Official Opening - The Happy Schoolhouse

We had a small party to celebrate the opening of our 3rd preschool in HCMC, The Happy Schoolhouse. Students from The Alpha Kindergarten joined us in the celebrations, giving the school a more lively and vibrant environment ... at least for the morning.

Another month has passed

Here's the view from our living room window - it's a fine evening indeed; one of the rare sunny evenings in this rainy season. And that's a concrete jungle out there if you can't picture what one is like.

We had dinner last Sunday at a very cozy Japanese restaurant, Geisha at 85 Pasteur St in Dist 1. The ground floor was a boutique. The restaurant occupied the 1st and 2nd floor. They had a set dinner special at 150,000vnd (S$9). For that, I had pork chops and potatoes (it was really good; one of the best pork chops I've had in a long time), desert - peach and mango torte (my kind) and iced green tea. Joyce had fish and a mixed of carrot and ginger juice, which definitely did not go down well with us. Desert was fried bananas with coconut cream (my kind again!), and hot green tea. Geisha's a very nice and cozy place for a meal or a drink to while the afternoon away. Books and free wifi available. The couches on the 2nd floor looked most inviting. And they have shisha there too - 120,000vnd (S$7).

This is where I buy my phone card top-ups.

A 100,000vnd (S$6) card goes for 95,000vnd here.

Once a month, there'll be a 3-day period where there's free 50% for every top-up (used to be 100% a few months back).

What you see below are prices for new SIM cards. Pay 25,000vnd and you get 65,000vnd for Mobi-phone. For Vina-phone, 33,000vnd gets you 117,000vnd worth of calls. So many Vietnamese have 2 phones - one permanent line for incoming calls (free) and one phone for new SIMs. This has led to the ridiculous situation of them discarding SIM cards (and the accompanying tel numbers) and buying new ones just to take advantage of the offers. There are an estimated 85 million people in Vietnam. If 1% buys new SIMs every week, can you imagine how many numbers would have been discarded every month?

School No 3 (The Happy Schoolhouse) is up and running - have finally completed most of the preparations. Updates are here and the website (temp) is here.