14 posts tagged “saigon”
Down the street from my house there was a Vietnamese funeral going on. These extravagent affairs are quite common public displays. It was quite different from a western funeral, with loud music and singing transexuals, and a large crowd of gawkers. I think the singers were a bit unusual, even here.
Work started in our office at eight in the morning. But before nine, the power had failed. And it was not back on within a few minutes, as had been the case in the past. So I decided to put into effect my coffee shop plan for business continuity. Later we would find out that the government planned to keep the power off until four in the afternoon; this would be one of Saigon's summer power outages I had read might happen.
I designated the day one for research for some -- that means reading technical books (not using electricity or computers). And with a laptop, and an iMac (they are surprisingly portable), we moved to a cool coffee shop to continue working for the day. We got off to a bit of a slow recovery because the coffee shop had to get its power generator working. But eventually we were sipping coffee and fruit drinks, eating some great food, and listening to Jazz while we worked from our new office away from the office. I think the day was almost as productive as usual, once we got going, and I'm sure we all had more fun.
I chose to set up in a new coffee shop called "Squared", located at 5 Ly Tu Trong in District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam -- just across the street from the popular club, "Lush". The coffee shop is owned by a tobacco company, which did not exactly endear it to me. Although I must admit I did think it was rather interesting that they have a tobacco bar where they will make a pack of cigarettes for customers using a blend of tabacco and flavour of their choice. The reason I
If power failures like this happen frequently, I might buy a back up generator. But this coffee shop solution seems to work well.
One of my friends broke his ankle quite badly a few days ago. He bravely decided to have an operation to set it at a hospital in Vietnam. He chose the Franco Viet Hospital, one of the newest and widely accredited as the best hospital in Vietnam. Time will tell if they can actually practice medicine well, but all the superficial indications look good to me. They have a slick website, international (French) doctors, and exceptionally nice modern facilities. And the food menu looked good!
The hospital is located in District 7 (Q.7) in the suburbs to the south of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
The interior and exterior of the Franco-Viet hospital look very clean and modern. The hospital is celebrating its five year anniversary.
REF: Franco-Viet Hospital website: http://www.fvhospital.com
Our party at a famous local club in Saigon ended with a food fight. It was a really delicious cake -- I got a glob stuck to the side of my head while taking pictures. By the end, every girl in our party who didn't have cake on her was a target.
Reactions varied. I thought it was totally unexpected fun. But some people were upset. There was concern that we would get kicked out by the owner. They shut the club down for the night. But luckily the owner came out swearing at us and hitting us -- with a smile on his face.
With the US dollar coming under relentless downward pressure against most major currencies, stock markets being hammered, and interest rates driven down by the Fed, it is not easy to justify keeping assets in the dollar if one has the choice to pull out.
Perhaps it would be wise to buy Vietnamese Dong (VND)? The Vietnamese government has set a fixed exchange rate at a level that is almost universally considered much higher than the medium term rate. So profits are built in. But banks are fighting back and doing everything they can to prevent people from buying at the artificially low VND exchange rate (according to The Financial Times):
In the black market, the dong is already trading at around 15,650 to the dollar, around 2.4 per cent stronger than the official exchange rate of 16,037 to the dollar. Banks are also trying to circumvent the exchange controls – some by levying special fees to change dollars into dong, or by converting dollars into third currencies, then converting that into dong.
The black market rate for the dollar on Ha Trung street in Hanoi is quoted at VND 15,800 compared to an official rate of VND 16,054 by the International Herald Tribune on Feburary 28, 2008.
One must also consider the cost of getting money out of Vietnam. There are generally fees of around 3% for converting Dong back into USD. The existence of export restrictions has led to significant smuggling of money out of Vietnam.
However, Vietnam has its own monetary problems. Inflation in February 2008 was 15.7 percent. The communist central government is reportedly trying to restrict the money supply in order to fight these inflationary pressures. But this should cause even greater pressure for the currency to rise against the dollar.
Monetary policy has caused local currency shortages. Investors have had a hard time getting cash out of banks for their massive investments. Remember, in Vietnam, without cheques, and a cash culture, even massive transactions often take place in even more massive piles of physical cash -- only ten percent of Vietnamese have bank accounts. Even individuals have been hurt by the cash crunch, with at least one local bank this week arbitrarily limiting cash withdrawals to individuals to VND 3 million (USD 187).
