Anecdotally, I know a few people who are children of Vietnamese who fled the war that are moving back to Vietnam. Reasons include perception of better opportunities and weather.
Though I doubt many people will return to live in Vietnamafter living in western countries. Of course many people come to visit, but even with living being so cheap quality of life is still too far from US or any of european countries.
* No infrastructure unless you drive a bike. So children, older or disabled people mostly have to stay at home.
* Lack of recreational infrastructure in cities. There are some parks, but it not a place where you would want to go.
* Air quality in big cities is actually terrible.
* Smaller and more touristic places have better infrastructure and air, but have no entertainment whatsoever. Like having single shopping mall for city with 300,000 population.
* Free education is very lacking. There are paid options, but they are expensive even for rich vietnamese.
* Same true for medical services. Yeah you might find cheap dentist, but for some health problems you will need to look options outside of Vietnam.
* No pension system unless you been working for government.
Some of issues can of course be compensated by fact of how cheap human labour is, but unfortunately having personal maid and cook wont help you with entertainment for your family or quality of air.
- People are kinder to each other, that's worth more than many modern comforts.
- feel free and comfortable and relatively safe to ride your moped in your 70's - everyone does.
- get a cheap private Grab (Uber) if you are really incapable.
- food chain supply is significantly better, resulting in fresher and with healthier options almost everywhere compare to most modern countrues.
- most modern medicine is available, and their are counties with superior medicine with a few hours flight. For many specialties, it's the same in the US - except you may only fly between states rather than counties. Same distance though.
Ultimately, quality of life is subjective. You may think you have luxeries like neverending fast food sitting on your ass watching netflix, while I think you have shackles to an un-natural lifestyle that is burdened with gluttony and misery.
In my experience living in Vietnam, the people are poorer and work harder, but still happier than the average person stateside. If you judge quality of life by a standard of happiness, I think many modern countries loose.
At the same time I have vietnamese friends who struggle to provide their children with education because private school with good English cost them $1000+ / month. And since they mostly have more than one child it's can be hard even if you own some family business and work two jobs.
Also I have foreigner friends who took a job offer for $60,000 and went to work to HCM or Hanoi and hate it here because air pollution and terrible and situation with transport and public infrastructure.
Are there any beach towns there that are developed well enough, are walkable and safe for children to play on their own?
1. Partially true. If you are not abled bodied then you are trapped at home because nothing is built to accommodate wheelchairs except housing/malls built by VinGroup. There are still cars everywhere and that’s how I commuted everyday. Every space on the streets are filled with cars and without adequate public transportation, the city will drown in traffic as the number of cars goes up (and Hanoi is planning on banning motorbikes by 2030).
2. There’s plenty of parks and things to do everyday. In comparison the US is very lacking of parks and recreational opportunities. I completely disagree with this point.
3. Absolutely true and only 5% of locals see it as a real problem.
4. Not really a problem as most people live in HCMC, Hanoi, and Da Nang where in the first two there’s a mall every 500 meters.
5. The public education system could be better but I know plenty of people who went to public schools and got a better education in the natural sciences than me, an American.
6. Unfortunately true. For complicated cases you need to relocate to Singapore or Thailand.
7. I’m not very informed about pensions, but most old people have their lifestyles funded by their children in this culture so it’s not too important.
Every vietnamese has a bike or borrows it from a relative (yes, people here lend things and money as a normal thing, do not think it is like for westerners, for them it is the right, natural thing to do).
> * Lack of recreational infrastructure in cities. There are some parks, but it not a place where you would want to go.
I see regularly people walking in parks, playing badminton in parks, how come you do not want to go. There are even small places that sell drinks. Go to Vo Thi Sau/Hai Ba Trung park for example. There are quite a few parks
> * Air quality in big cities is actually terrible.
True. Hanoi even worse than Saigon.
> * Smaller and more touristic places have better infrastructure and air, but have no entertainment whatsoever. Like having single shopping mall for city with 300,000 population.
Vincom (District 1), Crescent Mall, GigaMall, at least in Saigon you have Zara, Uniqlo, Decathlon, Thegioididong... with that you should be reasonably covered, but there are also night markets (and day!). there are quite a few malls in Saigon. There are places to play games inside malls, climbing and others. People play badminton or this typical game in the street or in parks (go to the park next to Pham Ngu Lao in D1 and you will see it). There are a ton of restaurants in city and also more than enough places for drinks like Bam Bam, Qui Bar, and others.
