Vietnam finishes #10
Posted on 12/26/2019 10:47:33 AM PST by DUMBGRUNT
After his military career, Rockhold worked as a defense contractor, operating mostly in Africa. He first returned to Vietnam in 1992 to work on a program to help economic refugees. He settled in Vietnam in 1995, the same year the United States and Vietnam normalized relations. He married a Vietnamese woman in 2009.
In fact, he liked it so much that he persuaded his mother to move to Vietnam from Santa Maria, Calif., also in 2009.
She came for the wedding, and decided to stay,” he said with a laugh. She lived in Vietnam until her death in 2015 at 94.
Vietnam has relaxed visa rules to lure American retirees like Rockhold, along with their savings.
Remarkably, he said, some of his friends are Americans who never served in Vietnam. “The cost of living is so low,” he said. “It’s a communist country, but if I blindfolded you and put you in downtown Saigon, you wouldn’t know it.”
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
“The English spoken in Vietnam today would be easier understood than the English/ebonics spoken in much of Chicago.”
Point taken. Chicago is a polyglot city to begin with. Ebonics only apply if you hang around the projects. You can still find German speakers on North Lincoln Ave, or Polish speakers in the nortwest and southwest side. (Mexican, nigerian, etc.)
Air pollution? They are simply following China, like, you know, Shanghai and Beijing. While the country may be beautiful, the ecosystem in these craphole countries poisons everyone.
That may be true in 2019, but back around 1977, Russians and those from the Bloc were the only whites to be found in Vietnam, and from what I read at the time, they weren't very popular.
I don’t doubt it. I retired and moved from Texas to Panama for two reasons - cost of living and Christian ministry. With social security and two pensions, I can live in relative comfort here and serve the Lord instead of trying to get by in the States on handouts.
Panama uses the U.S. dollar as it’s currency and I can often figure out what is written in Spanish even when I don’t know it because so many words are similar. In Asia, I would have to convert to the local funny money and interpret squiggles instead of a common alphabet.
So even if Asia is cheaper than Panama, I don’t think I could adapt to it as well as I have here. Best wishes though.
China less communist than CA? Not sure. Much of the Internet is blocked in China.
Việt Nam is nominally a Communist country but the government is Vietnamese and after the old hard core revolutionaries died off the government has been characterized by Vietnamese practicality. Unlike the Russians, when Vietnamese see that something is not working they stop doing it. When they see successful practices in other societies they adopt them. It is much more like rule by an enlightened Mafia than by traditional Communists. Vietnamese culture is family and clan based and as such is not up to Democracy. In such a culture voting for your government officials is silly and doesn't work. We have not figured that out in the Middle East or Central Asia and as a nation, may never figure it out so we get bogged down in hopelessly trying to bring Democracy to the natives. In a clan based society if there is an election as we know it everyone votes for the candidate most closely related to family and clan. Officeholders are expected by everyone to use their positions to benefit primarily their clan. The Vietnamese government is relatively efficient and benign and probably the best such a society, just beginning to emerge socially and economically from traditional structures can expect.
There is no constitutional freedom in Việt Nam as there is no Constitution. It is an authoritarian government that is far more economically literate than almost all other such governments. The Vietnamese leaders determiined in the 80s that Việt Nam had to grow rich as a country in order to stave off becoming a province of China. Liberalization of the economy began slowly until the last of the old guard died off then picked up steam.I was there between 2003 and 2007 when the corner was turned. In 2003 everybody wanted to go to America where money grows on trees. By 07 everybody wanted to go to America where they could work hard and send their children to University. When I went back in 2011 everybody wanted to visit America but then return to Việt Nam because they saw the future as being there.
There is corruption in Việt Nam, of course, but there is a whole lot of corrruption in America, too. We are seeing that with the fear of the Democrats and Republicans about a serious Ukraine investigation. My buddy in Cam Đức who has read a lot about America contrasts the systems in the matter of building a house.He paid out a total of a couple of hundred dollars in bribes to various officials and police and built his house. In America the bribes are still required but they are institutionalized and one must pay out many thousands of dollars to government offices before one may stick a shovel in the ground. Then the government tells you what you can build and makes you pay for the information. At every turn there are more such legal bribes to government offices to get each facet of building permitted. Thông's house cost him about $4000 in materials. It is about 1800 square feet. If the wind blows hard and knocks it down well, ya shoulda built better. We here have to build everything to government standards and the Hurricane comes and blows your house away and you cannot rebuild with the 100% insurance payout because the government has changed all the building codes in the week after the storm. Vietnamese approximation of private property in land and structures is de facto much closer to actual than it is here.
Just did not know if true or not.
Right now the air pollution is worse than I’ve seen in Beijing or Shanghai. It didn’t seem to affect me in terms of coughing though. The worst air pollution I’ve been in in terms of negative effects is in Seoul. They call it “fine dust,” a combination of air pollution from China and fine dust supposedly all the way from the Gobi Desert. That stuff’s nasty, you just start hacking away.
For anything serious, you are just a short, cheap hop to Thailand. Amazing healthcare by doctors trained in the west, but at a much lower price.
As the father of an Amerasian child, I’ll have you know that rule varies from country to country. What you said about discrimination in Vietnam is true, but on the other hand, in Thailand and the Philippines, having mixed ancestry is a plus, thanks to the influence of Hollywood. Most Filipino actors and singers fall into the “Mestizo” category.
Really? Which one?
We don't have to worry about the Government doing that in America.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. handle blocking conservative site and speech.
Just being outdoors in UB made my lungs feel like they were burning. The city sits in a "punch bowl." There was light snowfall, and within 2hrs everything was a sooty brown again.
Before I left the States, I checked the weather forecast and saw "partly smoky." I figured it had to be a mistranslation, and in reality would be foggy, partly cloudy, etc......Nope. It was smoky. At some points thick black smoke rolling down the road from the power stations (I swear they burn mattresses and tires for power generation). I had to wash all of my clothes at least twice upon return to the U.S. to get the pollution smell out of them.
That said - the Mongolian countryside is GORGEOUS. The people were really friendly (and showed tremendous disdain for the Chinese and to a lesser degree the Koreans).
Yeah, I’ve heard it’s really bad there—a lot of kids die from lung diseases and infections.
I always thought if I had to leave Chile was my destination. Fairly civilized, cheap and stable until recently.
Interesting...we had some friends who vacationed there earlier this year and said they’d never go back.
Vietnam finishes #10
They did a survey where they asked the citizens of different countries their views on Capitalism/Free Markets.
Vietnam, it turned out, was Number One, in terms of the population being pro-Capitalist.
The government is pretty much Communist in Name Only, but still holds onto power by pretty much allowing for a Laissez Faire economy.
No thanks. Too muggy.
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