A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Yesterday I set out to find a place to live in "the ghetto", which is a block not too far from the city center with teeny tiny streets (big enough for motorbikes but not cars) filled with tall narrow houses. It's like someplace James Bond might motorcycle through to escape auto-bound pursuers, knocking over orange carts and shoe vendors along the way.

I headed for Thuy's grocery, a diminutive corner shop that sells a wide variety of merchandise. Thuy (pronounce "Twee", as far as I can tell, but don't hold me to it) appears to be quite the entrepreneur, with his sign advertising the store, fax services, room and house rentals, visa and passport arrangements, air ticket booking, hotel reservations, motorbike rentals, and wholesale frozen and canned food delivery. He wasn't there, so I called him and made arrangement to meet him this morning to look at rooms. As I was leaving I wandered through looking at houses sporting Room for Rent signs, and was greeted at the door of one of them by a very nice Vietnamese girl of indeterminate age (I can't tell how old anyone is here, but they very sweetly guess on the low side when estimating my age in conversation. Liars.). This girl, whose name I never quite mastered, took me to three houses, all of which had basically the same setup, same furniture, etc., owned by various members of her family. I looked at all of them and told her I would get back to her (or hand motions to that effect).

So this morning when I went to Thuy's, I ended up with another guy (not Thuy, very little English), who took me to see Hue, another gorgeous Vietnamese girl, who would show me some places. It took me a minute at the first stop before I realized that I had been in exactly the same house the day before. My attempt to explain this was in vain, so I ended up seeing all three again today. They must think I'm insane. I actually saw the girl who took me around yesterday at the second house and tried to explain to her too, but really I should have just given in at the outset. I was no match for these girls determined to show me every house, and clearly my Vietnamese is not up to the challenge, being basically limited to "please" and "thank you" at this point.

So basically I've been at this house hunt for two days and have seen 4 places, though 3 of them I saw twice. I think I'm just going to bow to the inevitable and take one of them for a month. I'll definitely be improving my Vietnamese by living there!

© 2002 Katy Warren

posted by Katy at 10:01 PM