Week 2: Establishing the routines
The second week of living in Mombasa has been pretty intense! The highlights? I moved to a new apartment, went grocery shopping, there was a fire in our office building (!!!) and the weirdest birthday celebration I ever had. But let’s get those one by one.
Last week I devoted some time to flat hunt which was entertaining 😁
The first huge difference from Bangkok is that the apartments are enormous here! Which is good. What is not so good is that most of the apartments are unfurnished (wasn’t an option for me) or furnished very poorly. Imagine if you moved all the furniture you wanted to discard from differently styled places in one flat and tried to make it work. Given there’s generally not too many options, finding a nice place might be not as easy as one would hope for.
Also, consider this: most of the pictures of the flats you see on the websites are crap. I mean it. It looks like someone was taking those pictures with their eyes shut. While running. They are blurred, they have a weird angle, sometimes it’s impossible to understand what exactly that is on the pic. So I braced myself for an interesting experience. I would also only consider the flats with an ocean view (well, I didn’t move to the coastal city not to be able to see the ocean!) which made the search even more difficult. When I saw pictures of a really beautifully furnished apartment, I told myself to not get my hopes too high: I was almost sure the pics were from some interior design magazine. You can imagine my surprise when we entered the flat and it looked exactly like on the pictures! I immediately liked it, especially the big island kitchen with a window (which faces amazingly beautiful sunsets!)
the balcony overlooking the blue of the ocean
and the jacuzzi ❤
We did agree to check out some other apartments, but I new at that time that my heart belongs here. And 2 days later I was unpacking my suitcases (after living 2.5 months out of a suitcase it was such a bless to finally unpack!)
So last weekend I spent making this place a home, arranging everything to my liking and going to the supermarket. I packed so many things into my trolley that I could barely manage to bring them home! I was very grateful to incredibly helpful supermarket workers and a taxi driver who helped with all those boxes and bags.
Another good thing about my new home is that it’s only 15 minutes walk from my work, and on the way back I’m enjoying the sunsets which are so gorgeous here.
A not so good thing? Well, there’s a lot of kids in this condo. I mean A LOT. And they are loud. They jump in the pool, they scream and shout… Well, but no place is ideal, as we all know. This is not such a big price to pay for all the benefits this place has to offer.
The work week also didn’t happen to be uneventful: I was on a call with a colleague on Monday morning, when the fire alarm started and my coworker told everyone to leave their things and leave. I hang up on my call, explaining there was a fire drill in our office and went outside (living all my stuff but the phone in, including my newly received passport and all my bank cards). When we all got out we very quickly figured it wasn’t a drill, it was the real fire! I’m not sure what is wrong with my karma, but apparently I’m attracting fires to my workplaces (there was a fire in the building where my Agoda office was in Bangkok not so long ago).
Thankfully, no one got injured, and in some time the fire was managed, but I made a mental note to myself that if the ambulance arrives at the same speed as the fire brigade, you’d rather not get sick here — the guys almost managed to put out the fire with the fire extinguishers and buckets of water by the time the fire brigade arrived.
It’s an interesting experience arriving to a new country where you almost don’t know anyone just a week before your birthday. Add the quarantine to the mix to make things even more bizarre. None of my colleagues (except of one friend) knew about my birthday to start with, and I didn’t want to make fuss out of it, so the day was pretty normal (but for all the calls and messages from my friends and family ❤). And in the evening me and my friend went to a Japanese restaurant. Officially, restaurants are still prohibited to sell alcohol here because of covid (and there’s a curfew after 9 pm), but most of the places neglect the rule, hence I didn’t have any concerns about it. Well, I should have, as that particular place was strict with following the rules. Even telling them it was my birthday didn’t help. So we were left just to dinner being the only guests in the restaurant accompanied by what we figured was “The best of Celine Dion” playlist. The dinner was great though. We enjoyed watching the chef cooking all our plates, explaining what it was and suggesting the pairing with different sauces (I’d rather he’d paired it with wine!)
Back at home, my besties organised a spontaneous Zoom celebration (thank you, technology!) which was a great way to finish off the day.
Those who know me well understand why this birthday was such a weird experience for me: normally I arrange big parties and invite a lot of people, but well, the circumstances are forcing us to get creative and what is important in the end of the day is to enjoy. And I did enjoy it!
So the first weeks in Mombasa are really intense, and since there’s so much to explore I hope not to slow down (minus the fires, please!)
And here’s some more sunsets (cause they are freaking awesome!)
