I shouldn't say all of Vietnam because despite having lived here for over 5 years, I haven't really seen very much of the country. I can only speak for Da Nang, where I live, and how no matter where you go there is construction going on.
A few kilometers south of where I live, there is a portion of beachfront that is relatively unused and it is also one of the only places where the buildings have their own beachfront. In the metro area where I live, all of the buildings, even the fancy hotels, are on the opposite side of the beachfront street and I guess this is a good thing.
But down a bit out of town there is a ton of land that isn't really used all that much but if you think that this is going to stop people from building there, you would be terribly wrong.
I was on a walk yesterday and found this absolutely massive building that they developers simply walked away from.
This is/was many things and you can see at the top of the building the words "Marriott" appears. You probably know this name because it is one of the largest hotel chains in the world. If you look to the right of this picture you will see something even taller, and we will get to that in a minute.
Most of the Marriott complex appears as though it was never even finished and I don't know if it was ever open because it has been closed since the day I moved here.
Walking down the beach access road next to it, which is actually very well maintained, you can see that there are construction materials still stored in the sides there. There were multiple security guards around the property, even though it is mostly non functional.
This is the same structure but right along the beach. There are multiple unfinished areas that appear as though they were going to be swimming pools because that's what you put there, right?
The only part of this facility that is open in any capacity is the fledgling "shopping mall" that is only partially open and from what I could tell is only used to bring by busloads of tourists to the duty-free shop.
It says "now open" and it is, but only at 1 of the 4 entrances. When I walked past I could see that almost all of the stores didn't even have anything in them and I just don't understand why they bother to be open at all. This building apparently had a movie theater in it as well but that has never been operational since I moved here. It's basically just a gigantic ghost of building that nobody has anything to do with and there doesn't appear to be any real inclination to revitalize that. Which is what makes what I am going to feature next and referenced in the first photo so perplexing.
This megastructure that is 25 stories tall and had probably 400 rooms in it is still under construction. It is likely the largest hotel in the entire region and is right on the beach. The thing that gets me about this build is that it is directly next door to the shuttered Marriott that we just looked at.
I guess I just don't understand people with money because since this entire area is derelict and abandoned, what on earth would compel someone to spend what has to be hundreds of millions of dollars on doing essentially exactly the same thing? To me this would be like building a super fancy, and super-expensive brand new resort on the beach of Atlantic City, where nobody really ever goes to anymore.
Also, the beach and ocean directly behind it, isn't anything to get excited about. It is also located far enough from the main town that the people staying here, when they do, are going to be too far away to actually walk to do anything else. There is literally nothing in this area.
I would like to believe that when someone does actually open this thing that they will put some real effort into cleaning up the beach area behind it but as it stands now it is absolutely filthy and the waves that come in have a sort of trash froth to them that would definitely keep me out of the water.
I hope it can beautify the area but the people next door seemed to realize pretty early on that this area wasn't any good for this purpose, so I just don't get how investors come in with HUGE amounts of money and then just do the same thing that has already failed in the same area. What's the logic here?