Phu My Hung

Who would have thoughts that two weeks could pass so fast, actually 2 weeks and 3 days. Tomorrow is the start of reality. The kids start school. I am sure that the next few weeks will be filled with many ups and downs, let's just hope there are more ups then downs. Except of course if you are Australian girls in school uniforms , who when they put there hands in the air there belly's are exposed. Thats what happens when you go to a school where the majority of the population are much smaller then you are, the uniforms are a bit squishy.

Life in Phu My Hung has become a little more predictable. We now can find our way around. Though today we found a super market that is cheaper and more convenient then any of the others so we are still discovering. We did learn that meat that looks really good and really cheap is likely not to be beef but rather buffalo and we are not going down that path. It looks like a we are on a diet of chicken and seafood - I just have to get the kids to eat seafood that doesn't come in a box.

We are not even so suprised with what is carried on the backs of motorbikes anymore - though the 6 people Zander saw is still winning the most people on a bike. Though I will add there were 4 children and 2 adults but that is where the similarities to my family end.

Seeing a fridge on the back of a bike is now common place.

Back to life in Phu My Hung. Phu My Hung is in District 7 on the outskirts of the HCMC it's a much quieter part of the city. There is more open spaces then in the city but there are still heaps of restaurants, including Pho 24 which we all love and is very cheap. A bowl of Pho costs about 35,000VND which is about $2AUD, there is not many places we can feed our whole family for $12.00 and Pho 24 is not the cheapest place to buy Pho.

We live in a villa, My Tu Canh, which provided us with much more room then any of the apartments that we looked at. Some of them where so small that I don't think we could have fitted in the lounge room at the same time. Some of them had the ugliest furniture, I know you can't judge a book by it's cover, or in this case a room by its gawdy lounge but I couldn't have lived with brown felt with flowers on it!

Anyway after a heap of apartments and villas we finally decided on this one, it's older then the others but roomy, it has a pool, and it has a 4th bedroom which Mikaela quickly grabbed as it was intended for the maid, Mikaela can now officially claim she is the 'Cinderella' of the family. The only thing that is missing is hot water in the kitchen and an oven but apparently we are now officially living like a local no one has either.