The internet at the hotel I was staying in was awful and wouldn't let me into Blogger. So here is my first blog for a long time...
Well I have eventually moved into a house in HCM City, it's in District 1. I moved my bags by Cyclo! Which cost just over three dollars, and I have a lot of bags. It is a fantastic house with four bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, brand new hand-built kitchen, great furniture, big LG flat TV with good cable, balconies off each room and two roof terraces. It costs double what the house in Hanoi cost, but it is worth it. I am sharing with a French couple, an American guy, and an American woman. They all seem very nice and we seem to get along well. My room is huge and has a big, comfortable bed, a two and a three seat sofa plus a chair, some lovely furniture (but mosquitoes by the hundred!) and a small balcony.
So altogether I am enjoying HCM now. It has been a bit difficult, but I have found well paid work and soon I will be working seven days a week, and taking home good money. But for now I am a bit broke as the rent and deposit has to be paid plus I had to pay for a month at the hotel, and I don't get paid til the fifth of next month and that'll soon get eaten up. The area we are living (Hai Ba Trung) has lots of good, cheap restaurants and local food, so it won't cost too much to live, but it'll take a couple of months to get back some fiscal resources.
I will put up some pics of the house soon...
Showing posts with label HCM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HCM. Show all posts
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Saturday, 23 February 2008
In Limbo
I am sitting in limbo now.
Before Tet I applied for a job, had an interview, which I passed, was asked to do a 15 minute lesson plan which the was happy with and was told I had got the job teaching the employees at a factory in District 2. I was promised an email about the hours while in Malaysia. But it never arrived and no replies to emails. So when I got back from holiday I tried emailing the school head office in Hanoi. I eventually got a reply telling me the guy who interviewed me had left the company and had not mentioned me to them.
They asked me for another interview... This was getting repetitive... I met the director of the company and was told I still had the job (at a reduced rate of pay!) and it was starting 25th Feb. So I rented a motorbike, which I would need to get to work. Then a couple of days ago they rang to say the company wanted to put off the course for one week. GGGRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrr
Bear in mind I have been to Cambodia for three weeks for Christmas and New Year and then Malaysia for Tet, so have little money left. They won't pay me til a month after the start of work and I have to pay $10 a night for the hotel plus my food, etc. So I am trying to live as cheaply as possible now and hope my money lasts out.
So it really pisses me off when I get overcharged. I am still angry about dinner last night. I ate the night before in a small local place, had pork, rice and salad which was 15,000 VND. Then last night I returned, had 2 chicken legs, rice, salad and vegetables. 40,000 VND! Which is ridiculous. This happens quite often here. They see a non-local and try to get as much as they can out of you, probably thinking you are a tourist.
On a plus point I met a nice French couple: Kevin and his girlfriend who are working in a restaurant in HMC. We are all looking for a house to share around District 1, so wish us luck
Before Tet I applied for a job, had an interview, which I passed, was asked to do a 15 minute lesson plan which the was happy with and was told I had got the job teaching the employees at a factory in District 2. I was promised an email about the hours while in Malaysia. But it never arrived and no replies to emails. So when I got back from holiday I tried emailing the school head office in Hanoi. I eventually got a reply telling me the guy who interviewed me had left the company and had not mentioned me to them.
They asked me for another interview... This was getting repetitive... I met the director of the company and was told I still had the job (at a reduced rate of pay!) and it was starting 25th Feb. So I rented a motorbike, which I would need to get to work. Then a couple of days ago they rang to say the company wanted to put off the course for one week. GGGRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrr
Bear in mind I have been to Cambodia for three weeks for Christmas and New Year and then Malaysia for Tet, so have little money left. They won't pay me til a month after the start of work and I have to pay $10 a night for the hotel plus my food, etc. So I am trying to live as cheaply as possible now and hope my money lasts out.
So it really pisses me off when I get overcharged. I am still angry about dinner last night. I ate the night before in a small local place, had pork, rice and salad which was 15,000 VND. Then last night I returned, had 2 chicken legs, rice, salad and vegetables. 40,000 VND! Which is ridiculous. This happens quite often here. They see a non-local and try to get as much as they can out of you, probably thinking you are a tourist.
