Cash, cash, cash, and adventures at Metro Cash and Carry

Have I mentioned that it is primarily a cash society here? For example, on Thursday I had my first lesson in Vietnamese - needed to pay the instructor for two weeks up front in cash - 500,000 dong to be exact. Went to pay the bill for our coffees - 72,000 dong cash only. Then it was off to the International Ladies of Vietnam Tea (ILV)- 100,000 dong entrance fee. I thought I had over 200,000 in my wallet but it turns out I only had over 20,000 dong. The 10,000 and 100,000 are almost identical except that the 10,000 is slightly smaller. The same applies to the 500,000 and 50,000 notes - just ask Hal about that sometime! Anyway, the ILV ladies wouldn't take 82,000 or US dollars (you'd think they would give the newbie a break!) so it was off to the ATM. Oddly enough, they did accept and prefer that the membership fee (20) be paid in US dollars. All the big numbers still freak me out even though they aren't that big when you convert them to US dollars.

Around our second week here I went to a large store called the Metro Cash and Carry. It was a fiasco! I needed my passport to apply for a memebership card so I had to find a taxi to return back to our apartment then go back to the Metro. Once I got there I didn't end up buying anything because it was incredibly busy with folks buying supplies for Tet and the checkout lines were astronomically long. I did a walk through and left! Today I made Hal go back with me. I used the same card they gave me January 15 and we picked up the usual range of grocery items - and a bunch of pork and beef. They don't have pork and beef at our local so that is really the biggest reason to go the the Metro since we haven't found it anyplace else. So, we load up, get to the check out and discover that the produce needs to be bagged and priced in the produce department. Hal grabbed a cart and took it all back to the department where an Aussie took pity on him and showed him how the system worked - drop it onto a conveyor belt and walk to the other side of the department where it comes out bagged and priced. Meanwhile, I was taking care of the rest of the cart and bagging it all up. Then, oops, turns out the card they gave me in January was a temporary, one time only card. I just looked at the guy, looked at the groceries that we just paid 2,700,000 dong for, and said what am I supposed to do? Unbelievably, he took pity on me and said the cashier could finish the sale. Now, you must understand that none of these transactions took place in a common language - it was all a mixture of body language and a few common words here and there! So, we head for the door, receipt in hand, where we discover that no one bags their items until they get out the door because the store has employees who take your receipt and check each and every item in your cart. This time Hal was in the lead and the door lady took pity on him and let us leave without a third thorough accounting of our groceries. Whew. This is why I made Hal go with me. Who wants to have this kind of fun on your own?

Midweek Ramble

Friday will mark 1 month since our arrival - three weeks of it spent in Vietnam and one in Bali! It has been strange to be in a new place with few responsibilities. Let me re-phrase: in a new foreign place with a lot of time. Hal has his work and the kids are busy at school - just like in Maine. My work - looking after the house, sewing, volunteering, etc. - stayed in Maine, with the exception of looking after the family.

The first few weeks here were spent adjusting: to the climate, the people, the apartment, the currency, the neighborhood...you get the idea. Then we went to Bali - and I know this may sound strange but that was a vacation. If we were in the states for a school break it would have been to see my parents in Florida.

Now we settle into a real routine. I am finding a few things to do to keep myself out of trouble - a cooking class yesterday, the International Ladies of Vietnam Tea on Thursday mornings (1st one tomorrow) and I just cold-called Mr. Huong, whose name I found in a magazine, for lessons in Vietnamese.

When we went to Bali one of our scuba companions was a former UN employee who ran the refugee resettlement camps for Vietnam and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. He is Indonesian, lives in Java and has a summer home in....New Hampshire! Just over the Maine border. We left him Hal's card so that he could send us some underwater photos he took. I hope he sends them so that we can reach him to invite his family over for lobster in Maine because I would love to hear more of his stories.

We went bowling at the Diamond Plaza Shopping Center on Sunday. The folks on the lane next to ours were from San Diego. The woman we spoke with had left Vietnam when she was five years old and this was her first time back. I wonder if our friend in Bali "resettled" her? As a parent it makes me wonder how you decide when it is time to leave everything you know and love and move to another country? Have conditions in your country declined slowly over time is their a defining moment? I don't suppose you can ever know unless you are forced into that situation.

On a lighter note it is quite tricky re-thinking currency. For example, In Vietnam $1 US dollar equals 17,440 Vietnamese Dong. In Bali we used the Indonesian Rupiah - $1 US dollar = 11,675 rupiah. Next week we will spend some time in Thailand where $1 US dollar = 34.95 Thai Bhat. Cheat sheets converting 25, 50, 75 and 100 are helpful but I should probably learn to do it in my head. Who knows, maybe by the end of April I will have learned to think in Vietnamese!