What amazes me most about the Vietnamese we’ve encountered is their spectacular sense of improvisation and adaptability, while still not being really innovative. Hotel staff will set up camp on the floor at night and tailors work their asses off to get things done under abysmal working conditions; the lady who served us delicious seafood dishes at An Bang beach yesterday had a pot and two very basic hot plates to cook with — and that’s all. At the same time, there seems to be a reluctance to take the initiative — to suggest better ways of doing things, or to come up with some sort of process that’s unconventional.
These guys are traders, like Lebanese on steroids. They’re also builders and makers, who’ll sit on a sidewalk and bang together industrial-quality metal goods with little more than a hammer and a pile of sheet metal. But every shopkeeper in touristy areas has the same goods and welcome lines, my tailor could have saved an insane amount of time and effort by just using their past experience to make some active suggestions before I ordered my clothes, and nearly ever road and building construction site seems to be making the same mistakes in terms of leaving things half-done — their overall productivity, happiness, efficiency and attractiveness of urban areas could be increased so much with a few basic steps.
It’s the most can-do culture I’ve ever come across, while at the same time crippling itself somehow. If they ever figure out a way to take a step back, look at what they’re doing, and logically think about ways in which they could do it better, they’ll be unstoppable.
