Has your Vietnam attitude changed? Wish you had left?

Well Australia is just as locked down and they have now gone to no jab no job same as USA etc, so I don't see a difference.
Europe has protests, Australia has them so does UK.

There only a handful of places who don't have lockdown non of which i'd want to be in more than Vietnam so 100% staying here.

I speak daily to friends in Oz and they are just as peeved off at covid and lockdowns as us here so no difference really.

The grass is always greener looks good but usually ends up just having a different view of the same patch of grass.

Id prefer to have been back in Australia, my state was hardly affected and life continued as normal.

I'm in Queensland and we are doing well not much covid but still locked from NSW and Vic they are around 1000 a day and several deaths . Government saying 80% is vaccinated target then borders open . predicted by end of November . travel to several countries allowed at first including Singapore . Vietnam not on the list but hopefully they can speed up the vaccine program and allow travel early next year . Stay safe there is a light at the end of the tunnel ...no it's not a train ..

Digga juz wrote:

I'm in Queensland and we are doing well not much covid but still locked from NSW and Vic they are around 1000 a day and several deaths . Government saying 80% is vaccinated target then borders open . predicted by end of November . travel to several countries allowed at first including Singapore . Vietnam not on the list but hopefully they can speed up the vaccine program and allow travel early next year . Stay safe there is a light at the end of the tunnel ...no it's not a train ..

Thanks Digga where in Qld?

gobot wrote:

Just a poll    of my fellow foreigners   who have been living in Vietnam since the Chinese virus arrived.

(1)   How do you feel now about living in Vietnam? Is the bloom off the rose? Are you changing your plans for 2022? Thinking about moving somewhere else in the country, ditching to another country, or return "home"?
Undecided or Waiting to See are reasonable answers, meaning open to making changes.

(2)  Are you glad you remained in Vietnam, or would you have rather been in another country for 2020/2021?  Which?

That's all, not bashing, just curious!   

I would definitely still be there if I could have gotten another visa extension.

Even though I didn't go through the HCMC lockdown, I was in Danang last year and managed to survive it by myself.

If I had been able to stay in June and had been under lockdown again in Hội An, I would have been with my partner and that would have made it even easier.

I can't say for sure exactly how I would have felt if I were still living in Vũng Tàu, but I would have been able to hang with my really good buddy (Ciambella's husband) in the same building, and I have no doubt we would have been able to figure some way to get into regular trouble together.

When the borders open up, the only thing I'm going to do differently is to enter with a tourist visa this time.

If my partner and I decide to get married, there won't be any more Visa problems, but we won't get married simply for that reason.

Still safer here than back in england even with the huge numbers of vaccinated people

Cheaper here too, and probably becuase i dotn see it a lot less political also

Living in VN is still ideal for us in many aspects.  Living in Vung Tau makes it even better because Saigon is too chaotic and Hanoi is too insincere. 

I would absolutely love to move to Dalat where I know half of the city very well and where I certainly will flourish, but its distance from an international airport is a big deterrent.

Returning to the States will not happen because we cannot close our eyes on the majorly wrongs that have become acceptable and even encouraged there.  Without being overly dramatic, I fear for my husband's blood pressure and emotional health if we live there full time again. 

The only thing that will make us leaving VN is if the government stops issuing VEC.  I cannot see us having short term visa that will require yearly or more often renewal. If that's the case, we'll look into other options in North or South America where language barrier is minimal.

I'm giving myself 7 months to find a solution if things will not change.  Hopefully it'll not come to that, but if it will, we're not novices at moving to a different country and starting a new chapter of our life.  My brain actually excels at adapting to new environments, and major changes have always kept us young so far.

Hey Andybriss ..I'm on the Fraser coast Hervey Bay .I take it your from Brisbane .. looking forward to getting back to Vietnam ..

OceanBeach92107 wrote:

I can't say for sure exactly how I would have felt if I were still living in Vũng Tàu, but I would have been able to hang with my really good buddy (Ciambella's husband) in the same building, and I have no doubt we would have been able to figure some way to get into regular trouble together.

