The second set of photos includes our snorkeling trip to the islands nearby, the farewell party Mac's student threw for us, and the lovely book that they made for us as a farewell gift.
Here's a link to Mac's Facebook page, where he keeps his own albums of photos to remember students, events and volunteer teachers who've joined his conversation class over the years. One album consists of photos taken of our farewell beach party. Some of the photos are terrible, some better, and none taken by me. I was wandering about in a weakened state, recovering from my first serious food poisoning in ages - my last one had been18 years earlier.
Our friend Esther Bedik created an amusing quiz that will resonate with westerners who've spent a little time in Vietnam. Some of it verges on "you had to be there", but it's cute and funny:
Esther’s Post 5 March 2014: Vietnam Pop Quiz
In a loving spirit, I would like to present:
The Vietnam Pop Quiz
1) Which question is safe to ask at a restaurant in Vietnam?
A) What is the round thing floating in my soup?
B) What do the little green chilies taste like?
C) Do all the employees wash their hands regularly?
D) What is fish sauce made from?
E) Can I get some steamed white rice?
Answer: Only E, if you want to sleep at night
2) Upon meeting you, a new Vietnamese acquaintance will:
A) Ask where you are from and nod sagely, even if he has never heard of a state called “Misery” *
[* Esther and Lloyd are from Missouri]
B) Ask how old you are and acknowledge that you do not look that old
C) Ask where you live in Vietnam and smile approvingly
D) Ask how much you pay for rent and exclaim with shock and horror that you are paying way too much, what are you crazy, why didn’t you ask him to find you an apartment, he could have found you an apartment for half the price, next time be sure to come to him first….
E) Be compelled to ask all of the above in exactly that order
Answer: E, of course
3) At a Vietnamese intersection, who has the right of way?
A) Vehicle that is honking the loudest
B) Man on motorbike balancing huge propane cylinder
C) Woman on motorbike with two toddlers
D) Enormous bus full of Russian tourists
E) Man on motorbike driving toward you on wrong side of road while texting
Answer: Trick question! There is no such concept here.
4) Many visitors to Southeast Asia are worried about traveler’s diarrhea. Is it actually possible to travel to Vietnam and be constipated?
A) No, everyone eats copious fresh fruits and vegetables
B) Yes, apparently it is possible
Answer: Unfortunately, the correct answer is B.
5) In a hot climate, the advantage of a white tile floor is:
A) It is cool.
B) It highlights every crumb and bit of dust.
C) It is easy to clean three or four times a day.
D) You can always find your husband by tracking his footprints across the living room.
E) It makes a lovely backdrop for the red ants.
Answer: D
6) If you have a problem with red ants in your house, you should:
A) Spray toxic chemicals all over your house
B) Keep your house scrupulously clean
C) Sprinkle talcum powder in key areas
D) Stop looking down at your white tile floor
Answer: Skip A, try B, then try C, then fall back on D
7) When you try to speak Vietnamese, your chances of being understood are:
A) 0
B) 0
C) 0
D) 0
Answer: Take your pick, unless you are Marcel Marceau or very proficient at charades
8) Your feeling of serenity during your morning Yoga class is enhanced by:
A) Throbbing techno-pop music from the aerobics room
B) Booming march music from the military base next door
C) Cell phone conversation being carried on by the woman next to you
D) Your inability to understand almost all of the instructions
Answer: D
9) When you and your husband show up stylin’ on your motorbike and you see a group of young people laughing, you can be sure that:
A) They are delighted to see you.
B) They are not paying the slightest attention to you.
C) They are laughing with you.
D) They are laughing at you.
Answer: Either B or D, can’t really tell.
10) On a home altar honoring ancestors, you are likely to find:
A) A bouquet of flowers
B) A bowl of fresh fruit
C) A pack of cigarettes
D) A can of beer
E) A tin of Danish butter cookies
Answer: Any and sometimes all of the above
EXTRA CREDIT QUESTION: What can we learn from this ancient cultural practice? How do you honor your ancestors? What will your children put on YOUR altar? What’s up with the Danish butter cookies?
