Vietnam is a wonderful place and I am glad that I live here. I don't know of a cheaper place in the world that is also safe and I have lived in quite a few places.
It's special, I like it for the most part, but just like anything, it is far from perfect. The bad comes with the good and this neighborhood I stumbled upon on a last trip is a very good example of both of these things at once.
I was just wandering with no particular destination in mind when I came across this neighborhood that has almost no buildings in it but it already had the perfect streets, streetlights, electric and water already placed underground (no aerial wires going all over the place like a lot of Asia) and nobody even lives here yet. This is a forward planning aspect of Vietnam or specifically, Da Nang, that I really enjoy. After living in Thailand for over a decade where they build like one electrical wire and string it down the road on an aerial and just make a mess of the place, then don't install anywhere near as much water pressure as is needed for what the neighborhood ends up becoming. Here in Da Nang, there really isn't even anyone living here yet and virtually no businesses either, but the infrastructure is in place for when it does happen - which could be many years down the road.
That's the good... The bad should be evident but I am going to give you a play-by-play anyway.
All around this future neighborhood there is dumped garbage just everywhere. A lot of it is construction debris as well and that is something that I think should be punished. Since there isn't much construction going on it wouldn't exactly be some huge mystery about where the left behind materials came from.
All the while that I was riding, in the shade mind you because of the planning done on the trees that lined ALL of the roads, there is just garbage thrown all over the place and it doesn't look like anyone is coming by to pick it up anytime soon.
There are also these rather large dumpsters every 100 meters or so and here's the thing: There are no houses here so where is this garbage even coming from. There's literally no houses or businesses around so was this trucked in from another area?
It carries on like this for miles and miles and of course, it stinks because garbage that is left in the sun to rot tends to not be the most wonderfully fragrant thing in the world. This is within sight of one of the rivers here that is well-known for being badly polluted as well. I wonder how that happened?
This river connects to the nearby seaside where people frolic in the waves all day as well. Awesome.
So while I am not going to try to get all judgmental about how people live their lives this just seems incredibly irresponsible no matter where you come from or where you live. They put all this time into pre-planning an area, putting in all the infrastructure in honestly, a very admirable way, then they just walk away and the place fills up with garbage.
Is the idea that whoever buys the land will clean it up. Is that how it works? Because if I was thinking about building a house over here the constant stink of rotting trash would probably turn me off to that idea.
But I suppose it will work itself out in the end but it just seems such a shame to me. You have what could be a wonderful area that is completely ruined by people being lazy. Since this is Vietnam I would imagine that someone will come by at some point and burn all of it because despite the fact that this is one of the most heavily populated cities in all of Vietnam, the burning of trash on the roadside is extremely common here and when it happens, nobody even bats an eye. It's just "normal."
I enjoyed the nice streets and the pre-planned shade but I can't see myself going back here because the stench was just unreal. Pity!