If you were here during the 2.5 months of lockdown, I'm sure the two of you would be out on the balcony every day for hours on end.  Beer and snack were deliverable from Lotte (we choose not to order, but it could be done easily with my connection there), and the children have sent me plenty of movies and TV series (Travelfar also sent me a good TV series too.)

Luca will deliver the first pies coming out of their oven after almost 3 months for our lunch tomorrow, half an hour after they open again.  The order is for a large salame piccante, a large pazza, and 2 ice-cold limoncello.  You'll be missed.

[Post deleted]

EVTRA wrote:

Hey AndyBris, just want you to know I'm barred to reply to your messages.

? You went into blocked instead of contacts,,,
Your not alone haha

Digga juz wrote:

Hey Andybriss ..I'm on the Fraser coast Hervey Bay .I take it your from Brisbane .. looking forward to getting back to Vietnam ..

You will miss the fishing if you come here lol, I bet there is no snapper caught off VT beach.

Andybris2020 wrote:

Digga juz wrote:

Hey Andybriss ..I'm on the Fraser coast Hervey Bay .I take it your from Brisbane .. looking forward to getting back to Vietnam ..

You will miss the fishing if you come here lol, I bet there is no snapper caught off VT beach.

I saw a lady with a big snapper  walking along the beachfront. I nearly fell off my bike.

colinoscapee wrote:

Andybris2020 wrote:

Digga juz wrote:

Hey Andybriss ..I'm on the Fraser coast Hervey Bay .I take it your from Brisbane .. looking forward to getting back to Vietnam ..

You will miss the fishing if you come here lol, I bet there is no snapper caught off VT beach.

I saw a lady with a big snapper  walking along the beachfront. I nearly fell off my bike.

is that code or an actual fish?

Andybris2020 wrote:

colinoscapee wrote:

Andybris2020 wrote:

You will miss the fishing if you come here lol, I bet there is no snapper caught off VT beach.

I saw a lady with a big snapper  walking along the beachfront. I nearly fell off my bike.

is that code or an actual fish?

Sit down and think about it!

If you had asked this question last summer I would have said that I should have stayed in Vietnam, now I'm not so sure. I left on 20th March 2020 fully intending to return that Autumn but sadly that didn't work out.
Considering the lockdowns have gone on for so long I'm probably better off in Europe, where we do have some freedom of movement, I was able to go to Lanzarote for a few months last winter for example. However I have a girlfriend in Vietnam and I am always hopeful that I can return soon.

Actually, I had a plan to leave VN and move back to Laos in 2019 and live in Pakse, but then I thought I should spend just one more year in Vung Tau first and move in 2020. So, now I am still here.

As for question 1): Yes, I will leave soon in line with my previous plan. Unfortunately, I can’t get back to Laos or other countries in the region without quarantine, so I plan to move to Albania.

Question 2): Well, we were never really locked down in Vung Tau until mid-July and are now coming out of it. In some ways, I regret not leaving VN back in May or June, but it wasn't that difficult. I have my view of Back Beach and the sea, and got a lot of goodies delivered from Q-mart, Taj Grill and Good Morning Vietnam. I also lost some of my gut by overall eating less.

Ultimately, I didn’t want to leave in the middle of the lockdown, and now I have a chance to leave this beach city under more normal circumstances, so I’m glad I stayed.

Ciambella wrote:

OceanBeach92107 wrote:

I can't say for sure exactly how I would have felt if I were still living in Vũng Tàu, but I would have been able to hang with my really good buddy (Ciambella's husband) in the same building, and I have no doubt we would have been able to figure some way to get into regular trouble together.

If you were here during the 2.5 months of lockdown, I'm sure the two of you would be out on the balcony every day for hours on end.  Beer and snack were deliverable from Lotte (we choose not to order, but it could be done easily with my connection there), and the children have sent me plenty of movies and TV series (Travelfar also sent me a good TV series too.)