Esther's husband Lloyd Bedik has just written a blog posting called "Death by Intersection", a pretty accurate description of traffic on Vietnamese streets.
March 8th. We went to Vinpearl amusement park yesterday. The cable car ride is the longest in the world "over water". At Vinpearl we waited 35 minutes in a line to ride the Alpine Coaster, a sort of luge on rails that runs back and forth down the hillside. We decided to skip the line-ups for the other rides, and headed for the aquarium, which was surprisingly good and modelled on the one we'd visited in New Zealand.
I was keen to try the waterslides until I saw how many steps you had to climb for one quick ride; hardly anyone else was using them either, even the young and fit people. We looked for something else interesting to do and found the wave pool. I waded in and began enjoying myself for about three minutes and suddenly there were no more waves. They turn it off for a half-hour, every half hour, and the lifeguards take a smoke break. My guess is that this is because once you've paid for your all-attractions ticket, they can't make any more money by keeping the rides open constantly, as they would in a western amusement park. We spent our first half-hour break swimming in a manicured beach area with pure white sand that they brought in from somewhere else, and went back to the wave pool when the break was over. We stayed for three shifts, and could have stayed longer. Even Deborah had fun there, and I had a gas, although it is pretty dangerous. I flipped off my tube in shallow water several times and bumped my head on the concrete pool bottom more than once.
We decided to avoid further line-ups getting home by leaving a bit early. Deborah had just agreed to ride on the "Compact Coaster", which would have been the first time in a quarter century I had talked her into riding a roller coaster, but just as we arrived to line up they shut down for their half-hour break as well. "Sorry," the attendant said. "Back in 35 minutes." Bummer. Nothing left to do except a room full of crappy video games. I've never understood the fascination with arcade videogames unless you're a teenager and you want to hang out with other teenagers who are supremely bored with their small town lives. So we came home.
March 11th. I disapproved of the fact that Vietnamese youngsters have to buy their way into their jobs. The practice ensures that you don't hire the best and the brightest when you do that, but the most "connected" and already wealthiest, and therefore presumably already inculcated into corrupt practices, which they will perpetuate along with their superiors. Then I met Sammi and Fabrice, who came to Mac's English class. Fabrice is a chef who has also worked aboard ships, and he told me that it is common for ships to sell their jobs, in the Caribbean and elsewhere. He has known people to volunteer to turn over their first two months' pay in order to land a job on a cruise ship. It reminded me that there is a practice of unpaid internship for many jobs in the west.
We decided to avoid further line-ups getting home by leaving a bit early. Deborah had just agreed to ride on the "Compact Coaster", which would have been the first time in a quarter century I had talked her into riding a roller coaster, but just as we arrived to line up they shut down for their half-hour break as well. "Sorry," the attendant said. "Back in 35 minutes." Bummer. Nothing left to do except a room full of crappy video games. I've never understood the fascination with arcade videogames unless you're a teenager and you want to hang out with other teenagers who are supremely bored with their small town lives. So we came home.
March 11th. I disapproved of the fact that Vietnamese youngsters have to buy their way into their jobs. The practice ensures that you don't hire the best and the brightest when you do that, but the most "connected" and already wealthiest, and therefore presumably already inculcated into corrupt practices, which they will perpetuate along with their superiors. Then I met Sammi and Fabrice, who came to Mac's English class. Fabrice is a chef who has also worked aboard ships, and he told me that it is common for ships to sell their jobs, in the Caribbean and elsewhere. He has known people to volunteer to turn over their first two months' pay in order to land a job on a cruise ship. It reminded me that there is a practice of unpaid internship for many jobs in the west.