On a plus point I met a nice French couple: Kevin and his girlfriend who are working in a restaurant in HMC. We are all looking for a house to share around District 1, so wish us luck
Saturday, 26 January 2008
More differences
Still been thinking about the differences between Hanoi and HCMC.
Bia Hoi in Hanoi generally costs VND 2000 or 8p or 15cents. Sometimes it's 3 or 4,000. I like the taste and don't mind sitting outside on those tiny plastic chairs chatting with fellow drinkers. Other than Bia Hoi the bars usually charge you VND 20,000 for a bottle of Tiger or similar. Yet I have only had Bia Hoi once since moving to HCM. It was VND4500 a litre and came in a plastic bottle. But it tasted bloody awful! So I will stick to drinking bottled beer. Tiger, Saigon (green or red), BGI (usually the cheapest and comes in a bigger bottle), Heineken (the most expensive) are the most popular and usually available around the backpacker's area. I can find a BGI for around VND 10,000 or 33p/66cents. So drinking is a bit more expensive in HCM compared to Bia Hoi. But of course it is 34 Celsius during the day and only drops to around 25C minimum compared to 17/10C in Hanoi now, so it is nice to sit and drink a cold bottle of beer.
The food around the backpacker's area is certainly more international/westernised than anywhere in Hanoi. For example, I looked everywhere in Hanoi for a decent English breakfast and never found it. The save money, make money mentality meant they tried to save money and therefore give you tiny portions. Even if it said "eggs" on the menu I have known them to give you just one egg. In a restaurant near the cathedral I ordered breakfast, specifically asking for soft/sunny side up eggs (this I have asked for in every restaurant I have had breakfast in and almost always got hard eggs) but of course the eggs came hard. So I said to the waitress "I asked for soft eggs!" She said "I know" and wandered off...
The service in general in Hanoi is poor to diabolical. It is not unusual to go into a restaurant and find all the staff sitting down watching television. Most restaurants serve the same Vietnamese food and that gets incredibly repetitive. In the end I almost stopped eating Vietnamese restaurant food as it was just so dull. There are lots of restaurants that serve international food, but they are generally expensive. I ended up buying wholemeal bread, salad, ham, tinned fish, cheese (which is expensive) and eating sandwiches during the day. Luckily, I enjoyed one local lunchtime dish that was available everywhere in Hanoi: Bun Cha, which is rice noodles in soup with barbecued pork and a plate of herbs to add as you like. This I have been unable to find so far in HCM :-( It really is delicious and filling and often costs VND10,000). Some places serve spring rolls with it too and with a couple of those it is a very filling dish. The Bun Cha restaurants are the dirtiest restaurants in town because of all the barbecuing, but is easily the most delicious and I never had any stomach problems after eating it.
Pho (pronounced fer) is the Vietnamese national dish and is available both north and south, but I am not a big fan I'm afraid. It is rice noodle soup, usually (although not always) with uncooked beef on top: Pho Bo, or Pho Ga, which is the same but with cooked chicken.
There was one great Deli/restaurant on Kim Ma that anyone who is in Hanoi should look up. It is only a small place and is often empty, but has a three course set menu for VND75,000 (US$4.5) which they changed regularly and was always delicious. It was called Oregano and was 657 Kim Ma or something close to that. It had things like stew and mashed potatoes on the menu, and for sweet one option was a fantastic chocolate mousse, with some good starters too. Good French wine was VND30,000 a glass, which was really good value.
Here in HCM the food around the backpacker's area is generally pretty good for Western tastes. So far I have not had one hard egg when eating English Breakfast and don't even need to ask. Mexican food is more prevalent down here and is often very good. Most of the restaurants around here have it on the menu. In Hanoi there was TexMex on Giang Vo, but that was the only Mexican restaurant I found. It is rarely, if ever spicy, however.
Never order curry in Vietnam. They are unable to cook curry as a Westerner knows it, they put some ginger in and call it curry. There are a few 'Thai' restaurants around in both North and South, but I have yet to find one where the food tastes anything like Thai food and always avoid them now, even though Thai is my favourite food. Every table has a bottle of Tuong ot (ert) or curry sauce, so I use that to spice things up.