Luca will deliver the first pies coming out of their oven after almost 3 months to us for lunch tomorrow, half an hour after they open again.  The order is for a large salame piccante, a large pazza, and 2 ice-cold limoncello.  You'll be missed.

Here's to the day when we will able to lift our limoncello together again!

1) everyday is an adventure. especially when it comes to healthcare, more specifically with the supply chain being cut off when it comes to medicine availability.


2) yeah I have no regrets, how many people can say they got to experience martial law first hand and experience the forced collapse of the supply chain to one of the major cities in SE asia?

dionstravels wrote:

1) everyday is an adventure. especially when it comes to healthcare, more specifically with the supply chain being cut off when it comes to medicine availability.


2) yeah I have no regrets, how many people can say they got to experience martial law first hand and experience the forced collapse of the supply chain to one of the major cities in SE asia?

martial law ? you mean Army helping supply food?

no martial law as in bringing in the military to enforce their directives of stopping people from leaving their homes for any reason. cutting off the supply chain in terms of food and essential medicines to people who needed it the most and trapping people in their homes/alleys with barricades in order to prevent them from leaving and creating roadblocks to stop people from going back to their hometowns.

dionstravels wrote:

no martial law as in bringing in the military to enforce their directives of stopping people from leaving their homes for any reason. cutting off the supply chain in terms of food and essential medicines to people who needed it the most and trapping people in their homes/alleys with barricades in order to prevent them from leaving and creating roadblocks to stop people from going back to their hometowns.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the barriers were in place way before the Army got into HCMC, police were escorting people back to hometowns also way before Army got here, the stopping people going back to hometowns was a directive by gov to stop spread of covid back into hometowns,  the only changes are now the Army are helping the police, medical and volunteers in actually providing all the things you say they are stopping.

It is the Gov directives and Police that issue the paperwork to travel not the Army so as long as the documents are in order the Army just waves them through.

The supply chain has been disrupted by drivers, etc having to do covid checks which are done by medical personnel some of which are being helped by Army medical staff and students.

Most of the Army is doing the heavy lifting with supplies to households, I see them pushing bikes with rice on them and unloading trucks, some stood around under umbrellas checking paperwork with security or police.

Martial law involves the temporary substitution of military authority for civilian rule - police and people's committees still have full control, just because you see a guy in an Army uniform does not mean he is in control.

I live in Phu Nhuan barriers here were in place before 30 May, Army got here 23rd August, and they are here to assist the police as per directives 15 & 16 to help with the pandemic.

They are not in control so it is not Martial Law.

Ciambella is the legal eagle I'm sure she will correct any point I have wrong.

No one is being stopped from leaving their homes,, they may get fines or checked by security, Army, Police if the go out as to where and why.

in our area there are people wandering around all day, the forum has many posts of the same in their areas all are saying its as if there is no lockdown, in our street, there are as many as 10 out there any time from 5 am until 9 or 10 pm,, I can hear kids running in street and parents talking, while next door 4 guys are sat outside drinking.

So if we are under Martial Law and Army is trapping us in our homes they are doing a crap job in at least districts where ex-pats are living.

I get your frustration but its not the Army at fault.

dionstravels wrote:

how many people can say they got to experience martial law first hand and experience the forced collapse of the supply chain to one of the major cities in SE asia?

Andybris2020 wrote:

martial law ? you mean Army helping supply food?

Many foreigners, including the US Embassy and Consulate in Saigon, have been throwing out the term "martial law" left and right, as if they understood the meaning of the term and they were experiencing the force of the military upon them. 

Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law, and the substitution of military authority for civilian rules.  When martial law is in effect, the military has unlimited authority to make and enforce laws.

Tell me, what have you seen the military doing to constitute their control of the law in Saigon?  Did any of the soldiers point a gun at people to tell them to do anything?  Did they usurp anyone's power?  Did they exert their will on the residents?

