Living Local

Making discoveries is what makes life and living fun!  We can all get a bit bogged down in the daily grind, regardless of geography, so one of the things we often do as ex-pats in a new and unfamiliar place is follow advice or our own noses just to see where we end up.

Sometimes, we end up down the end of a street where things look dodgy and we high-tail it back out-a-there, quick smart....

Other times we find an oasis of sorts - a garden in the midst of the grime and grunge of inner-city living. Thanks to our friends at 'Tiny Hearts of Hope' we discovered this lovely place yesterday.

 These hanging art-works were a feature at 'TET' - Vietnamese new year too.

 Finding hanging gourds made us laugh in memory of our accidental garden tour in the 'Silver Hair' 'Noble County' community area in Suwon....

 This garden had numerous statues and sculptures to appreciate...

And, in the background a small pond filled with greedy coi carp that fought each other to grab food that was thrown by visitors....

Lately we have been blessed with visitors from home, which turned us into tourists and tour guides at different times. Some of our exploits have already been shared on FB, but the inaugural arrival of my new 'toy' has yet to be documented. I felt it deserved more than a cursory FB status update, so here it is - evidence of the successful purchase of an environmentally friendly electric motorbike!

Funny thing was....that it doesn't particularly do so well with 2 bodies on board, and apparently electric motorbikes don't really like water. Who'd-a thought it?!!  Our friends, the Stentons were here when I took ownership of this wonderful new toy - called a Yamazuki. So, the introduction into the family involved Sue jumping on the back and us heading off to the Song Saigon - the Saigon river - to gaze at the view, and then head back to the apartment. The initial effort of getting up and out of the underground car-park should have been enough of a warning sign - we couldn't make it up the steep grade out of the basement without Sue having to get off, but, I was determined to take our friends on a scooter tour, so persistence and perseverance won over common sense.

Unfortunately, there was flooding - quite odd, as it hadn't been raining - and the bike started to react quite badly to this unwelcome component - moisture. Yikes. With the water and mud came a strange and unwelcome surging motion - next, the battery indicator started to dip rapidly towards the 'E' for empty - yikes again!  This then led us to step fully into the Vietnamese way of dealing with motorbike problems. Yep, 3 up on the petrol bike, with me going ahead and getting an occasional push via Mike's foot.

We limped along the back road until we came to a restaurant we had eaten at once before. We asked if I could plug my bike in while we had a drink, and got it charged up enough to limp home. Not a great start, but the optimistic Mike suggested that the battery would react well to being completely drained and then fully re-charged. Yay for optimism!! Sure enough, all my jaunts ever since have been free from drama - well, except for congested traffic drama, which is a whole other story.

Owning the Yamazuki means a bit of independence, I can ride around freely, as I don't need a licence or to be registered, and - don't use any petrol. All good as far as I can see! The one thing that is a little strange is that it is relatively silent - so I sometimes have to use the horn to let people know I'm there. We will keep the 'regular' bike though, as I am not confident that mine has enough grunt to get up and over the bridge!

Living local - and loving the discoveries that brings.