7am Wednesday 4th August 2010

I was waiting for my coffee this morning before going into work and decided to grab quick footage of what's happening on the street today. The building I work in is the tall one... the only tall one in this area. You can see a lady doing the hoola-hoop which is a very common form of exercise amongst women, the kebab vendor is tucked away behind car - not sure if you can see it. The streets are much quieter at that time of morning. I will take more footage of our office and where our usual local lunch place is. Stay tuned xx

Breakfast and Injuries

This mornings events.........

We have to go out tonight, and Shan didn't have time to shave this morning so he threw the razor in his bag. On the way in we stopped to get coffee at Segafredo, and Shan was outside sitting on the bike waiting for me to get them. Next thing I know, there is a POOL of blood on the ground, blood all over his shirt, and all down his hand. He has HACKED a CHUNK out of his finger. It took about 10 minutes to communicate with staff that we need serviettes and water, and in the end I stormed the kitchen looking for them. They of course don't have a handle on their tap and I couldn't find the pliers to turn the tap on so that caused a bit of a stir. Up until this point I had a great relationship with the coffee boys.. now I'm not getting much eye contact from them. Still, we got our coffee, rode into work and bandaged him up. I wish I remembered to pull out my phone to get some photos.

After, I went down to our breakfast lady across the road from work to get our herb omelette roll. See below for pics. It's just a little stand on the side of the road, with a breadroll heater, and hotplate, chopped herbs, some cucumber and optional chilli. It costs 7,000VND per one (.40c).

Below is the breakfast stand:

Cooking the omelette:

Shan and his sore finger:

I'm pretty happy about breakfast:

So is Shan:

Our New Playground

3 Entries in a week! I'm on a roll! I thought I would show you my and Shan's favourite new place. It's a pool that is attached to a hotel here.. not a fancy hotel, more low-key and in a great location. The pool is open to the public for 50,000VND per person, roughly $3.50. It's located in Tay Ho which is near West Lake, just about 2km north from our apartment.

It always has heaps of locals and expats there and great atmosphere. Pool on oneside and Westlike on the other. They don't offer all the expensive hotel benefits, they simply have a sheltered area to the left where there are a couple of fridges with beer and coke, and a deep frier that they fry up chips and sausages. The most fun though is that there is a golf area where you can buy 100 golf balls and whack them into the river - or if you have any skills you can aim for the targets in the river.

Pool in front of us....

West Lake behind......

Golf to the left...

And this is a pic taken this morning on the motorbike on our way to work....

Sweet Treat

A few new people have started in our office this week and it's customary to bring a gift to the office for everyone. (Didn't know that). This is the 'cake' that was given to everyone in the office. Apparently it's made from a type of wheat and stuffed with mung bean.. yummm, I knowww! It's quite heavy, and very very sticky. Imagine throwing it against a wall and it will just stay there. Probably forever.

Here are some pics. I tried a bit, it actually didn't taste that bad, but I would choose chocolate over it any day of the week!

Life Goes On.....

Hello! It's been about 3 months since my last post I know..... We have been really busy. Getting into work and trying to get a routine here has been consuming all our time.

We've started our Vietnamese lessons - have been having them for 4 hours a week in total. It's been difficult finding the time to practise and the nerve to start using it. But we're starting to throw in whatever Vietnamese words we know in our sentences. Attached is a pic of us having our lesson on Sunday morning in our apartment. Shan and I do it together and our teacher is Co Van. She's really great - full of accolades which Shan loves, and we have lots of laughs.

We've done a little bit of travelling, a weekend in Hoi An (I've posted these pics on Facebook) and an afternoon trip just out of Hanoi - literally over the bridge to a rural area that is slowly being built up with apartments. The traditional houses and alley ways around and beautiful and I think the apartments are ugly.. they are like confines, bad public housing??? Around some of the local areas they were drying over the streets this bright bright orange corn - a colour I've never seen before.

