Earlier this week, I found on my desk at work two slips of paper, both entirely in Vietnamese, that looked suspiciously like they might be post office notices. I checked with the Vietnamese admin woman in our office, and sure enough, that's what they were. It also had an address, a street somewhere in District 7 that I'd never heard of. She drew a map for me, and I also asked a fellow teacher, who gave me some directions.

After work that day, I headed out to try and find it, since the post offices here close at 8pm and thought it would be nice to just get it over with. I failed. I ended up driving up, down, and around all these interesting little roads in District 7, while doing my eyes no favours with all the dust getting caught in my contacts.

The next day, I headed out before work, armed with an actual Ho Chi Minh City map that had the correct road on it. It was further out than I'd expected, but I eventually found the road. Then I proceeded to drive all the way up and down that road, trying desperately not to be hit by the huge trucks zooming past in both directions, as I looked for the correct street number, which was 81/1C. I found number 81, which was an electrical appliances shop, with absolutely no evidence of post office-type activities anywhere to me found.

I did eventually find a post office, way, way off from this location. So I went in and asked them. The friendly security guard told me that what I wanted was the other post office on this road, which was about 2km further down the road. But it was already time for me to head off to work, so I had to give up yet again.

Finally, today, I zoomed off again. I found the post office in question. It did have the number 81/1C, even though none of the other buildings on this stretch of the road had street numbers even remotely similar to this one. I went in and my two packages were there. They even fit nicely under the seat of my bike.

Now it's like my birthday all over again. From my sister, I received the Life on Mars DVD sets (for both series 1 & 2), and from krylyr, I got a couple of DVDs that I'd left at his place, and I finally got my contributor copies of the Renard's Menagerie issue with my story in it. It's the first time I've seen a story of mine in print, which is pretty sweet :)