Over six years ago I came to Vietnam visiting DaNang. Being from Ocean area of Florida DaNang appealed to me very much with the fresh sea air, beautiful cloud formations with added features like 3 mountain ranges in DaNang IE: Monkey Mountain, Marble Mountain and Ba Na Mountain. Then they built the most beautiful new airport to improve transport. The government of DaNang was very professional with absolutely no corruption. This city has a long term development plan for the community and visitors. Living in DaNang for 3 years was a beautiful experience.
Then I moved to Saigon where population over crowds the streets and markets. The government could care less about helping foreigners but they surely want the all mighty US Dollar. I got married to a girl I knew for 4 years and then it took 6 months 8 days to get the marriage papers spending over 7 million vnd most of which was corruption and non essential repeated paper work. I have seen the interest paid on bank investments go from 14% to now only 8%. The price of eating out is more expensive in Saigon than in any major city of USA. You can not get a decent lunch for under $10 USD and GOD forbid should you want any drink.
The local banks and government does not comprehend what it means for a foreigner to be retired. The banks question every dollar you deposit and spend. You withdraw 20 million vnd and they question "WHY?"
I pay 15 million vnd a month for an apartment where management will not even print important rules, regulations or warnings in English. The management will not paint the walls allowing a 4 star residence to look like a slum. The swimming pools are only cleaned 2 times a week on Monday and Friday so by Sunday the water is so dirty you dare not swim unless you want an ear infection. Plus the management even charges you 200,000 vnd to swim for one month even on top of their 750,000 maintenance fees.
So where will this culture stop and look at where and what they are doing? They still pay common workers 3 million vnd a month for 60 hour 6 day week job. The rich get richer and the poor get even more so poor.