Casey Space

A couple months ago, the school got us in touch with a housing broker. Her name was Hang, and she sent us links to apartments to talk about what we liked and what we didn’t like so she could get a sense of what to show us when we arrived.

When I checked my email at the Hanoi airport, I found Hang asked us to move our appointment up one hour and meet her in the neighborhood we wanted to live in. In response, I asked her to come pick us up because we had been in the country for 7 hours, most of which was sleeping, and we didn’t know how to do anything, including getting around.

She graciously did pick us up, and I realized it added like an hour to her day.

We drove all around Tay Ho looking at 2 bedroom apartments in our budget. This area is popular with Ex-Pats and many of Josh’s coworkers live here. It is about a 40 minute ride to Josh’s school. One of the last ones we saw was a clear favorite so it was all settled in just about one day.

Like Ants at a Picnic

It is common practice to negotiate housing prices. We did get a small discount on our apartment, like $20/mo off the list price.

We signed our lease in the apartment with the landlord and housing broker. Internet, electricity, cleaning, and water were included in the rent. On the way out, as we went past the common washer and dryer, the landlord said casually, “Oh and to use the washer and dryer, it’s $30/mo.”

Our housing broker’s body language changed immediately and she started arguing with him about it and my eyes got wide and I said, “$30 a month! We only do laundry like once a week.” Of course, this is in Boise, where it’s a dry desert, I would soon learn that won’t work here. Anyway, we argued back and forth and it came down some.

It is an uncomfortable feeling to have to pay “newbie foreigner fees.” I knew this was part of moving abroad, and was mentally prepared for it to happen, but when it actually happens, it still stings.

Paying Rent Issues

The housing contract listed the Vietnam bank account to wire the rent and deposit. I wired the deposit in Dong to this account. I was then told the landlord prefers dollars and they gave me a different account to wire money to.

Well, I’ve never internationally wired money before, so I accidentally put in the ID number instead of the Account number. A couple days later, my bank called to let me know the account number was wrong, so I gave them the correct information.

My mistake ended up making our rent payment post to the landlord’s account about 14 days after it left our bank account. It is a shameful feeling when your landlord thinks you are trying to get out of paying rent in your first 2 months even though you have proof the money left your bank account. Extra discomfort comes when your bank says it’s out of their hands and there’s nothing they can do.

We ended up giving him a pile of cash in Dong and just hope the wire transfer eventually completed. It took 2 days and about 20 ATM transactions to get enough money for 2 months rent.

Side note: I’ve heard it is illegal for landlords to charge rent in Dollars, so that’s a fight I may have to have in a couple of months. As someone said, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?”

The prediction is the Dollar will get stronger while the Dong gets weaker so really our rent will be going up steadily as the year goes on since our wages are paid in Dong.