. "Okay," I say. "...but, what is that?"

"It's good, you'll see."

I get an address and soon after I'm introducing myself to the owner of this tiny street-food joint as a writer for Word magazine. It feels...odd! "We'd like to feature your restaurant in the magazine," I explain. She's delighted. We eat 'bo la lot' (beef in leaves), I interview her about her life, her restaurant and her food and I spend the next couple of days writing (yeah, I took my time!). It feels great to be writing for a purpose again, after so many months filling notebooks with what are mostly futile attempts at story writing, for stories that no one will probably ever read anyway. I like it.

It's October now, and at the end of the month we take a half-term trip to our nearest 'desert island', Phu Quoc. In the waterfront bar of our hotel sit a few copies of the magazine.

"I'm in there," I say to Rosie.

"You are! You are indeed."

I flick one of them open to my page, just to make sure it's still there. It is.

I COULD DO THIS...

The next week my Street Snacker article is published in the November edition and I'm once again sat at the editorial meeting to plan the next issue.

"December's Street Snacker..." says Nick. "Simon?"

"Absolutely," I reply, and my confidence leaps. They like me...I guess?

"Cool. Next up - Top Eats. There's a great BBQ place in District 1 that's just had a makeover. You want to check that out too?"

"I can indeed." And I'm thinking to myself, wow! That's two pages. Two articles, two pages!

When the discussion is opened up to other ideas for the December edition I raise my hand. "There's a cool 'room-escape' game that opened this summer in District 3," I offer.

People look confused. "What's 'room-escape'?" someone asks.

"Where you get locked in a room and have to solve puzzles to escape...?" 

Silence.

"It's very big in Europe and the States - like the online puzzle games you get..."

"Okay, sounds interesting," says Nick. "Write it up. 600 words." 

And that's three pages! It's going to be a busy month.  And then....

He runs through his list of notes. "You mentioned chocolate wine before..." he continues, looking up at me.

Our neighbour had recently tried cocoa juice wine at her boyfriend's house and raved about how good it was. He worked for a chocolate factory in HCMC and the farmers who supply their cocoa had sold him a bottle of their home-made wine. Again, no one at the table had heard of it.

"Chocolate...Wine?" came the ubiquitous response. "I have to try that!" said someone else. 

"Okay," said Nick. "Chocolate wine - Simon Stanley."

And we're up to four pages!

THE BIG ONE

Over the coming days I exchange emails with Nick and we agree on an angle for the story. Focussing on Marou chocolate - a luxury producer based in Saigon whose products can be found in Fortnum and Mason among other luxury stores across 25 countries - we decide to craft the story around the company's farmers with the chocolate wine as the hook.

"So much has been written about the story of the company - let's do something different," I suggest.

Dotted throughout the countryside, these tiny farms are producing some of the best chocolate in the world, in a country that neither produces nor consumes much chocolate at all. I'd heard about Marou's "better than fair-trade" business ethic and was keen to show another side to the firm away from a simple "this is Marou, they make good chocolate".

I line up an interview with the French owners at their factory (and make a scramble all over town on the morning of the meeting to find the one shop that sells dictaphones) and make the long taxi ride up there. Tucked away in a dusty backstreet on the edge of town, I navigate the final hundred metres or so by smell alone, the distinctive aroma of chocolate riding the warm air.

I'm shown the production facilities, the sacks of beans arrived straight from the farm, the packaging room...the whole process. Yet I feel like an impostor, wielding my stupid Sony dictaphone like an idiot, asking stupid questions with lots of "umms" and "errs", in my yokel accent (a tragic consequence of using a dictaphone is actually hearing your own voice - and hating it). What must they think of a magazine who sends such a numpty to do their journalism? "We're a serious company!" I hear them saying to themselves. "Sacrebleu!"

I suck it up and try to sound as professional as possible. I ask if we could join their agronomist on one of his tours of the countryside when he goes out to visit their farmers and hunt, literally, for new ones. "Of course," says Samuel, one of the co-owners. He gives me the guy's email address and we arrange to spend 24 hours with him on a trip to Nam Cat Tien National Park in Lam Dong and Dong Nai provinces.

But there's one problem. The guy rides up there on his scooter with his translator on the back. I need to shadow him on this journey and the only way is to follow him from Saigon. But I don't have a bike. Or a photographer. "You must take a photographer," Nick had said. "We need the photos."

URBAN AND OTHERWISE - VIETNAM'S JUNGLES

Less than 48 hours before departure, I acquire a 125cc automatic scooter from the manager of our apartment building and head off into the backstreets of District 1 to get my bike legs. The roads in Vietnam are re-diddly-ickulous. Packed with millions of bikes, the rules are...flexible. People whizz up on the wrong side of the street, turn suddenly without indicating (or even looking), pull out of side-streets without so much as a glance, and ride so close together you can frequently feel exhaust heat from other bikes gently baking your left calf. If ever there was a lesson in anticipatory, defensive driving, Saigon is it.

Here's a video to give you a rough idea of what it's like aboard a bike here...

Check out the beer delivery at 2:55! 

At 5:20 this guy drives past the end of our street, 100m or so from our apartment.

You won't believe me, but it's safer than it looks. Slow and steady, the traffic just 'blends', flowing like water through the streets, always moving, never clogging. And despite the horns and what we in the UK would class as bad driving, no one is angry and no one gets road rage. The horn just means "I'm here," and we all go about our business. Nippy, agile and able to stop on a dime, the scooter is the only way to really get about this city.

So I manage a few hours riding practice over two days but the afternoon before I'm due to leave, we still have no photographer. After a frantic exchange of emails with the magazine, one of the members of the their staff (a writer, photographer, editor and fashion expert), Francis Xavier, agrees to make the ride up with me. I feel pretty guilty - it's a long way, and she probably has better things to do. No. she definitely has better things to do, better than riding up there with this idiot. But I suck it up and think of the story.

Next problem, her bike is an old 50cc Honda Cub and "probably won't make it".

It's a four hour drive, at least, and I don't doubt her for a minute.

More e-mails. I'm inexperienced as a rider and don't need the pressure of taking her on the back of my bike - that and it's not so comfortable sitting on the back of a bike for 150km. But she has a friend with a 125 to lend her. Just hours before we need to leave, we are ready.

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

After almost 4 hours in the saddle, caked in road dirt, brake dust, tyre rubber and sweat, we arrive in the Nam Cat Tien National Park buffer zone - the sparsely populated ring of rainforest, fruit farms, coffee plantations and tiny villages surrounding the park. The landscape is stunning. Rolling mountains surround us, their faces coated in lush tropical forests. Waterfalls tumble out of the scenery and kingfishers, herons and eagles dart overhead as we cruise the dusty country roads in convoy. And here we find the cocoa farmers. And here the story begins.

So today, with this being my 150th blog post, my first feature magazine article has been printed and distributed across Vietnam - another 15,000 copies - with the story later to appear on the magazine's website. It covers six pages, plus the other three articles I wrote earlier in the month. Pretty chuffed am I.

If you want to read the whole magazine, full PDF versions of each edition are available at the bottom of the magazine's homepage at wordvietnam.com (iPad users can export the PDF to your Kindle app) or click the following links to see just my articles (opens a new tab):

October
November
December - part 1
December - part 2

The big feature on Marou was substantially edited, so do feel free to read the full version here.

With a few more articles lined up for January, a 2,000 word Open University assignment on the Russian Empire due next week, a half marathon this coming weekend and a week or so exploring Nam Cat Tien national park and the mountainous city of Dalat over Christmas, it's going to be another busy month...