“I heard back about the overseas job — I got it!”
That was the first time the talk of moving to another country shifted from a distant possibility to a concrete reality. From the chilly, windswept streets of Melbourne to the so-humid-the-air-feels-dense warmth of Ho Chi Minh City. After plenty of planning, packing, and preparing for the big move, we touched down in Saigon just before Christmas.
After navigating the airport and being met by a driver, we were on our way to our new home — a residential apartment in an international hotel chain you’ve definitely heard of — through the most chaotic road traffic I’d ever seen in my life.
It might sound strange — the idea of ostensibly living in a hotel — but time is the only thing you need for something to become normal.
Once it had been confirmed that we were leaving Collingwood, there were a few different accommodation options we were given. While price was certainly a factor, the one non-negotiable was — for various reasons — to rent from a company, rather than an individual. This narrowed down the options by about 90%, effectively leaving us with the choice of gated community-style living in a compound, or a hotel.
Location ended up being the deciding factor in where we elected to stay. After all, convenience is key — especially when you’re moving to a new country.
Our airport driver pulled into the semi-circular drive of the tower we were about to call home, an elegantly presented man in a uniform helped us with our bags, and we thanked the driver. They opened from the inside, with identically uniformed men welcoming us with a smile and downward nod as they pulled their respective door handles.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but I assumed the process for moving into a hotel in a semi-permanent capacity might be different if you were checking in for a night. It wasn’t. We pulled up to the front desk, presented our passports, received our keys and were taken up the elevator to our apartment, where our bags were already waiting for us.
It was fully furnished in the kind of neutral, inoffensive-to-the-point-of-forgettable decor that hotels have transformed into an art form. The cupboards and drawers were filled with exactly six of everything — plates, bowls, glasses, the works — and we were handed papers that itemised everything in the apartment. We checked it, signed it off and were left alone, with the hotel management happy we’d agreed to be billed for anything we broke.
The days and weeks that followed were an adjustment period, to say the least. Without friends at that point, and my wife being at the office while I worked Australian hours from home, I found myself exploring the facilities on offer. The pool was never empty, either occupied by the children of holidaymakers or elderly women swimming lengths of breaststroke without goggles. Despite the truly oppressive heat outside, the saunas and steam rooms were filled with Korean and Japanese businessmen, while the gym was frequented by a few fellow residents and mostly by Europeans and Australians hunting a holiday pump.
For several months, most of my interactions — apart from with my wife in person and my colleagues online — were uncomfortably asymmetric. From the hotel staff and waiters to taxi drivers and shopkeepers, there was a through-line of keen service that was about as far from the bitter disdain Fitzroy baristas offered as you could get. It’s a strange thing to complain about, I agree, but it’s equally strange to miss opening your own taxi doors.
The other strange thing about living in a hotel is that as much as it might be your house, calling it a home is a stretch. Negotiations need to happen to hang art on the walls, staff doing smoke detector maintenance can surprise you in your living room if you don’t hear the doorbell, and most of the objects in the apartment don’t belong to you. It doesn’t feel permanent, but at the same time, it isn’t meant to.
Having lived in Ethiopia as a child, I was fully aware that life in Australia wasn’t exactly difficult. But despite the early and ongoing moments of teething, living in a hotel has elevated day-to-day convenience to a level I wasn’t aware existed. The beds are made, the towels are replaced, and if you feel like an omelette for breakfast, you need only roll over in bed, pick up the phone, press four buttons, and ask nicely.
There’s a dry cleaning service that will not only deliver your clothes back into your wardrobe, but will return each garment to its respective place in the wardrobe (I honestly couldn’t believe it the first time it happened). When your friends arrive for a dinner party, you’ll receive a courtesy call 30 seconds before the doorbell rings to let you know they’re in the elevator. And if your air conditioner breaks or there’s an issue with the toilet, a maintenance man will come to solve your problem. It’s all very, very nice.
If I’m honest — and I think anyone living in similar circumstances would agree — it’s the kind of arrangement you could easily enjoy for the rest of your days. However, as their name suggests, fixed-term contracts don’t last forever, and soon enough, we’ll be heading back to Australia where true normality must resume.
However, there’s a tightrope to walk with the time we’ve got left. On one hand, you want to enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime experience that this is as much as you can. But on the other (and this is true for all “regular” people experiencing luxury), it’s self-preserving to resist “getting used to it” as you hope to reduce the height of the psychological fall, when you do inevitably return to earth.
Soon enough, the same airport driver will return and my wife and I will dive headfirst into the traffic I’ve come to love. But in the meantime, we’ll do our best to remember every moment we spent living in a hotel.