Those examples barely compare with demanding five years of a parent's average salary, but I suppose that in a country of 93 million people, half of whom are under twenty-five years of age, there just aren't enough jobs to go around. The laws of supply and demand have led to hiring by kick-back rather than hiring on the grounds of merit. It is difficult to see how young people shut out of the economy can gain a foothold, especially if they have not been taught to be entrepreneurial and to think outside the box. They have been educated, and they have expectations which have been fed by their teachers, their government, and the marketing of international media, magazines, the internet...one wonders how long their frustrations can be contained.
We did our third and final Nha Trang hash run this past Sunday. We got drummed out of the group with our own turn on the ice and a very ignominious song announcing that we should "be on your way, then", but with much ruder words, and a sort of reverse baptism of beer from the tin mug over the head. Of course, that was all just to show us how much they loved having us in the group. There's a hash group in Toronto, the Hogtown Hashers, known as the "Toronto kennel of the international drinking club with a running problem". I might lace up my shoes and go on a few runs with them this summer, now that I know I can hack it. The Nha Trang run is always only about seven kilometres in an hour and a half, cross country, with a beer stop in the middle - not nearly as difficult as I'd have imagined before I'd actually done it.
Deb and I walked the beach at 6:30 a.m. this morning, heading to morning badminton. We saw few tourists, but lots of Vietnamese enjoying the beach. They rush out when it is cool and work out on the public exercise machines, play badminton in the sand and on the concrete squares, play the hacky sack game with a feathered shuttlecock that you kick back and forth, swim and jog, and even do aerobics and dance in small pavilions. They try to get that all in before the hot sun comes up and makes them feel lazy, and before the risk of acquiring a tan, which is considered very unattractive in this culture. In the evenings they sometimes picnic and fly kites. We walked past all this activity and a small flock of pure white doves, and I reflected - not for the first time - that we will miss Nha Trang.
To me, Nha Trang has a feminine quality, something to do with the soft sea breezes and the easy going way of the people - except for the constant sharp honking of traffic, which is something I could do without. There's an ever-present odour, slightly sweet and "cookie-ish", sometimes almost more of a texture than a smell, that I've never encountered anywhere else that I can remember.
We did our third and final Nha Trang hash run this past Sunday. We got drummed out of the group with our own turn on the ice and a very ignominious song announcing that we should "be on your way, then", but with much ruder words, and a sort of reverse baptism of beer from the tin mug over the head. Of course, that was all just to show us how much they loved having us in the group. There's a hash group in Toronto, the Hogtown Hashers, known as the "Toronto kennel of the international drinking club with a running problem". I might lace up my shoes and go on a few runs with them this summer, now that I know I can hack it. The Nha Trang run is always only about seven kilometres in an hour and a half, cross country, with a beer stop in the middle - not nearly as difficult as I'd have imagined before I'd actually done it.
Deb and I walked the beach at 6:30 a.m. this morning, heading to morning badminton. We saw few tourists, but lots of Vietnamese enjoying the beach. They rush out when it is cool and work out on the public exercise machines, play badminton in the sand and on the concrete squares, play the hacky sack game with a feathered shuttlecock that you kick back and forth, swim and jog, and even do aerobics and dance in small pavilions. They try to get that all in before the hot sun comes up and makes them feel lazy, and before the risk of acquiring a tan, which is considered very unattractive in this culture. In the evenings they sometimes picnic and fly kites. We walked past all this activity and a small flock of pure white doves, and I reflected - not for the first time - that we will miss Nha Trang.
To me, Nha Trang has a feminine quality, something to do with the soft sea breezes and the easy going way of the people - except for the constant sharp honking of traffic, which is something I could do without. There's an ever-present odour, slightly sweet and "cookie-ish", sometimes almost more of a texture than a smell, that I've never encountered anywhere else that I can remember.
