KVT – The Plus Plus Side of a Jack Hammer

(Shortened Vietnamese version available)

KVT finds an exciting art place in Duong Nghi Tam

Sometimes there’s a bit of a plus when the neighbors decide to renovate….not much of a plus when you take into account 2 weeks of jack hammering and another two of screeching steel saws as they built ten-foot high thin walls and thick steel gates around their perimeter to deter would-be burglars….at one stage I expected razor wire to be rolled out as Fortress Hanoi took shape.

They kept telling us only 2 days to go, but we stopped believing them after the beginning of the second week.

We’ve tried before to emphasize that the neighborly thing to do would be to give us advance warning before any booms and bangs and screeches reverberate through the walls and across the alley so that we could plan our lives around the clamor, but when we woke up one morning to the ominous thuds of the dreaded hammers, they patiently shouted through the tympani of boom-clatter-bang bang that it’s not the Vietnamese way of doing things…which I think is all a lot of bullsh8t. Bad manners more like!

Mind you they are consistent!

Two years ago, on the dot, their son in law started to thud, boom and shatter his house (directly behind ours) to smithereens to erect sparkling apartments in their place. A year ago on the same dot his brother in the next house directly behind ours ditto-ed.

Time to think about early summer holidays we sighed again and got the suitcases down from the attic.

But back to that bit of a plus!

One hot morning, slightly befuddled with the NOISE, I jumped on my xe dap and pedaled wherever shade grew along steamy streets and all of a sudden my eye was drawn to the sight of an old lady peering, as if demented, through a second floor plate glass window on the river side of Nghi Tam.

I know her! I thought.

In fact I knew her very well… from last year when she spent a month motionlessly peering out through the front windows of L’Espace.

I had to get to the bottom of all, this so I risked life and limb to cross the double barreled roadway and with only a few dents and scratches and ear drums further lacerated by the blaring horns of a few luxury cars, including a very uppity Rolls Royce, I almost fell into a shop front piled higgelly piggelly with plaster busts of Uncle Ho and Buddhas and other Tuong stuff and definitely startled the family eating a savory smelling mid-day meal.

To cut a long story shorter, the lady of the house realized my interest in the contents of the upper floors – as glimpsed from the street – and took me on a fascinating guided tour.

It was a bit déjà vu-ish.