Considering 2019 was a great year for the stock market and after another hugely profitable year for me trading penny stocks, I decided it was time to travel to Asia again. If you’ve read some of my other blog posts, you should already know that I really enjoy traveling to Asian countries. In the past decade, I have traveled there seven times and have now visited a majority of the countries in South East Asia. Although I have been quite sick over the past 2 years, you only live once, so on January 27, 2020, I packed my bags and hopped on a business class flight to Hong Kong.
This was at the very start of the pandemic when the COVID-19 outbreak was occurring in Wuhan and the rest of the world was blind to the virus. At the time, my family and friends thought I was crazy, but it turned out it was a lot safer in Asia than in the U.S. because of a willingness of virtually everyone to wear face masks, temperature checks, mass quarantining, and contract tracing. When I arrived in Hong Kong it was two days after the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday so a lot of places were closed, but a few days later it was basically back to business as usual. Luckily the virus had scared away the protesters at the time, so I was able to stay safe from the chaos. Hong Kong is one of my favorite cities in the world because of the amazing food and great public transportation system, but the past year of rioting and protesting had already put the city into a recession.
Hong Kong Island 
Me 
Cheong Fun Rice Noodles – HOP YIK TAI
After Hong Kong, my friend and I flew to Bangkok and spent five days there. Bangkok is another one of my favorite cities and I feel like I am missing out if I don’t visit there every time I go to Asia. There are not many places in the world where every time I eat it is one of the best I have ever had so I mostly just took pictures of my food during this trip but I have other blog posts with many pictures from Bangkok. Thailand is quite developed these days, but still has relatively cheap prices, amazing beaches, warm weather, friendly people and so many interesting places to visit. I highly suggest it to anyone that has never been to Asia but is looking to travel somewhere new once there is a vaccine and things settle down. After 5 days in Bangkok, I took a short one-hour flight to Koh Samui.
Pad Kra Pao – Basil Fried Pork 
Papaya Salas 
Grilled Squid cooked in lime and chili 
Mango Stick Rice Vendor 
Thai Pork neck Salad 
Satay Chicken
Koh Samui is a very nice island and surprisingly quiet, due to a lack of tourists because of the Corona Virus. The first time I visited this island was in May 2014 and so much had changed since then. Normally it would have been very busy in February, but there were mostly just a small number of Russian tourists during this time. I prefer a quieter place rather than an all-out party nowadays, so I actually was glad to be there during the pandemic. Koh Samui is a decent size island with many restaurants and hundreds of beautiful beachside resorts. I stayed at a very nice place called the OZO resort on world-famous Chaweng Beach. Chaweng Beach is at the center of Koh Samui and constantly ranks as one of the top beaches in the world. The seafood in Koh Samui was out of this world and the water was 90+ degrees, so I basically was in heaven for a week.
A view from my room 
Chaweng Beach 
Pool at OZO Resort 
OHO Hotel Koh Samui 
Thai Steamed Squid 
Seafood BBQ
Next, I headed back to Bangkok and caught a 1.5-hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was my first time there and I was pleasantly surprised at how orderly this city was relative to some of the chaos in other megacities( like Jakarta, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, and Phnom Penh) in South East Asia. Kuala Lumpur is quite developed and there seem to be a lot of tourist sites, shopping, and other interesting places to explore there. I stayed in an Airbnb rental in an area of the city called Busit Bintang, which is an upscale part of the city. Kuala Lumpur has a great metro system which makes it easy and cheap to get around the city and avoid the harsh traffic. The food is also very good with both Chinese and Indian influences in the flavoring. Not to mention is quite cheap there. Although I only stayed in Malaysia for just 4 days, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I would go back sometime for sure.
Petronas Towers – Kuala Lumpur CBD 
KL Tower 
Buddhist Temple 
Government Building 
Claypot rice 
Amazing Spicy Noodles with Prawn
The next place I visited was Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam which was about a 2-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur. Ho Chi Minh was formerly known as Saigon but was renamed Ho Chi Minh sometime after the Vietnam War. It is a massive city with 9 million people and I really enjoy it there. The advantages to this city are that the food is really delicious, the prices are super cheap ($1-2 for a delicious meal), it’s fairly easy to get around (via motorcycle taxi) and there is a lot of interesting places to visit. The disadvantage is that crossing the road is a bit overwhelming at first due to the unbelievable amount of motorcycle drivers on the road, and the fact that people have no concept of letting a person cross the road. The pollution is also pretty bad, which means face masks are essential when outdoors there.
Binh Than District – Ho Chi Minh 
A View Of Saigon River District 1 
Ho Chi Minh Skyline 
Vin Homes Golden River Apartment 
Passion Fruit Hot pot – Saigon Grill 
Pho 
Gỏi cuốn – Summer Rolls 
Banh Mi – 37 Nguyễn Trãi. 
OC OANH Best Seafood District 4 
Rice Rolls – pork and prawn 
Heart of Palm Salad 
Stuffed Scallops
Next, I took a 1-hour flight to visit an island in southern Vietnam called Phu Quoc. This is a beautiful place with really nice beaches, amazing seafood and a lot of activities such as water sports and trekking. This wasn’t my first time in Pho Quoc, but a lot had changed since I last visited there in December 2016. The island is now a lot more developed, yet when I was there it was very quiet, due to a lack of tourists. Last time I stayed at the Salinda Resort and this time I chose the Dusit Princess, which was excellent. I’d definitely go back to Phu Quoc again in the future.