The town isn't stunningly beautiful at first, and there are flaws: garbage in the streets which, however, gets removed by an army of street cleaners each night; annoying motorcycle parking blocking the sidewalks (pedestrians have no special rights in Vietnam), annoying vendors, cyclo and taxi drivers. Somehow one gets used to all of that within a week or two and then you experience the pleasure of intimacy with a city that is small enough to navigate on foot and becomes familiar very quickly. We have so many "favourite" food venues, and there are many more undiscovered ones, I'm sure. It's easy to make new friends, not the least of which have been Mac and his students, and there's always something new and fun to explore and to do. The citizens are generally very sweet and friendly, as soon as they realize how polite you are, that you have made an effort to learn a few Vietnamese words just to try and bridge the culture gap from your side, and that you're not one of the predominant westerners on the streets of town, the unfriendly Russian "packager" tourists. It would be a great pleasure, now that we feel so familiar with this little city, to share it and show it to others.
March 15th. Deb and I are both taking azythromycin. She had a crack in her tooth that the dentist tried to fill because Manulife wouldn't pay for a crown, and the fix lasted until a week before our return. I got attacked by a virulent hoard of bacteria who took up residence in my lower intestine. There was fever, sweating, pain, stiff neck, sore muscles and joints. It seems to be responding to the antibiotics, although I'm a little nervous about the 13 hour overnight sleeper bus ride to Saigon.
A lot has happened in our final days. We had a lovely snorkeling trip to Hon Mun, Mun Island. There's a marine sanctuary there and a decent coral garden. The visibility was good and the water was warm. The crew put out food for us and we had plenty of sun and plenty to eat all day.
March 15th. Deb and I are both taking azythromycin. She had a crack in her tooth that the dentist tried to fill because Manulife wouldn't pay for a crown, and the fix lasted until a week before our return. I got attacked by a virulent hoard of bacteria who took up residence in my lower intestine. There was fever, sweating, pain, stiff neck, sore muscles and joints. It seems to be responding to the antibiotics, although I'm a little nervous about the 13 hour overnight sleeper bus ride to Saigon.
A lot has happened in our final days. We had a lovely snorkeling trip to Hon Mun, Mun Island. There's a marine sanctuary there and a decent coral garden. The visibility was good and the water was warm. The crew put out food for us and we had plenty of sun and plenty to eat all day.
Sadly, we observed that the fishermen wait until the dive boats are out of the way each day and then swoop in to catch the bigger species, which removed them from the waters we snorkeled in. The snorkeling boat staff say that the fisherman just pay off the marine police with a fish or two, and sell the rest of their catch to the hotels in town. One wonders why they couldn't respect the boundaries of the marine sanctuary and catch their bigger fish elsewhere, but perhaps they don't want to spend the extra money for fuel to go farther out. They might have their own traditional fishing areas, and to move into someone else's territory might cause conflict. There are no quotas here on fleet size and fish catch as there are in the west, and no seasonal controls.
The students at Mac's gave us a lovely party send-off last night, on the beach close to our hotel. New friends from Australia and France, Fabrice and Sammi, made crepes which we spread with the remainder of our maple syrup, then rolled up and ate like little spring rolls. The students presented us with a book they'd compiled containing photographs of previous beach picnics we'd attended, and many of them wrote a page of appreciation for our time spent with them.
The oldest student in the class, a 51 year old divorced lady named Thuy Thuy, invited us to her house for lunch. She put out a spread you can barely believe, and invited some of the other younger students who are friends of her son and who also go to Mac's conversation group when they have free time. Her son is in California taking an English prep course prior to beginning his university program in September. She has a daughter and two sisters in Belgium. She used to own an electrical appliances shop but apparently lost it in her divorce; still, she and her husband must have made quite a bit of money at that business in order to pay for their son to attend university in the U.S.