In Hanoi they are just starting to implement a new law to ban hawkers from a lot of streets. The police often arrest street traders and that is only going to get worse. But you do get bothered by book-sellers if you go for bia hoi at the international Bia Hoi corner at Luong Ngoc Quyen, but it isn't too bad. Here in backpacker's area in HCM the book-sellers/newspaper hawkers/women who sell this and that/women with babies selling chewing gum are totally beyond the pale.. You can sit in a restaurant and you will get 10 sellers come up to you and ask if you 'wanna buy book?' within a 5 to 10 minute timescale. Maybe more. Also there are far more disabled people here in HCM. I see anywhere from 20 to 50 disabled people every day, mostly begging on the streets. From people with a limb/foot/hand missing, to people who ride around on a small wheeled cart because they have no limbs, to people who lay on corners with apparently no control of any limbs, to a woman with a baby in a pram with a hugely oversize head. All just normal everyday sights, ignored by almost everyone, and rarely given any money. In Hanoi, I rarely remember seeing disabled people begging for money, probably because the police would move them on.
Bia Hoi in Hanoi generally costs VND 2000 or 8p or 15cents. Sometimes it's 3 or 4,000. I like the taste and don't mind sitting outside on those tiny plastic chairs chatting with fellow drinkers. Other than Bia Hoi the bars usually charge you VND 20,000 for a bottle of Tiger or similar. Yet I have only had Bia Hoi once since moving to HCM. It was VND4500 a litre and came in a plastic bottle. But it tasted bloody awful! So I will stick to drinking bottled beer. Tiger, Saigon (green or red), BGI (usually the cheapest and comes in a bigger bottle), Heineken (the most expensive) are the most popular and usually available around the backpacker's area. I can find a BGI for around VND 10,000 or 33p/66cents. So drinking is a bit more expensive in HCM compared to Bia Hoi. But of course it is 34 Celsius during the day and only drops to around 25C minimum compared to 17/10C in Hanoi now, so it is nice to sit and drink a cold bottle of beer.
The food around the backpacker's area is certainly more international/westernised than anywhere in Hanoi. For example, I looked everywhere in Hanoi for a decent English breakfast and never found it. The save money, make money mentality meant they tried to save money and therefore give you tiny portions. Even if it said "eggs" on the menu I have known them to give you just one egg. In a restaurant near the cathedral I ordered breakfast, specifically asking for soft/sunny side up eggs (this I have asked for in every restaurant I have had breakfast in and almost always got hard eggs) but of course the eggs came hard. So I said to the waitress "I asked for soft eggs!" She said "I know" and wandered off...
The service in general in Hanoi is poor to diabolical. It is not unusual to go into a restaurant and find all the staff sitting down watching television. Most restaurants serve the same Vietnamese food and that gets incredibly repetitive. In the end I almost stopped eating Vietnamese restaurant food as it was just so dull. There are lots of restaurants that serve international food, but they are generally expensive. I ended up buying wholemeal bread, salad, ham, tinned fish, cheese (which is expensive) and eating sandwiches during the day. Luckily, I enjoyed one local lunchtime dish that was available everywhere in Hanoi: Bun Cha, which is rice noodles in soup with barbecued pork and a plate of herbs to add as you like. This I have been unable to find so far in HCM :-( It really is delicious and filling and often costs VND10,000). Some places serve spring rolls with it too and with a couple of those it is a very filling dish. The Bun Cha restaurants are the dirtiest restaurants in town because of all the barbecuing, but is easily the most delicious and I never had any stomach problems after eating it.
Pho (pronounced fer) is the Vietnamese national dish and is available both north and south, but I am not a big fan I'm afraid. It is rice noodle soup, usually (although not always) with uncooked beef on top: Pho Bo, or Pho Ga, which is the same but with cooked chicken.
