Vietnam diary

May journal

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Enjoyed some final time off work today as Vietnam’s Liberation Day public holiday continues…

We’ve been endeavouring to keep up with the UK bonanza of holidays of late, and joined in with the Royal Wedding celebrations last week.  I made a bee-line from the office on Friday, with a colleague from Cairo, to join Lou and Flo and a mass of wedding supporters congregated in a local café to watch the event.

The café had colour portraits of William and Kate on display outside, and a big screen inside beaming BBC World Service to a packed crowd of union jacks, ladies hats and jugs of Pimms.   A sight usually more fitting for the banks of Henley, but it was somehow quite reaffirming to be a part of the spirit of the day, particularly given the lack of media build up we’ve had out here about the whole affair.

We then watched online video footage of it over the weekend as well.  Flo was transfixed by the whole thing, picking out the yellow Queen, the white fairy princess, and apparently some orange horses.

Today also marked the first day of Lou officially moving into “full term” territory (37 weeks).  Originally, I was due to fly to Dhaka today for work, but this got cancelled, which in many ways means less nervous moments for both of us (getting back from Bangladesh in a hurry would have been a tad too high octane maybe) however on the other hand, and according to Lou’s doctor, our baby is very healthy, settled and content and not likely to arrive anytime soon.  This, despite Lou constantly feeling exactly the opposite given how low the baby is languishing in its healthy, settled and contented little home at the moment.

With due dates and delivery very much on our minds this month, there may not be much time to recall what we’ve been up to since the last ‘journal’.  Suffice to say April found us very much getting into the groove of a routine.  It’s been over 9 weeks since we first arrived in Saigon, and our Thailand holiday and some of the more excruciating moments of that last week in London seem far removed in the memory.

The weather has turned up a notch, and humidity and heat are both now set too high for much of the day, and certainly too high to be outside for very long.  Flo’s early rising continues, and quite often we’ll take her downstairs to the children’s play area before breakfast, only to find the slides already sizzling hot.

For some of the draw backs of living in a 9th floor apartment, the pool here, adjacent to the swings and slides, is a blessing.  Lou has been swimming most days (“but it’s not as nice and refreshing as Tooting Lido”) and Flo has started lessons again and is gaining in confidence in the water.  There is a small gym downstairs too, which I’ve used a couple of times as I reintroduce the body to running again.

I plodded round the block yesterday at about 8am, which was instantly more enjoyable than the running machine, as you jog past local tea shacks, fruits stalls and lots of ‘garages’ (which tend to, in fact, be people’s living rooms) where scooters and bikes are in a permanent state of having their tyres fixed, their wheels washed or an oily rag applied to some part of their engines.  Round the block is definitely for me, even if I did arrive back home looking as if I’d plunged into the pool fully clothed on my way back upstairs.

Florence is thoroughly enjoying school.  She had a fortnight off for Easter, but now has a clear run in before the summer break at the end of June.  More confident and gregarious all the time, she has taken to ordering her own food and drinks when we go out, and berates the taxi drivers if they miss our turning!

We’ve started to get to know some really nice people here at the apartment as well as through school, and Flo is making friends with children of different ages and from different parts of the world.  The ex-pat community is certainly a well travelled one and, as a family entirely from UK stock, we are more the exception to the rule when exploring with new people their various backgrounds, countries lived in, and languages spoken.

For my birthday last week I had the day off and Lou and I took up a local cookery course (a leaving gift from CARE UK colleagues) which was a great excuse to eat more lovely food.  We followed that by heading out in the evening to an Argentinean steakhouse for dinner and drinks (this is maybe why I need to go running more).  All in all a very civilised way to see in being 36.

Work is going well.  I feel quite at home in our rather quirky building in downtown District 3.  Have had a few visitors drop in, and run some workshops to support the team here.  Am keeping busy developing ideas that came from the meetings in Hanoi, and have also started to do some networking in Saigon at local Chambers of Commerce events.

Next week I’m heading down to the Mekong to visit some of CARE’s rural projects for a couple of days, and then India, Sri Lanka, Laos and Pakistan are all potential countries to be visiting after my paternity leave finishes.

May 2011 is for sure to be a memorable month for us out here.  Exciting changes ahead, and priceless days for Lou, Flo and I in the run up to life as a family of four.

April journal

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Just back from lunch, and tapping away quietly writing this as   Lou is sleeping in one bedroom and Flo is supposedly doing the same in hers…although I can still hear her singing.  Sarah is with us and downstairs having a swim.

