After a bumpy six-hour bus ride, I arrived at Ho Chi Minh City (abbreviated as HCM), a thriving southern Vietnamese city, for a quick escape from Phnom Penh. This short vacation was intended as a “visa trip,” but nonetheless, I saw it as an opportunity to compare and contrast the development of two countries once tightly connected during the Cold War era.
Prior to my travels, although Vietnam appears more “developed” on paper, I expected that every aspect of HCM would be a magnified version of Phnom Penh – more motorbikes, more traffic, more messy streets, etc. However, my three-day experience there proved me wrong: HCM is visibly more developed and the Vietnamese people certainly have a higher standard of living and higher purchasing power.
What strikes me first about HCM was cleanliness. Take the example of local markets, the home of numerous stalls selling raw food, cooked food, souvenirs, clothes and electronics. In Phnom Penh, the Central Market and the Russian Market are the main tourist markets. For the former, outside the recently renovated indoor building are scattered stalls operating under shaky tents. For the latter, under dim lights, one can feel the unevenly paved floor, which often floods when it rains. In both markets, the cooked food sections are nightmares. Dirty plates are littered on the tables, with flies flying all over the place. In HCM, the Ben Thanh Market, the must-go tourist market, is inside a brightly lit indoor building. Most stalls have their inventory orderly displayed on shelves without completely obstructing the walkway. What impressed me the most was how food sellers would post pictures and display samples of their food and drinks to attract customers. Sometimes, even English menus are available; and you would not see dirty dishes everywhere.
My second observation was city-planning. In Phnom Penh, although traffic is busiest on several main roads, the whole city is very dusty. Partly due to air pollution and poor city-planning, it is impossible to find decent-sized parks for jogging and exercise. Some people gather at the Olympic Stadium and small parks for morning and evening aerobics; others run their dogs near the Independence Monument, where there is no shade and the noise of tuk-tuks and motorbikes continue to deafen your ears. If you want to play basketball or tennis, appropriate facilities are yet to be established. In contrast, in HCM, I was most impressed by its parks. Located at the heart of the city, the park next to the Reunification Palace has trees stretching several metres up in the sky. Sand pits and slides were created for children; joggers run shaded paths. Around the city were several sport clubs with tennis courts, dance studios and basketball courts. Walking in the park, the green spaces and tall trees seemed to have insulated noise from the busy streets. For about ten minutes, you can feel relaxed and forget about the crazy traffic on the next big road ahead.
The Vietnamese are also visibly wealthier than Cambodians. In addition to the Japanese and Korean sports cars on the road, I saw more “brand-name” consumer goods around the city. In the night, you can see neon light signs of various established brands: Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Toshiba, LG, Sanyo, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, etc. In contrast, the dearth of foreign brands in Phnom Penh indicates the people’s lower purchasing power. Since Cambodia is still a Least Developed Country, most people would not earn enough to purchase those expensive, imported products. Instead, many can only afford a narrower variety of products, often with lower quality or of an older model. Indeed, the urban Vietnamese appear to have moved past the stage where they only fend for basic necessities. More people now have the ability to desire for higher standards of living.
While there are many more motorbikes in HCM and most motorcyclists drive faster, I nonetheless feel that the traffic there has more order. In HCM, roads tend to be straighter and better-paved. There are more traffic lights and fewer unexpected lane-cutters. Cars tend to move quickly but orderly along clearly delineated lanes – motorbikes on the outside lane and cars on the inside one. Most motorcyclists would wear helmets for their own protection. In Phnom Penh, during my everyday 20-minute biking exercise to work, I often see the opposite of the above-mentioned list. Motorbikes would come from literally every direction; few people have the patience to wait for the green light. One can see illegal U-turns everywhere; cars often got stuck in traffic while motorbikes brush past. In the end, to be cautious, everybody is a “slow driver.” In my opinion, without functioning traffic rules and well-educated drivers, traffic would not move fast. I would see the “order” in HCM as a proxy for government institutions with higher capacity to enforce rules and maintain order.
While wandering inside a bakery in Saigon’s backpacker district, I had a brief conversation with the shop’s Cantonese-speaking manager. Finding out that I work in Phnom Penh, his immediate comment was, “Phnom Penh was like Ho Chi Minh City twenty to thirty years ago.” In other words, in twenty to thirty years, Phnom Penh should be at least as developed as Saigon. Would the current path of economic development and the level of human capital be sufficient to bring prosperity to Cambodia?
To be continued…
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