· You can’t ship yourself technology (hard drives, photography equipment, computers, etc.). If you need something here, it’s best to bring it with you. I am operating without any catalogs because I decided to ship them to myself rather than bring them with me. [We received a shipping allowance to move, so we jam-packed three boxes that were to be shipped by my office. No one told us about the electronics shipping, so it was all wrapped up in with sheets and towels and catalogs and other things we wanted. The day after I arrived, I had to frantically call back to tell my company not to ship the boxes. Otherwise we would have lost everything. I had a few friends bring necessities when they came over, but you can't really ask someone to carry a 40kg (84lbs.) box for you. In the end, we had to hand carry this stuff back with us when we returned to the US for the first time. We ended up paying hundreds of dollars in baggage fees. I guess the silver lining is that when we went back through the boxes after seven months in country, we found we'd packed a lot of stuff we would have never used or didn't need.]
· Standard security deposit on an apartment is three months’ rent, plus you have to pay the first month when you move in. For a $1000 apartment, that’s $4000 up front before you can set foot inside your place. [I'm being slightly melodramatic here, because the standard security deposit is two months rent plus the first month. So the reality would be $3000 for a $1000/mo. apartment. You can find rooms and roommates on the cheap if you're flexible. We didn't have a ton of options because there was two of us and two cats. Regardless it's still a shit-load of money to pony up if you landed without a lot of cash. And here's why:]
· You need a local address or business card to open a bank account. I don’t have a local business card, so I can’t open a bank account. Since I can’t open a bank account, I can’t rent an apartment… [most landlords want that security deposit in dollars. You can't withdraw dollars from an ATM here. To get dollars you have to go into the bank and withdraw it from your account (if you have an American dollars account -you have to specifically ask for it). If you don't have an account, tough shit. Time to work on those negotiating skills.]
· If you travel alone to VN, there is a 0% chance of finding an affordable (nice) apartment close to the office for less than $1500/mo. in the allotted two weeks. Reyna has looked at apartments every day since she got here, and has only seen two that are decent, but they’re significantly more than the allowance the company is giving for housing. I can’t imagine finding a place on my own in two weekends. [Two things: The key phrase here is "in the allotted two weeks." Also it's important to define the word "nice." Nice in this instance means an apartment that is comparable to where we were living in the US (i.e. Modern and Western with a couch that isn't wood or wicker). We also needed a place that was big enough for two people and two cats. It would have been easier to find a place for just me, but then I would have had to leave three of my favorite things in the US. It took three weeks to find an apartment that we could afford, stand to be in for more than five minutes and was within walking distance to my work. After three months we knew enough about living here that we decided to move out and into a house. We decided we'd rather live in a better neighborhood and have a longer commute than stay in our small, cramped one bedroom apartment. I spent three MONTHS looking for the house. We decided to move in July and actually moved in October. It takes time. We like it a lot, but it's still nowhere near as nice as the place we lived in in the US. The longer you're here, the lower your standards get, so we find that we're happy with it despite it's many problems. If you desire nothing less than equal to your current western place, then you're looking at $1500+ in rent. Also, if you plan to start work immediately, it's a good idea to make sure the housing situation is settled. I never had time to look once we moved, and Reyna got stuck with the whole business finding the first place, which was stressful as hell. Plus all the agents stuck her with the taxi fares. We used an agent for our first apartment, which worked well enough. I tried to use a different agent to find the house. They probably showed me 80 places. I only saw two I really liked, and both were more than we wanted to pay. In the end Reyna found our place on An Phu Neighbors, the neighborhood Google Group which has turned into quite a life-saver].
· Toiletries are extremely hard to find. Bring toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant with you. [They're actually not that hard to find if you know where to look. There are nice supermarkets in all the big shopping malls (Vincom, Diamond Plaza and Parkson). Once you know that, you're fine. But coming from the US, thinking to look for deodorant next to the American Eagle is not a logical thought progression. It doesn't help that to get to those supermarkets you have to walk through an arcade and a bowling alley. It's surreal. The thing to remember is that your standard "western" brands, especially in toothpaste (Crest, Colgate, etc.) are manufactured in SE Asia instead of Mexico or wherever that stuff comes from in the US, so it all tastes just a little different. If you're very set in your ways and like things just so, it's best to bring this stuff with you.]
