Apparently I’m Every Vendor’s First Customer at Ben Thahn Market

Today I had one goal: to bargain my way to as many souvenirs as possible within an hour at Saigon’s famous Ben Thahn Market. We started the day with Vietnamese language lessons on numbers and how to haggle prices, but largely those skills went unused since virtually the entire market speaks English to better appeal to countless streams of Western tourists. That being said, loudly shouting “mac qua!” (too much!) definitely helped the vendor’s reception of my obnoxiously low initial bids. It often forced them to break their script of “handsome man, you my first customer” and “this price make us both lucky.” These phrases were often coupled with aggressive grabbing of arms which definitely came as a shock but was not difficult to avoid once I knew to avoid eye contact and keep walking if I wasn’t interested. I picked up gifts for family and friends as well as a few souvenirs for myself for about 60-70% of the price tag, which I was fairly happy with.

After the market, we traveled to VinaCapital Foundation (VCF) to learn about what they do as an NGO (non-governmental organization) in Vietnam. We spoke to a number of higher ups in VCF as well as their parent company, VinaCapital Group and discussed a number of social issues in Vietnam that VCF works to solve. One of the most interesting topics discussed was wealth disparity. It is easy to see that Vietnam’s economy is rapidly growing, and has been for some time now, but what I learned from this visit is that much of this increased wealth is focused in the upper classes. Poverty is still very prominent in the nation, especially amongst ethnic minorities who are often discriminated against by their Viet neighbors. While legislation has been passed to rectify this, proper enforcement has not been carried out. This seems to be a trend in Vietnam, where the government is making some good decisions to advance their nation, but beaurocracy and corruption are holding the country back.