That Saturday, after driving through flooded streets in the pouring rain to see two unfurnished houses in Binh Thanh District with the people from Nice House, I sent a text to The, who immediately text me back informing me that he had two houses for $600 in District One. Steven and I headed straight to the address he provided and immediately fell in love with the first house, only going to see the second because the first was so nice we thought it would be nice to have two great options. We left The telling him we'd let him know as soon as we could about the properties and sent him a text two minutes later on our way home telling him that we wanted to rent the first house and asked him to call the owner to ask him to hold it for us. We went to sign the contract the following day and set a move in date of Friday, August 28.
Today, August 28, we said goodbye to the lovely ladies of the Tuanh Duc hotel and hauled our stuff from Pham Ngu Lao to our new house at 18A Nguyen Thi Minh Khai.
Steven had left school during his planning period to help me move all of our stuff, so once he left I got busy unpacking and settling in. After a few hours and numerous trips up and down our steep staircase, I had emptied our suitcases into three wardrobes in our three separate bedrooms - one for me, one for Steven and one for work clothes in the downstairs bedroom, three kitchen drawers and two knickknack drawers. I defrosted the fridge, wiped down the cabinets and stacked up all my books, to a soundtrack of my favorites from our MP3 player hooked up to speakers in the front living room.
After I set everything up, I took pictures of the house to post, but my mother said that my description made more sense than the pictures, so I'll include both.
The house is two stories, three bedroom/two bath. From the front door, you walk into the living room and go through a little hall to the kitchen. The first bathroom (which is identical to the second upstairs with a sink, toilet and hot water shower contraption on the wall) sits off that hall just before the kitchen. The downstairs bedroom is at the end of that hall. Each of the three bedrooms are identically furnished with big beds, full sized wardrobes, and televisions on television stands. Walking up the three turns of the narrow stairs leads you to the second floor. There is one bedroom to the right of the stairs with a door that leads to the front patio.The patio is about 8 x 8 and looks out over the alley. To the left of the stairs is the second bathroom, identical to the first. At the other end of the hall is our bedroom, identical to the other two - all with individual a/c units. There is a door off of our bedroom leading to a small, fenced in back patio where we can hang our clothes to dry and have interesting views of our neighbors tin roofs.
In between our bedroom and our bathroom is an open space of about three feet by eight feet that spans the height of the house. There is a sturdy metal grate in the middle to let light in from an adjustable sky light on the roof. The sky light is operated by a pulley system from the second floor, so you can pull one rope to open the sky light when it is nice out and it looks like there is no ceiling at all. When it rains, or you leave, or at night, you just pull it closed and it looks like part of the ceiling.
From the front room, we have another patio area, where we park our motor bike. That front area is separated from the house by tinted glass doors (and curtains that you can pull across). The doors can be unhinged from the floor to open the entire width of the house (or about 8 feet). A metal gate, that also spans the width of the house separates the front area from the alley. The ceilings on the first floor are about 12 feet high.
Most families leave their front rooms open for the cool air, so anyone who walks by can see right into your house and you can hear everything going on in the alleys and the other houses. It may sound strange, but it is a neat way of being a part of what is going on in the neighborhood without quite being a part of what is going on in the neighborhood. You can see into everyone's house when you walk down the alley. When we want privacy, we can shut the door and pull the curtains.
Not only do we love the house, but the location is great too. We have lots of little vegetable stands, local stores and street restaurants. We less than a five minute drive to Notre Dam Cathedral and central Saigon, a five minute drive to Steven's school, and the best part of it all is that half a block north of us is a soccer stadium with a track that we can use for free whenever we want - the only hindrance being the addition of someone's house that was built out over all six lanes about three fourths of the way around so if you stayed in your lane you would run smack into the side of their house.
Here are the pictures of our new house:
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