There was one great Deli/restaurant on Kim Ma that anyone who is in Hanoi should look up. It is only a small place and is often empty, but has a three course set menu for VND75,000 (US$4.5) which they changed regularly and was always delicious. It was called Oregano and was 657 Kim Ma or something close to that. It had things like stew and mashed potatoes on the menu, and for sweet one option was a fantastic chocolate mousse, with some good starters too. Good French wine was VND30,000 a glass, which was really good value.
Here in HCM the food around the backpacker's area is generally pretty good for Western tastes. So far I have not had one hard egg when eating English Breakfast and don't even need to ask. Mexican food is more prevalent down here and is often very good. Most of the restaurants around here have it on the menu. In Hanoi there was TexMex on Giang Vo, but that was the only Mexican restaurant I found. It is rarely, if ever spicy, however.
Never order curry in Vietnam. They are unable to cook curry as a Westerner knows it, they put some ginger in and call it curry. There are a few 'Thai' restaurants around in both North and South, but I have yet to find one where the food tastes anything like Thai food and always avoid them now, even though Thai is my favourite food. Every table has a bottle of Tuong ot (ert) or curry sauce, so I use that to spice things up.
In Hanoi they are just starting to implement a new law to ban hawkers from a lot of streets. The police often arrest street traders and that is only going to get worse. But you do get bothered by book-sellers if you go for bia hoi at the international Bia Hoi corner at Luong Ngoc Quyen, but it isn't too bad. Here in backpacker's area in HCM the book-sellers/newspaper hawkers/women who sell this and that/women with babies selling chewing gum are totally beyond the pale.. You can sit in a restaurant and you will get 10 sellers come up to you and ask if you 'wanna buy book?' within a 5 to 10 minute timescale. Maybe more. Also there are far more disabled people here in HCM. I see anywhere from 20 to 50 disabled people every day, mostly begging on the streets. From people with a limb/foot/hand missing, to people who ride around on a small wheeled cart because they have no limbs, to people who lay on corners with apparently no control of any limbs, to a woman with a baby in a pram with a hugely oversize head. All just normal everyday sights, ignored by almost everyone, and rarely given any money. In Hanoi, I rarely remember seeing disabled people begging for money, probably because the police would move them on.
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Birthday Party, New Job and Tet Holiday
I have had a good few days. On Saturday I attended my friend Thuy's birthday party. She used to live in the north of Viet Nam but moved down here to work. I met her through Julian and Clio. Her second language is French but her English is pretty good too. So some of the guests were French, some Vietnamese and me the only Brit, lol. Julian who we met in Vinh was there and his English is excellent and Ben, a Frenchman who is trying to design and sell t-shirts in HCM, was happy to chat in English too. I cooked (Chau peeled the pots :-)) potatoes with scrambled egg (Thuy's favourite dish at a restaurant on Bui Vien. I had never cooked it before, and put a little too much salt in the egg, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. So it was a very enjoyable evening.
Then yesterday I had a presentation/second interview for a very well paid job. The presentation went well and I got the job. So after Tet I will be teaching (presuming everything goes well) business English at a company in District 2. They will pay me travel expenses on top of a very good hourly rate. YAY!!!!
For Tet I am going to Malaysia from 30th Jan to 14 Feb. I am meeting Julian and Fiona from Hanoi there. So I'm really looking forward to that and know we'll have a great time.
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Monday, 14 January 2008
Life in Saigon
Blogspot has been down for a few days so I couldn't blog...
However, it's back up now so here is my first blog for a while.
Things are starting to look up a little bit on the job front, but not much solid yet. I have been teaching young kids last weekend, from 8 to 10am and should be again this coming weekend. It is Tet holiday early February, and schools close down for up to a month, so most are not looking for teachers now. But tomorrow I have another interview, so wish me luck.
I really want to go somewhere for Tet. Last year I went to Vang Vien in Laos and had a fantastic time. Unfortunately, with little money coming in I won't have enough to fly there and the bus takes 40 hours just to Vientiane! 20 hours to Hue, stop the night, then another 20 hours from Hue to Vientiane, I think it was 4 or 5 hours to Vang Vien. It has been suggested to go to Borneo, which would be great, but I have looked on the internet and can't find any cheap flights from HCM.
