- 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.

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.