Expensive Football Pitch

A row of three houses being constructed by the park in Phu My Hung...huge, palatial places recently built. I take issue with some of the architectural features but this one in shot has nice terraces. The second you can see being constructed in the background.




And here it is finished - looks Spanish to me:




Amusingly for me someone has set up a pointless, posh little football pitch on the plot in-between these mansions. That's the most expensive football pitch in Vietnam, probably worth more than 1/4 million dollars! Presumably someone rich, maybe one of the owners of these houses, has done it 'because they can' and to take the piss out of everyone passing by. It's working!

Green

Any green oasis in the 'city of dust' is a godsend, the tree lined avenues in parts of the city are a transportation into another place, a fantastic dream of cleaner, more beautified streets.




It's no coincidence that green helps us feel relaxed, it has (apparently) more space in the visible spectrum than any other colour apart from blue. Psychologically, green  has a calming effect and soothes us. As part of our primeval genetic make-up, where once all shades of green were familiar to us in our everyday lives, we now flock to parks, fill our balconies with green plants and enjoy that refreshing visit to the countryside. Perhaps in some way, the dusty, desolate and colourless districts that span for miles contribute to the hardening of the urban dweller personality and the crystallising of societal development.

Having said all that, what a pleasure it is that urban development in Vietnam will begin to recognise the essential part of our quality of life, green. All new projects have a percentage allocated for 'green space', and I'm not referring to the condos going up in HCMC, more the satellite projects that are coming down the road.

It's easily done, living somewhere foreign for a long time, to have a kind of sensory numbness to your environment. But I never grow tired of seeing tropical trees and plants by the highway, a small clump of banana trees in an urban environment gives me some kind of buzz, palm trees swaying in the wind just tell me to chill out a bit, remember where you are.

For now, Phu My Hung is the shining example of a green area, and one of the main reasons I enjoy living there so much. For an evening stroll around deserted back streets, the residents have created wonderful floral displays, plant exotic trees in their gardens and leave huge shrubs on the pavement outside their houses.

My favourite is the Travellers Palm. It is in many gardens and also planted by the Nguyen Van Linh highway in places. I find it dramatic in its size and shape. Here it is central in this green area outside some PMH apartments.





And here's another, right alongside the main road:




If can have my own little countryside abode with a small swimming pool and a couple of Travellers Palms for shade I'll be happy.

Here are some more green snaps from around Phu My Hung





Houses with tress and shrubs outside








A small park with huge houses backing onto it




New apartments going up with a large green area being prepared in front...




Trees lining a Phu My Hung street




A street with a small oasis of a park running down the central embankment




By the river




Suburbia




More new apartments with fantastic views over the river and the future Phu My Hung golf course, currently marshland!

Dancing in the Park

We see all sorts in the park on our Sunday morning walks, me and Lou. We've seen dramas and soaps being shot, adverts, models posing for magazine photos and of course plenty of wedding couples - tripping over each other in fact. On this particular occasion it was the filming of a music video. I was amused by the fact that two guys were acting as a counter balance for the camera thingy..not sure if that is industry standard practice!

At the bottom...


At the top...



The song was one of those ballards that is so slow it takes about 45 seconds to rock from one shoulder to the other and every arm movement is in slow motion. Enjoy.

Development Update Feb 2010

A few little notes from around, a few updates.

Paragon, Feb 2007:



Paragon, 2010:



Saigon Pearl, Feb 2008:



Saigon Pearl, August 2009



Pearl is a real blot on the landscape, an ugly concrete monster. Manor 2 is rising next to it, and this is the site of the first underpass in the city (that I can think of).

Riverside, Nguyen Luong Bang, August 2009:



Riverside, Feb 2010



Sunrise City, Feb 2010:





February 2008:



Now this whole area is turing into a new urban development, on the road out to Phu My Hung from District 4 (Nguyen Huu Tho):





As this article in Thanh Nien tells us:

The Novaland Real Estate Investment Joint Stock Co. has also claimed that a 400-squaremeter apartment at its Sunrise City project has been sold to popular pop singer Cam Ly at more than $1 million and a penthouse for around $5 million to singer Dam Vinh Hung.

The company advertises its apartments in District 7 as “the best constructions in HCMC.

I have yet to visit the location of 'Diamond Island', but it is one of the most talked about projects in the city. Thanh Nien says:

Around 25 percent of 700 apartments in the project are priced at more than US$1 million and around 15 of them are between $2-3 million.

