Visiting Vietnam

A battle raged among the places I visited in Vietnam as history, culture, and communism butted up against the rapid pace of capitalization and industrialization. Within these lands, diners pay $1-2 meal and hotels are $14 a night. It’s a place where factory workers manufacture shoes sold in the western world for the local equivalent of two-to-four week’s salary. As such, those shoes don’t often see a store shelf in their country of manufacture. It’s a place where anyone can walk into a dentist’s office, sit in a chair within minutes, get a few fillings, and pay a grand total of $45 for the instant service. And it’s a place where your dentist just might be a Harvard Dental School graduate, as mine was. Wonderful.