...Paradise Found, Paradise Lost

Somethings are just too good to be true, I suppose. Upon arrival in Saigon, I began to look for an apartment, and for some reason the first place I visited was what I was looking for, quiet, outside of the downtown area, close to some open space. The owner is a Tibetan buddhist, and did a wonderful job decorating the building. Paradise Found.
Unfortunately, it was less than a month after I moved in that four gentlemen arrived one morning on the open plot of land next to my apartment with a makeshift altar, incense, fruit, flowers, and lots of prayers. In Vietnam, such devotion can mean mainly one thing: business. Sure enough, within the day, my new neighborhood arrived: a crane, a pile driver, and about 15 workers.
Paradise lost.
Since then, my balcony has offered up the view of various forms of heavy machinery, trucks, and tools: the dump truck that drops stones, the pile driver pounding concrete foundations into the soft earth, the back hoe digging the foundation, the crane lifting and dropping slabs of stone. The hours between 6 and 8 am, when the digging begins, are now my favorite part of the day.