So the first thing you forget or perhaps underestimate is how used to having a car we all are. Yes there is a sort of romanticism around this ideal, much the same as not having a mobile phone, but I tell you what, you try buying everything you need so you can move into your new house, in a different country, whilst living only 10 minutes away in 1 day, without a car. It should be a lot easier than it actually is, it’s fucking intense! I think I had 3 round trips on foot between the serviced apartment and the house. Then a taxi to and from a bigger super market, then a taxi to and from the Vietnamese Ikea (yep even here as apparently NOONE ELSE SELLS CURTAINS – REMEMBER THE CURTAINS THAT I HAVE NONE OF)  then a taxi to the house, and I was just going to abandon it all but I couldn’t do it. Brief stop for some Thai ‘fast food’….

So at 3am when the 2 pairs of curtains I had managed to buy were up, the bedding was on my bed, there were a couple of bits in the fridge and I had got out some essentials ready for day 1, I put the giant backpack back on and walked down the rainy tree lined street and across the bridge rewarding myself with a kit kat ice cream, to get a couple of hours shut eye before I walked back to the house to be collected by the bus for my first day at work in this new world of mine….