Son said all the six $3 million apartments in the project on the banks of the Saigon River in District 2 have been sold, and that in fact there were more than six people wanting to buy them.

Son said his project has sold 40 percent of apartments worth $1-2 million.

Pictures from Diamond Island construction as soon as I have them, and after we move in of course.

Finally, another project in the Phu My Hung urban area, Dragon City. This one slighty south of the main area.

Apartment in Phy My Hung $600

Chi and I are having to move to a bigger apartment - mother-in-law is coming to stay. More on that later. However, in the interests of us NOT losing our deposit, we need someone to move into our current apartment for the end of Feb/beginning of March.

The details:

My Vien (in Phu My Hung, near the Waterfront), 7th floor, about 90m2, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, fully furnished (very good quality). Very nice block of apartments (9 floors high) - adjacent to the best parks in the city (2 mins walk), very green and quiet around. We have a nice view out to Phu My Bridge/Saigon/Phu My Hung. A new bridge has opened which means you can get to the rest of Phu My Hung in 5 minutes by motorbike (new bridge from near Waterfront comes out to near Panorama/Grandview). Sometimes at night you can see the aurora borealis. Asking price is $600 per month - as cheap as you are going to find in the area. Parkview and Greenview in the same area as this are $800+ minimum. Chi and I are staying in My Vien, just moving to a 3 bed place - we don't want to leave. So an added bonus - you get to be our neighbors! Ok, there was one lie there.

You can see some pictures of the area here.

If you know someone out there who may be interested please contact us at jon@connectionsvietnam.com and we can arrange a viewing.

My Vien:

Phu My Hung Security Fire Drill

The boys in green (Phu My Hung Security, the largest private army outside of the Vatican's Swiss gaurds) strutted their stuff this morning in a fire safety exercise and just happened to do it in the apartment adjacent to us on the same floor. We had ringside seats for this dramatic exercise involving fake victims being rushed out on stretchers, a smoke machine, victims abseiling from the 7th floor window in a rudimentary winch and hoses being unleashed with their full fury.





I played my part, standing on the balcony waving my arms and holding up the baby as if to say 'Save us, for gods sake save us!'. Some of the guards were laughing but I don't think the guy barking orders with a megaphone found it amusing. That aside, it was a serious exercise as this video will show - a volunteer (or not) guard crawling out of the window and abseiling down the building.

Finally, a sunset!

Over the weekend we finally had the opportunity to sit and enjoy a bit of a sunset.



Maybe I will start a photographic exhibit called 'Beautiful Phu My Hung'...;-)

New Neighbourhood

In the distance is Phu My Hung, in the foreground the upcoming Riverside Residence project, which as you can see, we will have a pretty good view of from now on.

"Phu My Hung is not a dirty word Blackadder. Crevice is a dirty word, but Phu My Hung isn't."

Phu My Hung seems for some to have a stigma attached, as if moving there is a cop-out, a wimps option, giving up in a sense to a sterile environment, giving up on the real Vietnam. Well, for us, now a family, it's the only choice. The time for bravado and the (apparent) ego trip of still being 'hardcore' enough to live in the inner city districts is gone. The three and a half years I spent living in Binh Thanh district, an epi-center of all that is potentially frustrating (congested roads, flooding, poor infrastructure) feel like that was my time. Now, times have changed. Our little one needs the space to breath and play, and with our new neighbourhood we have this. We can actually use a pushchair and in the morning or evening stroll around leafy green parks and quiet deserted streets. When I retire at night it is not to the sound of bad karaoke, racing motorbikes or a hawkers call , it it is to the sound of croaking frogs and humming cicadas.


I suppose our year back in England helped to put a lot into perspective, about the good things and the bad things of living in Vietnam. Quality of life being one. From now on there is no more traffic to worry about, my school is 5 minutes away. No flooding anymore, and the air is comparatively good too. Town is just a 15 minute taxi ride away but all the stresses of its heaving streets are now just a twinkling skyline visible from my chair as I sit typing - that, in itself, is peaceful. PMH has developed now into another busy part of the city and even the main part now is not so attractive to us - busy in it's own way. However, we have managed to find a little corner of the city suitable for what we needed.

In the field opposite the apartments an old man has taken the liberty of setting up his own garden. This is not unusual either, as opportunists have done this in various other spots I have noticed.


Here, work being done on the lawn out the back, the peaceful tree-lined road and apartments in the background.


