I’m amazed that I have already reached 100 km on my odometer. It’s very easy to do 20km just on a couple of trips around the city in one day.

I had my first experience with a local cop this morning. I was going down the wrong way on a one-way street off of a roundabout (believe me, many people do this) when I got pulled over. Policemen here have a horrible reputation for corruption, but amazingly he didn’t ask me for a bribe or give me a ticket and just told me turn around and go back the right way. I was grateful.

That was the good news for the day. The bad news is that they started construction on the house directly behind me and it is likely to go on for the next month or month-and-a-half at least. So I have to put off with the noise as well as electricity being off for who knows how long.

Construction noise is inevitable in HCMC, but I am really feeling frustrated. I had to put up with a lot of construction noise at my last place and I moved less than a month ago only to have to suffer through it again. I am seriously considering looking for a new house. I like my new neighbourhood, but I would like to find a quieter alley if possible. Even before the construction started I was getting fed up by the blaring TV next door.

It was a fairly busy weekend socially. Kat was away at a retreat with her company, so I was on my own. On Sunday I went to two birthday parties- one a BBQ and another at a restaurant with excellent seafood. Around 2 AM we went and had snails, more because we were wide awake and it’s fun to ride the motorbike at that hour than because we were really hungry.

Later this week I might be making a decision as to what’s next as far as work goes.