We've also moved into our new office. It's so much better than the last previous office. In hindsight I can't believe we worked in those conditions - communal filthy toilets, crowded, dirty little rooms. No wonder is was so stressful. Below is a bad photo... but you get the idea.. I took the photo to see show someone the curtain.

But we have fantastic views. Below is a photo of an oncoming storm.

I'm about to have dinner.. will post this now and update more later. Bye!

On the street

It feels like we have been here for months but it's only been three weeks! We've done a lot. Firstly - I ate toad. I didn't know it was toad. It didn't taste right. It didn't taste like the 'fish' they described it as, and I only ate one piece. It was about a week later that I saw them chopping them up in the markets that I realised it was what we had. I DO NOT want to talk about it again. Thanks.

Here are some photo's of our apartment. This first one is of the street we live on.. we live right near one of the lakes in the north of Hanoi called Truc Bach.

This is the front door the the building we are renting, they have an apartment on each floor and the there are 6 floors. The family who own the building live downstairs in a room off the main foyer, and everyone parks their motorbikes in the foyer, just beyond these doors.

This is the main window in our little lounge room, just ahead of shan is our kitchen which is kind of in a corridor on the way to the bathroom. Behind him is our bedroom.

This is the view of the lake from our balcony off our bedroom.

And this last shot is from today, Shan watching Collingwood beat the Western Bulldogs - there's no hiding from AFL - even in Vietnam!

Work has been good. I went and did a site visit on a day spa that we're designing. This would usually involve hard hats, council vests and steel cap boots... I was in ballerina flats. I had to balance across 10cm wide metal beams that had a 4m drop below to get across an unbuilt stair well.. there were bricks stacked along the side of the building ready to drop below and potentially kill someone, there were bits of timber with nails protruding from them the ready to impale me. The complications of working in Vietnam are like nothing I've experienced, on one hand it's great because I can design anything I want with basically no restrictions, and if I reckon it can be built, then it probably can, by someone.

A few more pics:

Duck anyone?

Lunch

My new red shoes - the only pair I've found in my size despite the millions of stores and millions of shoes...

The markets

This is of Shan and I getting some food on the street - an on-street bbq.. more photos on that another time but it was wonderful! Basically you chose what you want to eat from a table of vegies and skewered meats and they bbq it for you and bring it to you bit by bit - we ordered waay too much and had three beers between us and it cost $8!

Oh! What's that??? Look! It's my bag!

So, Stay tuned.......

Jobs, apartments, friends..

Just over one week has past! So much has happened we both feel like we've been here for months. We have just moved to into our apartment which feels like the biggest piece of news. More on that in a minute.

WORK - It's been a really full on week, work is so busy. We are working in a 5 storey terrace in the city, with lots of really cool little areas around, and, as I just discovered, there is a Western Supermarket! We bought wine and a Hershey chocolate bar. Wine was great, Hershey bar was overrated! This is important news - take note!

Shan and I work in very close proximity to each other (see photo) and we are adjusting .. We will be moving to a new office building sometime in the next couple weeks. The builders have 2 weeks to get the fitout completed which is crazy. On Friday I chose the carpet from a 50 x 50mm sample,... so we'll see how that looks... Things will be a lot less cluttered and the fitout will be nicer (and a better standard of dunny I hope!).

We went to a great restaurant in an area called Truc Bach - its up near the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, this is where we have now rented our apartment. We get 10 rice paper rolls with beef for 30,000VD which is about $1.80 plus some rice paper squares that are fried with beef and green leafy vegies dumped on top for 35,000VD.. you do the maths... so good. Last night we bought our first lot of fruit from the markets, $1.30 for a dozen passionfruit (DAD!!) and the same for the limes!

Pho Cuon - fabulous!

These photo's are from my iphone - I have other photo's from my camera of our apartment and Shan and I about town that I want to upload - but I just can't find the cord to do it at the moment... so hopefully tomorrow night. Goodnight.