Blogging is usually rather spontaneous affair but this time I suddenly decided to plan my writing. It is not a random decision but rather, a step to get my English on to the next level. I started this blog as an effort to write in English more frequently and also to express myself using this language. I must say the attempt have been more than successful because after more than 4 years of blogging, my English is way better than my Chinese despite the opposite trend when I started out. Nevertheless, I realised that my writings have been little less than organized and it reflects the messy kind of thinking my mind engages in. The fact that I enjoy multi-tasking and stray into reading random Wikipedia articles while attempting to source information for the things I am writing about doesn’t quite help. Anyways, here’s my first attempt.
This article is definitely long overdue. My trip to Vietnam was from 20 February to 24 February and I’ve now already made another trip overseas again. I planned on writing this long ago but then even with all the data and information in my mind, its poor organization up there naturally called for procrastination and thus I postponed the writing of this entry. I got on to reading other stuff and now that I promised myself to devote a good deal of today’s afternoon writing I shall write this entry and some others to get this matter done and over.
Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City
Technically speaking, my February trip was a Ho Chi Minh City Trip more than to Vietnam. I’ve mainly only seen the city side of the country, knowing barely anything about the North, where traditions and customs were more properly preserved I learnt. I have, for the benefit of my readers, decided to look up Wikipedia to aid myself with an introduction of Ho Chi Minh City.
Ho Chi Minh City is the largest city in Vietnam. Under the name Prey Nokor, it was the main port of Cambodia, before being annexed by the Vietnamese in the 17th century. Under the name Saigon, it was the capital of the French colony of Cochinchina and later of the independent state of South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975. In 1976, Saigon merged with the surrounding province of Gia Định and was officially renamed Hồ Chí Minh City. – Wikipedia
I think this is one of the best kind of summary when you want to talk about history of places; their development and all that will take up too much space so just talk about who rule or is in charge of that piece of land, how the name changes and be done with it. How
My Brush with Vietnam
Before the trip, all I know about Vietnam’s History and Geography is that she was involved in the Vietnam War and that she is located in South-East Asia, which sort of explains why she happens to be an ASEAN country. Besides that I know they are an emerging economy and doing pretty well with globalization.
The Vietnam War segment of my knowledge was largely a result of this short thesis paper I wrote in Secondary 2 that briefly discuss if United States screwed Vietnam during the war. It was a crappy piece of work and I failed the assignment terribly.
Pre-Trip Facts
I wanted to get away during my Birthday period and since I was going to deplete some leaves for it, I might as well take Overseas Leave to avoid the trouble of having people bug you. I have to decide somewhere to go anyways and it’ll be good if I’d be able to explore myself and travel entirely at my own pace. It is an entirely random idea and I was glad that Yi Da made the trip because he made it possible for me to foresee the stuff there, he gave me recommendations on what to do and places to go and such. I must thank Yi Da for all that and he has been a great ‘Guinea Pig’ sort of subject for me. Unfortunately, this knowledge and foresight was not enough to convince my parents to allow me to go on a trip without package tour and frills like such by myself with a friend. I got Ruiyuan to go Vietnam with me but was subsequently forced to drag my 2 aunts along with me to pacify my parents. I guess it’s pretty embarrassing but I’ve no fear about revealing this since this step is supposedly my stepping stone for more trips on my own.
Economic Observations
Okay, well. So I did make it there eventually and as a rather academic person who admires Economics, I thought it’ll be a great idea to consolidate my Economic Observations. I think it’s a wonderful city with lots of opportunities – as I did mentioned in some previous entry that you see street-side stalls in front of posh hotels and everywhere. Most families own these street businesses probably on top of some other breadwinners in the family working either for the government or big firms. The city consists mainly of people from the South Vietnam, more acquainted with capitalism and more entrepreneurial so to speak.
The development is somewhat haphazard, with poor maintenance of roads and these traffic networks evolved so spontaneously that I must say it is considerably messy. The good thing about Ho Chi Minh is that their terrain is relatively even so there’s little geographical barriers to development (say relative to cities like Hong Kong). There’s is no decent maps that tells you the name and location small streets around the place and the street signs are kind of small so it’s really difficult to tell where you are. Buildings there for residence are probably mostly build by households and not centrally planned so they’re also in quite a mess.
However, they have the grand advantage of super smart people who are full of drive to improve themselves. People (mainly referring to shop-keepers and stall owners) there could mostly speak a little bit of many languages thanks to the influx of tourist into Ho Chi Minh in the recent years – I heard English, Mandarin, Cantonese and probably French (logical since they were the focus of the French Colony. The shop-keepers at Ben Thanh Market successful scammed me into buying imitation dry-fit tees at a cost of almost SGD $9 when I could have gotten it at 4 bucks or something. Technically speaking, I can only blame my poor bargaining skills, which improved quite a little after the trip. The girls there have got pretty vicious mouths since lowering the prices too much yields exclamations like ‘I kill you!’, which can be pretty scary when they hold up their fist and try to look fierce. For that I have got to admit I’m a pretty timid person and I shall not defend myself against this charge.
Vietnam companies have obviously been really good with diplomacy, securing the formation of many cartels for the agencies in the tour industry. On the trip I went for 2 tours, one to the Cuchi Tunnels which I learnt about extensively during my study on Vietnam War (out of curiosity than academic interest) and the other was to the Mekong River Delta. Usually when one talk about Mekong we think about Thailand but the fact is most of the rich stuff that comes down along Mekong ends up with Vietnam. At the Mekong River Delta, I observed the lives of Vietnamese farmers and the simple lives in those rural towns. Frankly, it isn’t that different from those rural towns on the coast of Malaysia.
The food there is not priced as competitively as I’d expect but I think it’s good price relative to Singapore when you consider the service there; their KFC have staff serving you and taking orders, you can get the smallest Whipped Potato at about SGD$0.80, the typical cafe fares around Pham Ngu Lao region where I stayed was price around SGD$4.00 to SGD$6.00. Some restaurants have that sort of prices too although they often offer more foreign sort of food like fries and steak. The best is streetside fare, since a meal cost at most SGD$2.50 bucks with a drink and both the cooking and ingredients used are great! I had a plate of Stir-fried Beef Noodles for SGD$1.80 although I have to put up with sitting on the small chair that I used in the past to do homework when I was 4 or 5 years old and also for most unlucky people, they have to sit beside the roads where motorcycles were rushing by. The locals didn’t seem to mind though.
Some Prescriptions
The thing lacking in Ho Chi Minh City that most modern cities need to have is a metro-system, rails trams that shuttles people around. Their public buses work poorly because some roads are not suitable for big buses to go through and their street sides are not so suited to being lined with bus stops. Currently most locals travel with the aid of bikes and foreigners are allowed to rent bikes – this isolates those travellers who doesn’t ride bikes (me for example) and makes it difficult for people to move around in masses.
The lack of a rail system removes the excuse for a ‘transport node’ where you can open huge shopping mall and generate positive network effects. Vietnam doesn’t need those super high class malls, they just need those mid-class ones like Singapore’s old style malls Beauty World, Bukit Timah Plaza, People’s Park Complex and such. A degree of centralized planning is needed.
For those ‘learning’ to backpack (like me I guess) and want to explore cities of foot, Ho Chi Minh is a good place to start out. Knowing Vietnamese language is definitely a huge advantage, but for people like me, Broken English is good enough in Pham Ngu Lao district and otherwise you can only rely on kind souls who can speak English to help.