Most Vietnamese cannot fathom the cost of a return ticket to Toronto, let alone the expense of travel once you arrive there. One girl I sat with today quizzed me about that and said that it would take her entire salary for a year to pay for a round trip ticket, and that's by working ten hour days, probably a six day week. But it would be a mistake to think that all Vietnamese are equally poor. You might think that it is a classless society of communist equality, but it is far from that. The range of income disparity is immense, and unfathomable to those of us who grew up with any expectation that communism meant equality. The communist experience is quite different from one country to the next, just as "democracy" has many different faces in different nations. Here, the communist leadership are very upper class, economically. Government officials and policemen have ways to shake down the people who need their services, and many business people are extremely well off.
The students at Mac's gave us a lovely party send-off last night, on the beach close to our hotel. New friends from Australia and France, Fabrice and Sammi, made crepes which we spread with the remainder of our maple syrup, then rolled up and ate like little spring rolls. The students presented us with a book they'd compiled containing photographs of previous beach picnics we'd attended, and many of them wrote a page of appreciation for our time spent with them.
The oldest student in the class, a 51 year old divorced lady named Thuy Thuy, invited us to her house for lunch. She put out a spread you can barely believe, and invited some of the other younger students who are friends of her son and who also go to Mac's conversation group when they have free time. Her son is in California taking an English prep course prior to beginning his university program in September. She has a daughter and two sisters in Belgium. She used to own an electrical appliances shop but apparently lost it in her divorce; still, she and her husband must have made quite a bit of money at that business in order to pay for their son to attend university in the U.S.
Most Vietnamese cannot fathom the cost of a return ticket to Toronto, let alone the expense of travel once you arrive there. One girl I sat with today quizzed me about that and said that it would take her entire salary for a year to pay for a round trip ticket, and that's by working ten hour days, probably a six day week. But it would be a mistake to think that all Vietnamese are equally poor. You might think that it is a classless society of communist equality, but it is far from that. The range of income disparity is immense, and unfathomable to those of us who grew up with any expectation that communism meant equality. The communist experience is quite different from one country to the next, just as "democracy" has many different faces in different nations. Here, the communist leadership are very upper class, economically. Government officials and policemen have ways to shake down the people who need their services, and many business people are extremely well off.
Stanley Karnow makes it clear in his book that this is the hotbed of what we now call "state capitalism", where gov't Ministries own, manage and run entire industries, pay as little as they need to in order to attract labour from an immense labour pool of underemployed citizens, and make massive profits while enjoying monopoly protection from foreign competition. Many businesses have been state owned for decades, and therefore enjoyed subsidies, wide-spread high-powered connections and a great head-start on any private venture competition, putting the owners and managers of these businesses in the catbird seat when it comes to extracting money from those seeking their services, or jobs in their industries. It seems that Vietnamese people now, and perhaps always, have improved their lives by stepping on the heads of those below them, notwithstanding the fact that they are also some of the sweetest and most emotional and affectionate people on earth, at least to those visitors who display liking and respect for them. The system of state owned industries continues here while it has fallen in places like East Germany, and I suspect that is the greatest source of sand inside the machine that prevents a smooth transition to successful development which was predicted for Vietnam through the '90's and beyond.
March 16th. Ghosts and gods: my group of students exercised their English muscles today by explaining kitchen gods and spirits. Spirits are everywhere around us. They are the known and unknown dead, hosts of ghosts who populate the streets and houses, who have fallen in centuries of wars, perhaps on the very sidewalk you tread. Some are remembered and many forgotten, but they still have the power to influence the lives of the living in positive or negative ways. They must be placated through propitiation - prayer, offerings on outdoor altars and the burning of "ghost money" that looks like packages of counterfeit bills from Vietnam, the U.S. and other countries. Beer and cigarettes are popular with ghosts, apparently.
In addition to outside spirit altars, there are altars inside the home. One is for the ancestors, and it allows prayer and offerings to loved predecessors. The other is for the three kitchen gods. They are not ghosts per se. They are like the gods who populate heaven, but they reside in peoples' homes throughout the year. There are two male and one female god in each home. At Tet, they leave the home in a special ceremony and travel to heaven to report on the inhabitants of the home, communicating the good and bad things that the people in that house have done. About four days later, they are invited back into the home in another special ceremony, and throughout the year, offerings are made to them to keep you on their good side so that they will speak favourably of you during their visit to heaven at the next Tet.
