If you want to meet weirdos that don’t know the meaning of cleanliness, just rent a room in Hanoi through a room rental company. We have spent the past month living in a house with four other bedrooms.
Tomorrow we are leaving Hanoi, and while I am a bit sad about it, I can’t wait to leave these dirty weirdos behind. Are they so bad? Yes. Here are the reasons why:
- dirty kitchen – pots and pans, dishes and bowls are left unwashed. Food in bowls left out for days, til mould starts to grow and soups start to smell. Used takeaway containers just left strewn on the table, huge crumbs and bits of food left on the floor. Everything left dirty til the cleaner comes on Tuesdays.
- a sick mouse came into the house. It could hardly move. Maybe it was attracted into the house by the food left out and got sick from eating it.
- Laundry done at ridiculous hours of the night (past 1am).
- Lights left on ALL the time. I am constantly having to turn off the lights yet then in the morning, I see they have been left on all night.
The weirdos:
Weirdo 1 – Older woman (in her 60’s) left after a few days, complaining about the noise.
- She was new to Vietnam and was basically complaining about Vietnam. I don’t think Asia is for her. Anyway, she was looking for an English teaching job and complaining that they would only pay her $17/hr, not $20/hr. She even said herself that she has no teaching experience. (Minimum wage for Vietnamese is about 56 cents/hr).
- She was unhappy that the housing company wouldn’t refund her the full amount of money she paid (she did sign a contract and stay a few days, after all). The day she moved out, she told them that she had someone come into her room via the balcony while she was sleeping and steal money from her. Whether that actually happened is very questionable.
Weirdos 2 + 3: Couple that lives upstairs.
- They are EXTREMELY dirty. Girl cooks all the time and leaves all her dishes unwashed. The one time I wanted to cook, everything was unwashed. I asked her if the dirty pots and pans were hers, she said yes. I told her she should wash after herself, her excuse was that that morning there were so many dirty things to wash that weren’t hers. So then she left to go out.
- So Artur washed a pan for me and then we just ate dinner from the pan, since I wasn’t going to wash some of her dirty plates out of principle.
- They even leave dirty dishes with bones and leftover food outside their room, next to the washing machine on the top floor.
- Their toothpaste ran out and instead of buying their own, they used ours for a week. Squeezing the tube in the middle. Now I wouldn’t normally care if someone used my toothpaste, but this really annoyed me. To the point where I decided to keep my toothpaste out of the bathroom, forcing them to buy their own.
- The girl brought a puppy down to the kitchen once. Another one of our housemates told me she had seen two cats and that puppy staying up their in their room. Hmmm.. Three pets in one room??
- We never see the guy. I was sitting in the kitchen with some of our normal housemates and he walked by without saying anything. So I’ve never actually properly met him. He just stays in their room the whole time, while his girlfriend cooks for him. He kicked her out for a few days, but now she’s back, as untidy as ever.
Weirdos 4 + 5: Couple that lives downstairs.
- We hardly ever see them, just hear them at night, getting back from drinking.
- They yell at each other, break glasses, slam doors and tables, all at ridiculous hours of the night.
- This happens a few nights a week. Even at 4.30am they yell and throw things around.
- I suspect that they may also be contributing to the dirtiness of our kitchen.