Our House

Location: Hoi An, Vietnam

The view to the left from our balcony

 We have just signed a 2.5 month lease on a 3 bedroom house. It is on Luu Quy Ki street (pronounced “loo-WEEkee” - ish) on An Hoi island just across the Thu Bon River from the Ancient City of Hoi An.

Here's a link to our house on the realtor's web site.

And here's a link to Google Maps showing our approximate location.

Our friends Steve & Marg from “Lion's Paw”, whom we met in the San Blas Islands in Panama, are sharing the house with us. We are in a local neighborhood just off the tourist "beaten path", and are looking forward to building relationships with some of our neighbors.

All three bedrooms have queen size beds (a bit firm for our tastes, but we're sure we'll get used to them) and en-suite bathrooms. The bathrooms are of a typical Vietnamese style – toilet and shower in one easily washed down tile room, and a sink in the bedroom. We have a two burner propane stove (no oven), refrigerator, two TVs, and a washing machine.

Us, our new Chinese friends, and our host

We said goodbye to Riverside Pottery Village Homestay and our friend Quyen (corrected spelling – we had the pronunciation right - “win” <ish>). We are going to maintain our relationship with him, his family, and his staff, however, as they're now our “go to” guys for local information, customs, shopping tips, etc. And we'll need a lot of help with all that until we learn the ropes.

Dragon Fruit - yummm!!

 Our landlady Cuc (rhymes with “cup” - ish) lives next door to us and today we got to meet her twin 3 year old grandsons. We didn't get their names, yet, but we did get to play paper airplanes with them until their mom (“Nyoom” - ish, no idea how it's spelled) made them “stop bothering” us. They are very cute and we are sure we'll have some fun times together while we're here.

Kumquats

Today we walked to the Ba Le market and got our first real taste of shopping in Vietnam. The Ba Le market is very much a local market and we really enjoyed walking around picking out vegetables, some needed housewares, and checking out the fish and meat parts of the market. Since it was late in the morning we decided to save meat shopping for a day when we could come back much earlier while things were more fresh. The meat and fish sit out in the stall until they are sold. We're talking no refrigeration here, and we're still a bit too “gringo” to feel comfortable with that.

Flowers for Tet

 We are getting close to the Vietnamese New Year festival of Tet, a national holiday that runs from January 26 – February 1 this year. Part of the tradition is to have a flowering tree in your home. The streets here are lined with vendors selling fruit filled kumquat trees, huge flowering chrysanthemum plants and other showy plants. We are seeing lots of lanterns being hoisted along the main streets and are really looking forward to seeing what events will accompany this festival. Our new house is almost in the thick of things here, so we will be able to easily sample what the celebrations have to offer.

More flowers for Tet

An interesting advert

 At any rate, back to shopping. 
Julie & Marg were buying some things for the new house and were attempting to barter with the stall holder who told them the total for their purchases was 404,000 dong ($17.95) We offered 350,000 she said no, then we offered 375,000, “NO!”. So we got the bank notes out to pay her the 404,000 dong ( we are terrible at bartering), hand her the money, and she lets out a huge cry and looks angry. That's when we realized that we had given her 4 10,000 dong notes (each worth about $0.50 instead of the intended 4 100,000 dong notes (each worth about $5) - with all those zeroes it's hard to keep track which note is the correct one especially since the 10,000 and the 100,000 are the same color! Once we convinced her that we were just idiots and not trying to rip her off, she smiled again, and once again we got to practice saying “I'm sorry” ("toi xin loi" pronounced "toy sin low-ee" - ish), one of our few Vietnamese phrases, which, to our chagrin, we are using more often than we'd like.

New market friends

What to buy?

 Another time, while Julie and Marg were buying some vegetables, a woman from the next stall came over to Mark. She called out to several women in other nearby stalls, patted Mark's belly, and called out “Number one! Number one!” - meaning either that Mark was going to have his first baby, or his belly was "Number One".  We're not sure which. At any rate, we all (especially them <grin>) had a good laugh.

Later this afternoon we also decided to go ahead and check out the Hoi An market and ended up being really glad we'd been to the Ba Le market first. The vendors at the Hoi An market were much more aggressive and the place was absolutely packed with locals, tourists, vendors, and motor scooters - getting around was a bit challenging.

Pork BBQ - also yummm....

We did, however, end up getting some really good street food - barbecued pork – yum!! The cook had a small charcoal brazier over which she barbecued thin strips of pork wedged in a split piece of bamboo with the ends tied together to stop it from falling out. Along with rice paper, fresh lettuce and sprouts, and some absolutely delicious chili sauce, we were treated to a lip smacking mid-afternoon snack.

We're still having fun and are looking forward to getting to know our new neighborhood, our neighbors, and our local vendors. And we're looking forward to cooking our first dinner tonight in our new house – stir fried vegetables with fresh shrimp and a salad. The markets here have an awesome variety of salad greens and we're making the most of it.

Julie & Mark