In case you were wondering, finding an apartment in our part of Southeast Asia is not so fun. We've wandered around the city (mostly on foot and each carrying a kid) and climbed hundreds of stairs thus far, in vain.
Here's how the system works (for us). We look around for apartment complexes that seem suitable and then find a real estate office near that apartment complex. We give them our criteria and they check the surrounding area for available apartments. We walk to the apartment usually crossing busy streets and climbing several flights of stairs. There's no online database that we can access and each real estate office has the only keys for apartments listed with them. We've seen a little bit of cooperation between real estate agencies but not like you'd expect in a city this size. We're learning a lot each day, about the system, the city, and ourselves. :)
We've looked at 9 apartments in 3 days as a family. And J went by himself one day and looked at about 7. This morning was our most successful but still not great. We found a wonderful apartment in a terrible neighborhood and a terrible apartment in a great neighborhood. Ah! Thankfully we have a great local friend helping us and when he's not available the local agents have been super gracious with our sub-par language skills. (I have a total mental block when it comes to the word for "square meter" but with a few hand motions, they've all caught on.)
Not gonna lie, this whole process has been a lot harder than we anticipated, made worse by the fact that apartments are 3 times as expensive here as they were in our city when we left. (I think this might be true of all living expenses. Today at lunch I ordered this yummy meat dish that always cost us $2 when we lived in Asia before. Today we got the bill and realized it was $6 for that one dish! (The total cost of a meal out for our entire family used to be about $8) We are definitely going to be looking into this more.)
Finally, committing to an apartment here means that we are truly leaving behind everything familiar for the fourth time in five years. I tear up just thinking about the goodbyes awaiting us in our old city, made worse by the fact that last time we were skyping with my parents, S asked if she could go to their house. Is there nowhere on this planet that is our own? Of course the answer is a resounding no. And that's ok. We are sojourners after all.
Thankfully, we do not sojourn alone. We are blessed with precious and dear friends.
And most importantly, the one who sent us is with us still.