And some shots from the park:

Development - Latest Round Up

As the city continues to demolish and build, changing it's face literally every month, I'll attempt to round up the latest developments. Nguyen Thi Minh Khai has suffered recently from the totally absurd story behind the Pacific building. WHAT a joke.

Over in Phu My Hung, things have really gotten crazy. I am talking about the completion of the new highway which runs through the residential area, which must be at least four lanes each way. Roughly a year ago I took pictures of the area from around March last year which you can see here.

Comparing to today's finished project:

It is hard to show the sheer ridiculousness of the new road system through pictures. Here you can see half of the highway running in front of skygarden apartments. It is quite simply a big ruddy mess. For the residents down here now who may wish to cross one side of PMH to the other, it now means negotiating 10 or 12 lanes of road, with of course no provisions set out for pedestrians. Really a couple of pedestrian foot bridges are desperately needed, and the fact that they didn't incorporate these features when the highway was constructed is, for me, mind numbingly unintelligent -- but also typical. The planning just looks so random and hurried - a shame.

This was taken a year ago. It is the Saigon Paragon.

And today:

Adjacent to the Paragon, the Saigon Convention center is now under construction, and looks like it will be a good modern space.

The Panorama, a riverside PMH apartment complex, one year ago:

Today - nearly ready.

Over on the highway linking D7 and D4 and beyond to D1, big plans are taking shape.

District 5 in the distance.

Plans for a Police University on the site :

Back into town, a bridge now connects Thu Thiem to Binh Thanh district, creating an alternative route onto Highway One (other than the Saigon Bridge) and meaning motorbikes no longer have to queue and wait for the ferry across the river. Rather than join in with backslapping of the local media over the opening of this bridge, I feel it put things rather in perspective about Vietnam. Despite the 'incredible growth of 8% per year', we can see that this most useful and basic of infrastructure is still just arriving. The city really does have awful links, especially in this D2/D7 area in the south and east of the city.

The new bridge:

The bridge arrives in Thu Thiem on a typically narrow thoroughfare so it is still no good for heavy traffic. It will eventually link up with the east/west highway currently being built along the canal through D5, into D1, through the tunnel under the river (of which I have heard very little recently) and then into Thu Thiem eventually arriving at H1 some 2/3kms beyond the Saigon bridge. I am hoping this will eventually mean the end of articulated lorries trundling down Ton Duc Thang, which I envisage as a semi-pedestriansed modern river front in the future. Really, the river should be more of a centerpiece, as it is in any city, and once the old ports further along it's banks are cleared as they inevitably will be, we have potential for some nice outdoor restaurants/cafes lining the river. So much potential!

So in the old days, I'd finish working in PMH and drive over to D2 to play football - a minimum of 45 minutes. Not a million miles, but when you understand that it could actually be a journey of 15/20 minutes with the right infrastructure in place, you get frustrated. Apparently the bridge needed has had 'contractual' and 'bureaucratic' problems for many years. A very tired old story, one which represents the biggest obstacle to useful development -- because friends, acres of high end apartments and extortionate office space is only useful to the few. However, by 2009, this new journey should be ready to test drive, finally giving a link between the developments in Phu My Hung (which are spreading east) and the developments and apartment blocks in Anh Phu, D2 (which are spreading west). With decent transport links it is likely the two areas will continue to grow together, and what with the government plans for the rest of D2 (Thu Thiem), we could see a new urban center on the other side of the river. I am hoping this will happen and the burden will be lifted on what will become known as the 'old city'.

Now dominating the skyline of the city from many angles, the Saigon Pearl is nearly finished. In Binh Thanh district, it is right on the river and well placed - equidistance between the highway and the city center. The street it is built however, as residents of The Manor will attest to, floods horribly during the rains (which always makes me laugh as the slogan of the Manor is 'The best address in Vietnam'). Here is the Pearl, the Manor in the background. You can see the villas/townhouses built below the towering apartment blocks.

And from Ton Duc Thang in D1.

And close up:

In the town center, Times Square on Nguyen has finally begun construction phase, as my friend Chris often tells (he lives basically on top of the site and often they work at night). Saigon Happiness Square, Nguyen Van Cu:

And back where we started, Sailing tower on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai / Pasteur.

I am, of course, just skimming the surface, but that's a round up of what's going up. Amidst all the madness, the traffic, the people dressed in orange who sweep the dust a further two feet up the road, all I can do is share the sentiments of the giant billboard awaiting arrivals leaving the fantastic new international terminal at Tan Son Nhat :