628

January 20, 2009
The Vietnamese don’t move house. Whenever they decide to leave their house they simply destroy it and have a new one built on the same spot.
I could ask myself, why don’t they just sell it and buy an other house somewhere else? Instead I ask myself if I would like to pay money for a house in Hanoi (or anywhere else in Vietnam). A firm NO would be the answer. So far I have lived in three houses in Hanoi: everything is of very bad quality and nothing fits. Every size is "almost right", resulting in many gaps around doors and windows and causing a draft which is strong enough to blow your coffee cup off the table.
They seem to use the wrong paint for everything and nothing is straight. The list is a lot longer, but you get my idea.
628 days is what it takes to make a new house look old here.