Thang Nguyen 555

This past Thanksgiving in Virginia was quite a contrast to my previous one in Hanoi.

Last year, I stayed at a Hanoi Hotel for more than four weeks, determined to get my Cambridge certification in English teaching. And there were only four other classmates who were from the States. The rest were from Australia, and Europe. So forget about the Turkey day then.

Virginia and Hanoi are two different worlds, far different from Virginia and California, or Florida (regional vs global).

Yet, Hanoi and rest of Vietnam will soon be invaded and inundated with brands from abroad: Japanese beer, Samsung phone , Intel chip, Nike shoes, KFC, Hard Rock Cafe. Marriott has three large hotels there and will start constructing its fourth. And Miss Universe will once again be broadcast near China Beach.

Who would have thought the country can just leap-frog from a predominantly agricultural base straight to an IT world?

Its aim is to be fully industrialized by 2020. But my guess is that the young population can’t and won’t wait that long.

Already it exports furniture, textile and footwear. It’s been many years now that Made-in-Vietnam clothing are sold at Macy’s. IKEA has been opening up factories there. So does Vespa, Ford, Mercedes and Hyundai.

I was surprised to see a large influx of backpackers going through there, especially when Thailand and the Philippines experienced some upheavals. At any one time, millions of backpackers move about the face of the Earth.

In the early 90’s, it was the Eastern European countries which were their destinations of choice (Prague).

Now the Eastern Europeans themselves are visiting Vietnam and Cambodia, backpackers’ version of Eco-tourism.

http://www.thanhniennews.com/features/?catid=10&newsid=54178

Large supermarket chains from Britain, Germany and Korea are positioning themselves to gain shares: Unilever, Metro.

Mobil apps are flourishing. So is online game industry. President Bush, when visiting Vietnam, said that if he had been a young man, Vietnam would have been his destiny. If he were there today, he could choose among a variety of beers, least of which is Budweiser. Corona, Heineken and now Sapporo have been first to market. They said consumers could only remember the top three brands.

When a student again, I could only afford, and loved to join classmates over draft beer, Cambridge off-campus version of binge drinking.

I am optimistic about Vietnam as a country and an industrialized force. It has paid steep price over the years (my aunt died yesterday, the last of her generation) to take a seat at the table (WTO). Now it’s its younger generation’s turn to learn, live, love and leave a legacy, just like anyone else. Their Seven Habits will get them far, if not, to play catch up. In Net time, it may mean 24/7 multi-taking and networking. Neighboring countries are showing them that the impossible is possible. Young Vietnamese today want to be and beat Singaporean, Korean and Taiwanese. They want to emerge as a serious contender, to be recognized economically if not intellectually (see my previous blog on River Crossing, about Ngo Bao Chau, PhD in Math at Princeton, who solved the 30-year lemma).

One of their initiatives to make this happen is to start learning English at a very young age: K-3-5. Good move!

I understood now why my Mom, a former school teacher, sent me to French school although we weren’t well-off at all: we couldn’t afford not to. Years later, after my Mom had died, I found myself back to her city, this time, on my own,

staying at a Hanoi Hotel, continued on my journey of continuous improvement. That would have made her proud.