Vietnam: A Dong Millionaire

Simply Perfection. What? Do you expect more?"
Genuine advertising slogan of a Chinese camera company

VIETNAM: A DONG MILLIONAIRE

Well, I've finally left the authoritarian, rigidly controlled country that is modern day communist China ... and entered the authoritarian, rigidly controlled country that is modern Vietnam.

On the plus side I am officially a millionaire here - although as a million Dong is around thirty four pounds, I'm unlikely to buy a Rolls Royce or a penthouse apartment just yet. Having said that, it is possible to get round very cheaply. The combined cost of my transport - all flights, taxis, subway journeys, trains, buses from London, to Estonia, across Siberia, China and now into Vietnam - is still under two hundred and eighty pounds. Which has the symbolic importance of being the same amount as I used to spend commuting to work in London every month.

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Having said goodbye now to Lucy, Amy, Tim and Simon I'm supposedly travelling on my own, while they're back off to the UK. In practice I'm hardly left alone. China is incredibly ethnically homogenous, and anyone who isn't ethnically Chinese sticks out like a sore thumb. I haven't been mobbed like a film star - as I was while in Africa - but I certainly have a large number of people asking for my photo. And when I'm on trains, people crowd around and ask me questions and watch over me. At times it can be a bit wearing, but on the whole it’s quite fun. Yesterday a taxi driver offered to take me out to dinner, although I politely declined.

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Northern Vietnam is beautiful, and the landscape is very similar to Rwanda. It is quite mountainous, and has the biggest mountain in Indo China- Mount Fansipan. I attempted to climb up Mount Fansipan but it was absolutely pissing it down with rain and none of the local guides thought it was safe.

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I also decided to go to Cat Ba island. We went trekking on the second day, and the views were beautiful but it was bloody hard work, and the guide - who could only say 'Yes', 'No', 'Hello' and 'Go' in English - wasn't much help. I can't really describe how dangerous the route was, and I didn't feel safe. A few hours in I tripped and cut a gash in my leg. I carried on for another hour or so, and after the third peak, I ended up collapsing.

Luckily the guide was on hand - his medical care consisted of pointing at my leg and saying 'Hello' – as this was pretty much all he could say. An argument then broke out between Jean-Pierre, (the Belgian bloke I had been travelling with) and the guide, as the guide said we had to go, while Jean-Pierre suggested we wait for a while. To his credit Jean-Pierre won the argument, and overall we did have a great time on the island, (although the fact that the boat on the way back was infested with both cockroaches and rats did temper my enthusiasm somewhat)

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Oh, and yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the independence of Vietnam from colonial rule. Ho Chi Minh gave a speech on the new constitution which resulted in the applause of all present – including the Americans there, who of course had helped him write the constitution. Ho Chi Minh was famously given diplomatic, economic and military support by the US as he was officially a goody at this time, (much like Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were in the 70’s and 80’s). Until the late 1940s when the domino theory started to gain currency, and, without actually changing any of his views, Ho Chi Minh went from being a "goody" to being a baddy".

Nowadays, as with China, the country is rigidly authoritarian, although Communist in name only. It is entering the world market in many goods, and hopes to accede to the WTO. This will supposedly bring huge benefits. One of the local papers showed a case study of a local businessman who was an "icon of an emerging economy". The line of the press here is that opening up markets will bring unparalleled prosperity to the country. However, rarely has a newspaper chosen such an unintentionally ironic metaphor. The businessman was a shoe shiner, cleaning the boots of foreigners. The government is sure that greater trade liberalization and abandoning socialist principles will benefit the country, but I strongly suspect Vietnam as a nation may end up like the shoe shiner.

Anyway, I’m off to Nha Trang.

Michael