Second day in vietnam

Second day

Second day started with a trek to three different villages. I learnt a fair bit about the village life today. Firstly, since 1982, the government will tax them about 7-8 USD per harvest per family. Initially, I thought that this is a good deal for the ppl as they get free education, than after asking the tour guide, I found out that most of the money goes to the government pocket and it is actually UNICEF who funds the schools. Furthermore, the villagers do not grow crops to sell, so without tourism dollars, they will have problems paying the tax.

This probably explains the reason why from the moment we got off the bus, there were four Vietnamese local girls, with the youngest about 7 years old, following us throughout the walk (which was about 10km through rocky and muddy terrain). Apparently, they walk up and down the valley so many times in a day that they have to wear a band around their leg to ensure that they do not injure their leg. Anyhow, they carry a basket of their handicraft which they try to sell to us for around 3 USD (which is about double the normal price).

They seemed pretty experienced in this. From the moment we got off, they started conversing in us in English, what is your name? How old are you? How many people are there in your family? It seems pretty sad how they learn an entire new language and sell photographs of themselves just to earn the tourism dollar. All they really want is for us to buy their handicraft, which is actually well made and pretty much worth the money in my opinion. When I look at them, I realized that all of them will never be able to afford a college education; in fact a college education will probably be able to feed an entire village for a many years.

For 20000, the price of a Vietnamese bride, I believe that the entire family does not have to work ever again. Considering how far they will go just to earn 1 or 2 USD, it comes as no surprise that they are willing to go overseas to marry for 20000. Furthermore, if they manage to get a good husband, it is more than likely that their life will be better overseas than in their village, where there is typically no electricity, mud floor and freezing temperatures. What do they have to lose by marrying a total stranger?

The Vietnamese and Singaporean perception of marriage and love is totally different. The Vietnamese have a sort of love fair, where the guys will bring a flute to meet girls at a certain place, something like a primitive SDU. If a guy likes a girl, he can carry her back to her house and keep her there for 3 days, where someone from his family will ensure that she does not escape. Every night, the guy will apply honey to his ears and try to sweet talk the girl into marrying him. At the end of 3 days, whether or not the girl likes him, they will be married. Furthermore, they marry at about 12-13 years old, for 2 reasons. Firstly, there isn’t really anything much else to do around there. Secondly, the guys typically try to marry young so as to get someone to help with the fields. In fact, our tour guide had his first fling when he was 16 years old, and has had multiple flings since than even though he is not married.

Considering how lowly the women are respected in Vietnam, do they actually have much to lose by marrying someone from another country? Granted that if the guy has to go to Vietnam to find a bride, he is probably not an eligible bachelor and might have some character flaws. However, I believe the 20000 the family gets will and the possibility of breaking out of the poverty cycle wills more than make up for it. Every mother hopes for the best for their children. Even a child living under terrible conditions in Singapore will still have free education and government aid, which is more than what they will get in Vietnam.

I am thinking of buying a couple of their handicrafts and bringing it back to Chicago to sell and see how it goes. They have pretty useful handicrafts like a silk sleeping bag, pillow cover and silver bracelets going for cheap prices (1-2 USD). If it is popular, perhaps something more long term will be feasible.

First day in Vietnam

First day

Today, I flew in to Vietnam through Korea. The Korean airport is quite amazing, they provided free internet and it is pretty comfortable. At the Vietnam airport, I was quite surprised that food cost only 2 USD! In fact, I got cheated as they charged 2 USD but it was actually 1.5 USD on the menu, but I did not know the exchange rate at that time. Considering how cheap the food airport is, I bet the food is even cheaper at the local places. Since Terence and Pimp’s flight was delayed, we ended up having to rush through to reach our train on time. I didn’t really get to sleep well on the train even though the bed was comfortable as it was pretty hot. It was the first time I got to sit on a train which had beds though, so was a pretty interesting experience. After the train ride, we took a bus ride to Sapu, where we checked into a nice hotel before taking a walk at a nearby village.

Apparently, there was government intervention in the village as they were trying to build schools in every village. The government ruled the village by appointing a village chief from outside. However, I do not think most of the kids got to go to the school. The condition of the village was pretty shocking. It was even worse than the one I went to in Chiang Mai. For one, the floor is made of mud, and it was apparent the villagers do not get a chance to bath for a very long time. Furthermore, about 17 people squeeze into a small space, something like the construction workers; and apparently sometimes at night it gets to freezing temperature.

The people had a lot of children and were very superstitious. This came from them not having much to do as they had no TV or night life at all, so most of them get in bed early and have plenty to do. Furthermore, they marry young as most of them need help on the fields. As to why they are superstitious, I suspect this has to do with their total reliance on fate. For example, they have only one harvest of crops a year from May to August, and if the harvest fails, they will have problems for the whole of the next year. Under such circumstances, it is always good to believe that there is some way to affect your fate, ie by praying to some God or something. An example of this is how they placed excess corn from a period of good harvest on their door in the hope that every year is like this. What this does mean for us? I believe that this could be one of the reasons why there are more and more atheists in the world now as compared to the primitive people. When we are able to control our fate and have an understanding of how nature works, we have less of a tendency to have to believe in some super being affecting our lives.

One thing which affected me greatly was how poor this people were. In fact, they depended so much on tourists buying their handicraft, and I believe 1 USD will last them for a very long time. It made me realize how lucky I was, in that I get an education, I get food, I get shelter without even having to think about it; while these people struggle just to achieve any of the above.

I hope to be able to make an impact in the lives of these people in future. Let me contrast how I will go about doing it as compared to organizations like China care. They raised a couple of thousands just for one baby to undergo neck operation. I feel that this is a misappropriation of resources. For one, there is no reason to believe the child will even get a fair chance at life after the operation. For another, the same amount of money can be used to help one entire village. Ie, it can be used to buy a whole tractor for the village which can help 1000+ people. In this way, the children can spend more time on education and hopefully break out of the poverty cycle. I believe that a big reason why so much money can be spent helping one person is the publicity it can achieve. It is surely easier to raise money with heart wrenching pictures of a cute baby than of farmers working the fields. I believe a good way to start is sort of an exchange of local handicrafts for technology program. The local handicrafts are hand-made and reflect a great amount of skill, and are surely demand in the developed nations. In exchange, machinery, genetically modified seeds and such can be offered to the villagers making their lives better. However, I do not believe that I will be in a position to do all these for quite some time. Perhaps, I will come back to this when I grow older.

Some other things I have been thinking about: I feel that my main weak points are that I procrastinate a lot, do not put in enough effort to carry out things I promise to do, spend excessively and get overly obsessive. Perhaps, these explains why I am overweight- I procrastinate in exercising, do not put in much effort into it and am overly obsessive when I find a food I like a lot. I hope to change these as I have created 3 excel spreadsheets, one for work I have to do, one for my daily expenditure and one for my daily food intake. Let’s see how it goes.

I miss Joey, but then again, it does not make sense to throw resources after an impossible cause right? Some people wonder why guys can change target so quickly. Well, as the Chinese say, tui er si qi chi. It always makes sense to think of alternative plans when it is apparent the main plan doesn’t work out.