Copacabana for bores

In order to get some fresh air I went to Vung Tau on Saturday. A hydrofoil boat leaves from a pier immediately in the central business district and needs just 90 minutes over the Saigon River to the shore. Arriving in the small resort city the first I recognized was a statue similar to the world famous ‘Cristo Redentor’ in Rio de Janeiro. I was told that Vung Tau should be a nice city for taking a rest from urban life. However, it has noting to offer but the typical kind of socialist-modernist architecture, an unspectacular beach with 20 centimetres of surf, a boring clientele, most of them locals, some empty restaurants offering limited cuisine except seafood and some shabby girlie bars. I rode one wave of three meters, length, not higth. There’s virtually nothing to do in this place.


So Sunday noon I already left. On the journey back I paid attention to the river and it was really interesting. In the way that streets are urban lifelines, the rivers are the rural veins and economic gateways of the country. They are very broad and the system is of large extent. Coming close to SaiGon there are small docks built in the mangroves, or the huge container ships and tankers just cast anchor in the brown, dirty water. The harbour constructions and the impressively high rusty old ship sides seem to me some kind of “evil”. I always asked myself how tons of drugs come to Europe day by day. Vietnam is not known as a remarkable supplier country, but for sure it is ships that look like these in the world’s banana republics that carry them.


It was astonishing to see very small and simple boats that were looking like lost between the huge vessels. But fore sure they are on a mission that is as important as the missions of the larger scale cargo.


Coming back to the city, I felt that all the means of a modern life fit my interests better than doing nothing, and again I saw how much I got used to convenience. The simplicity of a surf-break still attracts me much. But that alone is not enough. There was neither surf and nor anything else to do, anybody else to meet. A German lecturer in Hanoi once said to me “If you are here in order to seek intellectual exchange, then you’re wrong!” Bali as a tourist place attracts at least some of those people with an intellectual or humanist touch. If there are those people here in Vietnam, then they are probably in the city. At least does Ho Chi Minh City offer more opportunities than a Copacabana for bores.

streets

Life in Vietnam takes place in the streets. They are marketplace, living-room, dentist’s surgery, hair salon, café and restaurant simultaneously and serve many more purposes. The borders between private and public space are very fluid. The most significant impression of the major cities in that country is made up by millions of motorbikes. I am now attending Vietnamese courses at the National University. The streets almost reach into the classroom.


university in Vietnamese

Not only the traditional market is something very important in Vietnam. If you like to impress pretty girls a brand new Nokia or Samsung mobile phone has to be at hand and the Honda @ it the scooter you ought to have. Plastic toy producers in this demographically young developing nation go beyond the youth and target the even the smallest:


beyond the @ generation

The streets serve also as stage. “Đi chơi”, go out, cruise around, does in a way also mean to show up. The country is crazy about Italian designers, extravagant chic, make up and hair style. I admit I like to watch the beautiful young ladies flying through the urban lifelines on their spaceships. But you can feel that many people here forget about the depth behind the surface and the expression of a modern life seems more important than any other fundamentals. However, when you slow down and walk past the streets instead of fly on a motorbike yourself, then you will discover little things that seem to remain from ancient times, on almost every street corner. You feel like ages ago, feel pure simplicity – and experience the market in a totally different form.

emerging markets