Building a House in Việt Nam — Part 2
Breaking the law for love of karaoke
This Substack is about life in Vietnam from the viewpoint of a 10-year expat who spent his first 60 years in a low-context culture.
Welcome to the second in a series about my experience of building a bespoke house from scratch. If you missed Part 1, you can click on it and then return here.
The Hill
Before you can build a house in Vietnam, you ask the government for drawings that show the maximum allowable size house you may build. Exceeding these maximums by even 10 cm (4 in) can get you in trouble. The worst that could happen for going bigger is that they tear down your house for you and then bill you for the demolition. It wouldn’t be the first.
The property gifted to my wife from her parents had a 5 x 4 x 4 meter (~16.5 x 13 x 13 feet) hill in the rear of the property that had probably never been touched by a shovel. It's outlined in red on the drawing above and you can see it beyond the brick wall in the photo below. The red corrugated metal is the roof of the ground floor of the old house.
The government drawings say we can't remove it, but we can build on it.
Huh?
This is what we can build:
As I arrived for one of my first visits to the job site, I saw that the excavator was almost finished removing the hill we aren’t allowed to remove.
Ut-oh!
That night, at a meeting with my father-in-law, the builder, the architect, and the translator, I ask, "WTF?!" but nicer, because my father-in-law is there.
The answer:
Không sao
which is Vietnamese for “no problem”, which in this case means, “don't worry, we've got this,” — the standard Vietnamese response to a LOT of things that actually merit concern.
Then my grinning father-in-law drops his bomb,
Karaoke!
He told the builder to rip out the hill so that he could have his very own karaoke room with an ensuite bathroom for him and his friends to throw up in after too many beers. So much for getting my consent to change anything. I did put my foot down (yes, I said this) at karaoke hostesses; the boys would have to serve themselves.
This video is typical Vietnamese wedding karaoke I shot soon after I arrived in Vietnam. Karaoke shops have a video sound system instead of a band; the video is to show you the typical singing talent of people who LOVE karaoke. And yes, her flowers began the party as a table centerpiece.
To FIL’s great surprise, I answered with a thumbs-up and the caveat that it must be professionally soundproofed, just like the many dozens of karaoke shops in town.
His grin is now threatening to split his face wide open.
Paying the Piper
Everything is all sunshine and roses... until the government inspector drops by a few weeks later. Where he expected a hill with banana trees, he saw this:
My wife tells me he's "upset."
No shit, Sherlock!
"We" have blatantly disregarded their mandate re the hill and plowed ahead with pouring the ground floor and walls. One way or the other, this is going to get expensive.
Fortunately, it's Vietnam, where most such sins can be made to go away with the proper application of begging, cajoling, and apologizing with more than words. One of the aunts is a well-connected lawyer and the sister-in-law who likes me works for her. It takes about a month for us to get government-approved drawings that say we can take out the hill and build on what’s under it. The cost? There is now at least one less trip to the US in my future.
Lesson Learned? Uhhhh, no.
Things go relatively well from there until a month or so later, when I notice that the natural light opening in the first level is about two meters short.
Inquiries reveal that father-in-law told the builder to stop it at a beam — his second violation of the our agreement that any desired changes to what’s on the drawings must be approved by both of us.
The opening should be the length of the red oval; it was only the length of the blue rectangle. Why? Because regardless of how many times I try to explain, my FIL can’t imagine the final product. He also has zero intention of ever asking me,
What if we did it this way, instead?
before telling the builder to change things, because he’s the patriarch-who-shall-not-be-questioned as discussed in my post “Family”.
Hurried conversations with the builder result in a promise that the opening will be cut into the floor to give us the opening specified. The ground floor of this house is blocked in on three sides so there can be no windows. This makes the light-transmitting opening through to the roof crucial for the ground floor.
Father-in-law and I revisited our agreement that ALL changes to common spaces will be run past the other prior to saying anything to the builder. The builder smartly decreed that any changes must be made to the architectural drawings before he will implement them.
It’s NOT even close to the last time I get to deal with this, damn it!
I always believed people when they told me building a house is a nightmare. Try doing it when you don't speak the local language and are still learning the mores and folkways.
Fortunately, most of the people involved are (at least at this early stage) somewhat forgiving of the regular faux pas made by the rude foreigner.
It gets better as we get further into the build… by which I mean worse.
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I don't know how you ever finished. I probably would have stopped funding after the first run in with the FIL changed plans without discussion. FIL who doesn't listen is bad feng shui.