Almost all Vietnamese believe in ghosts and gods. Offerings of food to ancestors and to kitchen gods can be recycled and eaten by the living inhabitants of the house at the end of the day, once the ghosts and gods have taken as much of the offerings as they wish, but in general, offerings made to the outside spirits of the dead cannot, because that would bring bad luck. That is one reason many of those offerings consist of paper items, money or letters, that can be burned in an offering barrel. Sometimes we see small restaurants or businesses along a given street using the same burn barrel, one after the other, passing it along to their neighbour as they each finish their offering.
March 17th. It is quite interesting to note that the Communist party leadership here has intentionally chosen a free market economy, supply and demand path, while fervently denying that they have embraced "capitalism". Our friend Vinh explains that it is a kind of middle path, intentionally chosen, unlike any practiced in any other communist country. I read that it happened in a rather panic-stricken series of leadership meetings after the Marxist co-operatives had failed to provide enough food for an expanding population during the '80's. For many reasons, a western communist overlay on this particular market-based traditional Asian society just wasn't going to take root.
March 16th. Ghosts and gods: my group of students exercised their English muscles today by explaining kitchen gods and spirits. Spirits are everywhere around us. They are the known and unknown dead, hosts of ghosts who populate the streets and houses, who have fallen in centuries of wars, perhaps on the very sidewalk you tread. Some are remembered and many forgotten, but they still have the power to influence the lives of the living in positive or negative ways. They must be placated through propitiation - prayer, offerings on outdoor altars and the burning of "ghost money" that looks like packages of counterfeit bills from Vietnam, the U.S. and other countries. Beer and cigarettes are popular with ghosts, apparently.
In addition to outside spirit altars, there are altars inside the home. One is for the ancestors, and it allows prayer and offerings to loved predecessors. The other is for the three kitchen gods. They are not ghosts per se. They are like the gods who populate heaven, but they reside in peoples' homes throughout the year. There are two male and one female god in each home. At Tet, they leave the home in a special ceremony and travel to heaven to report on the inhabitants of the home, communicating the good and bad things that the people in that house have done. About four days later, they are invited back into the home in another special ceremony, and throughout the year, offerings are made to them to keep you on their good side so that they will speak favourably of you during their visit to heaven at the next Tet.
Almost all Vietnamese believe in ghosts and gods. Offerings of food to ancestors and to kitchen gods can be recycled and eaten by the living inhabitants of the house at the end of the day, once the ghosts and gods have taken as much of the offerings as they wish, but in general, offerings made to the outside spirits of the dead cannot, because that would bring bad luck. That is one reason many of those offerings consist of paper items, money or letters, that can be burned in an offering barrel. Sometimes we see small restaurants or businesses along a given street using the same burn barrel, one after the other, passing it along to their neighbour as they each finish their offering.
March 17th. It is quite interesting to note that the Communist party leadership here has intentionally chosen a free market economy, supply and demand path, while fervently denying that they have embraced "capitalism". Our friend Vinh explains that it is a kind of middle path, intentionally chosen, unlike any practiced in any other communist country. I read that it happened in a rather panic-stricken series of leadership meetings after the Marxist co-operatives had failed to provide enough food for an expanding population during the '80's. For many reasons, a western communist overlay on this particular market-based traditional Asian society just wasn't going to take root.
Many leaders decried the policies initially promulgated by the party leadership. One of them, a Dr. Hoa, told Stanley Karnow that administrators at her hospital "padded payrolls, accepted kickbacks from suppliers, and looted pharmaceuticals for sale on the black market". She told him, "This is still very much a feudal society, regardless of the ideological veneer." Someone else told Karnow that there was a little known saying by Ho Chi Minh that they'd decided should be their mantra: "The poor should get rich, and the rich should get richer", presumably by any means necessary and available.