Granted, I'm living in VT and not seeing everything first hand, but there are more than 120 of my blood relatives living in Saigon and not one of them told me that the military has been doing anything but:

- loading, unloading, shopping, and delivering food
- guarding checkpoints side by side with volunteers and local authority
- transporting corpses from hospitals to crematorium (I bet you don't know that)
- taking care of the ashes of the cremated (I bet you don't know that)
- following strict traditions while handling the above mentioned acts (I bet you don't know that)
- taking the roles of the absent family members to light incense daily to pray for the souls of the deceased (I bet you don't know that)

Except the checkpoint guarding, none of the things they've done in Saigon was in their military training, let alone to be considered a takeover as what would've happened in martial law. 

I bet anything you have never been under martial law in your life.  I have, more than once. The first time was the 4 year period (1963-1967) between the First and Second Republic of Vietnam, and the second time was at the beginning of 1968, on and off until the following year.  I was in middle school when the first one began and about to enter university when the second one ended, so I still remember what happened.  Let me tell you, it's very, very dissimilar from what the military has been doing for (not to) the people in Saigon during this lockdown. 

Whether or not the Army succeeded in their duties, they did it at the best of their ability, and they did it with plenty of respect, compassion, and hearts.  Their parents would be very proud if they knew what their sons did in Saigon. 

Anyone who thinks or boasts that he's living through martial law because a few thousands soldiers were in their city doing grunt work should evaluate his ability to separate facts from fiction.  That list should begin with the people at the US Embassy/Consulate, then continue down to the expats who live in the midst of things but still can't see the truth.

dionstravels wrote:

no martial law as in bringing in the military to enforce their directives of stopping people from leaving their homes for any reason. cutting off the supply chain in terms of food and essential medicines to people who needed it the most and trapping people in their homes/alleys with barricades in order to prevent them from leaving and creating roadblocks to stop people from going back to their hometowns.

First, you need to use punctuation marks.  That's the first rule of writing which we all learned in grade school.

Second, the leader of the city was the one who petitioned to place the city under Directive 16, and the PM was the person who approved the request.  The blame should be placed at their doors, not the people who enforced the regulations.

Third, the local police, or UBND, were the ones who enforced the regulations because that's their job to do so.  The military didn't come in until much later.

Fourth, the roadblocks and barricades were erected and guarded by BOTH the local authority and the local residents who knew they must protect their areas.

Fifth, no one cut off the supply of medicine, before or after the military moved in.  The many hotlines were available from Day One for people to call when they needed to leave the house.  Even when they didn't use the hotlines, no one forced them to live without medicine.  They were either allowed to go to the pharmacies and hospitals or the meds would be delivered to them.

Get the facts.  Learn the facts.  The real facts, not some fake posts on FB.

Clearly Ciambella is the official spokesperson of the party responsible for pulling the forums back into line 

Erikji wrote:

Clearly Ciambella is the official spokesperson of the party responsible for pulling the forums back into line 

If the word you use, "the party" means the Communist Party, then no, I'm not the spokesperson of the Party, nor am I enamoured with this regime.  Not even close.

If you read all the posts I wrote from the first day I joined this site, you would've seen that I'm very saddened with how the country has become, with the decline in education, the absence of quality of life, the increase in corruption, and the erasing of history.  I'm one of the millions of old Saigoneers who forever mourn the country whence we grew up, but that sentiment doesn't allow me to bash everything to pieces.  There are *some* good happening, and even though the good is not equal the bad, pummel without cause is not how a dignified adult should act.

In addition, I'm not a hypocrite.  I came to live in this country because of what it can do for me, so I have no right to malign it at every opportunity.  If I dislike the country to the point that I must vilify its government on a public forum, then I ought to pack my bag and leave.  But if I continue to live here, I have the responsibility as a decent human being to respect the host.  I wouldn't lie and say everything is hunky dory, but I wouldn't be silent when other foreigners trash talking it either.

