A Country That's So Close and Yet So Far
"Theft"
Hiromi Kimoto
April 8, 2002
While I was visiting my children in Boston, there was some criminal affair of a kind. I heard that there were many foreign people having their houses broken into. For such a peaceful and calm town like this, that is a kind of news somewhat hard to believe. Though we have had some burglary cases also in the past, most of the burglaries broke in when the residents were absent. However, for the recent cases, they would steal into a house at dawn while a resident is in, and I heard there even was a resident who has been placed a knife under his nose. As a matter of fact, one of my friends, a young Japanese female, told me that, being exhausted with work (?), she flopped straight down onto her bed with her clothes on. But while in bed, she got a mosquito bite, and, thinking "Gosh, it itches. I have to put an ointment," she turned the light on. What she witnessed then was a man. She told me that she could not tell whether he was young or old as she did not see very clearly, but the shock she experienced was indescribably awful, of course. I suppose that the theft must have been flurried to see her waking up that he ran away in a fluster. That actually was very, very fortunate that he just left. We also had an antitheft alarm set up at our house, and rebuilt the wall higher.
Now letŐs change the subject.
At the beginning of this year, the first super-luxury apartment in Vientiane was completed, and they were advertising for new residents. It really is a fashionable-looking apartment with a swimming pool and tennis court, but the rent also is ridiculously high by VientianeŐs standard. My house (Though without a swimming pool, of course) has three bed rooms with a quite large garden, and we are paying $500 a month. Compared with that, that apartment is $2,500 for 2-bedroom type. Even for a studio type, it costs $1,000. So the manager made 30% reduction on the rent, but still could not attract enough prospective residents.
However, its vacant rate has been lowered to about 10 percent by now. In the face of frequent cases of theft, those foreigners rushed all at once to this apartment, which provides reliable guard. Now, there is a rumor spreading fast among the foreigners in Vientiane. "Was it the manager of the apartment who contrived all the recent theft-related matters?" It is because that in the last few months, there has not been any trouble of theft. Well, truth isÉ?
Translated by Maiko Noda
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