Today, A House

 Dear Mom,

It’s still the quiet of the morning and I’m still not sure I have the right answers, but life feels a little more clarified than yesterday.  Clarified.  That’s not to say perfectly clear, but lots of the muddy silt has dropped out of the churning water in my bucket and settled down overnight, and the water above the silt is clear enough to see through.  If I wanted to put a stick into the muck at the bottom, I could make the water cloudy again, but if I’m careful the water will stay clear.  Clear enough.

That’s partly to do with your many thoughts toward us, I know.  Ask for thoughts from home and get ready to receive hope!  Wow.  “Thank you thank you thank you cảm ơn.”  (Which is what I’ve taken to saying to people here.  More about that in a Post Script.)

If I’m grateful for your thoughts for me, and I am, imagine the emotions of my soul when I was writing just now and remembered this one:

Okay.  Here’s where we’re at.  We’ve asked to see again a pretty good house in a pretty good neighborhood today.  It’s one that we saw the other day when we were so disappointed to lose the amazing house.  Er … I think I need to back up for the benefit of those newly tuning in.

Early this summer we reached out to the same realtor team that helped us find a rental house 10 years ago.  They’re still in business and agreed to help us find a house, even though normally they only work with clients renting for a year or more.

I cruised through the houses listed online (they’re mostly sham listings, click-bait) and chose one that had a gorgeous open-plan living room and kitchen, plants and trees outside on the wall, aircon in the living room, the works.  I said “we don’t care about the bedrooms, but we want a house where we can cook together with friends and have more than one table set up for games/eating in the living room” and I sent them the link to the click-bait, too-good-to-be-real one.  Now, several months later, they were showing us unsuitable houses with all kinds of fancy bedrooms and narrow/small/normal living spaces.

And then.  

They said “now, if you want to we could go see this house today… it’s a little more expensive …” AND THERE IT WAS.  Phuong was showing me her phone and I grabbed my phone and scrolled way back and matched up photos from my phone to hers.  She was saying that she could show me the exact house that I’d used to shape our hoped-for outcome.  Saying DREAM HOUSE is a little strong, but it is a gorgeous house in a perfect location.  We went to visit, gave it our hearts, and then when we sat down to go over final details she said “minimum 12 months” and showed the realtor the text exchange in which she had specified this.  Crushing.

Probably if we weren’t hot and still jetlaggy, being full of the right kind of joy, strong in every good way and detached from the material pleasures of life, it would have been fine.  “Oh, that perfect house you offered us isn’t available?  Gotcha.  Okay, moving on…”  

But for us it felt crushing.

Today’s clarity, then is several things.

1. We’re not looking for an apartment.  We’ve tried getting our heads around how hosting 8 motorbikes at a time can be a good thing in an apartment setting, and it just doesn’t work.  Maybe sometime this year we’ll see something and say “ah!  next time let’s move to that sort of apartment!” but though we’ve tried, we can’t make it feel right.

2. We’re ready to settle for pretty good.  The PERFECT was introduced to us and then removed, and I’ll sort that out with Dad later.  But today at 4pm, unless something comes from sideways, we’ll sign for a pretty good house in a pretty good neighborhood.

So thanks for thinking.  Hoping for continued clarity in the next 8 hours.

~Tim/Janet

PS.  

You would not believe how many local people have some basic English now.  And how many local people are now fully proficient!  It’s a dramatic change.  

Saying “thank you” is more of a western thing than an Asian thing, as a general rule (we say it flippantly, all the time, for every little thing, but other cultures tend to reserve thanks for larger occasions, I think).  So I’ve taken to saying “Thank you thank you cảm ơn” to people in place of trying to get the “cảm ơn” by itself to communicate, because the thanks are a little out of place and they don’t expect me to be reaching for some tiếng Việt. Saying thanks in my own language first cues them to what I’m communicating and then when I flip it and say it in their language they can hear it.

“Thank you thank you cảm ơn” seems to be working very well as a language strategy, and I get big smiles when I do it.  So to you also, for thinking of us:

“Thank you thank you cảm ơn”

Happy, Mostly

 Dear Mom,

I’ve been waiting to write because I wanted to write with the happy news that WE FOUND OUR HOUSE!

We did find some good options, and one AMAZING option that turned out not to be an option.  More about the house-hunting later, when there is real news.  For now, we feel discouraged no sad no pessimistic no … we feel STUCK.  We are at a lovely @ 600K/night hotel with fabulous air con in the bedroom and a sweet garden courtyard, and we get to toot around on motorbikes and eat noodles with friends, but the ambient heat here still drains the life out of us, and we have decision fatigue, and we had some clear guidance about a house not to take but no clarity about whether to go forward with a good-enough house, or move into a less expensive apartment with inconvenient motorbike parking, or what.  The indecision feels … I’m unable to complete that thought so I’ll pretend that it’s a complete thought in and of itself.  The indecision feels.

I know enough to know better; I know lots of true things:

Cast all my cares. Seek first.  Trust.  Turn my eyes upon. The battle doesn’t belong to me. Take every thought captive. Foxes have holes. It’s irrelevant about having plenty or being in want.

