Many infrastructure changes are taking place in Saigon other than the proliferation of high-rise buidlings. One is the recent opening of the Thu Thiem (Thủ Thiêm) tunnel that routes traffic underneath the Saigon River and connects districts 1 and 2, a journey that previously could only be made by ferry. Unlike some other similar bridge and tunnel projects, this tunnel was sorely needed and has been heavily used since opening day. Like many road infrastructure projects in Vietnam, cars, buses, trucks, etc. must pay a toll but 2-wheeled vehicles do not. A small gesture towards addressing the problem of growing inequality here.
While there are obvious changes taking place in the skylines and on the roads of cities like Saigon the equivalents are taking place in homes and businesses that are not as obvious to a casual observer.
Any time there is economic growth, the rewards are not evenly distributed and here the problem seems especially acute. I believe the growing inequality is magnified as a result of the rapidity of the huge disparity that is being closed between Vietnam and the more developed world and the fact that so few Vietnamese were in a position to individually prosper from it while at the same time the government was not in a position to effectively moderate the effects of it. There's probably some economic equation somewhere (like in a basic economics book?!) that correlates economic and inequality growth rates as the two seem to always go together and there doesn't seem to be any way to prevent that. There's an irony in that the system in place in Vietnam before it began opening its economy helped create the situation in which only a very few Vietnamese would be properly positioned to prosper from the change. In other words the previous sytem that championed social equality has resulted in facilitating just the opposite.
My anecdotal evidence, however, tells me that the Vietnamese middle class is growing, and quickly. One change I've noticed is the make-up of the clientele of the nice coffee shops around Saigon that I used to feel were more like private foreigners' clubs. Often when I walk into a Highlands Coffee nowadays, there are no seats open and the customers are almost all Vietanamese and they all appear have their laptops or smartphones out. Hell, I don't even have a smartphone!
Other more official data point to the burgeoning wealth of Vietnamese citizens such as the increasing number of private vehicles regardless of the exhorbitant cost due to the high import tariffs imposed on such goods. While I've never investigated the prices of cars here, I've been told by enough credible people that the price of a vehicle in Vietnam will run 2-3 times that in the USA. I once asked someone about the Bentleys and Rolls Royces that there seem to be a significant number of around Saigon and was told it would cost in the neighborhood of $500,000 US to purchase one here. Some segment of the extremely wealthy Vietnamese population seems to have a disturbing fondness for these vehicles. It seems wrong that anyone would drive a car so expensive in a country where the average annual income is somewhere in the low single digit thousands of USD, but I know that's a matter of opinion. It also says something about myself that I can feel that way about one person's lifestyle while not questioning my own. But there is more to it which is that society has a collective tolerance for inequality, both in its magnitude and the perceived causes behind it. When this tolerance is breached, big problems can result for the status quo so it's not something to be trivialized or dismissed.
Anyway, there are many nice aspects to the improving economic situation here for those with a little money to take advantage of them. One of them is the wider availability of quality products at reasonable prices and one of those that I'm especially fond of is good wine. One can now walk into any supermarket, and there are more and more of those, and find a fairly good selection of imported wines for sale. Sorry to say, but here in Vietnam good wine is only the imported stuff. There is a wine region in Da Lat (đà Lạt) and while it' s inexpensive I'm not of the mind that it's even a good value. That's my opinion but I've met others who disagree.
But the good news is that I can now find decent wines from regions like Bordeaux for around $10 US per bottle. Life just got immensely better!
I also moved into a new apartment this week. My life has sort of been on hold since I arrived here in December 2010. I've mentioned that the reason I came back here then was because of a Vietnamese woman that I met and I've also mentioned that it's been long over. At some point I'll do a blog post about that whole experience when I'm at a point where I can be reasonable and somewhat objective about it. Soon, very soon.
I've lived in 2 different places since coming back here, both just rented rooms and while they were both OK, I was doing it with the thought that I might need to find a house to rent at some point and that living in a rented room was only temporary. Yes, that's what I was thinking, renting a house big enough for, you know, a few people. Well, I'm over all that now and decided to try living in one of the new high-rises that have sprouted up in the last few years. I'm now on the 16th floor of one and have a nice view of downtown Saigon and the Saigon River. The first 1 or 2 days I felt completely isolated and lost, but now I'm starting to really like it. A really nice feature is that it's quiet, something hard to find in this city. I'll log a few extra km on my motorbike getting around, but that's ok. I doubt I'll be able to go back to living 'down there' again.