· EVERYTHING takes longer. You can’t just walk to the store and buy X. Especially if the thing you want is not a “normal” item. Google hasn’t documented every square inch of this city, so when you find an address for something, you can’t be sure if you can trust that the place is actually there. And if it IS there, you can’t know if the cab driver will know how to get there. It’s difficult to know if it’s alright for me to spend half a day finding things instead of working. [I would put this in the "I'm freaking out because we just moved here" category. The first few weeks are totally overwhelming. Google Maps is actually quite useful, although you still have to hunt around for things sometimes. You can also use Diadiem.com, which is like the local version of Google Maps. It's handy for finding little tiny streets, of which there are many. Over the weekend I needed to find a CR2450 battery for a camera accessory. I had to go to five places to find it. And when I did find it, it was in the most unlikely place. I would have never ever looked there if someone at Nguyen Kim hadn't given me the specific address.]
· Pretty much everything you buy here must be paid for in cash. [Yep, still true. Do not think you can "do" Vietnam on your credit card. That is, unless you want to take out cash advances on your credit card constantly. A friend of mine who came to visit learned the hard way, and I had to loan him money throughout his stay. Other things to consider are when you take out that $3000 to move into your first place you will have to carry it across town in your pocket or backpack. Not fun. There are places that accept credit cards, but many times the employees see them so rarely, they don't know how to work the machine, and they inevitably make a mistake (read get your card blocked). I spent six months with blocks on both my credit cards because I couldn't bear the thought of paying to sit on hold with the credit card company. When we went back to the US, I called them and explained that I lived in Vietnam and occasionally needed to make large purchases with the card. That seems to have solved it. Overall it's a good thing because we got out of the habit of using credit cards, therefore we rarely buy expensive stuff.]
· HSBC bank here and HSBC bank in the US are not related, and are not affiliated with each other in any way. [That pretty much says it all.]
· Lunch time is siesta time here, so no errands can be run at lunch time. [A little dramatic here, but not totally untrue. If you need to pick something up at a local shop at lunch time, it's not out of the ordinary to find the proprieter of the shop dead asleep on the floor. The bank goes down to one teller between 12 & 1, but most locals don't go to the bank at lunch anyway (they're busy sleeping too) so there's usually not a line.]
· I wish I’d had a local cell phone ready to go on the first day. We couldn’t start looking at apartments because it took three days to get a local cell phone. So basically, we missed the entire first week just getting our feet under us and getting everything together to start looking. [Again, if you are being transferred for work, have this arranged beforehand, especially if you have a deadline for finding a place to live. It will make a HUGE difference. I corresponded with one of our new hires before she arrived, and this was the #1 piece of advice I gave her. So far she's the only person to be transferred and find an apartment in under two weeks.]
· You can plug an ungrounded plug into the wall anywhere with no problem. You need an adapter for grounded plug. [Okay this requires a little explanation. You can plug anything into the wall here (US plug, Euro plug, Chinese plug) HOWEVER the voltage is 230V. What does this mean to you? Things have multi-voltage wiring (they will say 120V-240V somewhere on them) will work fine. This means your computer, cell phone charger and most newish electronics are good to go. If you are bringing electrical things that don't accept varying voltages (hairdryers, fans, electric razors) prepare for a little show with sparks or smoke or both. Ladies, I'm sorry to report that your Infuser 3000 hairdryer will not work here. It'll either blow up the hairdryer or destroy the plug in your bathroom (which is sadder? I'm not sure, but both suck). As far as grounded plugs go, offices tend to have them, but houses and apartments that aren't specifically designed for westerners generally don't. You can buy power strips with grounded outlets on the cheap. We brought three adapters with us and they're collecting dust.]
· Have someone who knows you’re coming into town, so you aren’t completely alone the first day. Perhaps recruit someone (that speaks English) to meet the new person, and make sure the driver is there to pick you up. It’s scary as hell the first day if you’re alone. No one came to the airport to pick me up because I arrived on a holiday weekend. I took a gypsy cab to the hotel, which cost about three times what I should have paid. I didn’t know it was a holiday weekend until I got here. That would have been good to know beforehand. [Me being bitchy, but still true. No one came to pick me up at the airport on the day I arrived, even though I was told a car would come to meet me. It was also about 150 degrees outside. I moved from the desert in the US and I've never felt heat like here. I was already stressed to the max about moving because I had to leave Reyna behind in LA with the cats (we'll save that one for another post). I found myself suddenly alone and in a foreign country.
