So, we had $1036 all together, but Rob, Dan, and I finally got our payment for September teaching…all $601 of it. Our teaching schedules hadn’t yet matured, so while this could help stave off poverty for a bit, it’s certainly not a sustainable income and it doesn’t offer much comfort as we careen our way through October, anxiously awaiting Dan’s coming paycheck and our end-of-the-month paycheck.

Expenses:

$430: New housing in our new neighborhood, away from the frenetic Pham Ngu Lao area. Excellent! Unfortunately, this did require 2-weeks rent up front, though, so not being homeless took about 70% of our paychecks.

$100: 2 slick new bikes joined Bonus Hog, each at $50/month. They’re light, fast, and sexy, and they don’t plague us with engine problems or sear us with their blazing hot tailpipes. Rob’s in love with Bonus Hog, so the other bikes are shared by Brian, Dan, and I. One curious note about these bikes – the rental “company” (I think just a family that owns a bunch of motorbikes) required only our driver’s licenses as collateral…not an effective security measure, in my humble opinion…

Younger, sexier, sleeker than Bonus Hog

$25: Transit costs are going down, but some of us still take Xe-Oms to those classes requiring a brutal 1-hour battle through rush-hour traffic. We’ll brave those when we have more experience on the bikes.

$110: Our food budget plummeted, partly because we left the foreigner area, partly because new stable wifi doesn’t drive us to internet cafes, partly because I yell at everyone for spending too much.

$70: Cheap cell phones for Rob and I, plus sim cards for all four of us. Brian and Dan brought their own phones, so they didn’t need to wade through all the options to find that budget Nokia cell phone for $30. Man have I missed that classic cell phone game Snake…

I could knock a driver off a motorbike with this...

$40: Miscellaneous items, including a bunch of software from the totally legit software store. Using a totally legit commercial service called Bittorrent, they download totally legit software, burn it to CD’s, package it up nicely, and cell it for anywhere between $1.50 and $10. Dan got MacOSX Leopard, Brian got Bioshock, and we all high-fived for supporting the local pirate economy. Note: Jet Set Zero endorses totally legit software and supporting local economies.

So…$862. DAMMIT! Dan should get paid next week, but Brian, Rob, and I will huddle down for the long October winter until we get paid again…

Our housing search continues.  We have to stay together, so our choices are either a guest house with 5 cheap rooms or a large house.  But, we find ourselves caught between 3 unfortunate realities.  First, it’s almost impossible to find a guesthouse with 5 available rooms.  In fact, we’ve found only 1, and the rooms that were available 3 weeks ago have all been taken.  Second, we haven’t found any houses willing to lease for 3 months (2 months, at this point).  Third, the effort it would take to scour the city in search of other options is simply beyond us.  We’re weary from teaching, exploring Ho Chi Minh City, running Jet Set Zero, filming, etc.

We want to get outside the backpacker district (Pham Nhu Lao), which is overflowing with tourists and backpackers, hawkers and high prices, and – if the night-time street vendors are to be trusted – almost every drug imaginable.  It’s a neighborhood very much oriented toward travelers, and we’ve been told that if we want to immerse ourselves in Ho Chi Minh City, we should move out of the area.  The search has so far remained fruitless.

However, we do enjoy where we’re currently staying – Xuan Spring Hotel.

It’s a cozy comfortable little place nestled in a bustling alleyway.  Sure it has the occasional gecko dashing about, and an air conditioner that sometimes decides it’s time to take a nap, and an 11pm curfew that means we have to wake up the owners to be let in after a late night, and 4 flights of stairs for Brian and me.  Nonetheless, it’s run by the nicest cadre of people we’ve encountered in Vietnam: 1 patient grandmother who always smiles in greeting and chuckles quietly when we try to speak Vietnamese, 1 adult gentlemen who speaks English quite well and never fails to help, and 2 young sisters who always make fun of me when I mispronounce “Cam On” or “thank you” – which, by the way, is almost all the time.

They’ve made this place quite a welcoming place to live in the short term, and I’d definitely recommend the hotel to anyone traveling here.

I think I’ve supplied a good deal of laughs for this family: mispronouncing the most basic word in “tourist Vietnamese,” forgetting my room key downstairs when I trudge up 4 flights of stairs to my locked room, and even locking the key inside the room (only twice in 4 weeks…that’s pretty damned good).

So while we’re scrambling around trying to find something permanent, almost 4 weeks have flown by in the Spring Hotel without any cause for complaint.

- Matt

Our current home in Vietnam is in District I, and as massive as it is, even the small area around our hotel is filled with a non-stop slide show of amazing, stunning, and often confusing sites.  I have tried to pull together a few shots to provide a bit more insight into where we live and what daily life is like here.

NIGHT

As many times as we have tried to convey what it is like to cross the street in the city, this picture might do the best job.  The motorbikes never stop, it’s a stream that you wade through.  One slow careful step at a time.

Sunday was the Mid-Autumn or Moon festival, known as “children’s day”. The general idea is that due to long working days this time is set aside to show family affection towards children. Since the poor families work the hardest, people often give lanterns and moon cake to the families unable to afford presents and the city’s orphans. In this picture a couple of charity workers hand out lanterns to children near a busy intersection.

DAY

Walking this street was amazing.  It appears to be a kind of drive through a supermarket.  As you pull up you yell out an order to one of the seemingly identical vendors who line the sidewalk and they run out to your bike and load it up with bags of limes, spring onions, and host of other vegetables and fruits I have never seen before.  There was a similar street that had small food vendors next to it that seemed to run on the same concept.

This is our current restaurant of choice.  There’s a great local crowd.  They have Saigon Green – our favorite local beer – by the bottle for 9,000 Dong ($.54). And a great view of the traffic below.

You can see the whole set of pictures on a map here (you might have to zoom out a few times).  Hopefully this offers at least a glimpse into what our life is like here.

Vietnam has been a whirlwind.  Vietnam has been insane.  From the traffic, to the smog – from the food to the people.  New and totally overwhelming.

We arrived Friday to our new home, a landscape unfamiliar even from the sky.

We quickly settled into our hotel.  A place far more secure, clean, and comfortable then we dared dream for 7.50$ USD / Night / Person.

Since then we’ve been looking for jobs, eating all the noodles we can hold, learning the differences between all of Saigon’s local beers, and doing our best to get a permanent place to live, make some friends, and get through the daily street crossings.

Oh, and we’re filming at a fast and furious pace.  We promise the video is coming soon and will be worth the wait.