Tempus Fugit and all that jazz... Our time in District 2 of Saigon has flown by since we hopped across town from D4 on 13 Dec 18. It’s been fabulous being in Saigon for 5 weeks altogether as it’s been a perfect opportunity for jewellery - specifically, getting my jewellery wardrobe sorted out (as you do). Several rings needed resizing, alternately up or down (the garnet ring from a flea market in Georgia needed to drop something like 10 sizes!) I had a pair of stud earrings that I never wore because they never quite ‘worked’ so we had them converted to drop earrings (now worn a couple of times each week), and a massive smokey quartz ring set in a hand made silver setting bought at a flea market in Tasmania for $25. Due to the setting it had never been cleaned properly and then one arm of the setting broke and the stone fell out - so I couldn’t wear it at all... the gent who arranged some of the repairs weighed the stone and on carat weight alone it was worth US$280 - so a nice stone - but no good sitting broken in my jewel bag. And then there was the Brazilian rutiliated quartz for €5 from a flea market in Paris. The silver band was worn so thin, it snapped... yet another weighty piece in the ‘Repairs’ pocket. We have a slogan for our travels (one of many) and it goes something like this... “In Australia, we get ripped off on ______ (fill in anything you like)”. The resizing jobs alone would have been close to A$400. The repairs on the two quartz rings would have been economically unviable. All up, for 4 resizings - 2 gold 2 silver plus one major resize/remake in silver, plus remaking the rutiliated band and mending the mount on the smokey quartz, converting the earrings, and everything cleaned to within an inch of their lives... less than A$150. The perfect Christmas present - all individually wrapped and under the tree for me on Christmas morning along with a new clutch bag. James had a new watch waiting for him and a new leather band fitted to his current watch. Lovely to have everything up to spec again as we try not to lug about unwearable things. As to not buying any new jewellery... well there’s Thailand, Jaipur, India and Colombo, Sri Lanka on the agenda in 2019.

Apart from doing impressions of Golem from Lord of the Rings (‘Precious.......’) we’ve been occupied checking out the private health care available in Saigon. We visited the Head of the Dermatology department at the FV Clinic to have James’s stitches out - what an experience. Many staff, many rooms, a well oiled machine actually and after 40 minutes with the doctor we left with a prescription for dressings and so forth... next stop the front desk and the pharmacist and we left with the baggie of dressings and a receipt for... wait for it... A$100. We actually don’t know how they do it for the money.

On the subject of money, one of the things we love about Vietnam is the lack of coins. We’d be more than happy if Europe and Australia would both go to polymer notes for the 1 and 2 denominations. Much less weight involved. Some notes do end up piling up in the wallet unless you religiously offload them - primarily the 1000 dong note which is worth about 6 cents. However 15 of them will buy a freshly made banana juice... so easy enough to spend. The most important thing is keeping the blue 500,000 Dong note on one side of the wallet and the blue 5000 Dong note on the other side. The 200,000 and the 10,000 are also similar orangey shades - not the best things to mix up. You might think with the bandying about of such large numbers that Australians would be in clover here in Vietnam. Yes to a large extent, however it is almost embaraasing to admit that in the month we’ve been here, the A$ has dropped against the Dong, of all things (and the NZ$ too). In fact, when we arrived, 3 million dong could be had for A$173... as of the end of December, that’s now A$187. Banana shakes are getting more expensive every day. Honestly... don’t mind us... we’ll be fine.

We’re battling on despite the daily reduction in our spending power and one day we fancied walnut brownies from the Voelker German bakery in Thao Dien - the main shopping street in D2 - out of the expat enclave where out tower sits and in the real world. It was so hot and humid and there was so much traffic on the roads and footpaths that we gave in and whistled up a Grab to take us around the corner. Literally. 700 metres. We walked it once and were so frazzled and miserable we swore ‘never again’. For the sake of 80 cents each way in air conditioned motorised comfort - best money we ever spent. It was obviously a bit unfortunate on one such outing when they’d run out of brownies. Sigh... so we ordered 8 and had them delivered for free to the apartment door the next day. At 34,000 or A$2 each - quite a luxury item in these parts and kept us going over a week. We have also become accustomed to having car doors opened for us whenever we reach our building - we can certainly see that after living in Asia for a while, returning to the real world could be an insurmountable challenge.

Whilst tootling around the corner once a week is entertaining, we have also been religiously visiting the big smoke (District 1) of Saigon twice a week on Monday and Fridays to let our housekeeper do the apartment without us underfoot. Despite being in District 2 (expat-ville) it’s incredibly easy to take a Grab into the city - about 6 kms and $6 return. Pictured is one of our favourite sights on Nguyen Hue Street - (Walking Street, Saigon) - such a juxtaposition of buildings. Christmas Eve fell on a Monday and we enjoyed an inexpensive lunch in town and bought a new bunch of lilies at Ben Thanh market before stepping outdoors and realise big fat drops of water were starting to fall from a very threatening sky. Almost immediately all the taxis dissolved in the rain and the first Grab we ordered cancelled when the city traffic came to near-standstill. It turns out, even in the dry season, that a good Asian downpour can actually go through an umbrella. Fortunately the second car did turn up and we sat in the back soaked through for the ride home through the torrents. Umbrella will never be the same again however.

Christmas day could not have been more different from last year (stone villa in the Italian countryside). We took a car all the way around the corner and found all the shops open and happily serving the ex-pat community. The gourmet supermarket looked like a session of the United Nations with a good sampling of races and nationalities from all over the world. James was particularly pleased with the extra present from there - a whole roast chicken.

What’s coming up? We leave Saigon on 2 Jan and are heading off on an adventure (well, more of an adventure than usual). Due to our 2 month sit being cancelled just 5 weeks prior to arriving in Vietnam, we picked up this 3 week sit in District 2 but now have all of January free. We’re taking the opportunity to visit Vietnam properly and catching the Reunification Express train up to Hoi An, Hue and Hanoi - then flying back south to Can Tho for a couple of nights before heading to Phu Quoc island for Tet (Lunar New Year). Asia comes to a standstill that week making travel close to impossible (a bit like from Gatwick airport recently). After Tet, on 11 February, we are embarking on our bucket list trip of south east Asia - Angkor Wat (Cambodia), Luang Prabang (Laos), down the river to Chiang Mai, (Thailand). From there to Mandalay (Burma/Myanmar) and down the Irrawaddy river to Bagan for hot air ballooning over 2000+ golden stupas/temples. An overnight train will take us to Rangoon/Yangon where we were due to finish the trip on 1 March. Now with the recent melanoma scare, we’re keeping ourselves busy until the end of March with the onward travel to India and Sri Lanka. Airmiles will take us from Myanmar to Delhi, India arriving early on 4 March (stupid o’clock at 2.30 am) then later that day we’ll take the train south to Rajasthan and spend 6 nights near Ranthambore National Park to go tiger spotting, then the Golden Temple Mail Train sleeper north to Amritsar on the 11th - to finally meet our tour group. We don’t often take organised tours (only 3 times so far - East Africa/Egypt/Jordan) but India is a country where we think a tour and good hotels are warranted. Finishing in Delhi on 23 March we flit down to Colombo to tour of Sri Lanka for 8 days.

Well that’s the end of the year/New Year - what comes next update. Unfortunately, the time has come, the walrus said, to pack for our imminent departure to Hoi An (all together now.... Yay! Packing! - All aboard the Reunification Express!