apartment hunting

Over the past few days, I’ve been looking at apartments. I like my guesthouse. It’s clean, has AC and cable TV, and even someone to do my laundry and iron for me (I could get used to this), but I’ve been told I can get more for my money if I get an apartment. And I want to save money so I can travel. (In fact, I went to the beach this weekend. Yah beaches!)

Let me just start by saying that trying to find a place here is nothing like apartment hunting in NYC. Sure, there are brokers. But their business styles are a bit different, if you can even call it that. First, the brokers take you around on the back of their motos. Second, they just start driving around with no real idea of what places are available. As they drive, they’ll see a sign advertising a place and ask the guard, if there is one, if we can see it. The guard or someone who is responsible for the keys will show us the apartment. Other times, if there is no guard, there’s a number posted for the owner and the broker calls the owner.

So far, I haven’t found anything I really like yet. I’m picky, I know. The places that are nice, meaning places I want to live and with no indication of roach or other unwelcome pet infestation, are too expensive or too far outside of the central part of the city. The ones that are reasonably priced are too far out or not very safe in terms of bldg security, meaning no security guard or gate. The hunt continues. Of course, with only 8 weeks left, I’m not sure how many people will want to rent to me.

And rental time length is not my only barrier to finding an apt. An older landlady was reluctant to rent to me because of my Chinese ethnicity. She was afraid of the Pol Pot connection to China. Yet another one of the residual scars of the Khmer Rhouge regime. Interestingly enough, however, the owners of my guesthouse speak Chinese. I can practice my Chinese in addition to learning Khmer. I can say a few things now in Khmer!