The Financial Times cites cases:
In one sign of the currency crunch, last week Hanoi was forced to give special permission to Morgan Stanley to pay $217m in dollars for a 10 per cent stake in PetroVietnam Finance Corp, instead of making the payment in dong, as is normally required by law.
Elsewhere, an accountant for a foreign firm tried to convert $30,000 into local currency to pay staff salaries and office rent but was turned away when the bank said it did not have enough dong.
“It’s outrageous,” said a foreign executive, spurned in a recent attempt to convert dollars to dong. “We are going to have to go to the automatic teller machine and draw money out to pay salaries by hand.
And small change has also become strictly limited. Recently, when making a VND 65 million (USD 4,053) withdrawal at HSBC's head office in Ho Chi Minh City, the bank refused to give me any more than VND 500,000 (USD 31) in small VND 5,000 (USD 0.31) bills citing currency restrictions. The bank would not even let me place an order for small currency to be delivered at some later date, such as a few weeks in the future. Can you imagine running a business in the US and having your bank flatly refuse to give you more than $30 in quarters, and completely refusing to give you any stock of nickels or dimes?
This architect from San Francisco, now living in Saigon, writes quite interestingly in his blog "Antidote to Burnout" about architecture and design in Vietnam. I am not sure I really like the Vietnamese modern designs, but I do appreciate them more after having read about them.
I have gone to quite a few nightclubs in Saigon over the last few months. At first their location was just a (drunken) blur. But eventually I nailed down the location of many of them with the aid of modern technology, and a true geek's insistence on bringing a GPS with him when he goes out clubbing (at this point, you might note without surprise that I *still* haven't found a girlfriend here).
The following Google Earth satellite image of District 1 shows the clubs in question. You can see more detail by clicking through to the original image on Flickr.
1. Lush(!)
An ex-pat and overseas vietnamese ("VQ") oriented club with a cover charge. It is usually so full that dancing is not possible but open until about 2am.
2. Liquid***(!)
A local club of the sort where pretty girls pour your drinks and talk with you (in Vietnamese) in exchange for a $7 tip.
3. Acoustic
A mellow live acoustic music club where people come to watch rather good local Vietnamese singers and players of contemporary American music from the 70s through the present. They sing in english.
4. MGM***(!)
A massive multi-story local club with excessively loud trance and hip hop sections.
5. Prive***(!) and Bounce***(!)
Bounce and Prive are next door to each other on upper floors. Bounce plays exclusively Hip Hop for a soundtrack with DJs pretending to play. Prive has a wider mix of music. Bounce is the more popular, but Prive is open later so people often go there after Bounce.
6. Palace(!)
On one of the mid-floors of the Palace Hotel, across from landmark Sunwah Tower. No real dancing here. Mostly loud music and of the sort where pretty girls pour your drinks and talk with you (in Vietnamese) in exchange for a $7 tip.
7. Gossip***(!)
A local club with a dance floor.
8. Go2 Bar
An ex-pat club that is open 24 hours a day. This is the place where people go to when everything else is closed. Very late at night it is filled with locals and foreigners who have nowhere to sleep that night.
9. X Club***(!)
A large local club with a modest dance floor.
Notable Clubs and Hangouts not shown are
1. America***(!) (outside District 1)
America is very large. It has several real DJs and a large dance floor. I think this is the loudest club in Saigon that I have been too, even whe n I did wear 33 decibel ear plugs, my ears rang for twelve hours into the next day after an evening here. A local club of the sort where pretty girls pour your drinks and talk with you (in Vietnamese) in exchange for a $7 tip.
2. Apocalypse Now
An ex-pat club, famous mostly for being very old and for being filled with prostitutes.
3. Volcano***(!)
A local club with a large Trance dance floor and a Hip Hop room.
4. Q Bar
A rather quiet high end bar that is open very late and popular among ex-pats. It has pleasant outdoor seating, and a very cool decor indoors.
5. "Blue" club. This is one of the names it goes by, but not it's official name. This is where locals go when all of the other clubs close. It is right next door to a very late night Chinese Dim Sum restaurant.
