Week 455 · Hanoi · Ho Chi Minh City · Saigon · Vietnam
Ho Chi
First trip to Asia in six years, first stop Vietnam. It was a work trip so I was pretty booked the whole time but did get out a couple of hours for some long walks. I had been to Hanoi several times and spent the first two days there, mostly in meetings but met some very interesting people.
One of the people I met in Hanoi had fought with the North Vietnamese — the side we backed — but then became a committed communist, then was sent to economics school in Europe, then worked his way up to one step below the Politburo where he started the privatisation efforts in the mid-1990s that changed the country. Even in the last 12 years since my first trip and this trip, a noticeable change has occurred in the country.
Vietnam's "Doi Moi" (Renovation) economic reforms, launched in 1986, transformed one of the world's poorest planned economies into one of Asia's fastest-growing. The reforms introduced market mechanisms while the Communist Party retained political control — a model similar to China's. Vietnam's GDP per capita grew from under $100 in 1990 to over $4,000 by 2022. Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon, renamed after reunification in 1976) is now Vietnam's commercial centre — home to approximately 9 million people in the city proper and over 13 million in the metro area. The scooter population of HCMC is estimated at over 7 million — leading to ongoing government debates about transitioning to cars and the traffic and pollution implications this entails.
I then flew to Ho Chi Minh City (formally Saigon) for three days where it was mostly meetings except for a couple of walks around the hotel. It was my second attempt to get to Ho Chi Minh City, and the first successful attempt — I was planning to go in 2016 but may have crashed on a mountain bike and had to skip it.
Much different than Hanoi — much more bustling and streets packed with hundreds of motor scooters. One of the discussion topics of my visit was "at some point these people will be in cars" and it will be a nightmare for both traffic and pollution.
They had just celebrated their 77th anniversary — liberation for Vietnam coincided with the end of WW2 — so a lot of propaganda artwork was still up around the city.
From my hotel room — the white penthouse on top of the yellow building is the famous picture of the Americans being evacuated in 1975. The picture was from the other direction. It was not the embassy — but expat apartments.
Ho Chi Minh would be proud — to the right of the statue is a Rolls Royce dealership. To the left, Burberry and Cartier.
"At some point these people will be in cars — and it will be a nightmare for both traffic and pollution."