Now, if you find yourself in the same situation, here's what I recommend. Walk out the little T at the airport where the masses of people are gathered to meet their parties and turn LEFT. Try not to look too "deer-in-headlights" (harder than it may seem) as you pass the 47 guys asking you if you want a ride somewhere. They will hassle you less if you appear to know what you're doing. You'll see a line of actual taxis queuing about 20 yards (or 15m if your not American) away. It's right where the pick-up area ends and the normal street begins. Go there and find either a Mailinh or Vinasun taxi if you can. Sometimes you have to wait. If you arrive at night, you have to cross the street and walk into the parking lot to find the Mailinh or Vinasun taxis. Or, you can just pay three times the price and have a gypsy guy carry your luggage and drive you in his personal car. When I arrived I paid US$20 for a ride to my hotel, which didn't really seem unreasonable because the same ride in the US would have cost more. He got me. Negotiate the price BEFORE you get in the car. If he tries to rip you off and charge you more than the price you agreed on, you will have to yell louder than him. That's always worked for me in those situations.]
And those were my first freakouts. Here's a few other things to chew on:
- One of the most invaluable resources we found the first week was The Word magazine. The Word and Asia Life are both filled with excellent information every month. In the back there's always a decent map and listings of hundreds of places to eat around town. We may have starved without that. And here's the best part. It's free. If someone had told me about it beforehand, my first stop after I landed would have been a bar to pick one up.
- Facebook is blocked. There are two ways I know of to get on. Using a remote VPN is the way most people access it and comes with the least headaches, but also generally costs money. You'll have to ask one of your new friends how to do it because it's too complicated to explain at this point in this post. If you have an iDevice (iPhone, iPad etc.) you can download the Opera browser app and access FB that way. It's limited, but if you just want to update your status and check messages, it does the job. If you're a status updatin', photo postin' fiend, then you probably want to consider a paid VPN like Astral.
- No Pandora, no playlist.com, no slacker.com, no Hulu, no streaming ESPN video, no Netflix. You can access these things with a VPN service, but the internet here is quite slow. Even YouTube takes patience. I also had to open a new iTunes account after moving because my old one got blocked when I tried to make purchases from here. If you're like me and demand a steady flow of new music coming into your life, then I recommend the Band of the Day app for iPads and iPhones. It helped. I think the Vietnamese people have declared war on music that isn't either shit pop or home-grown oddness.
- If Tiger beer makes you unbearably gassy, try it with ice. The ice knocks down the level of carbonation and keeps you from getting super bloated drinking it (not that this happens to me -it happens to a guy I know, okay? Jeez). Plus it keeps your beer cold longer. I used to know a girl that drank PBR with ice and I always gave her a hard time about it. That girl was onto something.
- It took me about six weeks to get numb to the traffic enough to try driving a motorbike. That seems like a reasonable amount of time. Being able to drive myself around was a gigantic step to making Vietnam feel like home. You're supposed to have a driver's license, but I don't. As long as you drive a smallish bike and don't drive like a goddamned maniac, you should be fine without it. I got pulled over one time, I paid a little fine and went on my way.
See, if you ask questions, I'll answer them -albeit in my own long-winded and roundabout way. Hope that helped Daitka (I see you). Oh and one more thing Daitka.
- You're right, there are lots of tasty vegetarian places around town. I don't go more often because my friends rarely want to go. I don't like forcing people to bend to my dietary choice, so I try to find places where everyone can find something tasty. That way they can eat, and I can manage. If I hadn't done that, I couldn't tell you that El Gaucho, the Argentinian steakhouse on Nguyen Sieu, has fabulous pasta. In addition, I find that many of the vegetarian places offer the same food. I like it, but don't want to eat it all the time. Plus, when I do eat it, I always feel like I'm eating something that is intentionally bland. Vegetarian Pho is good, but clearly not as good as the real deal, otherwise there would be a lot more vegetarian Pho places. Finally, the vegetarian places aren't always easy to find if you don't speak Vietnamese and really know your way around. There's one right around the corner from our house that we've never been to. We just found our usual haunts before we noticed that place. I blame The Word and Asia Life. As for my favorite vegetarian restaurant in town (so far), it's The Loving Hut - 152 Nguyen Trong Tuyen. Expansive menu, cheap and good. I'll try to spend a little more time on the blog mission in the future. Thanks for reading!
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