Thankfully, my colleagues at my new school have all been amazing. We have bonded quickly and I did not hesitate to reach out when I realized my living situation was not the best. I was comforted by encouraging words and opportunities to socialize. No one had actually seen my beautiful apartment, but when my close friend from Jordan (who coincidentally now lives in Saigon) finally stopped over, she was impressed. I was bolstered and we decided to venture out into the neighborhood to explore the street food. She has been in Vietnam for 6 months already and lives in a back alley guesthouse, so not much can get by her. But she confirmed the presence of a “ripping off the tourist” cloud that I had suspected was hanging over me. Additionally, I am always up for a culinary adventure, but the street food options were past my tolerance for exotic. Lack of cleanliness, intense smells and mysterious innards floating in my soup. Not a comfy café in sight. After a bit of fun, we made our way back to my apartment, and the tears sprang out again.
I was homesick, lonely (no internet at the apartment yet meant no email or skype), overwhelmed by my last minute job-change, and feeling like I couldn’t make a confident decision about what to eat let alone where to live. She talked me through the thought that had been sneaking into my brain since the moment I moved in, and we hashed out a plan for backing out of the lease. I sent the text to my real estate agent the next morning and waited for a reply. The biggest question was how much money I would I lose. His first response after breaking the news to the landlady was that it didn’t go well, so I decided to meet with her myself. Via her extremely responsible teenage daughter, I was able to communicate my need to be closer to my school and other expats. She did not hesitate to offer me back the full deposit and prorated rent (less the realtor's cut). She was worried about me being so far from my family and just wanted me to be happy. There were no hard feelings and we hugged good night when she left. I'll take motherly love wherever I can find it :-)
The next day, my agent took me around to a range of housing options in several districts, each having pluses and minuses. District 1 was close to nice restaurants, hotels, gyms, yoga studios and school, but it was also crowded, loud and apartments were tiny and expensive. The building on the edge of District 5 where several colleagues resided was much closer to school, but the apartments were lesser quality and equal in price to my current place. I just couldn’t swallow breaking a lease and losing money to move within the same district to a place that I didn’t really like. District 7 had some quite nice places in a concrete jungle complex for the same price. Although quieter and closer to the rest of my colleagues, I kept balking at moving so far away from downtown and tacking on another ten minutes to my motorbike commute. I should mention that all of these places wanted a two-month deposit, plus two months’ rent, plus a year lease. I had been blessed once by an amazing landlady, but the chance of finding another, were I to repeat my “wrong” choice, was very slim. After talking it over with my friend, we decided that District 7 was the best fit for me due to proximity to friends, open space, and presence of expat-friendly restaurants and stores.
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