Cash Economy

We are almost out of money until Andrew gets paid in a few days.

Things here cost more than we expected. Andrew received an advance on his first paycheck, which was delivered to us in Vietnamese dong at the airport. And, of course, we brought some money with us to tide us over. But, we didn't bring enough. I'm trying to think back on how we calculated, but the fact remains that we just didn't bring enough.

Our apartment required two months rent as deposit, and then we needed to pay two months rent up front. That took the bulk - $3600.00. We certainly didn't understand that before we came. Andrew and I had a good laugh when we discovered that we had both misunderstood, but in different ways. I thought we paid two months rent up front - one month as deposit, one month as rent ($1800 for this apartment, by my calculations). Andrew thought we paid two months rent as deposit, and then paid our first month's rent (for a total of $2700). In the future, we will pay three month's rent at one time, requiring careful budgeting. And all of this is paid in cash.

As always, there are ironies. The school was willing to pay for the hotel (including breakfast, refrigerator bar, laundry, running water) for up to 10 days. We were there 5. We wanted to move in to our apartment as quick as possible so we could start to settle. Then the water went off and we were out more cash than we planned for. Cards are not accepted readily here as they are in the States. We could use our debit card to access our cash back home, but only the really fancy places accept them. Of course, we don't want to go to the fancy store and pay $10 for something we know we can get from the local market for $1..... once we have cash.

  So we can't clean and we can't shop. We can walk only as far as we can entice our 7-year old, generally requiring a paid treat somewhere in the outing. We don't have enough quite yet to buy our bikes, although we would save a lot of taxi fare if we had them. We have found electronics here to be exceptionally expensive compared to US prices, so we can buy a lot of cafe sua da's from Ms. Mai's shop around the corner before it will become cost effective to purchase a coffee maker.

And, of course, all the stuff we "need", we have in a box at home. Now, why didn't we ship our stuff? Oh yes, Andrew has to be here and working for 3-4 months before he can get his work permit. And you can't receive a shipment in Vietnam unless you have a work permit!

We profess to a "green" lifestyle, but here we are buying coffee every day in bad plastic cups, with plastic lids, plastic straws and plastic carry bags included and re-purchasing almost everything that we left in a box or gave away back home.

And we know that this is how most people here are doing it. We joined a google group of neighbors in this area. 95% of the posts are from people trying to sell their stuff because they are leaving Vietnam. We went to one "garage sale" and picked up a few things. We don't want to do that too much though because we can get reimbursed by Andrew's school up to a certain amount for Settling In expenses. Requiring a receipt. Requiring you to buy things from a place that can give receipts. Requiring you to do most of your shopping in a store, away from the open markets where things are the least expensive and your dollar goes directly to the person selling to you.

In our good moments, it's all very strange and laughable.