Setting up for living in HCMC

Being here in Vietnam with my family is a much better experience than being here by myself. Here is an email I sent to my family when I was here on my previous trip, setting up the apartment ready for us all to come over (It is a furnished apartment but I still needed to buy plates, cutlery, and a dozen other things). On the two trips before this I was staying in a hotel and had to fend for myself a little less.

Hi Honey,

I didn't make it past 8pm last night before I had to go to bed. I've had about 7 hours sleep before waking up, so I'm lying here writing an email at 3:20am. Must try to make it to 10pm tonight.

Yesterday I had breakfast at the cafe in the foyer - they look like they have a full menu, which is nice, but I'm not sure what their operating hours are. I will go and see the management office today sometime - I will leave work early so I get back to the apartment before the management office closes.

Anyway, breakfast was a steak in a mushroom sauce and chips. After breakfast I was skyping with you and doing some research on churches and on supermarkets. I was kinda hoping that someone would ring and offer to spend the day with me, but it turns out I am not the centre of everyone else's world and that they do actually have a life! I had decided to put off doing any shopping until after lunch incase someone rang, but no - I was going to have to brave it on my own.

I went down to the cafe again for lunch - which was a noodle soup (Bun Bo, not Pho - the difference is the type of noodle) with pork bits and veges. It was quite nice and only 32,000 VND; about $1:50. After lunch I forced myself to go and do the shopping, overcoming my natural tendency to avoid the unknown.

I decided to go to the shopping co-op that's quite close to the apartment - probably within walking distance actually, although I can't remember if there was anywhere to walk (I will have to take more notice next time). I double checked it's location on the map and made my way there, but was concentrating so hard on driving that I went past it. It's on a one-way street so I had to try and remember the map and work out how to get back around. I managed that ok, and ended up back near our apartment. Resisting the urge to flee to the safety of my apartment (and just manage on what I could eat between the cafe and the mini-mart), I plunged back into the traffic and made my way around to the co-op again.

The co-op is a little building with 3 floors. The entrance and a supermarket are on the bottom floor, along with a few food shops around the outside. The third floor has a food court and a stationary shop. The second floor is like a little version of The Warehouse and it was here that I focused my efforts. I realised that with just one of me, I was going to have to shop either for food or for apartment stuff, but not both since they were separate stores on different floors. But first I went to the service desk and asked if they were able to deliver to the apartment; which involved me showing them the address on the apartment, preceded by the words "giao hang" which means "delivery". The guy nodded and then asked me something in Vietnamese with a confused look on his face, so I whipped out my cell phone, rang Tam and had her act as interpreter. Turns out the guy was asking where were the goods that I wanted delivered? So Tam explained that I was just checking that delivery was possible before I went shopping. All good.

So then I'm wandering around the second floor trying to find the stuff on our list - which wasn't hard although it took a while matching the vietnamese price tags to the right goods to work out the cost. The only problem, really, was that the shopping trolly was not particularly large and by the time I had got most of the bits I needed there was stuff precariously balanced on other precariously balanced stuff and more stuff hanging off the sides and handle of the trolly and an ironing board rising out up to a couple of feet over my head. I got a few laughs and concerned looks from a couple of the other shoppers and was beginning to feel like a bit of a side-show. But what was I to do? There was only one of me!

I decided that it would be prudent to stop putting anything more in the trolly before disaster struck, and I made my way to the checkout, which involved a bit more giggling and concerned looks. It took a while, but everything got packaged into bags and put back in the trolly. Actually, they cheated and put everything back in to 2 trollies. After paying, I gave them my address and walked out of the shop empty handed worrying that I had missed some important step that was crucial to the goods actually arriving back at the apartment.

Nevertheless, shortly after arriving back, I got a call on my cell phone (I had given them the number) and had a conversation with the same guy from delivery where I finally got to use the vietnamese phrase that I learnt which means "I don't understand". He hung up and shortly after that the phone rang again, this time with a different person, and one that could speak quite good English. They just wanted to confirm my address, which was just as well since I had written down the apartment number as 8080 instead of 0808 (apartment 8 on floor 8). Whew.

Everything turned up shortly after that - there was just one guy and I wish I had have been down in the foyer when he arrived so I could have taken a photo of him with all that stuff on one motorbike! As he was brining everything out of the hallway into the apartment, I pulled out my receipt to start ticking off everything to make sure that it had all arrived safely. Of course the receipt was all in vietnamese so I gave up and had to just trust that it was all there.

After unpacking everything, I wandered down to the mini mart and bought some ingredients for my first, home-cooked meal in Vietnam (not counting instant noodles):



Yup - spring rolls. The chilli sauce here has a bit more bite to it than ours, and it's not a sweet chilli sauce. So pretty basic, but it hit the spot.

It was still quite early and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open so I went up for a swim. It had been a fairly cool day (about 27 degrees) and the evening wasn't super warm either so the pool actually felt a bit cold! There were a couple of western looking guys sitting at a table and I considered going up to them and saying hello (very brave for me), but heard them speaking russian so I just went for my swim instead.

Well, I'm going to try and catch a few more Z's before getting up for work.

Love you all,
me

So there you have it - a little taste of my experience here on my previous trip.