Going Domestic

Things I liked about living in Thailand, Part 1

Part One: Nichada Thani

I really appreciated where we lived, which was a gated compound/community about 30 km north of BKK called Nichada Thani. I really want to write a little bit about it, because googling for it often leads to snarky comments about Nichada life from posters on Thai Visa and other forums like it, and those sentiments aren't really helpful to familes who might be trying to figure out where they might like to live if they're moving in the Bangkok area. So, without further ado:

Things that I liked about living in Nichada:

• It was green and clean, by Bangkok standards. There were actual sidewalks to walk on, and they were free of vendors selling hair accessories, squid snacks, edible insects, or fake Rolex watches. They weren't full of dozing (or oozing) soi dogs, either. The sidewalks were actually fairly stroller/tricycle friendly for my young kids, which can't be said of a lot of the footpaths in BKK. For my first 2.5 years in Thailand, walking around the lake in Nichada Thani (I don't know if it has an actual name, but I always thought of it as Lake Nichada) was my primary form of exercise, and I enjoyed passing by the gardens of roses, frangipani, bougainvillea, and the other tropical plants on the way. Lots of coconut trees. And I never actually saw a snake, though I often saw snails of an awesomely impressive size! 

 

motorcycle diaries: avian edition

One of the more amusing things to do while we're creeping along at a maximum of 30 kph in Saigon traffic is to watch out the window for the most outrageous item being transported on the backs the hundreds of motorcycle. Yesterday, Sadie and I were coming back home from lunch with Chris downtown, and we saw a man with at least half a dozen pink birdcages on the back of his bike, and an assortment of small colourful parrots and at least a couple parakeets inside them. 

The bike was parked, so I've been wondering if the birds hop around when they are zooming around on the road, or if they are clinging to their perches for dear life!

stepping out

I realized last Thursday that I really only leave my house here for one of two reasons: to take my daughter to school (or pick her up), or to do a grocery/bakery run. It's boring, and even though my daily life in Thailand was very routine, there was more variety to my comings and goings. In HCMC, I haven't really found much else to do on weekdays yet. 

Weekends are getting a little better, though. A block or so up from Chris's office is a tailor shop, and we stepped into it on Saturday to kill some time. "Well, I was hoping to have a couple of pairs of pants made," I said to the woman who came forward to help us. She showed me a photo of a pair of trousers being modeled by an impossibly tall and impossibly thin lady (which I don't really resemble), and sort of communicated to me that those trousers were the only ones that they made. I had expected a more customized experience for my first getting-pants-made expeditition, with a seamstress suggesting flattering cuts for my body shape, so I was a little uncertain about how to proceed. Chris started discussing having a suit jacket made, I chased Sadie around the shop, and sort of decided to take a chance on the tall and skinny pants. Worst case scenario is that I'll look like a Vietnamese office worker, best case is that I'll have a nice pair of pants to wear on a holiday somewhere cooler than there.  I have visions of having a couple of skirts and casual dresses made, but I don't think that this particular tailer shop does anything other than business wear. 

The other thing that I did this weekend was stop by the gym that Chris has been going to; he purchased a family membership for both of us so I am somewhat obliged to start using it. The first step to starting to work out there is having a fitness assessment with a trainer, so I called the gym this morning to schedule one for 10:30 am. I hung up the phone with the feeling that the receptionist really didn't understand what I was talking about. My suspicion grew stronger when I reported to the gym at 10:30 and the manager said he wasn't sure where the trainer was at the moment. He sent me off to the cardio room to find a treadmill to warm up on. About ten minutes later, a trainer appeared at my side, and she indicated that I should continue what I was doing, but for fifty minutes! Really? Fifty minutes? I was sort of hopeful that I misheard her English, and it was really fifteen minutes, but half an hour later, I was still on the treadmill. After very nearly fifty minutes, she came to fetch me for the rest of my assessment, so I was weighed and measured and performed a bunch of flexibility tests. The only highlight was that she thought that I regained my resting heartrate quickly. It was seriously a weird experience, or at least, not what I was expecting. Chris mentioned that he only spent three minutes on the treadmill for his assessment earlier this week. I still have the feeling that I am missing something important ... 

hot water

I'm not sure what prompted me to pass my hand through the water I had filling up the drum of the washing machine at our rental house a few days ago; usually I set the water temperature gauge to cold if I'm washing our clothes or hot if I'm washing towels or cloth diapers, and go on adding detergent, filling the drum, etc. But I did feel the water on Monday morning, and it was decidedly cool even though i'd selected "hot" on the washing machine's control panel. After a bit of investigation and a few emails to our relocation agent, it was revealed that there was no hot water hooked up to the washing machine. Even though the machine had very clearly labeled settings for cold/warm/hot.

Cue another one of my oh-my-gosh-why-did-i-ever-move-to-Vietnam freak outs! I was washing an assortment of bed linens, towels, and pajamas that Sadie had puked all over the night before, and somehow, using decidedly-not-hot-water to sanitize the dirty laundry was just not going to do it. Thank goodness we haven't had head lice or pink eye or bed bugs or anything like that! I wonder what families here do if pink eye invades and they don't have hot water for washing?

Anyhow, I got over my shock/rage/freak-out quickly enough; getting hot water hooked up for my washing machine here only took about three hours and cost less than $100 (which our landlord declined to cover - much like she declined to follow through with the "have the house cleaned before we moved in and have the paint touched up" terms on our lease - she's a do-the-minimum sort of person, I guess). Sadie's diapers were properly laundered this afternoon. We're probably the only family with hot water for laundry on our block.