Streets where I have lived: Danang VN circa 2007-08
PHAN HUY ICH STREET on the wrong side of town but to foreign eyes, things look pretty good when you’re paying $250 USD for a 3-storey house!
What could go wrong here? Well actually PLENTY PLENTY but a lot is daytime and weather dependent so you are NOT going to find out until your lease is signed and your deposit is long spent by your landlords….
OH WELL.
Near home, we were 5 mins on moto to the beach
What’s funny is that it has been a looooong time: 8 years but to tell you the truth, I still remember. Perhaps when you experience trauma or these random once in a lifetime situations, you just don’t forget them…anyway, here’s a little tale:
It’s a wide paved street, can fit a minivan taxi with ease. But drivers rarely know where it is b/c it’s a new neighbourhood, let’s say ‘up-n-coming’ or ‘in progress’ …:P
Anyway, it’s residential with decently sized houses on both sides. I can picture myself turning the corner on my mini moto and seeing our house come into the view. The houses are pastel in colour like terra cottas, pinks, yellow like what I’ve seen in more tropical places. They have slanted roofs made of tin and ours had a pretty nice terrace where we hung a hammock outside. SO FAR SO GOOD.
THE NEIGHBOURS, well the memorable ones:
1. One Swiss older foreigner male down the road…about 5 houses down but that’s enough distance that we actually never interacted with him except for maybe the first day I moved in and on ‘the incident’ day….(to discuss later) 😛
2. The loud spitting backside neighbours who gloriously spit up and hacked their throats (well I think it was one gentleman) every morning at hmmmm 7am or so. His house was directly behind my room so I heard this everyday from my bed…I can still hear the sound in my head as I type this!
3. The tv blaring frontside drunkard neighbours who watch footy matches on FULL VOLUME from about 630am to 8pm. Oh yeah, fyi, houses have open front living rooms where you can just leave the doors wide open, sometimes like people do with their garage doors pulled up. This means big view and big sound RITE INTO YOUR STREET.
OH YEAH NOISE POLLUTION IS NOT A CONCEPT OVER THERE. THEY HAVE NO IDEA AND THEY FRANKLY DON’T GIVE A DAMN.
4. Those pesky lil buggers. That’d be the kids. Now I love kids but somehow these ones, well they threw oranges at our house for new year’s and AT my roomie…she was pissed!!!! I guess that’s how you show you aren’t afraid of someone 🙁 and they rang our doorbell A LOT…so much so that I think we taped it to say it was out of order….
5. Those other pesky lil buggers: THE RATS. In Danang, rats are bigger than cats. Remember, this is the dingy side of town, underdeveloped and considered the backwaters of DN at the time…wonder what it’s like these days but man, during my time in DN, it was already the backwaters of VN so can you imagine the slum in this kind of town? But at least there was running water and sewage that I didn’t see go anywhere near me…and there’s tile flooring everywhere…
We called it the hidden house of horrors. From the outside, it’s charming and bright, but once you move in, it’s like out to get you with the rainbow mold (another story), no insulation, leaky water and smelly toilets, a landlord who won’t repair anything without an extra fee (do I look like a bank machine to you b/c that’s what she saw), random giant cockroaches wiggling their thick nasty legs or flying round and round. Ewww horrible horrible!
6. The whore house: that’d be US actually. Given that we were both foreigners (I guess my VNese roots didn’t count :P) and that we had friends who came over (also foreigners) and who left late (like after 10pm), we were WHORES. How do we know that? Well, the drunkards told us one morning! They got pissed b/c we opened our gate to let our friends out (it wasn’t even a creaky one but man ppl in the sticks ARE intolerant) and as a result, the peace in the neighbourhood was ruined…hmmmmmm 😛
Q: what do you think is noisier or more annoying: drunkards watching sports or a gate opening?
A: As if reasoning was part of the answer. It wasn’t 🙁
Ok so that’s a quick trip down memory lane….anyway want to move there? Last I heard, another foreigner lived in our old house b/c there seriously aren’t a lot of choices in Danang. But it’s 2015 now so please, good Lord, protect the foreigners who end up living in this neighbourhood. but ideally, it has improved. Wonder when I’ll get to go back and see it….not exactly high on my list 😛
Definitely a random place and hmmm was it the worst I’ve ever lived in? It’s definitely gotta be down there but I do remember that as a foreigner, I had very good accomodations in general. Nevermind the poisonous mold, well….. 😛
At least there was always fresh squeezed fruit juice 😛
And this is really why I came to VN anyway 🙂