So – 5 weeks on from the last pause for thought, and glad to report that things going well out here in Saigon.  In fact I mentioned to Lou this morning that living in Vietnam has started to feel real now, as opposed to the sense we had for a while that we were on some extended holiday out in South East Asia.  Work took me to Bangkok in the middle of March, and then a week more recently up to Hanoi, and it was upon arriving back from this last trip that it began to feel like coming ‘home’. 

True, Hanoi had been quite cold and my time there largely spent holed up in a hotel conducting workshops and meetings in window-less rooms, indulging in too much coffee, too many table mints, and having despairing Groundhog Day moments as I floated round the hotel’s endless buffet at lunchtimes wondering whether research had ever been conducted on linkages between crème brule consumption and various internal organ malfunctions. 

On the back of 7 days of seeing the inside of a hotel (with the odd skirmish at some local bars inbetween) I’d have been excited about the prospect of flying out of Hanoi and arriving back on the Isle of Sheppey but, as it was, touching down in Saigon was a real treat.  The senses were invaded with what were quite familiar sounds and feelings – the throng of chatter awaiting arrivals at Tam Son Nhat airport and the thick, hot air wrapping itself around you as you wait to jump in a taxi and weave your way through the neon lights and motor bike horns, over the Saigon bridge, and into Thao Dien district and our 9th floor apartment, where we’ve been residing for the past 3 weeks.

We’ve been exceptionally lucky since arriving in Vietnam, and this apartment was another good find.  Despite a relatively stressful weekend last month moving in (complete with lugging boxes around town, dusting and cleaning the place itself, and entertaining Flo at the same time) it’s been a great place to settle into and has some very useful amenities (pool, gym, kids area, café) onsite.  We also have a large sexy plasma screen TV, which many people will appreciate is something I’ve long dreamt of owning – although if truth be told the viewing options are not exactly cutting edge, unless you are an avid Vietnamese soap opera fan.

Flo’s school has also worked out extremely well.  We had enrolled her into the Montessori School here within 4 days of arriving and she started immediately.  Their facilities are really impressive, and she settled pretty quickly all things considered.  We’ve got our first experience this coming week of school Easter holidays (2 weeks) which will be fun, but also a bit of a juggling act for Lou.  The combination of 40 degree temperatures and an impressively weighted 5lb bump (not bad for 34 weeks) mean that keeping Flo occupied for a day can be quite tiring – I’m slightly more fortunate as my bump is only around 4.5lbs so am a tad more nimble under foot.

Anyway, I decided about an hour ago to start a blog.  Not sure what this means, other than I’ll have a convenient central space on which to keep these rambling notes, that one day might make for an interesting (for me at least) reflection of our time out in Vietnam.  Please manage your expectations carefully in terms of what you might find on this site (I’m struggling already with just downloading pictures), but I’ll do my best to entertain.  I’ve no doubt anyone who actually reads this will know better than I how to make their reactions heard.  In the meantime, go Rory Mc!  I’ll be sleeping sweetly as you hopefully clean up the Open.

March journal

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2 weeks have already past since Lou, Flo and I left the UK, and so here’s a few lines about what we’ve been up to so far…

It’s fair to say that our final week in the UK was chaotic.  But thanks to Lou’s organising powers and steely resolve, and the help of various family members and friends, we made it on to the plane in one piece.

Lou’s hypnotherapy sessions helped to calm her nerves whilst in the air and, as Flo was over-excited the entire time we were on a plane about watching Mr Men stories on DVD, and taking her headphones off and on, we seemed to make it to Bangkok, via Dubai, without too much agro at all (although none of us actually slept.)

The whole journey to Koh Chang (2 flights + a 6 hour taxi ride) took about 24 hours and upon reaching our top notch hotel in Koh Chang, and being hugged several times by a beaming Derek, we never looked back!

