Unfortunately this is something that is going on right across from my own balcony at the moment and it is just in the beginning stages that is relatively quiet compared to what is bound to follow.
I am referring to construction noise, and it is a bane on the entire area and always has been. Just when you think that there is no more land to build anything, someone comes along and tears an existing structure down, waits a while, then comes by and lays ground for what is bound to be a many months-long project of constant, all day every day noise.
While the image is bad quality, the sentiment is the same. I've seen it begin this way many times. Some nicely dressed guys will turn up with a couple of guys who are dressed down a bit and they are surveying the land. I can only assume that one of the guys is the big boss, another is an engineer, and another is a project manager of some sort. This wouldn't have been so worrying if it weren't for the circular metal rebar that they have next to them.
This is used for making column reinforcements that will serve as a housing of sorts for the poured cement that is going to make the pillars that support the entire structure. They have a machine that will form those into braces that can keep pieces of wood or something else in place while the heavier rebar in the middle has cement poured all around it by a machine that in of itself, is also very loud.
While you have to look closely in order to see, this is what was on the ground the following day. That is the long, heavier pieces of rebar that takes 3 or 4 men to carry it. It arrived on a truck at the crack of dawn today and they have been unloading and moving it for hours. When you see this stuff turn up, you know that they intend to go many floors into the sky and that this is not going to be a short build.
So now I have to make a choice: Do I uproot myself and move away from the noise or do I find a way to deal with what is bound to be 7am to 7pm (and sometimes later) construction noise?
There are no noise pollution rules in this city that I can perceive, and the owners do not give half a damn if they are disturbing everyone in the region. This is CONSTANT and almost completely unavoidable if you want to live near the beach in Da Nang. Everything is under construction and even if you move into an area where everything is already built, you can rest assured that someone is going to come along and at the minimum decide to do a complete refurbishing of the existing building and they will do this with the loudest imaginable tools and in a manner that takes many months to complete.
Most Vietnamese people go to sleep really early and wake up really early so I guess it is ok with them. For us expats, particularly people like me that have variable hours as well as variable sleeping hours, it is a very frustrating part of life here. Moving to another condo doesn't really solve the problem either because I am yet to visit anyone's condo anywhere on this side of the river that doesn't have some sort of grinding, loading/unloading, digging, or cutting going on at all hours of the day.
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother trying to live here. It is just annoying AF to have to deal with construction noise around every corner no matter where you go. Hell, even on the beach they have massive condos being built that destroy the ambiance and peace of the sea. This is all happening during a time when tourism hasn't yet recovered from Covid yet and hotels are never at capacity. Why on earth would someone come and build more of something that isn't even being used in what already exists? I guess I just don't understand the mind of rich people.