I am very satisfied living here in VN. Back when Covid was first getting started all the way up until the Delta variant showed up, VN had done an unpresidented job of keeping the virus under control and even now they still put my home country (America) to shame. If I had been back in America a few months ago my chances of getting the virus, and maybe dying, would have been much, much higher than here in VN. I'm not going anywhere. I intend to stay right here although I do have plans to relocate but they were in the works before Covid ever came on the sceen and have nothing to do with the virus. I have just applied for SSI and we have some land out in Dak Nong. It is not a real large plot but enough to keep me busy during retirement and suppliment our income. So that's it for me. As I already said, I'm not going anywhere.

Erikji wrote:

Clearly Ciambella is the official spokesperson of the party responsible for pulling the forums back into line 

I don't need to expand on Ciambella's concise reply to you, and I appreciate your clumsy attempt at humor.

But for a long time now there has been a faulty understanding of why certain posts in this forum, which reference the government and or the Communist party, are corrected or deleted.

I'm virtually certain there are no members of the government or of the Communist party who are either admins or experts on this site.

Expat..com admins are very aware of the need to be concerned about what is commonly called "Host Nation Sensitivity".

It's not only really bad form to allow threads which directly criticize the government and or the Communist party.

It's also poor practice specifically in Vietnam, as the government has made it quite clear that it will shut down social media sites and punish individual posters when they feel that "disinformation" is being spread through social media.

So anything that's considered to be political in nature, especially in challenging the government or the Communist party, is usually censored or deleted.

I fully agree with Drutter.

I'm from the Netherlands and been following the Covid developments closely because I cannot wait to return to Vietnam for my new job.

The population of my entire country is similar to HCM...yet it took over a year of lockdowns over here to get things under control.

So I never thought I would say this, but I believe my country could definitely learn from Vietnam when it comes to taking fast and efficient action!

I believe Vietnam is handling the pandemic really well. And agreed with Ciambella, calling this martial law is somewhat over the top 😄

OceanBeach92107 wrote:

So anything that's considered to be political in nature, especially in challenging the government or the Communist party, is usually censored or deleted.

Of course it is hard to count things that are no longer there, but I am fairly certain that a lot more posts that referenced the 45th president of the US have been deleted than those that referenced the Communist Party of Vietnam.

THIGV wrote:

OceanBeach92107 wrote:

So anything that's considered to be political in nature, especially in challenging the government or the Communist party, is usually censored or deleted.

Of course it is hard to count things that are no longer there, but I am fairly certain that a lot more posts that referenced the 45th president of the US have been deleted than those that referenced the Communist Party of Vietnam.

The underlying principle being "political".

And yes you are correct.

A lot of your snarky political comments were indeed deleted.

Ciambella wrote:

If you read all the posts I wrote from the first day I joined this site, you would've seen that I'm very saddened with how the country has become, with the decline in education, the absence of quality of life, the increase in corruption, and the erasing of history.

I wonder if you would concede that the old system provided an excellent education for a small urban elite, the overall level of education in the country is vastly improved.   I don't have statistics on hand but I am pretty certain that overall literacy has improved since the 70"s.  The same holds for quality of life, particularly for the rural peasantry many of whom now till their own rice plots even if the government owns the land and no longer pay rents to someone in Saigon or to the Catholic Church which used to own 1500 km2 of rice land.   Of course most everyone would agree with you on corruption and the erasing of history.

THIGV wrote:

Ciambella wrote:

If you read all the posts I wrote from the first day I joined this site, you would've seen that I'm very saddened with how the country has become, with the decline in education, the absence of quality of life, the increase in corruption, and the erasing of history.

I wonder if you would concede that the old system provided an excellent education for a small urban elite, the overall level of education in the country is vastly improved.   I don't have statistics on hand but I am pretty certain that overall literacy has improved since the 70"s.  The same holds for quality of life, particularly for the rural peasantry many of whom now till their own rice plots even if the government owns the land and no longer pay rents to someone in Saigon or to the Catholic Church which used to own 1500 km2 of rice land.   Of course most everyone would agree with you on corruption and the erasing of history.

