When I was in Vietnam last March, our guide told us the following (as close as I can recall): “Following reunification in 1975, we were a socialist country. You know what socialism is? It’s where if I work hard and you don’t, we get the same thing. So no one worked hard. In the 1990s, the government changed the rules and people who worked hard could profit. Things are much better now.”
It seemed that just about every house and building that we passed had a little shop where people were trying to sell things, be that food, crafts or merchandise. The people work hard and many foreign companies have built factories there. Supermarkets were rare but there were many smaller local markets that were packed. Visiting those markets was an interesting experience.
Saigon was said to be a country of 8 million people and 4 million motor scooters (and both numbers appeared low to me) with a lot of new construction. The air was fairly polluted because of all those scooters (especially the Chinese made scooters which while cheap, the Vietnamese called junk) but the economy appeared to be doing well. If they have any environmentalists in China and Vietnam, it appears they’ve been told to sit down and shut up.