This wasn't just a result of the failure of communist methods, however, or a reaction to it; the same behaviour was rampant during the U.S. supply of payrolls and materials, by the South Vietnamese commanders. They were locked in a life-and-death struggle against a northern army who would soon murder then, confiscate their property and cause a million citizens to flee, but they were, like the proverbial leopard, unable to change their spots. They stole from, and weakened, the war effort that their very survival depended on, and weakened the political will of the U.S. public and politicians to continue to support them.
There's an ancient social psychology here that begins to emerge when you consider phenomena like this, and it is in stark contrast to what you might expect if you've experienced Cuba and have read about other communist societies and imagined them in a most idealistic light, or if you've thought about how easily Caucasian communists accepted and worked within their collectivist experience, even though it was ultimately a failed experiment.
This might help to explain why it has been so difficult for Vietnam to ease up on its restrictive regulation of foreign investment, and emerge as a new Asian economic tiger, even though that is what they strongly desire. There's a joke that within the countries known as the Asian Tigers (Korea, Japan, etc), Vietnam is a small pussycat dreaming of being a tiger. I even saw a new coffeeshop in Nha Trang that is just about to open with two large statues of a tiger and a cat out front, and they've named their coffeeshop "The Tiger and the Cat". I imagine it well night impossible, once they've enjoyed preferential treatment for so long in this economy, for insiders in state businesses to let go of their advantages for the good of their nation. Vietnamese people have always looked out for their immediate families and their village communities, and competed for status within those structures, rather than identifying themselves as units of a larger national community.
I've been wondering how different it is now, twenty years after Karnow wrote his history of Vietnam, and even longer since Neil Jamieson wrote his. I've been asking questions of people like our friend Vinh, who works for the American Chamber of Commerce while he works on his law degree, and will soon go to a U.S. university to major in Public Affairs. Yesterday we had a chat about the different ethical approaches of Vietnamese business practice compared to what he's learned about U.S. practice, at the state level, and in the mid-level corporate environment. I tried to probe what might be revealing about Vietnamese at the individual, psychological and socio-cultural level compared to western business owners and consumers. He talked about the frustration experienced by his western clients at the "two tiered pricing" they experience here, which he says has been legally prohibited but still continues almost everywhere. It persists in micro environments like the markets, and median ones like hospitals, in hotels and apartment hunting situations, and even in the gouging behaviour of railway agents like the one who added a personal surcharge to our friend Anh's shipping cost for his motorcycle, but a much bigger one for the western customer just ahead of him in line.
Most Vietnamese clearly feel that all westerners are more well-heeled than they are, and should always pay double, triple or more for everything, although some westerners are not, including those employed here at local salary rates, and those who are volunteers. The practice places an inflationary pressure on the local economy, of course, that can hurt local Vietnamese buyers who are often at the extreme lower end of the income scale. The willingness of tourists to spend a large sum in a short time on a brief holiday - some who even take out loans for vacations, which Vietnamese can't do - exacerbates that problem in zones popular with tourists.
I've been wondering how different it is now, twenty years after Karnow wrote his history of Vietnam, and even longer since Neil Jamieson wrote his. I've been asking questions of people like our friend Vinh, who works for the American Chamber of Commerce while he works on his law degree, and will soon go to a U.S. university to major in Public Affairs. Yesterday we had a chat about the different ethical approaches of Vietnamese business practice compared to what he's learned about U.S. practice, at the state level, and in the mid-level corporate environment. I tried to probe what might be revealing about Vietnamese at the individual, psychological and socio-cultural level compared to western business owners and consumers. He talked about the frustration experienced by his western clients at the "two tiered pricing" they experience here, which he says has been legally prohibited but still continues almost everywhere. It persists in micro environments like the markets, and median ones like hospitals, in hotels and apartment hunting situations, and even in the gouging behaviour of railway agents like the one who added a personal surcharge to our friend Anh's shipping cost for his motorcycle, but a much bigger one for the western customer just ahead of him in line.
