Dear Mom (From Tim)
We've spent 15 Million Dong so far, and that is just what we've gone through at the big-box stores.
There are 3-4 such stores in town:
1) Metro is similar in scope to Costco and we've bought our biggest-ticket items there, such as a water dispenser that both heats and cools water from a blue jug, like what you might find in offices in the USA, shelving, fans, towels, blankets. Our receipt was printed on a dot-matrix printer! Metro has some pretty awesome stuff from all over the international scene--the world has REALLY gotten smaller since we last lived in Asia.
2) Big C is organized like WalMart used to be in small Oklahoma towns 20 years ago. A little haphazard, with an attempt at being organized and unified. Music blares and hurts my ears, but still I haven't thought ahead far enough to stick earplugs in my shopping backpack. Taking backpacks shopping makes sense, but they go to all kinds of measures to make sure I'm not shoplifting. One store passed a long zip-tie through all of my zipper pockets to make sure I didn't stuff something in. Several stores have free lockers outside that I check my bag into, and most stores take a look at Janet's little purse and ask her to hand it to the gate guard. Gate guard takes it and puts it into a plastic baggie sized for the purpose, then uses a heated metal sealing machine to seal the baggie closed around the purse. Note to self--carry your phone in your pocket, not in your purse.
3) Lotte Mart has the best cheap food-court in town, and good prices and selection on many types of food and household goods. I spent several hundred dollars here on two trips (pillows, small tools, kitchen bowls and silverware and other kitchen startup stuff, laundry soap, hand sanitizer, boxed milk, trash cans, etc.). When we discovered that the electric tea-pot in the rental house was being supplied with the furnishings, I went back with the unopened tea-pot I'd purchased several days before at Lotte. There's a Refunds/Exchanges counter there, and I walk up to it, smiling ignorant-foreigner-style, and present my receipt and teapot. Oh, sorry sir, no exchangee. Tim points to sign that says (in English and Viet) "bring it back in original condition within 7 days" and continues to smile. Eventually there are no fewer than 5 Viet women standing around me, talking loudly in complaining tones. One employee, a recent graduate of the Foreign Languages college, was trying to translate between them and the gangly giant of a foreigner who was trying to return something for no other reason than that he didn't want/need the thing he'd bought. Keep smiling. If you get mad, the game is up. They made their point sufficiently clear--don't buy it unless you intend to keep it. I got my refund.
4) Vincom is the closest to our house. Since taxis don't know our street name, I often get in and say "Vincom" to get the wheels rolling while I pull up Google Maps on my phone to show the specific street if I need to. Vincom opened a month or two ago and is a pretty swanky mall with a Vinmart store in the second level. Vinmart has most of the food staples we'll need, but earplugs are an absolute must. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have to shop with my hands clapped to my head--sometimes I found myself shopping in a part of the store I didn't want to be in, just because it was a bit farther away from the speakers. Tonight we'll do a taste-test of the 4 brands of ice cream Vinmart sells. Each brand offers a vanilla and one or two alternate flavors, but the other flavors are not consistent: chocolate, durian, strawberry, green bean, red bean, etc. We live between other foreign families (noted in teal splotches), and we've invited them over tonight for an ice cream expat open-house.
We've been spending money NOT at big-box stores, too.
- Each of us laid out $95US at the immigration office in Ho Chi Min City for a 3-month visa that we'll extend in September when the paperwork gets sorted out.
- Each of us paid about $40 for a used bike. I paid more for a 6-speed because it's tall enough for me and I'll be biking to work at the foreign languages college. By the way, in a totally unrelated note, it turns out that the word for foreign languages and the word for "women" is almost completely the same word. But when it comes out of my mouth, the Viet friends laugh and tell me that I just said I teach at the University of Danang Women. Yeesh.
- We laid out the deposit and the first 5 months of rent for the house, in cash. Also contributed $300 to match the landlord's $300 for some improvements to the house. So that was $4000 that I had carried into Viet Nam under my belt that I was GLAD to get rid of. We thought ahead and specified that at the end of our rental time, he'll give us back USD instead of Viet Dong.
- Yesterday I changed $300 at the bank and by the end of the night I only had one million Dong in my wallet. Busy day! I biked from here to the College of Women, stopping at furniture stalls along the way. This morning, a motorbike pulled up with my metal table and 8 metal chairs strapped to the back. I'm still waiting for my wooden chairs to come--there are 4 solid chairs with arms and two recliner beach-type loungers for the rooftop garden. Last night I went up after English Corner at the Vision Cafe and got caught up on some work on the rooftop, but all I had to sit on was a plastic stool. The wooden outdoor furniture will be a welcome addition.
- We paid a million Dong to a foreigner who was selling their bunkbed. The three kids continue to share a room, so having a bunkbed is a huge bonus. A next-step is to build a bed that is 1.5 levels tall--we'll have a veritable jungle-gym of beds in there!
- We usually average about 100,000 VND per taxi ride, and in these first 11 days in Da Nang we've been averaging 4 taxi rides per day. That's a cool 4 Million, give or take. But that will become much less now that we have bikes and aren't daily needing to cross town to do major shopping expeditions.
- Activating our phones here really didn't cost that much, even with data plans. And even though I had to pay the first 6 months of internet service in a lump sum, it only set me back a couple hundred USD. We haven't yet seen how much it's costing us to keep the three bedrooms air conditioned to 25 degrees. Incidentally, our bodies are adjusted now to both time and heat. Today is 33 degrees and the kids are downstairs playing in the non-AC zone of our house rather than confining themselves to the upper bedrooms. We didn't get to the beach this morning, but yesterday we walked with a Viet neighbor at 5:30am and did calisthenics on the promenade before soaking in the warm seawater. We rise early, nap during the hot noon hour, and stay up late.
The owner of the Vision Cafe is Daniel. He and Esther came from Korea, where they poured their lives into international students for many years. Finally they went international themselves, and they've been here in Viet Nam for 10 months. They opened the cafe in the summer break, and they have some hope of turning a profit now that school is starting up again. That's a nice way to have a soft opening and get your systems in place before everything starts up, but it has meant they've been hemorrhaging money for the summer. I'm fingers-crossed for them to turn from red to black, financially. Cross your fingers with me, for them?
Janet and I view the work that Daniel and Esther do as very, very important. We're likely to reference it throughout this year, as we have made a commitment that we will be volunteering there at the cafe twice a week throughout the school year. Then on most other nights we'll arrange for parties and private classes with students in our home. Building relationships, talking about things big and small, eating food, watching movies, sharing life.
By the way, in the course of composing this blog post, my wooden furniture arrived by motortaxi:
Love,
The Vietnam Chases
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