Visiting the urban area of the Manor was my very new experience. I was to many other new urban areas, but they are much different from this.
Firstly, other places are more of the living community, and more of the Vietnamese traditions, where people can find both supermarket and a normal chợ. Walking around the Manor for hours, I could find only 2 very small marts which support for the whole residents.
The place brought me the impression of a closed community where only people who live there can enter. Most of my classmates were chased out by the securities when they were trying to get into the place. I, Trinity, and Tam were luckier when we chose to go separately through the side gate. I heard from a friend before that they won’t let outsiders enter the place, so we pretended that we were living there, and walked straight into the place. Surprisingly, the securities were cheated and they let us in without asking anything.
Maybe the developer is trying to build a place in a totally European model, even though I’m not sure about how the European people live, but I can’t find the sight of the Vietnamese traditions in the place. The most obvious thing to see is that the Vietnamese community is very open, where people in the neighborhood are all friends. But the whole place was very quiet. One of the reason was that the time we came was the working time, so people were still in their office then. But eventually, it was still hard to find people around the place, most of the people I saw were the security guards, and the cleaning ladies walking around doing their jobs.
After hours walking around the place, I notice that there are only a few restaurants, and most of them are for wealthy people. It’s easy to see that people who afford living in the area are all very rich, because they have to pay for not only the house, but also for the monthly services of parking, cleaning, security, etc. Is that the reason for only build up the high price restaurants there? What happen if the rich people feel like eating phở for their breakfast? And yes, one more thing is that the food served by those restaurants is not suitable for breakfast, so where do the people go for their breakfast?
Around the area there are many offices, but it’s kind of a conflict to me when they open offices in the place where people from outside are not welcome. So what’s the point of opening an office there?
After all, living in a place like that is not even a good idea for me. I’d rather living in a place where I can find everything I want just by walking around, like my place right now. However, if I’m offered a place in The Manor, I’ll accept it happily. That will be a place for me to come and stay for a few days, to have the feeling of living in a bunch of money, and to know how good it is living in my present area.
