Cityception

Today we had our first company visit to Phu My Hung. From previous research, I expected to tour a modern development consisting of 10 or so buildings. What I found was an entire city which was built from scratch by the Phu My Hung Corporation over the past 20 years. After exploring the often chaotic nature of Ho Chi Minh City's blocks which largely consisted of unique houses connected by streets packed with scooters and motorcycles, exploring Phu My Hung's carefully planned and organized development was especially impressive. During our morning lesson, we learned about the HCMC's rapid growth as an economic keystone of Vietnam and the government's plans to expand the city to over double its current size with developments like Phu My Hung. At Phu My Hung's headquarters we received an impressive presentation on the history of the corporation and its transformation of previously lightly used marshlands into the spectacularly modern district of South Saigon. The most interesting aspect of the presentation was Phu My Hung's initiative in using international resources to plan and construct an almost entirely self-sufficient city within the borders of HCMC. In fact, Phu My Hung built a power plant that not only provides sufficient energy to fuel South Saigon, but also powers 40% of HCMC in entirety. That statistic is extremely impressive for 1 power plant but considering its massive smoke stack it probably consumes coal or natural gas. This contradicts Phu My Hung’s claim that they work in harmony with the environment but it also makes sense in that Vietnam is a nation that is struggling to compete with other rapidly growing nations in the region who also resort to cheap but harmful means of power.

I realized during the Phu My Hung visit that I am more confused than I initially anticipated with the Vietnamese government. As I understand it, one of the pillars of communism is a command economy where the borquoise is eliminated and resources are evenly distributed throughout the people. As we learned this morning in the presentation on urban planning, since the Doi Moi (where Vietnam’s command economy began to transition to a market economy), disparity between the rich and the poor has grown significantly. This policy makes me question Vietnam’s communist values. I find the most interesting part of communist morality is in its focus on maintaining equity. Phu My Hung exemplifies a private corporation which developed a self-sufficient city designed to attract the wealthy. Besides Phu My Hung having to lease the land from the Vietnamese government due to shared land ownership, this development seems farther from government involvement than most developments in Western countries. Phu My Hung plans itself, selects which businesses are able to move into their city, and even has its own police force with security stations regularly dispersed within the development. In many ways, Phu My Hung Corporation appears to be a government of its own. While I was extremely impressed by Phu My Hung’s modernized accomplishments, I was left skeptical about their clear marketing towards the wealthy. With signs like “we sell apartments to foreigners” and millions of dollars of foreign investment already given to Phu My Hung, the development will naturally aid Vietnam’s standing in the global market. However, I found myself questioning how HCMC’s economy will be affected if the majority of the city’s wealthy investors move to the exclusive South Saigon and invest less in the rest of the city. Regardless, Phu My Hung’s progress is a marvel in terms of business and engineering, and I very much enjoyed the visit.

Exhaustion is creeping in so I’ll keep the rest of the day fairly brief. After Phu My Hung, the Vietnamese students took us out to dinner at a pho (noodle soup) restaurant. I have been eating pho since I was very young in America, but never have I tasted anything as delicious as the real thing. I finished my bowl of pho within five minutes, broth and all, because I couldn’t stop eating. After eating pho, we visited a park in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral, where it is common for teenagers of HCMC to eat street food on newspapers laid out on the side walk. This makeshift picnic was wonderful and reminded me of the activity of HCMC, with hundreds of motor bikes revolving around our park. I realized that on a Tuesday night, very few American cities would be as alive as HCMC. This idea was strengthened by our trip down the newly completed walkway in the heart of HCMC. On this walkway, crowds of people on the massive sidewalk were flanked by busy streets which lined modern shops, restaurants, and sky scrapers. This tour of downtown HCMC dampened my doubts about Phu My Hung as it appeared that many districts of HCMC are rapidly expanding. However, we passed a high end restaurant in central HCMC named “Le Borquoise” and my confusion on modern communism reemerged. I hope to clarify this subject through the rest of my experiences here in Vietnam.

TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) Phu My Hung Corporation is impressive to say the least, I don’t really know what modern communism is, pho is good.