Eight months ago, skyrocketing inflation, rising food prices, an overheated economy and an insane real estate market were the key factors causing economic indigestion in Vietnam. Now, all of a sudden, there is too much rice stockpiled all over the country that nobody wants to buy, fish are flopping in crowded ponds without a exporting freezer container to hop into, petrol prices are falling, inflation is zero from any practical point of view, and the future of export-driven growth seems a bit iffy, given the financial implosion in the United States.
Meanwhile, a lot of speculators and garden-variety investors are getting killed in the stock market and creamed by their underwater real estate investments.
Growth in Vietnam has been driven in large part by big transfers of investment funds seeking profitable projects, a rapid growth in domestic industry and services, and exports (especially to the Unites States). If the financial crisis in the rest of the world has a major downward effect on imports from Vietnam and capital flows in the form of direct investment, what looked like an overheated economy could get pretty chilly.
There are some areas of Vietnam where development is exploding, and then there is Quang Ngai. A beautiful province with mountains to the west and the East Sea to the (you guessed it) east, Quang Ngai is still over 80% rural, quite poor and with no tourism to speak of. There are a few industrial projects, and downtown Quang Ngai is bustling, but for most people in the province, life goes on much as it did ten or twenty years ago.
Quang Ngai, located south of Hoi An in central Vietnam, is best known as the site of the My Lai massacre, a particularly nasty example of American soldiers out of control and killing every person they could find. These days, according to the members of the provincial People’s Committee I spent a few days with this week, My Lai is a local symbol of how to turn hatred into something positive, an example of how evil can be transformed over time into inspiration for peace.
My wife and I stopped the other day at some hole-in-the-wall near our house for breakfast, a nice hot bowl of pho bo chin (beef soup with soft flat rice noodles, served with brisket). We sat on small plastic chairs at plastic tables; at the next table were three white-bearded men eating, laughing, smoking and drinking rice vodka. They might stay there for a couple of hours, the food long since gone, but there is plenty more rice booze in re-used plastic bottles stacked along the walls, and the water pipe sits next to a big box of lung-searing tobacco.
While waiting, I had my motorbike filled up with gas and washed until it gleamed. The total for all this activity was $4.60. Had we wanted, we could have continued down the road a bit, put the motorbike into a full-service garage, enjoyed breakfast at the Intercontinental and spent more like $75, plus plus (i.e. paying the value-added tax, or VAT).
Many tourist pilgrims make the trip to Sapa, in the northwest of Vietnam. Nestled in steep mountains, the town is full of wandering trekkers and backpackers, with a smattering of higher-end tourists, all of whom stay at the 4-star Victoria Hotel.
Can I digress for a moment and say how much I prefer 3-star to 4-star hotels? The 4-stars offer important amenities like clean beds and bathrooms, and that’s perfect for most people.
If environmentalists really cared about saving the planet, they would be strong advocates for city living, promoting high-rise development and density in or on the fringes of all major cities. The same goes for those of us faced with challenging questions about the best way to promote rural development, reduce poverty, enhance healthcare and education, and save the planet: Cities are the answer. Good cities are, in fact, the only long-term solution to climate change.
Cities create living spaces of maximum density, with smaller housing using less energy, and much less need for travel by car. With most travel by subway, buses and on foot (and vertically via elevator), city dwellers use far less energy than their rural and suburban counterparts. Dense cities (New York, Mumbai, London, Nairobi) emit far less carbon per person than sprawling cities (New Delhi, Houston, Shanghai, Los Angeles), especially those in hot climates where every indoor space is air-conditioned. The nightmare comes when the booming cities of the developing world achieve the density, but without high-rise buildings, subways and decent city services.
“Patience is a virtue,” my mother frequently remonstrated her small children, the five of us no doubt insisting that we needed something right now – a new bicycle, clothes, a snack or to be driven over to visit a friend.
As a kid, I always wondered what she meant. We all knew that patience was on the list of officially-sanctioned virtues, what was the point of reminding us? I thought she was saying, “Patience is a good thing.”
It wasn’t until I was a teenager that it suddenly struck me; what she really meant was, “patience is one of the virtues that you should cultivate in yourself.” And not for the first or last time, I wondered if I was perhaps an exceptionally slow learner.