And in my STUCK misery I still know all those true things, but …

(Actually it’s not the waiting that’s feeling wretched…

it’s the feeling stuck.  Should we be deciding something?

Or should we be pausing before deciding?  Stuck.)

Meh.  

So here’s some photos from first days.  Sorry there aren’t any captions or explanations. Sorry they can’t convey how thickly muggy the air is, here in Đà Nẵng.  

Click for First Days Pics.

Oh!  But I should say that we’ve received several encouraging notes from home.  They may not have got our hearts unstuck, but that’s hardly your fault. Each time they are a benefit, and I’m so grateful.  Just a friendly “fingers crossed” reply email is all that’s needed—it’s a real pick-me-up on our end.

Love,

The Kids.

Day 2

 Dear Mom,

It’s just before 5am and I am giving up on sleep.  I did get enough good hours of solid that I should be all right today, but I have been awake since sometime at the early part of the fourth watch.

Day Zero was Saturday (we arrived in the middle of the night Friday night/Saturday morning) and I did indeed wander out and found a motorbike to rent down the street from our hotel.  150,000 VND is less than $10 per day, and he’s a snazzy orange feller.  

Janet took this photo of me as I returned from the hunt.  Our hotel courtyard is stunningly beautiful, and that’s where I’m writing in this pre-dawn morning.

Even though it was Day Zero and we were committed to limit social interaction and just keep moving and hydrating, we did in fact get coffee and lunch with old friends from 2015-16 Vision Cafe days.  Daniel is the Korean man in the photo, and Helen is a Korean woman we’ve interacted with on some short visits since leaving in 2016.

There’s no Vision Cafe anymore, but they do have Vision English Club a couple of times a week, and there is a state-sanctioned Vision Church that holds services in Korean, English, and Vietnamese. We probably won’t be doing much with the church part of things, but we’ll weigh the possibilities of helping with the English Club (and in fact we’ll be meeting with the English Club people tomorrow).

After a bowl of phở with Korean friends, we went for a massage and haircut.

My haircut was 65000, and he did a GREAT job.  In Google Translate I really gave it some thought about what to write in English so the correct thing would transmit.  If you write “Just remove a little” there is every chance that the translation tool will get it upside down and he’ll understand “Cut the hair down to a stubble.”  So I led with “I like long hair” and we went from there.

Massages cost upwards of a half a million dong each (you can always google “580K VND to USD” and this spa is one that has an untarnished reputation: https://queenspadanang.vn.  Highly recommend.  My foot is still gimpy but my right elbow seems to have been completely unkinked by the treatment.  So grateful!

Let’s see, what else did we do on Zero Day?  Nothing major.  

I went into this cafe and sat and drank a carrot juice when it started to rain and my rental motorbike battery was being revived/charged at a little repair shop next door:

We couldn’t help ourselves, and we did invite friends over for dinner.  We went out and got grilled pork and rice noodles and wrapped greens and meet in rice paper.  So so good.  

We were in bed between 8 and 9pm on Day Zero.  Hydrated and with a sleeping pill.  Success.

DAY ONE had a little less adventure, actually.  We went to DIF since it was a Sunday morning.  Saw lots of familiar faces there, met some new friends.  They were dunking people, 5 adults and two teenagers, all from English-speaking countries like Australia or the USA.  They are beginning a discussion series they’re calling Big Questions, and it’s using a video/discussion curriculum we’ve also used before.  We like it because it’s curiosity-driven and an exploration of life’s persistent questions.

We went out for lunch (Asian-fusion tacos) and then bought a couch.  True that we don’t have a house yet, but an expat listed his couch for sale on Facebook and we scooped it up for 5 million.  It’s a good start on the furnishings that will be a place of hospitality.  And we bought an automatic ice maker.  And we bought a motorbike.  Bun Cha Hanoi for dinner.  In some ways it felt like a pretty easy day, but we were still drained at the end of it, and our bodies are still in the sway of time-clocks in Bend, Oregon.

And so we begin Day 2.  I don’t intend to write daily, but it seems like right at the start there’s a big push to get things moving, and we’d love to know that you’re thinking about housing and friendships and all the rest on our behalf.  Fingers Crossed!

Love,

Tim

Launch

 Dear Mom,

We’ve arrived!  We were only delayed a couple of hours, and that was in ICN Seoul, which is a great airport to be stranded in, if there’s going to be a delay anywhere.  

Our sleeping strategy worked amazingly.  We boarded the plane Stateside at lunchtime, and we each watched half of a movie and took a sleeping pill before they came by with an airplane meal, and then we put on eye masks and dropped off for something like 6 hours of sleep, which is on-rhythm for Vietnam.  When we woke up, we only had 3-4 more hours of flying to do before laying over at Korea.  Stayed awake the rest of the travels, and only slept again when it was about 10pm Vietnam-time.  

When we got to the hotel we were dangerously alert, so we took another round of sleeping pills and I slept through to 7am.  It’s about that, now, and Janet is still sleeping.  I’m thinking I’ll go rent us a motorbike after breakfast.

