A Day in the Provinces

Yesterday we took an all-day trip – 6:30 am to 9:30 pm – out to the provinces of An Giang (pronounced ann-yang or ann-zang, depending on whether you are from the north or from the south) and Kien Giang (kin-yang or kin-zang) to visit a university and a community college. It was good to see other institutions, other cities, and everything in between. We’ve pretty much only been between Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC – Saigon) and Can Tho, without a good sense of what else is in the region.

A lot of what is in the region is poverty – people living in thatch-roofed and thatch-sided, 12 foot by 12 foot dwellings perched on the narrow strip between the canal/river and the road. These homes are interspersed with some brick buildings, or tin-sided buildings. Interestingly, because they are along the road, they are strung with electricity, and as night fell, we could see that nearly every home had one fluorescent light bulb and a television on. So an eerie, bluish-greenish light emitted from each small dwelling. If I hadn’t been completely carsick from the road conditions and erratic driving, I’d have taken a picture during the day to show you – I had to be both eyes ahead, even having taken two Dramamine! John took pictures, and when we’re home we can upload some to share the images with you.

There are also some factories and government offices, and the people who work in them may be the ones who live in the brick houses with windows (not the thatch dwellings). And two of the cities we visited had an almost European feel to them – the picture above is Rac Giau, and the river pictured runs right into the Gulf of Thailand, about 1 k farther down from this bridge. They are planning this city to be the starting-off point for a planned development of a major international tourist spot on a nearby island – Phu Quoc (foo-ock) – that belongs to Vietnam but which is much closer to Cambodia. You heard it here first – Pho Quoc will be the next Phuket!

I’m still processing a lot of what I saw yesterday – when you get out of the city, into the countryside, you get a better sense of where much of the VN war was fought, and I found myself wondering what it was like for an 18 year old – American, South Vietnamese, or North Vietnamese – to be out in the dark in these villages and the jungle in between. And then I started wondering what the region would be like if the south had held off the north after the Americans left in 1973. Would these people in the thatch houses be any better off? Would there be a Starbucks in Can Tho City? Would the social and economic development anticipated now that the country is pursuing a market economy have come sooner? Who would be better off? Who would be the same or worse?