Apartment Hunting

The practice of my new school is to bring new hires in a week early and put them up in a hotel, giving each family, individual, or couple time to look at various apartments, while adjusting to the time change, climate, diet, heat, and humidity.  Actually, the heat isn’t that bad, it is the humidity. 

I completed a housing preference form in March or April.  School provided a packet of information about 10 different housing areas with names like Sky Garden, Happy Valley, Green Valley, Scenic Valley, Riverside, Belleza, ERA Town, New Saigon, and my personal favorite, Dragon Hill.  After trying to locate them all using Google map, I determined the housing area closest to school to be Dragon Hill.  Living here would reduce the daily commute, and if anyone wanted to ride a bicycle to school, it would be easier from this location.  The school real estate agent agreed with my assessment of the situation.

It was Tuesday afternoon, less than 3 hours after arriving that I had a message from the real estate agent, ready to show us apartments the next day.  Thus, I found myself looking at apartments less than 26 hours after arriving in Vietnam.  It was certainly easy enough to squeeze it in between naps.

Twelve apartments and 3 apartment complexes later, not to mention countless photos and the completion of a rather detailed spreadsheet, there was plenty of data to digest.  There was the apartment with the peeling wallpaper at every seam, the one with designer bedrooms (a different designer in each bedroom), and the one with the bed taking up so much of the room I had to walk sideways to get around the bed.

Standard features became obvious.  An oven is not a standard feature.  Two gas burners can be built in to the counter top, or they might just sit on top of the counter.  Hot water is only available in the bathrooms.  The washing machine is located on a small balcony outside the living area, with some hang-to-dry scheme overhead (no electric dryers – absolutely no reason to have a dryer).  Wall mounted air conditioners (operated by remote control) are in each bedroom and the living area.  The compressors are located on the washing machine balcony or on an external shelf.  Outlets accommodate the U.S. plug system and the European plug system (how cool is that?).  Refrigerators vary greatly in size.  No dishwashers.  Parent/grandparents allow children to attach stickers to everything and anything.

We looked at 2- and 3-bedroom apartments.  I really wanted a 3-bedroom apartment to accommodate hobbies and guests.  Everything we looked at was in our price range (10,800,000 dong to 16,000,000 dong).  The school provides us with a monthly housing allowance of 35,000,000 dong.  It is meant to help us pay rent, utilities and the management fee.  We will have a monthly water (washing), internet and electric bill.  Additionally, we’ll buy drinking water and pay to get a refill of the gas canister for the stove top.

Part of the apartment tour included the facilities within the complex.  New Saigon boasts the largest swimming pool in District 7.  It is pretty big (with a bridge over the middle of it).  There’s also a weight room, and a dance studio for yoga and Zumba.  A grocery store is within the complex, as are numerous Mom and Pop restaurants, beauty salons and “spas” (massage and nails).  Phu Hoang Anh had an enormous long pool, great for lap swimming, but lacked the shops of New Saigon.  One of the apartments here was a 2-story apartment.  The ceilings on the second floor were so low, Stewart had to duck his head.  

Dragon Hill was easily the cleanest and best kept of the 3 places.  The weight room was also nicer than New Saigon’s.  The pool, however, was small.  The yoga studio right by the pool.  Four elevators meant it would be considerably easier to get up and down to the 7^th floor (well, considerably easier than the places with one or two elevators).

We settled on a Dragon Hill 3-bedroom apartment with marble floors in the living room, and shiny click laminate in the bedrooms.  The master bathroom has two sinks and I love it!  Our apartment is on the backside of the building, which provides us with a view of a large overgrown field/forest/banana plantation.  There are lovingly tended garden plots next to the back wall.  Several roosters live there as well.  If you Skype with me, you’ll be able to hear them.  There is a body of water next to the building.  At first, I thought it was a river, but it has completely drained twice this weekend, so it must be some kind of irrigation ditch.  Just across the “ditch” are some shanties with several families living there.  Whenever I feel miserable from the sweat dripping off of me – I just look out the window and remember how lucky I am to be able to turn on the AC.

Temperature control … now there’s a topic to write about.

In order to catch the school bus, we have to cross the divided highway to get to the other side of the street (also another topic to write about).