Hotel Thi Tai Boutique (it’s even better in real life than the pictures make it out to be) is 200,000 VND by taxi.  The meter only read 130K but there’s a 50K surcharge for them to enter the airport and it was the middle of the night, so we paid 200 and were happy with the taxi-van.

After customs in Da Nang, we each got our luggage and then wandered over to the telephone SIM card booth.  You can pay cash in VND or USD.  I had 500K Dong with me but it wasn’t enough for two SIM cards so I had to break $100.  The guy who was helping us had no trouble getting our phones swapped over, and showed us that with the airport wifi off we could successfully pull data and navigate the internet.  Incidentally, there are no ATMs inside the airport, so you have to have cash.  I paid with $100 bill and got $75 in change in VND.  

Photos from our travel day:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NoEYtgEZxDU9Fjwn9

Today we will keep busy.  Caffeine in the morning and keep hydrating all day.  Tonight one final round of sleeping pills, whether we feel like it or no.  Let’s kick jetlag outta here!

Love,

Tim

Clutter Birds

 Dear Mom,

Janet and I are taking care of many details, and I’m overwhelmed, but I’m imagining the many, many details that are being taken care of when a space rocket is about to launch. Intimidating! And then I think “yeah, but what if a family of raccoons had been living in the rocket for the last 9 years and you had to clean all their stuff out so the rocket could get ready to launch?”

We’ve been doing mostly the moving-out and cleaning-out bit lately, though we finally got two of the suitcases to exactly 49.5 pounds each yesterday. We’re not hoarders, but we’re not exactly lean-and-trim, either, when it comes to the shear amount of our STUFF around the house. We’re like some weird birds that gather fancy sticks and string for our nest but the nest-building instinct got stuck ON and our nest has gotten beyond fluffy. So we’re decluttering and packing and cleaning and fixing stuff, and soon (so soon) that part will all be over and new adventures await.

Today (Janet’s birthday!) one of our housemates moves in to the bedroom off the living room, and we’re in the south Airbnb bedroom until Wednesday, and then we fly out on Thursday bright and early. The other two housemates will move in after we go, and the three of them will caretake for our property while we’re away until late April.

We haven’t exactly resolved the Vietnam lodgings question, BUT our hearts are at rest about it. The realtors have shown us several options and we have been able to answer to our satisfaction the question about renting a house vs. an apartment: For the purposes of being able to offer hospitality and generally improved privacy, we’ll be spending a bit more than $1000/mo for a house in Danang. There’s one house we’re especially thinking about, about 7 minutes by motorbike north of Vincom. Lê Văn Duyệt, Nại Hiên Đông,

This morning it’s chilly here in Bend, and we’re trying to soak up the cold vibes. Soon, so very soon, the weather will be nothing but hot/humid!

Ah, I can tell that I’ve come to the end of this letter because I’ve begun to tell you about the weather. I dread the heat of September in Vietnam, but it’s still not a worthy topic for these letters (or you’d hear about the weather every-single-time.).

Love,

Tim

Lodgings ... we're looking ... hoping

We're officially hunting for housing now.  We have the same realtors who found us housing 10 years ago (Victoria/Sean and their team) looking again for housing that might match our criteria.

Hi Victoria and Team,
We hope you can find us a place in Son Tra somewhere between Hồ Xuân Hương in the south and Phạm Văn Đồng in the north

We are especially looking for a larger-than-average living area to offer hospitality. We hope we can find one where the living room and kitchen are good for hosting games and cooking-together.  Parking for motorbikes is important, too.

We especially like the older/established neighborhoods near the old Son Tra markets.  We don't need it to look glamorous or luxurious.  We do hope for AC in the living room/kitchen, even though that's unusual in most houses.  

If we can spend less than 25 million per month, that would be our target range.

Thanks!
Tim/Janet

----

And in our price range this is a pretty normal house (take a look):

https://www.dotproperty.com.vn/en/ads/3-bedroom-house-for-rent-in-khue-my-da-nang_4982247a3523-c2bf-ba22-eb4e-91d11089

There is not much room in the downstairs of these townhouses for hospitality, cooking together, etc.  And this is how 80-90% of all the city houses are designed... so we're hoping that we can find a house with an unusual layout. 

We really depend on the local realtor team to find actively listed (real) rentals and hammer out our rental contract, because most of the listings you'd find for yourself online are in the "bait and switch" category.  That happened to me last year for a one-week rental, and it was almost a disaster.  We were bringing some friends to visit Danang and I had to quickly scramble to find a place for us all ... it's a great story to tell you sometime, because what the enemy meant for evil, another power meant for Good.  And boy oh boy was the outcome good!

Right now at 25 million if we don't see lots of great options we might go up another notch.  (26.3M is $1000 USD, for context.)  There's a reasonable 2 bedroom apartment option at 19M, but the downside is that it can be inconvenient to host friends when you're in an apartment--they have to check in at the desk and there's no place for their motorbikes.  For not much more, we can have a lot more space in a house ... if we can find a suitable one.

Hoping for the best!  Glad if you'd hope with us!

Tim/Janet