> Some of issues can of course be compensated by fact of how cheap human labour is, but unfortunately having personal maid and cook wont help you with entertainment for your family or quality of air.
I do not think entertainment is that bad, the problem is the chaotic traffic and going from place to place. BTW there is a full network of buses in city, in Hanoi also. Not sure what is reachable but it covers a fair amount of space in city.
> Every vietnamese has a bike or borrows it from a relative (yes, people here lend things and money as a normal thing, do not think it is like for westerners, for them it is the right, natural thing to do).
The issue isn't not having a bike. It's being unable to ride one.
- Depending on the location, weather can be very hot and humid
- Traffic congestion, noise and air pollution in big cities
- Low food safety, drug safety due to lax regulations
- High corruption
Apart from the weather, none of these are unique to Vietnam btw, just general traits of a populous fast developing country.
Vietnam is hot, very humid, and for a large part of the year, extremely rainy. I guess many people would prefer that to living near the arctic circle.
I’ve never heard a Vietnamese person longing for the weather.
I spent plenty of time living around Phan Thiet, Na Trang and Da Nang next to the sea. While it generally humid in many places there is barely any rain outside of rain season.
I get that there are a few parts of Vietnam where it’s not oppressively hot and humid for a bit of the year, but “the weather” being a reason to move back year round seems suspect.
I’m not saying that there are zero people in the world who love the weather there, but if you compare the cities in Vietnam with the “best” weather they don’t come close to comparing with a city with good weather in the continental US—much less with a tropical paradise like Hawaii.
Compare the average humidity, temperature, average rainy days, percent of clear days etc… between Da Nang and Honolulu. It’s not even remotely close.
Suppose I need to come to visit US and Hawaii to judge it, but honestly I loved living in Vietnam between October and May. And I'll choose it any time over London.
Simple fact that in Vietnam I can wear very much the same closes most of the year and don't need heating in winter is great.
Compare any objective weather metric between Da Nang and San Diego then. Unless you just like the rain, it’s not even close.
And yeah from my own experience it become much more humid in May and there is some actual rain during the rain season, but nothing you can't bear if you live next to the sea. Some of my relatives lived in Mui Ne whole year since they stuck there during covid and it was pretty much okay.
Occassionally evening, rarely morning. But it is extremely rare that it covers a long span of the day. Really rare even if it can rain like one month in a row every day. Once I counted from 1st september to 10th of october.
However, you skip the rain and continue at some other time. It does not bother. Maybe people tend to imagine you cannot do anything bc it rains a lot, but the rain is concentrated in short spans.
Sure you can get used to it and clearly millions of people live with it, but I can’t imagine the climate in Saigon is a selling point.
I’ve talked to my sister-in-law about it before—she was born and raised in Saigon. She clearly was able to deal with it. She talks about doing things like driving a scooter in a downpour.
But she also complains about how awful the weather was compared to where she lives now. She lives in a hot, muggy, rainy city in the US (by US standards), so that’s really saying something.
For me it is. The rain clears up the pollution, does not bother too much, and I can go to the swimming pool today or any day in the year.
> But she also complains about how awful the weather was compared to where she lives now
I do not think, this is my personal opinion, of course, that it is that bad as in the paper. Bc if you say it rains for 7 months people would run away. If you say, from those only 2-3 like every day, it rains in very concentrated spurts and does not clash with activities (if you work most of the day) and it cleans the air and you can still go to the swimming pool, for example, all year.
I do not think it is that bad after 11 years in Vietnam.
That’s not a selling point. The air quality in Vietnam has only gotten worse over the last decade. Saigon’s pm2.5 levels are significantly worse than the worst US city.
>I do not think it is that bad after 11 years in Vietnam.
It’s not that bad because you’re used to it is not a selling point.
But assuming you don’t live in one of the 20 or so large cities in the world with worse air quality than Saigon, that point is irrelevant to this discussion.
I've met a ton of non-Vietnamese diaspora British expats who left because they hate the weather in the UK.