It is impossible to overstate the difference between Cambodia and Vietnam. Cambodia to the Western eye moves slowly and painfully. At dinner the other night Virak Seng, the Director of the Cambodian Legal Education Center which USF proudly started, talked about economic progress, but also commented that we are “still at square one”. Indeed. There may be cranes and construction, but the feel of Cambodia is very much the same as it was fifteen years ago. Even the issues remain the same as the constant struggle to deal with the Khmer Rouge past continues to haunt the country.
Vietnam is only a forty minute flight away, but it is worlds apart.
This is a huge powerful nation (population 85 million compared to Cambodia’s 13 million), poised, for better or worse, to enter the WTO with signs of an emerging wealth everywhere: huge high rise construction on the Saigon River and chain hotels (the Hyatt, the Marriott and all the rest), a new international airport, and auto showrooms that feature BMWs. This may only be a surface wealth masking Vietnam’s problems of poverty, repression of human rights and the struggles of its ethnic minorities, but the truth is that the minute you emerge from Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City and head to the hotel, the fate of the Japanese, the French and the Americans in Viet Nam is completely understandable. This is a very beautiful, tough, proud, and capable country.
Vietnam is only a forty minute flight away, but it is worlds apart.
This is a huge powerful nation (population 85 million compared to Cambodia’s 13 million), poised, for better or worse, to enter the WTO with signs of an emerging wealth everywhere: huge high rise construction on the Saigon River and chain hotels (the Hyatt, the Marriott and all the rest), a new international airport, and auto showrooms that feature BMWs. This may only be a surface wealth masking Vietnam’s problems of poverty, repression of human rights and the struggles of its ethnic minorities, but the truth is that the minute you emerge from Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City and head to the hotel, the fate of the Japanese, the French and the Americans in Viet Nam is completely understandable. This is a very beautiful, tough, proud, and capable country.
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