Going Domestic

green vietnam, but not in a good way

Well, would you look at that? Another entry for the "Things that Never Would Have Happened if We Still Lived in Canada" list - my pair of comfy Birkenstock sandals would not be covered with mold. Three colours of mold, actually. The same goes for two of my strollers. Darned humid climate. Our (rather irreplaceable) boxes of Christmas decorations were in the same room as the moldy Birks and Maclarens, and I spent a few hours today rather fearful that I'd be either tossing of cleaning those, but everything looks fungus-free, thankfully. I quickly re-organized a shelf in a more often climate-controlled part of this house for them to be stores in. 

I also should update that Chris and I do have a pair of new credit cards now. I used mine to update my account with Vonage (very dear to my heart), and then it went straight into our safe, where it shall remain for who knows how long in this land of cash-only. 

uneasy streets

This is my third year living in SE Asia, and I don't really think about being a visible minority any longer. What is harder for me is being conspicious because of my seemingly strange foreign ways. 

This past Sunday, Chris and I rounded up Madeline, popped Sadie into one her strollers, and and set off for a walk in our new neighbourhood in HCMC. I thought that we were just walking up the road and around the corner to the newly-opened Fanny's ice cream shop with the plastic toddler toys in the courtyard. Alas, I was wrong. Chris led our party of four up and down several roads. And I do mean road, since the sidewalks were nearly all unpassable due to being taken up with construction materials, motorcycle parking, and other obstacles. So we were walking on the road, pushing a stroller, and I was growing less comfortable with the situation as we continued on. 

Why? Because there weren't any other people out on this road taking a walk. I felt very much conspicuous as the only family on foot on this road. It made me think that if locals were not strolling along on this street, then it probably wasn't a good one to do so on. I was worried that the sling bag on my back was going to be snatched, that a motorcycle would run into the stroller, etc. 

I felt a lot better when Chris took us back towards home on a few side streets!

lost or stolen

There is a list floating around in my head that is loosely titled "Things that Never Would Have Happened if We Still Lived in Canada." It's pretty much populated by events from the last three years that we spent in Thailand, but Vietnam has it's first entry now. 

I was going to use my credit card to pay for Madeline's lunch fees at her new school, when I remembered that I couldn't do that. Because my credit card has been canceled. Why, you ask? 

Well, let's start with a couple of facts. The cards expire at the end of this month. We updated our mailing address shortly before we moved, in mid-June. When I called to update our mailing address (which happens to be a forwarding address, operated by the company that Chris works for), the credit card company representative mentioned that our new cards should be in the mail shortly. 

Shortly never arrived, and the end of the month was fast approaching. I called the credit card company again on Monday, asking about the cards that hadn't been delivered yet. The person that I spoke to on the phone explained a couple other important facts, like how they can't mail credit cards to PO Boxes (which is what we have) or to addresses that have been in their system for less than sixty days (which sucks for people who move close to when their cards expire, like us!). 

In order for them to be able to send new cards to us directly here in Saigon (instead of our unuseable mailing address), our current credit cards had to be declared "Lost or Stolen". Arrrrgh.

We should have the new cards by the weekend; they're being couriered to Chris's office. In the meantime, I am slightly uncomfortable about not having a credit card to use in case of an emergency. Which is sort of funny because since I've moved here, I am usually worried that someone is going to steal it out of my bag. Go figure.