Bai Sao Beach – Best Beach Phu Quoc 
Long Beach – Phu Quoc 
Dusit Princess Moonrise Resort Phu Quoc 
Sunset – Dusit Princess Moonrise 
Giant Prawn Salad 
Stir Fried Clams
Next, I spent a week in the coastal city of Danang in Vietnam. This is a great medium-size city with a population of 1 million people, which is located directly on a beautiful beach in central Vietnam. I stayed in a nice highrise apartment 1-minute from the beach and it was quite simply an amazing place. Despite a lack of tourists, it had a decent size ex-pat community which provided many opportunities to meet other digital nomads and enjoy some decent western food dishes. There are many coffee shops to get work done and it’s one of the cheapest places I have ever visited with amazing meals costing as little as $0.50 and beachfront resorts for $15-20 a night. I have no problem paying $1000 a night to stay in places like the Maldives which I visited in November 2017, but it’s nice to know there are still beautiful places in this world that offer so much value.
My Khe Beach 
Serene Beach Resort – Pool View 
Muong Thanh – My Khe Beach View 
Muong Thanh Airbnb 
Pagoda Danang 
Dragon Bridge
Originally, I planned to stay in Vietnam for a month before heading back to the U.S., but then things started to get out of control and I ended up getting stuck In Ho Chinh Minh for 4.5 months! In late March there were a couple of small outbreaks in Vietnam and the country immediately locked down its borders. On March 23 they put out an order to stay indoors for a month well before the U.S. and European countries had even acknowledged the seriousness of the virus situation. They really took the situation to a new level, because they had been through the SARS debacle in 2003 and didn’t want a repeat of that situation. There were no cases of the virus for 90 days so it seemed to work well.
With only about 1400 total cases of COVID-19, it’s safe to say the Vietnamese government did a great job. For a third-world country, with 95 million people compared to the U.S. with 325 million people, there is something just not right with regards to the way the U.S. has handled the pandemic. Of course, we can blame Trump and his lack of leadership, which is definitely at least partially his fault, but it’s definitely the people’s fault as well. Vietnam turned out to be one of the safest countries in the world during the pandemic.
On June 13, 2020, I caught one of the only flights back to the U.S. before Vietnam decided to lock down flights again due to the rise of cases in Beijing. When I arrived in Tokyo (NRT) on my way back, I was greeted by employees in Hazmat suits. Luckily, they only really care about people that were trying to enter the Japanese border, but basically ignored the rest of the people transitioning through the airport. However, even more, shocking was when I landed in Texas at DFW and realized 50% of people weren’t wearing masks. I wasn’t even asked a single question by the border control agents, about where I had been or whether I might be sick with the COVID-19 virus. It’s no wonder that two weeks later, Texas was deemed a COVID-19 hotspot with thousands of cases per day. Frankly, I was expecting the second wave of outbreaks after seeing how foolish people were acting. If masks didn’t work, Asia would have millions of cases, but the reality is they do work which is why ultra-densely countries have faired better than other Non-Asian countries.
Other than in late January and the first week of February, I traded many penny stocks while I was in Asia. Luckily, I had two USB monitors and was able to trade from the luxury apartment I rented there.
Trading from Asia was nice because the time change meant I could trade from 9:30 -11:00 P.M. Since I generally don’t trade the afternoon session, that meant I didn’t need to stay awake until 4:00 AM. The rest of the day, I was free to spend exploring Ho Chi Minh. February and March were some of the craziest trading days of the year. With the market first cratering and then later the massive bottom and a raging bull market with small-cap biotech penny stocks. For traders, COVID-19 has turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the penny stock market.
Penny stocks which I had been trading in the $1-4 were all of sudden surging to the $10-25 range, with a few small-cap penny stocks spiking to over $150! Every day there were huge trade setups in COVID-19 stocks. Some of the stocks I traded were VXRT NVAX KODK MRNA ABUS INO SRNE ADMA TTOO ECOR TNXP BIOC PDSB IBIO NIO PLTR. Each day I looked at both the small-caps and the hottest penny stocks and I found companies releasing news related to Coronavirus or COVID-19. These keywords can literally ignite penny stocks right now and the setups on both the long and short sides have been simply unreal. I also maintained a list of all of the penny stocks which had COVID-19 news and then monitored the volume so that I can determine when their next spike could occur.
Recently, there was a massive short squeeze in Kodak (KODK) stock where the stock went from $2 – $59 in one day. The reason for the spike was a pump by Trump himself, touting the penny stock through Twitter. Kodak was a defunct camera company that was made famous for its polaroid film in the ’80s and ’90s. At some point, it went bankrupt. All that it took to give life to the stock was a government loan for $700 million dollars which caused one of the largest pumps and dumps in my trading career. Although it was halted fifteen times, it turned out to be a great COVID-19 penny stock to trade. The company claimed they were starting a new part of the business to supply chemicals related to COVID-19. Who knows if this is true or not, but the fact is people are suckers and will believe any news that gets disseminated to the public. I have heard that Robinhood traders were a part of the short squeeze, and it’s sad to say a lot of those people may never trade again after getting caught long in KODK.