Honourable mention goes to
1. Windows 4 Cafe
An expensive coffee shop where people come during the day to see and be seen.
2. "CNSG"
A late night spot for locals to eat after a night out. This is just one of a few places open at the end of the night, so everyone you've seen at a local club seems to turn up here next. It is open until at least 4am.
The address is 162 Nguyen Trai.
***A main occupation here is to gyrate at tables while drinking $100+ bottles of rum or cognac. This is why these clubs can recoup their $500,000 liquor license bribes and startup costs in a matter of a few months.
(!) Bring ear plugs if you do not want pain and permanent hearing damage. Clubs in Vietnam are far louder than any I have experienced in the U.S. or Canada.
| HCMC attracts huge capital for foreign investment projects |
| (Listed Dec 28, 2007) |
 Ho
Chi Minh City has attracted a large sum of capital for foreign direct
investments (FDI) in 2007 to become one of the country's premiere FDI
destinations. A report from HCMC's Statistics Bureau said more than 460 foreign investment projects were licensed this year, an increase of 62.5 percent in terms of the number of projects and 40.1 percent in terms of their typical value. The city has seen an expansion of foreign investment projects in 2007 with addition capital of US$310.9 million being put into projects, increasing the total FDI capital in the region to about $2.6 billion, a rise of 16 percent compared with 2006. Foreign investors favored real estate and consultancy services which obtained 53.3 percent of their capital, the report said, adding that industrial parks attracted about 6.5 percent and hi-tech parks about 6.2 percent of their total investment. There are about 2,610 licensed FDI projects underway in the city worth a total of $16.55 billion. Industries account for 40 percent of these while 23.4 percent are involved in real estate and consultancy services. Reported by Vinh Son |
News I have read recently reiterates past statements that foreigners will be allowed to purchase real estate in Vietnam.
| Houses for foreigners could become reality |
| (Listed Dec 28, 2007) |
| Foreigners
will soon be able to own houses if a proposal by the Construction
Ministry is approved by the National Assembly's Standing Committee. To be implemented on a trial basis in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City for a few years, the plan envisages allowing six categories of foreigners - including investors, non-property enterprises, and people married to Vietnamese citizens - to own housing for 70 years. Some of the other conditions are that they must have lived in Vietnam for at least one year, buy the house for themselves or their families and not for commercial purposes, and can only sell the house a year after receiving the ownership certificate. A foreigner who already owns a house can only receive the monetary value of other houses they inherit or receive as a gift. Foreign companies doing business here can buy one or more houses for their foreign employees. At the end of the 70-year period, if the title is not renewed, the owner has to sell or gift the house. The ministry hopes that besides easing the living and working conditions for foreigners in Vietnam, the plan will also help attract more foreign investment and develop the real estate market. Foreigners now rent over 1,300 houses and apartments in Hanoi and 4,000 in HCMC. If the pilot goes without a hitch, the government will expand this program to the rest of the country. FOREIGN BENEFICIARIES UNDER THE PLAN - People coming to Vietnam for direct investments. - People who have contributed to Vietnam and have been honored by ministries or higher-ranked agencies. - Cultural and scientific experts. - People married to Vietnamese citizens and living in Vietnam. - Honorary citizens. - Foreign-invested enterprises not operating in the property sector. Source: VNA |
Given our experience, however, our next efforts were quite a bit more serious. Over the weekend we raised the entire floor level several inches, which should cover us against the worst floods in fifty years. We also corrected some problems with our drains. One neighbouring family had lived on our alley for a hundred years, so we did have some history to draw on in this regard.
I was amazed how fast work took place. From Friday to Monday, we went from utter chaos to order again.
We started with the chaos to the left, and ended up with the order to the right. While we were at it, I had a stone face put on one of the walls because our chairs were scuffing it. The whole wall construction, including materials cost about $125. It is amazing how quickly and inexpensively things can get done here when everything works as planned.
For our work on Friday and Monday and over the weekend, we just squeezed everyone onto the second floor, so we had no interruption in our software development work.
The dry season is supposed to start anytime now. But at least now we do not have to rely on luck, and we are ready for next year.