Most Vietnamese clearly feel that all westerners are more well-heeled than they are, and should always pay double, triple or more for everything, although some westerners are not, including those employed here at local salary rates, and those who are volunteers. The practice places an inflationary pressure on the local economy, of course, that can hurt local Vietnamese buyers who are often at the extreme lower end of the income scale. The willingness of tourists to spend a large sum in a short time on a brief holiday - some who even take out loans for vacations, which Vietnamese can't do - exacerbates that problem in zones popular with tourists.
However, if it weren't true that westerners generally appear to be better heeled than Vietnamese people, I believe they'd still be overcharged at every possible opportunity, simply because they're less aware of pricing norms and practices, and the Vietnamese vendor will happily take advantage of their vulnerability. And yet, I've seen instances of vendors returning change or giving discounts that were unexpected by the western buyer, just out of a pure sense of fairness. It's easy to make a generalization, but easy to find exceptions.
For daily items there are many western style stores with fixed prices on the shelves, often cheaper than you can negotiate in the markets, by virtue of economies of scale and the efficiency of pricing products so that they will move off the shelves without personal intervention by the energetic hawking of a vendor. We quickly learned that you are a naive innocent westerner visitor if you engage with vendors in the main market of Ben Thanh in Saigon. Unlike South America and elsewhere, they are not "bargaining in good faith". For example, I paid $10 for a $7 shirt after first being asked, incredibly, for $30, and the vendors can be as aggressive as piranha. I wonder what it will look like in years to come. It's all very interesting, and I've enjoyed reading books about Vietnam and Vietnamese history while experiencing the environment first-hand.
Our trip from Nha Trang to Saigon on the Nam Phuong sleeper bus was more pleasant than our previous trip. My intestines behaved themselves, and the driver was merciful with his horn. We slept as well as can be expected and arrived at 6 a.m.
Our trip from Nha Trang to Saigon on the Nam Phuong sleeper bus was more pleasant than our previous trip. My intestines behaved themselves, and the driver was merciful with his horn. We slept as well as can be expected and arrived at 6 a.m.
We stumbled off the bus and very luckily arrived at the door of a guest house Deborah had researched months ago. This time not only did it have an empty room, but there was a young man just leaving and locking the door behind him who let us in and got us settled before he left for work. We're in a front balcony room as big as the one they tried to gouge us for at the New York Hotel, enjoying air conditioning and quiet. We're down a narrow alley with only the occasional quiet scooter two floors below, none of the anarchic traffic of the main street and no nightclub clamour. There's no elevator, but I didn't quibble over his initial price as most customers do, and the young man, probably in a state of shock and delight, loaded himself up happily with Deb's backpack behind him and mine in front, and raced up the two flights of stairs to our room. Without backpacks, stairs are easy to do, and good for our health; and elevators in small hotels are noisy things, with their constantly opening doors and redundant dinging bells. I'm glad to stay in a building without any.
We slept until ten and then had a day of eating, shopping for a few interesting items to take home, and meeting with three friends back-to-back for meals or coffee: Marianne, Vince and Joe. Now we have a few more friends to connect with today, notably Tam, and apart from that I'll finish the final photo album, we'll read, pick up a few last minutes shopping items, and we'll retire early to get up at 2 a.m. for our ride to the airport. Although we're nervous about the cold and delayed spring in Toronto, Vietnam is getting pretty hot south of the Hai Van pass, and we're ready to head for home.
Bottom line, how do we feel about our winter spent in Vietnam? We'd have to answer that it isn't like any other place we've ever been, but it's been one of the best adventures we've ever had.
Bottom line, how do we feel about our winter spent in Vietnam? We'd have to answer that it isn't like any other place we've ever been, but it's been one of the best adventures we've ever had.
Back to my Diary Archives page.
