How Do You Know It Is Time to Move

Question: How do you know it is time to move from the place you are renting?

Answer: When the paint starts peeling off the walls.

In Vietnam, rental property is varied in price, quality, and selection. But one aspect is universal, what you expect as a westerner is not the same.

The price for renting a house is usually lower with the exceptions of a few really high end apartment complexes or houses in Districts 1, 2, and 7 (the places where corporate expatriates live).

But if you live in the cheaper areas the low rent means that you must also take care of all costs of improving the property. So I have an incredibly low rent for a 5 room house with a balcony in a nice neighborhood. But the roof leaks....alot....we pressured the next-door-neighbor (a Buddhist geomancer who focuses on the elemental ritual of water) to fix his roof. But now he has a nice new roof and the water from his roof still causes our house to flood. And it is causing a few of our walls to get wet. We had the house painted before we moved in (our cost, Vietnamese way of things, bitch and complain still doesn't change things) and the walls dried very slowly. Now eight months later, the roofs leak more during the rainy season and the paint on the walls are peeling off.

It is time to move to a new house.