Life in HCM is ok. Today it is very hot and sunny, which is not something I would be saying if I still lived in Hanoi. I am staying in the Dong A1 hotel in the backpackers area, which is $10 a night, with wireless internet in my room. My room is a little noisy as its next to reception, which is staffed with television-watching staff 24 hours a day, but it's a big room with a big bed, wardrobe, en-suite with hot water shower, and TV with reasonable channels, including Discovery, National Geographic, 3 American movie channels, but no CNN, and the BBC picture is blocked here but I can still hear the sound, I don't know why. So I get the news from the German, Japanese and Australian channels and, of course, the internet.
So living in Saigon is certainly a challenge, especially trying to live cheaply, but I am quite enjoying it, especially the weather. I am spending some time with James and we are still trying to make www.CheapHotelsCambodia.com, which is taking up a fair bit of my time. I have met some ex-pats at the Cantina Restaurant and the one next door and I hope to make some new friends soon and get lots of work.
However, it's back up now so here is my first blog for a while.
Things are starting to look up a little bit on the job front, but not much solid yet. I have been teaching young kids last weekend, from 8 to 10am and should be again this coming weekend. It is Tet holiday early February, and schools close down for up to a month, so most are not looking for teachers now. But tomorrow I have another interview, so wish me luck.
I really want to go somewhere for Tet. Last year I went to Vang Vien in Laos and had a fantastic time. Unfortunately, with little money coming in I won't have enough to fly there and the bus takes 40 hours just to Vientiane! 20 hours to Hue, stop the night, then another 20 hours from Hue to Vientiane, I think it was 4 or 5 hours to Vang Vien. It has been suggested to go to Borneo, which would be great, but I have looked on the internet and can't find any cheap flights from HCM.
Life in HCM is ok. Today it is very hot and sunny, which is not something I would be saying if I still lived in Hanoi. I am staying in the Dong A1 hotel in the backpackers area, which is $10 a night, with wireless internet in my room. My room is a little noisy as its next to reception, which is staffed with television-watching staff 24 hours a day, but it's a big room with a big bed, wardrobe, en-suite with hot water shower, and TV with reasonable channels, including Discovery, National Geographic, 3 American movie channels, but no CNN, and the BBC picture is blocked here but I can still hear the sound, I don't know why. So I get the news from the German, Japanese and Australian channels and, of course, the internet.
So living in Saigon is certainly a challenge, especially trying to live cheaply, but I am quite enjoying it, especially the weather. I am spending some time with James and we are still trying to make www.CheapHotelsCambodia.com, which is taking up a fair bit of my time. I have met some ex-pats at the Cantina Restaurant and the one next door and I hope to make some new friends soon and get lots of work.
Friday, 2 November 2007
Moving to HCM
Well I have decided to leave Hanoi at the end of the month and head to Ho Chi Minh. The weather in Hanoi is cold and damp and winter is approaching. So now seems as good a time as any to see what it is like living in the South's capital.
So if you know of a HCM houseshare that is looking for a new housemate or an independent school that needs an experienced English teacher with great qualifications, then let me know. I am probably going down there without either a job or a place to stay.
I will miss Julien and Clio, Henrik, Steve and Fiona and many of the lovely people I have met in Hanoi. I will miss my pupils, who are so keen to learn and fun to teach. I will miss walking round Hoan Kiem Lake and weekends away on the motorbikes.
But I am looking forward to being in HCM and the warm weather, the better nightlife, and later opening restaurants and bars. Although I think the traffic and the pollution may be even worse down there.
So if you know of a HCM houseshare that is looking for a new housemate or an independent school that needs an experienced English teacher with great qualifications, then let me know. I am probably going down there without either a job or a place to stay.
I will miss Julien and Clio, Henrik, Steve and Fiona and many of the lovely people I have met in Hanoi. I will miss my pupils, who are so keen to learn and fun to teach. I will miss walking round Hoan Kiem Lake and weekends away on the motorbikes.
But I am looking forward to being in HCM and the warm weather, the better nightlife, and later opening restaurants and bars. Although I think the traffic and the pollution may be even worse down there.
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