Imagine my surprise when, on the way to dinner one night, we came across a Vietnamese guy dancing his best MJ to “Billie Jean”. This was made even more impressive because of the fact that he was busting it out in the middle of a busy street.  I have trouble crossing this street at the best of times, but the traffic doesn’t seem to faze him.  Check it out:

After hitting the pavement for a day, I found a job!  I immediately hit it off with the girl interviewing me and I thought I was all set. There have been a few little problems though….

1) Remember how awesome it was that we found cell phone for $16?  I now understand, you sometimes get what you pay for.  My new boss has called me six times and every time I have to hang up and run back to the guest house because my cell phone is good for nothing except text messages.

2) The place I’m working doesn’t have the best reputation in town.  I’m beginning to understand why.  After receiving my schedule which included a solid ten hours of class next week, I get another phone call 10 minutes later explaining that all my classes have been cancelled.

So technically speaking I’m employed.  But I’m not working any hours this week, nor am I working any next week, so we’ll see how this all ends up.  I may just have to hit the pavement and see if I can find something a little more…. reliable.  I need a lucky penny for a day or something.  Or a lucky 1,000 dong bill.  Whatever works.

For the next three months, I’ll be working part-time at a French day-care center. From 7.30am until 1.00pm. Yeeeehaaaa!

J’AI TROUVE DU TRAVAIL!!!
Au cours des trois prochains mois, je travaillerai à mi-temps dans une crèche-maternelle. De 7h30 à 13h. Wouhouh!

Trying to imagine how the next three months at the day-care center will be like.

I’ve been listening to Kris talk about the awesomeness of Angkor Wat for the past month and how it is one of the most amazing things she has ever seen.  Ben is heading to Cambodia tomorrow and I was immediately jealous, I would love to go but I don’t have a job yet and I should be cautious with my spending.  But as Kris reminded me, Jet Set Zero is about taking the first step, stop making excuses and just book your ticket and go.  So it’s done.  I’ve made another one of those impulsive decisions and threw down $16 for my bus ticket to Siem Reap.

Life is good.

See you in a week.

There’s always something happening in 23/9 park, which is located a couple blocks away from where we are staying.  I’ve already posted video about Hai the Vietnamese busker and our friend Sven the fire-spinner, but on any given night of the week you are guaranteed to see some badminton playing, hacky sackying, or simply people just hanging out in the park.  We discovered that in addition to all that, there are free nightly aerobics classes at 6pm.  A combination of feeling chubby and the fact that I’m up for just about anything brought me to the park one evening, super excited to see how it would all go down.  Laurene and I strapped on our runners and I donned my black Adidas workout clothes that until this point had laid unused in my backpack.

(more…)

When you come home from traveling, usually you just want to leave again. And so it is. For the next few months, we’ll be working hard behind the scenes to make this site better (and you will continue to see clandestine updates to my personal blog), but in the meantime, you can’t blame a man for fantasizing about the possibilities of the future. Some may ask, hasn’t he had enough of this? If you do, you clearly haven’t been watching our episodes or reading the blog. My life is rich. So without further ado, Here are my four 3-country circuit options, broken out by geographic region.

A brief ado: My ratings and scales are entirely subjective based on hunches and basic research on a scale of 1,600 in honor of the Brian Lio International Satisfaction Scale (or BLISS). Feasibility reflects employment and cost of living. Life-Enrichment is the degree to which doing this makes me a better person.

Option #1: Eastern Europe – (after a brief stopover in Istanbul..) Odessa, Ukraine; Riga, Latvia; and St. Petersburg, Russia.

Total transit cost: $900 (all planes – not kidding)
Feasibility rating (out of 1600): 1200
Fun points (also out of 1600): 1400
Life-Enrichment Rating: 500

Option #2: Middle East – Beirut, Lebanon; Jerusalem, Israel; and Cairo, Egypt

Total transit cost: $720 (wow, even cheaper – after Beirut, all taxis)
Feasibility: 800
Fun points: 900
LER: 1600

Option #3: Subcontinent – Yangon, Burma; Kathmandu, Nepal; and Goa, India

Total transit cost: $2,200 (that looks more reasonable – all planes)
Feasibility: 400 (*volunteering in Kathmandu)
Fun points: 1000
LER: 1400

Option #4: South America – Calí, Colombia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Buenos Aires, Argentina

Total transit cost: $1700 (all planes)
Feasibility: 1100
Fun points: 1500
LER: 900

While walking around our neighborhood, I stumbled upon an old street vendor peeling off durian fruits (Sau Rieng) for sale. It might sound ridiculous, but I was quite fascinated by the amount of edible flesh under the shell…

En me promenant dans notre quartier, je suis tombée sur une vieille femme épluchant ces gros fruits que sont les durians (Sau Rieng), pour quelques clients affairés. Cela vous paraîtra sans doute ridicule, mais j’étais comme fascinée par la quantité de chair comestible cachée sous la coque du gros fruit…

I’ll have to admit, knowing that I have a job has taken a lot of pressure of the whole financial situation.  However, in true Kris form, I neglected to ask when I get paid so things could get a bit tight before that first cheque comes in.  But I’m spending under $20/day including accommodation, transportation, food, etc., which was my goal, and there’s a lot of room to save in there if need be.

For my second week (Nov 11-17), I spent an average of $19.69 per day (2.454 million dong).  Here’s a general breakdown:

lunch/dinner at restaurants: $36.91 for the week, average of $5.27/day

water/snacks/beer/groceries for breakfast: $27.81 for the week, average of $3.97/day (to be honest, the majority of this is beer)

taxis: $5.06 for the week, average of $0.72/day (this was 3 separate rides!)

sightseeing: $0.84 (War Remnants Museum)

tailors: $17.98 for two custom made shirts

hotel accommodation: $42.41 for the week, or $6.06/night

unaccounted for: $6.80 (give me a break, I’m not an accountant, all right?)

Considerations:  3 days a week, I will be teaching at a school quite far north from where we are.  It’s around $2.25 roundtrip for a taxi, which works out to close to $30/month, or I could rent a motorcycle for around $50/month.  I’m currently having a dilemma about which route to take.  For just a bit more every month I could have my own vehicle which would be awesome, but you are taking your life into your hands every time you enter traffic here and I’m not sure I’m a skilled enough motorcyclist to pull it off. We’ll see.

.

So, for my second week, I spent $137.87.  My balance from the end of week one was $354.24, so that leaves me $216.37. Hopefully I get paid soon and the balance starts going up!

So unlike the other girls, I’m not good at tracking my spending.

Nearly 3 weeks in I’ve spent a total of $240.  I have no idea what the breakdown of my spending is, life is too short to be anal retentive about every penny.  All I know is that I have a place to live, food to eat and I’m happy as fuck.

(Version française plus bas)

It’s hard to find a French teaching job in Ho Chi Minh City. I know English is THE popular language at the moment. But I really thought that there would be more opportunities for French-speaking people. Viet Nam was a French colony for a hundred years, for crying out loud! Despite that, the young generations have totally given up on the French language. So far, I have only met one 30-year old man who is fluent in French, and two other people who know a few words.

View of Ho Chi Minh City area from a plane.

(more…)