For the next 6 nights we had a blissful time jumping from swimming pool to beach to restaurant to bar, and so on.  Derek and Ru’s wedding itself was superb – various ceremonies on the white sanded beach conducted by Buddhist monks, followed by cocktails, dinner and then traditional Thai dancing and fire throwing!  Lots of great catch ups over happy hour beers with school friends, and all in all it put us in great shape to make our final leg to Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon, depending on who you are talking to).  We got here on Sunday after a final 2 nights back in Bangkok, and have had quite a busy first few days getting our bearings and sorting ourselves out…

Our first impressions of Vietnam have been really good ones.  It transpires that everyone who advised us beforehand on the amazing food, generous and charming people, and crazy traffic were all spot on.  But more than this, there is a general ease about the city here which is very engaging.  The traffic, despite its proportions, moves apace and you don’t get the sort of gridlock you find in Bangkok, or London for that matter.  There are 6 million people living in HCMC and 3 million motorbikes…which means the number of vehicles is relatively low and so everything moves about quite freely.  By freely, I mean people driving on wrong side of road, in the wrong direction, and when the roads get too congested (which is all the time) bikes just use the pavements.

Nevertheless, it all works, and as a 45 min taxi ride from one side of town to the other will only cost you about £4.50 then it is not so stressful on the pocket.  What you do have to do is put your Green Cross Code learnings into practice all the time.  You look left, right, in front of you and behind you, and then when you realise there is actually traffic approaching you from all sides you just put your head down and go for it, and everyone just weaves around you.

The food is very special.  Fresh ingredients, lots of salads, sauces and the famous Vietnamese “pho” – which is a version of a ramen soup, typically with shredded beef, noodles, chilli and basil leaves.  You can eat pretty exotically here if you want to – Flo and I walked past a tank of snakes and frogs on the way to the loo earlier this afternoon in a restaurant, and there was pig’s uterus on the menu last night.  Out of curiosity I’ve taken to ordering food and drink that sounds interesting (to be clear, by ‘interesting’ I don’t mean snake, frog or uteri.)

Yesterday I ordered a “sapodilla shake” and two dishes which turned out to both comprise of nice juicy fillet steak – one came with a French stick and the other came with chips.  Not what I expected at all, but very tasty nonetheless.  Sapodilla turned out to be a fruit much like a date, which meant I’d essentially consumed a milkshake laxative and two plates of rare beef.  A potentially dodgy combination.

Another good one the other night was ordering the wonderfully titled “beef Jacuzzi” – I just couldn’t resist it.  It sounded to me more like the title of a XXX porn film, but instead turned out to be raw steak, skewers, leaves, raw horseradish and a pot of boiling oil.  It was basically a beef fondu, but you wrapped the cooked meat in leaves with the horseradish and then dipped this in a variety of sauces also provided. Sauces are key here.  That night we had soy, sweet chilli, lime salt and chilli salt – finger lickin’ good indeed (…and yes, there are KFCs here as well as it happens.)

The coffee is really up to the high standards I was hoping for.  Given the country was colonised by the French there remains a lot of great coffee shops serving lush coffees, pastries and the like.  Vietnamese coffee itself is quite a different flavour but bloody awesome (technically speaking) – served hot or iced.

In terms of the important stuff, we’ve registered at the international FV (‘French-Vietnamese’) hospital and Lou has had her 28 week check up, which went well.  The hospital is pretty smart and the dr/consultant Lou saw was a very nice woman. We’ve already been put in touch with other new Mums here who have delivered at FV and I think it will be a good option for us.

We went to the Montessori school here and were really impressed with the facilities and the teachers and so have registered Flo there for 4 days a week (they run an 8am to 3pm day) starting next week.  There will be a week’s settling in phase but Flo seemed to really enjoy being there and hopefully she will take to it well.

Flo has started talking gibberish at times but we think this is her reaction to having listened to people speaking Thai and Vietnamese over the past 2 weeks!  Overall, she has been fantastic with all the changes, travelling and funny environments.  We’re really proud of her.  We need to watch her ego though as literally every single person we walk past stops and stares, dotes and takes a photo of Flo.  She is usually carrying around her doll with her, which all the locals think is very cute.

And then finally, where to live.  CARE have arranged a great little 2 bed apartment 5 mins walk from my new office where we will stay this month, but we’ve been looking at apartments nearer Flo’s nursery this week.  For obvious reasons it is going to be more practical initially if we are based nearer there and I commute across the river into work (about 35-40 mins).  This means we will be living in one of the more upmarket, ex-pat districts, but there is still a nice feel to the area and you don’t feel completely cut off from local life.  The apartments we saw today which are the current contenders also have a shared pool, tennis courts and gym onsite, which will be really useful given the practicalities of Lou getting about with 2 kids in the future.  You can walk easily enough on the roads and pavements, but with 2 kids it makes things slightly more tricksey.

Anyhow, stopping there for fear of this becoming far too long a ramble.  Will be in touch and fill you in on more happenings and the new job, again soon.