I only moved in a week ago, but my new house in Vientiane is already starting to feel like home. The search began less than 24 hours after I arrived, with a trip around town looking at houses for rent with a real estate agent. It seems like most falang living in Vientiane rent houses, rather than apartments, because there are so many in a comparable price range. At any given time, there are a large number of empty houses for rent, and you can follow the “for rent” signs around the neighborhood, which is basically what we ended up doing with the realtor. After a few less appealing options—very grand but run-down houses, tenants laying around watching TV and brewing snake whiskey in jars under the staircase—we found our place: a four-bedroom house with a small yard (with a coconut palm tree!) and an incredible interior. Luckily the house came furnished, mostly with very nice-looking pieces, along with a few eccentricities–like the painting of children smoking in the living room, the (non-operable?) BB gun affixed to the kitchen window, and the broken Santa Claus clock.
I’m living with three other Princeton-in-Asia fellows: one is also teaching at Vientiane College, and the others work for The World Wildlife Fund and Population Services International. We also share the house with a colony of geckos that chirp in the night, an occasional sparrow, and the neighbor’s dog, who likes to slip through our gate to visit the yard.
my bedroom gecko
Because there are often no real addresses (mail is not home-delivered here), the best way to identify the approximate location of a house is by naming the “village” where it’s located. Our immediate area is mostly residential, but we’re still only a short drive from work and the center of town. We hosted a casual housewarming on Saturday, which is likely the first of many gatherings at the new PiA house, since plans are already in the works for a big Thanksgiving celebration next month.