People are poor. The medium salary (still talking about 2004) in the country side it is 20$ and in Hanoi 65$. It is amazing how with this salaries they all manage to buy a motorbike that costs minimum 700 $ - or the expensive ones, 2-3000 $.
Nobody here lives just from their salaries, they tell me. And it seems true if you consider that everybody is doing some commerce.
So this is why every house, and I mean every house, has a store in front. In fact their living room is the very store in most of the cases.
The houses have no yard, they stick to each other, all very narrow, as I said, and the front wall is replaced by a large metal door, always open; in front it is exposed whatever they sell, while in the back you could see stairs - going to the bedrooms, I suppose; in the back, as a careless guardian, you can always see someone watching TV and the TV is always facing the entrance; in most of the cases the furniture is resumed at a showcase-furniture with the big TV on (the TV is always flat screen, no mater how poor the owner is), some small blue plastic chairs, a small table and, not too often, a couch.
During the night, the same room that serves as living-store becomes also a garage for the motorbikes. (!)
Another type of house is the one-room-apartment that serves for kitchen, living room, bedroom and garage in he same time and, as luckily the houses are high, on the back wall you can see a "mezzanine", like a kind of a balcony that is the actual bedroom where most of the time the bed is just a large wood pane covered by a thin straw mattress.
Considering this, there is no wonder that they can sleep any-time, anywhere!
.
