Cost of living in Hội An
Rent, food, transport and activities — a real family budget for worldschoolers, in VND and GBP
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The journal
every page so far · 20 entries · 15 months on the road
2026 so far
13 entries
The Rat House
Six bedrooms, a pool, a view over the river — and a second rental in Hội An that came with company we didn't invite
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Tết II: Tết
A deep breath before plunging into a new year — kumquats, red envelopes and hammer-and-sickle bunting
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Tết I: E's recollections
"Yeah… I mean, they don't bother me…" — the eldest, on Tet and the accompanying fireworks
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The living tractors
Water buffalo in shallow paddy water, content and untroubled
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The fruit man and the rice festival
Hội An local life, through the steady rhythms of the Fruit Man and a well-celebrated festival
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Beat poems & lucky wedding days
Google Translate as an accidental poet — and the strange beauty of mistranslations
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Vietnam rain
Experiencing tropical storms in Hội An — the sound, the smell, the slow drift of a city under sheets of water
read on →2025 the long start
18 entries
Ghost buildings in Hội An
Tourism, Western influx, and what happens when the things that make a place itself are diluted by their own success
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What Christmas looks like abroad
Life in Vietnam at Christmas — fairy lights in the palm trees, a tree on a scooter, a different sort of winter
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A walk to the light
A quiet moment of reflection on a night out - or something less reliable?
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World-schooling in Vietnam
How we educate our boys through travel — the days, the books, and the questions that don't have textbook answers
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Dog meat & other differences
Cultural observations from the other side of a familiar plate — held with curiosity, not judgement. And some judgement
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Da Nang airport, corruption, flooding
Arrival in Vietnam, the long way round — bureaucracy, weather, and the patience of a family with four passports
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Bangkok limbo: the wind of the sea
A waiting-room essay — visa stress, sticky heat, and the strange luxury of having nowhere immediate to be
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The long train, monk smack
Chiang Mai to Bangkok by sleeper — a meditation on the rails, a surprisingly violent monk, and the slowest sort of arrival
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A good use of life
How our usual lives shrank and shrank until everything we owned could fit into a single room — and why we hit 'buy now' anyway
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A note on mountains
Looking due west from a fifth-floor window in Chiang Mai — on the strange, almost physical jolt of encountering mountains for the first time
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Home educating & blackjack training
On the school question, the square-peg-round-hole problem, and why teaching your children to count cards is sound educational practice
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Expat home-schooling & culture shocks
A world-school meet-up, a proud Israeli, a casually racist Australian, and why Thai street food is the only acceptable response to all of the above
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A short letter every other Saturday with the latest entry, a photograph, and a daft thing one of the boys said this week.
FGE'VIET NAM'
POSTAGE PAID
POSTAGE PAID
HOI AN
· 18 · 05 · 26 ·
VIETNAM
· 18 · 05 · 26 ·
VIETNAM
To: a friend
of the road
somewhere warm
the world ✻