Good Morning, Vietnam

In the United States, bubbles in infrastructures—telegraph, railroad, Internet—helped lay the foundation for long-term growth by creating platforms for new types of businesses. In Vietnam, the process seems to be reversed. Investment is pouring into new banks, factories, and hotels, but not into crucial infrastructure like roads, ports, and power systems. The telephone and electric poles look like twigs surrounded by mounds of angel hair pasta. We visited Nike's showcase factory outside Ho Chi Minh City, where 20,000 workers turn out millions of shoes each year. Nike, which arrived in Vietnam in 1995, is a massive presence in Vietnam, to which it has exported its somewhat creepy corporate culture. (Inspiring maxims are inscribed on the walls above urinals in the bathrooms, including: "No. 6 Evolve Immediately.") On one assembly line, contractors were experimenting with customization, which offers customers in the United States the ability to design their own shoes and receive them within several days. But given the traffic and the state of the roads, it struck me that it would take at least that long simply to get from the factory to the port. "We're already seeing delays," said Shirley Justice, general manager of Nike Vietnam, citing issues with roads, ports, and power supply. "If in a couple of years, the plans don't come through, there will be bottlenecks." In Hanoi, Vu Xuan Hong, a member of Vietnam's National Assembly, conceded that the roads are "terrible." And this was one of the only times one of our interlocutors betrayed even a hint of bitterness about the devastating damage inflicted on the country by the United States and its allies. Vu blamed the sad state of Vietnam's infrastructure in part on land mines and bombings. "Infrastructure is not well," he said, while slyly alluding to this summer's Minneapolis bridge disaster.

The traffic certainly doesn't seem sustainable. There's very little in the way of public transportation in Vietnam. It's difficult to describe the volume and relentless flow of motorbikes in the country's cities. Crossing the street is like wading into a river and swimming across. Your pace slows instantly, and the current morphs around you at the last minute.

There was another factor in Vietnam that was certainly unsustainable and that was clearly contributing to bubblelike conditions: As if to emphasize Vietnam's emergence from the dark decades of deprivation into the sunlight of prosperity, we were practically buried in food. The nine-course Chinese lunch, which came after a tremendous all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, was followed by an eight-course Vietnamese dinner. Before I left on the trip, I dipped into Tim O'Brien's Vietnam chronicle The Things They Carried. The narrative of this group's journey to Vietnam would be more aptly titled The Things They Ate.

Daniel Gross traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia last month as part of a German Marshall Fund economic journalism fellowship.

© 2007