Impressions from a visit to
Vietnam.
·
Vietnam
is not a rich country, but it cannot be said to be a poor country. People today
are well-clothed, well-fed, and mostly employed. They live in small, but
substantial houses. There are lots of late-model vehicles on the road and
relatively few old ones. While there are some desperately poor people, there is
also a thriving middle class (which includes blue collar middle class).
·
It is
the most entrepreneurial place I have ever visited, beating Texas by a country
mile. The place is filled with small businesses, street vendors, and
manufacturing shops employing 10 or fewer people. Everyone seems to have a
hustle or a side hustle (that they run in addition to their day job) or both.
·
There
is a middle class. Vietgirl’s family included the following: a district manager
for a pharmaceutical company that covers much of central Vietnam, a used car
salesman, a long haul trucker (drives 18 and 22 wheelers), an IT technician,
several teachers, and a minister.
·
If you
were to ask for an analog, I would say Vietnam reminds me a lot of what the US
was like between 1890 and 1910. There are major companies, but most people seem
to aspire to become a boss/business owner rather than an employee. There are
lots of small-holders and lots of people living in small houses or townhouses.
·
Everything
is built on a smaller scale than the U.S. A typical house is three story with
two (or maybe three) rooms per floor. I stayed at a 12-story hotel which had
three or four guest rooms per floor. Streets and highways are narrower than in
the US. A four lane roadway is a major artery.
·
The
place is walled up. Virtually every place I visited, business or residential,
had a fence around the property. Not the six-foot privacy fences you see in
Texas, either. These were repel-the-borders barriers. There was a gate or
grating that would be pulled across the entryway. Steel barriers, folks. When I
asked why, they said it was because of crime, even though none of the people I
talked to had been victims of crime. All of them related tales told to them by
friends about crimes against friends of theirs. But no one knew of a victim of
a crime personally. The attitude is not really much different than Texans who
keep firearms in their homes to protect themselves from crime. The proactive
approach discourages crime, keeping crime rates low enough that outsiders think
the locals appear a tad paranoid.
·
The
Vietnamese live closer to the sources of their food than do Americans. Lots of
people in towns raise chickens for meat. There are rice fields and sugarcane
fields intermixed with the town. (The fields are typically small, five acres or
less.) I even saw cattle grazing by the roadside in towns. They know where
their food comes from, and do not understand why folks in the US treat food
animals as pets.
·
Transportation
is a zoo. Vietnam’s roads are traveled by everything from 22-wheelers (an
18-wheeler with a third axle on the trailer) down to bicycles and
bicycle-powered pushcarts (the back half of a bicycle attached to two-wheel
carts). And they all travel down the same roads at the same time, and view
traffic rules as strictly advisory. It is not unusual to see vehicles on the
wrong side of the road. It is also pretty typical to see everyone ignoring lane
markings. Once I saw three automobiles and three motorscooters abreast on a two
lane road! Peril sensitive glasses are recommended for passengers.
·
The
most ubiquitous vehicle on Vietnam’s streets is step-though motorcycles – the
old “you meet the nicest people on a Honda” scooter, with floorboards, lots of
sheet metal on the body, and normally a seat that lifts up for storage. Everyone seems to have one (although the rebels
have standard motorcycles). You can store your groceries on the floorboard for
the trip home. A common sight is three to five people on a single scooter, with
the first two adult passengers riding pillion behind the driver and the first
kid standing on the floorboard ahead of dad, and a second on the handlebars.
Another common sight is Madam Librarian on a scooter – an obviously professional
woman with perfect posture, back straight, arms held just right, and her feet sensibly
flat on the floorboards.
·
Vietnam
has rednecks, Bubbas, and good-ol’-boys. They look a little different than
their American counterparts but behave virtually identically. Vietgirl’s
trucker uncle is the spitting image of the US trucker. He smokes like a
chimney, drinks beer on his days off, and if he likes you, you are his best
friend forever. When I went into a cafe with Vietgirl’s father, there were a
bunch of factory workers having refreshments after their shift (beer, tea,
coffee) – just like US good ol’ boys. (They too, were smoking, ignoring a “no
smoking” sign. When we walked in, they wanted to talk with us, because I was
obviously a foreigner. Each one shook my hand asking where I was from. Texas?
Houston? They were delighted. They ribbed me about being Buddha (because of my
belly), and when I slapped my belly, agreeing, they became friends for
life. I am comforted by the thought that there are so little real differences
between cultures.
·
I
should also note the Vietnamese are friendly, friendly people.
·
Donald
Trump is popular in Vietnam. They love the slogan “Make America Great Again”
because that is what leaders are supposed to do. They thought “Stronger together”
was the type of slogan a lying bureaucrat would use.
·
The
Vietnamese also love Americans, and clothing with US themes is popular. I often
saw Vietnamese wearing US patriotic clothing (These Colors Don’t Run) or
anything with English slogans on it. Part of it is they respect us as fighters
and see a strong United States as their bulwark against China. Part of it is
Americans are friendlier than Chinese. But they do like us.
·
The
Vietnam War has achieved the same stage of nostalgia in today’s Vietnam as the
U.S. Civil War had reached by 1900. Vietgirl’s family had members participate
on both sides. Today it is more something they reminisce about than fight over.
The writer speaks of South Vietnamese. Northerners think Southerners are lazy spendthrifts. Southerners say their Northern brethren have no sense of humor.
