32 posts tagged “vietnam”

From Vietnam, I get a "page not found" error when I try to go to certain sites. Friends in the US, over Skype, tell me that they can see the same sites. So far the list of blocked sites includes the following:

www.voanews.com  Voice of America News
anonymizer.com  A proxy service

In a poor developing country like Vietnam, where it is 90F every day, opportunities for ice skating do not exist. But I just noticed a way to make it more feasible using artificial ice (Ice Tec 310). This would make it possible to put an "ice" skating rink in central park in Saigon, just like in Manhattan. That would be cool. 

According to the Economist's Economic Intelligence Unit, Vietnam may have 0.3% economic growth this year. That makes a lot of sense given what is going on in the rest of the world. But it is certainly a slap in the face to Standard Chartered's 5% growth estimate, and official Vietnamese government assertions that things would soon get better.

At a conference in Hanoi this week, estimates were all over the map. But all agreed that the government estimates were too high.  A lack of reliable and timely data was one reason reported for a lack of consistency in estimates.

Pacific Airline traffic is declining: Delta, the world's largest airline,  said its transatlantic capacity this winter would be down 11 percent to 13 percent compared to the winter of 2008, while its transpacific capacity would be down 12 percent to 14 percent. They are cutting capacity by an additional 10 percent in September following earlier cuts. (REF: reuters.) The number of foreign travelers entering Vietnam by air is reportedly down dramatically in 2009, although cruise ships tours are up (REF: vietnamnet.)

Vietnam's Economy is starting to feel the heat. For a long time the global meltdown had apparently left Vietnam largely untouched.

Even this year some employees of mine complained when I gave them pay raises of only 100% per year. I suspect we will learn that last year's double digit growth in wages has not persisted into 2009.  The real culprit is a lack of information that reflects the increasingly harsh economic reality. The Economist reports that the economy needs about a million new jobs each year just to provide work to new entrants into the economy. Yet last year about half a million workers lost their jobs, and almost as many may lose their jobs this year. That year saw 6.2% economic growth, the lowest rate in nine years. For 2009, the IMF, and many other observers outside the Vietnamese government, believe that economic growth will decline to 5%. Part of the problem is that the government is still trying to cover up the problem, and insists that it can achieve 6.5% growth. Either figure is a big decline compared to last year's government declarations that 2009 would see 8.1% economic growth, and expectations based on 2007's reported growth of 8.5%.

Local consumer demand has collapsed. Sales during the Tet holiday in January were down 50% from the previous year. Car sales were down 68%.  Clearly the downturn is affecting more than just rice farmers and labourers, it is also being felt by the middle class, and the rich (note that a basic car that would cost $25,000 in the US costs almost $70,000 in Vietnam after taxes, duties and shipping).

Vietnam's economic growth has been driven primarily by exports, and sustained by domestic oil resources. Domestic demand has largely contributed to a trade deficit. Yet exports fell by 5.1% year-on-year in the first two months of 2009, with electronic goods down by 13.7% and shoes by 7.3%.

REF: The Economist

Compared to the Global Economy, and the rest of the developing world, Vietnam remains relatively lucky. The World Bank has announced (recognized) that the global economy is likely to shrink in 2009.  Global industrial output could be 15% lower, year-over-year, by the middle of this year. And developing countries will find they have a financing shortfall of about $700 billion this year -- massive growth in rich world (e.g. US) borrowing, and restricted supply, are leaving little left for the economically uninfluential poor of Asia and Africa. REF: BBC

"Seriously? 800 diggs for one missing letter?" wrote capnawsome on digg.com, commenting on "my day in the sun" on March 2nd, 2009. The day ended up having 76,543 people view one of my photographs (see below) on flickr.com. And he was right, it was really just a trivial thing that I had noticed and laughed about, and blogged about here, back in November 2009.

I have been avidly taking photographs and sharing them with people since I was a teenager in the 1980s. Back then, I might have dreamt that almost a hundred thousand people might view one of my images. But I would have imagined it would be a beautiful moment caught with quick reflexes and a careful eye, brought to light after hours in the darkroom. The Internet (thank you) changed everything, and for better or worse the world gets to choose what it likes, and who it likes, when it likes, and for as brief a moment as it likes.

There really is no reason to complain about this moment of fame. Flickr lets me track how popular my photos are, and I have been miffed for several years that the perennial favourite has been a picture that I did not even take myself. It was a picture of a fake tsunami that I had received in a chain email letter just after the one that wiped out so many people around southern Asia on December 26, 2004.  That picture has been viewed 38,315 times so far. I'm pleased to see it more than supplanted by one I actually took myself, and wrote about. Perhaps one day, a photo of mine that I consider artistic will gain attention. But for now, it is just nice to be noticed. Thanks, digg.com. Thanks, flickr.com. Thanks, Internet.

P.S. One irony, that I think has been missed, is that this particular brand of insecticide claims to be much less dangerous than others (like Raid) on the market in Vietnam.

Based largely on the advice of Ken Berger, I now have a set of new protective gear for use with my motorbike in Vietnam. When in San Francisco, I bought new gloves, boots, a jacket, and pants.

The Frank Thomas jacket is lightweight and has some mesh for ventilation. It has internal armour for arms and elbows, padding for the back, and external steel guards for the shoulders. It is rather lightweight, but better than the alternative of nothing. The jacket really needs more mesh for the Vietnamese climate.

The SMX Alpinestars gloves also have quite a bit of mesh, with carbon fibre knuckles for extra protection (turns out they were made in Vietnam).  The lightweight and relatively discrete Italian Dainese boots have an exoskeleton steel joint around the ankle, a lot of carbon fibre, and steel toes.

My pants, by Iicon, look like regular jeans, but they have an internal abrasion resistent aramid layer for added protection. Aramid is used primarily for balistic rated body armor, and as an asbestos substitute. There is also a scarey skull on the back pocket should that prove insufficient defence.

I still have my locally bought Vietnamese helmet, but hope to upgrade that someday too.

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

chose this place was because it has good food, pleasant Jazz and Lounge music, and most importantly, good Internet. Today I measured about 350 kbps in both directions with Silicon Valley, but in past days, I measured about a megabit per second of bandwidth.

If power failures like this happen frequently, I might buy a back up generator. But this coffee shop solution seems to work well.

Today's black market rate (in one competitive jewelry store) shows the US dollar falling in value and black market rates moving closer to official rates.

The black bid rate was 17,400 VND/USD. In other words, they will pay you 17,400 Vietnamese Dong for one US dollar.
The black ask rate was 17,520 VND/USD. If you have 17,520 Dong, you can buy a dollar.

Transactions are usually in crisp, unmarked one hundred dollar bills. Rates are less favourable for other denominations or conditions.

Note the very narrow 120 Dong (0.69%) spread.

Compare the black market rate to a 16,845 official bid rate for June 29, on Yahoo Finance.

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).