This Substack is about life in Việt Nam from the viewpoint of a 10-year expat who spent his first 60 years in a low-context culture.
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This post went out prematurely and is now numbered properly. If you’ve not yet read part 5, Brick-by-brick, please do so before coming back to read this.
This is the sixth in my series about my experiences building a bespoke house in Đà Lạt (Dalat), which sits at about 1500m (~4900ft) altitude in the Central Highlands.
Previous posts include:
This installment is intended to be a cautionary tale. As such, it may at times seem like I’m complaining, though that is NOT my intention. I hope that if you ever decide to build a house in any country with a significantly different culture than your native one, you remember this and avoid making the many mistakes that I made.
As I said in an earlier post:
Something else I learned the hard way: parents in this society are infallible, all-knowing, and the ultimate authority. They are never challenged or talked down to, regardless of how egregious their behavior gets. My FIL, for example, goes on a screaming bender if he feels even a small slight and no one can tell him to shut it. I wish I’d recorded the most recent one; at over 40 minutes, it was epic.
At the time we built the house, I did not know this; I thought his obstinance and complete disregard for our agreement1 that we BOTH approve any changes was a just character flaw. Unfortunately, a cultural entitlement given to him at birth. It was also Reason #1 of 273 that building this particular house was a mistake.
My FIL can’t read a set of plans/drawings, but he can visualize what HE wants. Vietnamese culture dictates that he, as the oldest, is the boss of the extended family and that what he says is law. What I, his youngest daughter’s husband, want or think is best for my family means as much to him as what a stray dog wants. Maybe less.
Consulting with both my wife and FIL, I spent months laying out every detail of the house: window and door placement; depth of balconies; traffic patterns; floor coverings; plumbing fixtures; and much more. My in-laws agreed with everything laid out in the drawings and (of course) chose their rooms’ paint color, flooring, and bathroom fixtures. For the joint-use areas, I consulted them and they told me they had no preference; whatever I chose would be fine.
After we resolved FIL’s unscripted changes to the ground and first floors as detailed in Part 2, things went pretty smoothly — for a while. Once we got to the third floor, I was kept pretty busy. On separate days, I arrived to find:
The karaoke room door moved from close to the center of the room to the right-side wall. Not normally a big deal, BUT we had purchased an L-shaped sofa that I had then designed the room around. If the door wasn’t in the center of the wall, everyone would have to climb over the sofa to get to the rest of the room.
A window moved so that it was no longer between two beams and was now aesthetically unpleasing. Chances are, I won’t be around when my daughter’s kids are old enough to ask, “Wtf was grandpa thinking?” If I am, I’m going to put it all on their great-grandpa on the other side.
I have no idea what tf they were thinking The wall around the elevator where tile would be added was supposed to be flush with the rest of the wall (see red arrow below). The design called for a wall indented the thickness of the tile to allow the final wall to be flush. In the previous week, I had reminded the builder twice that the wall must be flush AFTER the tile was installed. He said he understood and then didn’t do it. FIL told him not to worry, it was no big deal.
Tearing out the concrete and a bit of brick to the thickness of the tile allowed the final seam to be flush as in the original design. 
It’s the “small” things that make a difference. An awning installed over the rear deck that would protect only a 50cm x 50cm (20” x 20”) area in the back corner from either rain nor sun. FIL and I discussed this a week earlier and “agreed” that it was NOT the best solution. Then he did it anyway. So I told him I wasn’t paying for it and that I would let him pass this information on to the contractor he had hired to provide and install it. After a few weeks, it disappeared.
Over 90% of rain comes from between southeast and southwest. 
This is part of the awning hardware after exposure to about five weeks of weather. The guy who installed it thought this was acceptable.
When you’re trying to build a house you hope your daughter’s grandchildren’s grandchildren will live in and enjoy, you want to make it the best you possibly can. I would think that would be the case, even if you were going to sell it in 10 years… but maybe that’s just I-can-see-OCD-from-here me.
Fortunately, one of my wife’s aunts is an attorney and she drew up the contract between us and the builder. The clause in it that saved the house from becoming a total cluster-f*ck said that each payment was due only
on acceptance of all previous construction.
This gave me HUGE power to hold the contractor to the drawings. Normally in Vietnam, and I hear it’s the same most places, if the builder does something outside the scope of the plans, you can either accept it or, maybe, void the contract. Voiding the contract involves going to court and foreigners rarely, if ever, prevail in VN courts.
Our contract went on to say that if the builder did shoddy work, we could “unilaterally terminate the contract.” In that case, per the contract, we would only be responsible to pay 40% of the cost of the accepted construction. This would pretty much screw the builder, so he was motivated to make sure I never even thought about activating that clause.
Have I mentioned which of my wife’s many aunts is my favorite?
In each of examples 1, 3, and 4 above, I told the contractor that he would get his next payment only once my wife and I accepted everything to that point and we would accept ONLY what was done per the drawings. He bitched and moaned and appealed to FIL, but I was the only one with control over the payments. In each case, he eventually gave in and did what the drawings called for, which was all I wanted in the first place.
The contract was a flat per square meter price to build the shell. Per the contract, I bought all paint, insulation, flooring, fixtures directly and their installation was included in the square meter price. This meant he couldn’t hide the extra costs he incurred to re-do things; he had to absorb them.
Initially, I thought that after one or two of these, he’d wise up and talk with me before changing something at FIL’s request, but he never did. Those detailed above are about one-third of the total instances; just like a child, he never stopped pushing the boundaries.
I let it slide a couple times (see 2. above), and looking back, that was probably a mistake. Maybe he thought that if he got away with something once, he could get away with something again. I’ll never know, because there won’t be a “next time”. Even if something happens that I end up building another house here, he has a less than zero chance of being the builder. I’d most likely hire an interpreter and be the General Contractor myself.
What could possibly go wrong?
My FIL signed the family homestead over to my wife and I paid the total cost of building the house, so we each contributed “equally” to the creation of the house. We agreed verbally to, in theory, reach a consensus for any changes to the agreed-upon design as laid out in the drawings. Unbeknownst to me, he never had any intention of honoring this agreement; he did what he wanted and I still built a beautiful bespoke house he and his wife (and his daughter and one grandchild) could live in for the rest of their lives.
That's a wild experience John. Good thing for FIL he didn't get Hoffa'ed in the rebuilt stairwell.
When you live in Vietnam for long enough, you start to hear a lot of horror stories about construction here. A friend of mine mentioned the entire skylight of his new villa fell in after the first storm following the villas construction. It was a mess and caused considerable damage to everything inside the newly furnished home. Someone on the bottom floor nearly got hit as the entire thing came crashing down the three or four story stairwell. Did the contractor fix it? Of course not, he had already been paid.