Life Update: Welcome to Tan Dinh, My New Neighborhood!

It's that time again, folks - I've moved! And I have to talk about it! And lots of other things! Because I can never shut up!

I have a great new place with a big ol' room for my kitties and a lot of exciting street life, restaurants, and cafes for us big two-legged bipeds. And hence... the itchy typing fingers have got ahold of me. I'm all out of video games, I can't stand to read the Stephen King book about a magical pandemic (!!) that's been hanging out on my nightstand since February, and I'm sitting on a thousand or two pictures that need sharing.

Before you ask, you might notice that not only have I abandoned Facebook posting, I've also now left Instagram (itself Facebook-owned). Sadly, social media is not great for my mental health, and pursuing those little dopamine hits easily spirals out of control for me, personally. 

My new neighborhood is Tan Dinh, a smallish area surrounding the eponymous market and home to a lively and engaging space.

Click through for all the details!

In Praise of Living with Housemates Abroad / New House Tour

I live in a reasonably-sized bedroom, but I believe there are many great benefits of living in a smaller room, especially when you're in a house FULL of varied, awesome, friendly, nerdy housemates! (Seriously, we're all nerds about something, it's fascinating.)

First, let me describe my house for you.

I live in a house. It’s 3 meters wide at the main door on the street. My house has a garage, nicely-equipped kitchen, and a comfortable living room on the ground level. The living room and back 5 bedrooms were previously part of a separate structure, but at some point the wall between the (current) kitchen and living room was knocked down, combining the two and giving the house a super weird footprint. Rooms in the back lack the view of the canal, have less natural light, and are a bit hot, but are also  a bit cheaper.

Let's take a quick tour of my new place!

My Bedroom is Like a Third-World Ocean Fairytale

[UPDATE: The walls are white! There are posters hung! A new homemade light fixture! And... no more finding nemo shades! We feel positively grownup about it all.]

In all the ways that my bedroom is like living in a deep sea children's insane-asylum - the pink coral-colored walls, the Finding Nemo windowshade, the charming children's sheets on the charmingly-sized twin bed made of plywood - the LED lights are by far the oddest feature (yeah, let's stick with 'feature'):

Movin' On Up! & Up, & Up...

Welcome to my new house!

As far as I can tell, the new place doesn't have a mail slot in the front doors. There's certainly no room for a package in there, I can tell you that. 

As for the front doors themselves, they're HEAVY mothers - both of them are extremely solid in their construction! The outer doors slide and the massive inner ones swing open to allow motorbikes to be parked in the garage (which is right on this side of these doors in this picture. I'm standing where 5 motorbikes could fit parked across. The doors are the width of the whole house.

As you can see from the photo at the right, this area near the doors reaches quite high, although not up into the second story like the space above the bike storage goes. That's a metal frame that is holding wooden shingles. 

By the way... this is not a hermetically sealed living bubble, by any means, like the homes we like to tell ourselves are impenetrable back in the US (as if). But honestly, I haven't seen a ton of bugs (or animal life of any kind) here in the city. There are a few small ants that are in the house - like, REALLY small - but if you keep the place clean they don't hang around. And we'll get to my little house lizards in another post - as soon as I find out what they are!

New Apartment - Work in Progress!

I like this picture - I almost can't believe it came out of my iPhone 3GS!

Finally, I moved into my new place on July 2nd! I sadly don't have internet quite yet. So, while I'm working at a café, enjoy a few pictures of my new room!