Stories from Vietnam

[madd0ct0r]

Just a couple of stories. There's been plenty more, but never wrote them down. will start from now.

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Arab Spring fails to reach Vietnam.

approximately a month ago, a young guy went to the town hall to protest. It is believed he was angry that proper compensation hadn't been paid for his family's house (demolished for road widening). The facts are a little blurry.
The security wouldn't let him into the building, and this somehow led to him setting himself on fire outside.
The news spread very quickly. My wife works in a different city office, and she heard from a friend in Saigon.

Shortly after-wards, videos appeared on Youtube showing the security guards (soldiers) standing around the burning bike. They were concentrating on removing the crowd and confiscating any mobiles that were videoing.

That evening the story was picked up by local news: " Today, a bike spontaneously burst into flames outside the town hall. Nobody knows why this happened."

The nest day, the identity of the man had emerged. He was a teacher. Police surrounded the area where he lived. The spokesman for the area came forward to make a statement: " Mr X was mentally ill. He in no way represents the rest of us."

So, a motorbike driven by a madman happened to spontaneously burst into flames outside the town hall. Who'd a thunk it?


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My wife works for a city department, The institute for Research Management and International Cooperation

She gets paid a starvation wage, with the idea she earns extra money depending on the budget of the projects she is assigned to. In turn, the institute then takes a proportion of that to pay for the office, computers ect.

One example would be a study affiliated with a Austrailian University. They needed a local 'expert' from a developing country to get funding. That is pretty much the limit of the Director of the Institute's role. The study got the funding. The institute's portion of the budget, $3000 is paid directly into the Director's account.

Last week my wife got the paycheck relating to the previous project:

Basic monthly wage: 3million VND (144 U.S. dollars)
Institute requests 400k back in cash, 'for accounting purposes'

Project Bonus: 6 million VND! (on paper)
2million VND actual

Tax paid on total (paper) earnings = 400k

final official paycheck: 8.6million VND
final cash in hand: 4.2 million VND

I've left out the 30% contribution to the 'workers union' as I'll deal with that in another post.