The street picture is very different in Vietnam from what we are used to here in the United States.

Real estate taxes are levied on lot size, which means that narrow and tall houses on small lots are prevalent, both in the cities as well as in the villages. It makes for some strange views.

I took the photo above from a moving bus as we went through a village in the country. This is a very typical view on the main street of any village in Vietnam. People work where they live. For instance, the peach-colored house second from the left has four stories. The bottom is usually a garage-type floor with a rollup door,  where the family conducts its business, whatever that might be. It could be a shop, a restaurant, a tire store, a butcher shop. Much of the family living also takes place there, and on the sidewalk in front of the house. Often you can them burning their trash in a barrel on the sidewalk in front of the shop. There are stairs in the back of the house that lead up to the upper floors, each of which consists basically of one room. You often see balconies, which just extend the living area.

Here is another such view. You can again see the narrow houses, with bare, unpainted side walls, since the neighbor’s house, should he build upward, would cover that wall. There are never any windows on the sides.

Here is another shot of the same row of homes.

Way out in the country, these narrow houses take on an almost grotesque view. I saw many four-story buildings with blank walls on both sides, one room wide, surrounded by nothing but empty lots. But if you only own a lot the width of one garage, that’s all you can build.

Here is a view in the city of Hanoi. Binh Chung is a restaurant where we ate. We walked into the entry hall, went to the back where the stairs were, and walked up a flight of stairs. We ate in the room just above the sign.

Another street view in Hanoi. A narrow hotel, the De La Sole Hotel. It can’t have too many rooms in that narrow tower.

I will always remember Vietnam as the country of the narrow, tall houses.