This is an interesting point for me to pursue as my GF is 36 and although she seems very forgetful and has somewhat of a goldfish type brain she seems to have no history, geography or world view I would be interested to know what types of subjects were in school in the 80's/90's to see if she did learn it and didn't listen or indeed she does have a bit of a goldfish brain.

I find it a bit hard to fathom that school kids in Saigon in that period didn't learn simple stuff like planets, elements, iron age, bronze age, dinosaurs tc, she seems to have zero knowledge of any of it.

I even had to explain why we have time zones? which was a total head spin to me.

Andybris2020 wrote:

I would be interested to know what types of subjects were in school in the 80's/90's ..........

I should have qualified my remarks on education to the period after the death of Lê Duẩn in 1986 and the introduction of the Đổi Mới reforms in the same year.  After his death, education probably improved considerably as it was likely relieved of the pressure to conform to Lê's strict Stalinist thought.   I expect education has improved considerably but would use 1986 rather than 1975 as a base year.

An interesting book "Rising Dragon" which was written in 2006 by an English juorno. The book talks about the positives and negatives of the system here. It was a very balanced view and praised the govt for numerous things.Unfortunately the govt didnt like the negative remarks so the book was banned and the author declined a visa extension.

If I remember correctly Thigv read this book.

THIGV wrote:

I wonder if you would concede that the old system provided an excellent education for a small urban elite, the overall level of education in the country is vastly improved.   I don't have statistics on hand but I am pretty certain that overall literacy has improved since the 70"s.

No, I would not.

I can only speak for what I know, which is the public education provided for all cities from the 17th parallel down to Ca Mau.  The entire system was uniformally applied to every area of the country, but the number of schools and students was of course much lower outside of the cities, not because of the education system, but because of the poverty level.  The same as it is now in every country in the world including the US.

VN as a Republic didn't impose a limitation on number of offspring per family, so parents in the countryside with 5 children often sent only one or two children to school for the entire 11 or 12 years while the rest got by with the mandatory 5 years of elementary school. 

I never believed in statistic taken by outsiders on the social matters that I lived with daily, so the reported literacy level didn't mean anything to me.  I can tell you without uncertainly that every person I met during the 22.5 years living in Saigon, a great majority of them labourers and street vendors, read the newspaper in his/her spare time and did silent math faster than any Texas Instrument calculator ever could. 

Vietnam before 1975 was a country of newspaper readers.  If you've never heard that, now you do.  What they read on the daily papers was not the same as what my father read or what I read, but EVERYBODY READ. 

People also rent serial novels to take with them to read at work (the market or the street stalls), the same way people watch Korean soaps on TV now.  There were several book renters in each ward when I grew up; each place housed thousands upon thousands of old volumes, books that were read by tens of thousands of people before me and tens of thousands of people after me.  The rent for two weeks was about what I paid for a scoop of xôi at breakfast.

So, the literacy level, as far as I saw in Saigon, Lai Thieu, Binh Duong, Bien Hoa, Thu Duc, Tay Ninh, Long An, Can Tho, My Tho, Vung Tau, Da Lat, Nha Trang, Hue, Pleiku, Kontum, Ban Me Thuot, Daklak, (I probably miss quite a few, but those were off the top of my head, places I visited in my two decades living in South VN), the literacy level was what I would call functional.  Meaning people could read their favourite column on the newspapers (mostly installments of serials), the headlines on national or regional news, their ID documents, the report cards their children brought home, and they could sign off those report cards.  They were also able to fill in their names and sign (not with an X) on the household card.  And math -- as I said above, EVERY Vietnamese who was born and grew up before 1975 did mental math as easily as breathing.  Long multiplication and long division?  Everybody was born with them.

Have you seen hundreds of old photos of cyclo drivers, men in barber shops, people drinking coffee at the sidewalk, and the male and female vendors with their faces planted in a newspaper or a used book with the cover rolled back?  How do you think people discussing politic if they could not read?  Discussing politic was the Vietnamese past time since football was not.  Vietnamese were not good in sports, but they all knew their politic.  Low level of literacy, my foot! 

