The Apartment

Well, I have been away for a while.  Busy with school and other stuff so I have not had time to write on the blog.  Today I thought I would post some photos of my apartment where I live in Hanoi.

We live in a neighbourhood called CIPUTRA, which was built mainly for internationals.  It is a big open place where I can ride my bike and go for walks.  The main reason we live here is I get to walk to school, which takes me about 3 minutes and I can walk home into the apartment while my dad is at work.

The bad part is that most of my fiends live in Tay Ho so I have to take taxis to go see them when I want to.  I'll save that neighbourhood for another day.

There are a lot of things in my apartment building, including a croissant shop, a market, restaurant, pool, gym, even where I get my haircut.

My apartment building is 20 floors.  I life on the 13th.  It has a great view of the city and two balconies.    I am on the left side of the building.

At the bottom on the right with the blue awning is L's Place, my little market shop.  On the left with the black awning is St. Honore, the bakery where I get good croissants and bread anytime I want.

The apartment building to the right of my building has a haircut place, the grey awning.  It is really cool in there, first they wash my hair, then give me a nice massage, once the cut my hair, they wash it again to get all the loose hair out, then a nice shoulder massage.

In between the two buildings is the restaurant.  Behind the restaurant is the gym and pool.  It also has the nice pretty fountain in front.

Just inside the building to the right is Ja Fa's restaurant.  Its a nice little place and you can even sit next to the bar.  There are normally lots of people in there from various countries, especially Australia and New Zealand.

Then there is the pool.  We had to get a membership to the gym and pool but its cool.  The tables to the right are part of Ja Fa restaurant.

Over to the right is a wading pool for kids.  Its kind of nice and works like a hot tub on a hot day.

In between the two pools is a yoga place.  My dad and I practice swords here.

Upstairs is the gym where my dad and I workout.  But we do not workout often enough.

Here is the cool fountain again.

This is the inside of L's Place Market.  It is really tiny and stuff is crammed everywhere.  You have to look up and down all over the place or you may miss what you are looking for.  The great part is that any time I am out of bread or milk or cheese I can just go down the elevator and get it.

This is St. Honore's to the left.  This is where we go to get breakfast croissants or even dessert at night.

I really like pain au chocolate and pain au noix (croissant with walnuts).  But what I really like is.......

Tarte au meringe (lemon tarte) and tarte au citron (lime tarte).  They are my favorite.

Sometimes when I walk home from school I get to stop in at St Honore and have a snake with me friends.  It is great stuff.

OK, now to the building itself.

When you first walk into the lobby you see the elevators.  I have to have a special access key to go upstairs to help prevent people who are not supposed to be there from going upstairs.  There is always a security lady, you see her in the blue shirt, there to help.  She even opens the elevator for me and uses her card to get me upstairs so that I do not have to.

Downstairs is a huge lobby where visitors wait until they are cleared to come upstairs.  It looks like the lobby of a fancy hotel.

OK, when you walk in the front door there is a foyer with a table and artwork.  This table is the sword alter, where we store our swords.

Right now we have three.  I use the first one, my dad uses the other two.  There is a light above them, which is always lit. You must always treat your sword with respect.  It will always save you and the only thing you can rely on.

In Viet Nam and most other asian countries people do not wear shoes in doors.  helps keep the floor clean.  Works pretty good.  So, just to the left of the front door is the shoe armoir.  When people come over or when we come home we take out shoes off and place them in the armoir.

After the shoe entry, which is to the left in this photo, is the dinning area.  We have this huge hutch and the dinning table seat 8.

This is the other view of the dinning area.  From here you can see the living room and the two doors in front are the guest room and the office.  To the right is the kitchen and to the left is my room.

This is my bed under the windows.  Sometimes it is very strange looking out the windows when there are 13 floors beneath your window.

Some of my decorations.  They are really my dad's he had in the guest room and I decided to put them on my walls.

Finally, my school desk.  This is where my dad makes me do my homework, especially my French.

This is our kitchen.  We do a lot of cooking in here.  Recently I started cooking tarte au citron (merignue) I'll show you that later.

We do not have a dishwasher here.  Electricity is way too expensive for that.  So, we wash our dishes by hand.  In the cabinet above the sink is a drying rack, so when we wash dishes we put them up there to drain and dry.

This is my dad's home office.  He does a lot of work from here.

Outside of the window of the office you can see UNIS.  This is my school, which I walk to each day.

Now the living room.  This is where I hang out watching cartoons, Gold Rush, Top Chef and Naruto.  Its very comfortable.

The view down from the living room balcony.  Actually that is me way down there walking to school.

OK, Viet Nam is also cool because there are animals all over the place.  In this case we have a cool lizard in our apartment.  No need to keep him in a cage when he can climb the walls on his own and catch bugs.

So, that is where I live.