Home Sweet Home

We have found our home for the next two years! After much looking and debating we have moved in to a three storey villa with four bedrooms, six bathrooms, two office areas, and a large open kitchen, dining, living area. Not the Vietnam we imagined?!

The house is in a very quiet neighbourhood and the streets are closed off in the evening to prevent traffic through the night. The walk to school is 12 minutes and follows Canal Street -- which literally has a canal in the median complete with walkway, bridges, and fish!

We have spent this week cleaning and organizing the spaces inside and out. We have met our housekeeper, Ngung, and our gardener, Mr Zhang. We have hired a handyman, JoJo, to do a few repairs, and a laundress, Ms. Lan, to clean all of the draperies. We expect our shipment

from Doha to arrive next week and we should be ready by then!

We have also inherited a quiet ginger cat named Bella!

Happy Anniversary!

On the weekend Tim and Lisa celebrated 28 years of marriage! We can honestly say that when we married in 1988 we did not anticipate celebrating Anniversaries all over the world.... It has been a full and interesting 28 years. This year we gave each other a Fitbit, the ChargeHR which records steps, flights of stairs, heart rate, distance, etc.

We spent our anniversary beginning the move into our new home. Living in a house with three stories meant lots of steps -- over 18,000 for each of us. Then we went to a little Vietnamese restaurant for the best Ga Pha in town (chicken noodle soup).

Househunting Fun

Since our arrival in Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday, we have been busy with school Orientation activities and searching for a place to live! We have visited many townhouses, apartments, penthouses, and villas. This can be a frustrating and exhausting challenge as we try to match our space needs with our budget and preference for location.

But it also has moments when we find ourselves giggling about a urinal in the bathroom, or staring wide eyed at a master bedroom wall mural of a cartoon prince and princess, or outright laughing at how Simon will never fit in a shower.

Perhaps jet lag also makes us a bit amused by other people's choices in decor.

We have learned that there are cultural preferences for layout, colours, and furniture. For example the Vietnamese seem to love Louis XIV style ornate dining room tables.

And their kitchen space is very small by North American standards. Lisa was especially curious that most kitchens do not have an oven -- just a natural gas cooktop.

But we are getting closer to finding a place of our own......

Arrived!

After 28 hours of flying we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, looking fresher than we felt! The flights were surprisingly easy -- even the 15 hours between Toronto and Teipei, Taiwan. It is humid in the city but we have already learned to accept that we will be wet all the time -- partly from sweat and partly from getting caught in a heavy rain shower a couple of times a day.

New Address

In preparation for our new home in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam we have a new address! Keep visiting us here:

www.chutevietnam.blogspot.com