Public schools mean zero fee, zero cost on books, zero cost on school bus.  The reason families in the countryside didn't send all of their children to school because the parents needed them on the field.  That's all there was to it.  Not because great education was reserved to the elite or the urbanites. 

From the time my father was born in 1902 until the day I left VN in 1975, our families (my grandparents and my parents) always housed children of people from the countryside, people whom we knew or people who knew people whom we knew.  Parents in the countryside who wanted to better their children sent them to the city (or a city nearest to where they lived) to stay with friends or acquaintances.  Education was free.  Food and lodging were negligible  (a couple Vietnamese adages that are still circulated to this day say  "An extra bowl and extra pair of chopsticks do not make an extra expense." and "Food can be counted but stay is free.")  No one charged anyone a fee to house a child or help raising him/her.  The young person was absorbed into the family, only distinguished by the food gifts that his parents sent to the hosts at Tet as a token of appreciation.

Therefore, saying education was for the elite was an assumption from outsiders who never knew how Vietnamese society worked. 

Most universities were free.  I graduated from University of Saigon, College of Language and Literature, with a major in Eastern Philosophy and a minor in Western Philosophy, plus the first year in Law School, concurrently,  with only a small registration fee to each school at the beginning of the year.  My classmates came from all over the country, from the poor and disaster-proned Central Vietnam to the abundant countryside of South Vietnam.  They housed together in government-owned single sex and co-ed dorms in Saigon, hundreds of units per buildings.  Scholarships and grants were available from the government, the universities, corporations, and aids from the US.

I don't believe in the statement that "overall literacy has improved since the '70s."  Figures don't lie but liars do figure (not you, I'm talking about the people who came up with those figures.)  I believed in what I saw with my own eyes and not what I read from people who culled statistics from third party then published what they read as official reports.

PS:  I don't know about the education in 1986, but comparing the education in 2020 (pre lockdown) with the one before 1975, the overall level of education in the country is miserably low.

Every student who graduated from public high school before 1975 had 7 years of first foreign language and 3 years of second foreign language, no matter where the school was located.  We were also taught algebra (and for Math major, pre-calculus), chemistry, biology, physics, geology, world geography, and for Literature major, philosophy. 

Not one high school student whom I tutored pre-lockdown in the preparation for college could answer a question I asked on any of the subjects mentioned above, but all of them could recite, in Vietnamese, what Lenin said,  "Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps."

Oh, both genders were also comfortably showing me how to crawl with a gun on their backs.  Even my great niece who left high school 5 years ago still remembers how to do that.

I rest my case.

well thats essential learning,, along with how to get over, under or around barriers haha

Andybris2020 wrote:

This is an interesting point for me to pursue as my GF is 36 and although she seems very forgetful and has somewhat of a goldfish type brain she seems to have no history, geography or world view I would be interested to know what types of subjects were in school in the 80's/90's to see if she did learn it and didn't listen or indeed she does have a bit of a goldfish brain.

I find it a bit hard to fathom that school kids in Saigon in that period didn't learn simple stuff like planets, elements, iron age, bronze age, dinosaurs tc, she seems to have zero knowledge of any of it.

I even had to explain why we have time zones? which was a total head spin to me.

So interesting. I wouldn't blame your girlfriend's brain.

My wife is 10 years older, a lifelong learner, head of her medical school class, who never watches TV or reads novels, but takes classes in parallel on Coursera for fun. Yet you could drive a truck through the tunnels in her basic education. Same same: no history, geography, other countries and cultures, psychology (she loves that now), basically the humanities, art. She did learn Vietnamese poetry, and likes the music of the Mekong but never learned an instrument. Sciences and chemistry and math, she had plenty of, and she knows the Vietnamese generals and why the streets are named after dates. Had to teach herself English which also demonstrates her drive to learn.

So yeah, weird public education curriculum compared to the west, at least back then. Hope it's broader now. Without the basics, just imagine integrating what social media throws at you.