Comments for Our Man in Hanoi

Comment on Buying an iPad in Hanoi is weird by Stephen McGrath

Stephen McGrath — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:46:30 +0000

Every iOS device I have purchased in Vietnam (4 so far) has come boxed and unopened. I guess you just have to choose your retailer wisely. As far as not being able to understand them goes, well it doesn’t take any longer to figure them out the first time you get one than it does with an Android device. In fact, there is no figuring out to do at all if you have a credit card for your purchases, and no need to transfer files. I use cloud services – no file transfers necessary and, as you know, 3G & wifi is everywhere and near-free. For the record, I have a Samsung something-or-other, and it languishes in a desk drawer because it’s too complicated to use, there are very few decent apps in my interest areas & the phone call process sucks.

Note: I would never jail-break an iOS device. I just don’t see the need, and once you do so you are trapped into waiting for a new jail-break release then taking it back to the retailer every time Apple releases an iOS update. Unlocked iPhones & iPads might not be what a geek or code-monkey is looking for, but they are a delightful world for musicians, teachers, writers, gamers and average people.

Comment on Buying an iPad in Hanoi is weird by Chris Forrest Harvey (@chrisfharvey)

Chris Forrest Harvey (@chrisfharvey) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 02:19:10 +0000

Jail-breaking your ipad is a piece of cake. Then you can put any app you like on it.

I’m not surprised they wanted to mess with your ipad as it came out of the box. Once people here have a mentality that “this is how it’s done” they often follow it blindly without thinking. It’s one reason I always buy electronics in the US or Singapore.

Apple’s brand is premium. In this culture face is especially important. It’s why people spend lots of money on personal items that their friends will see. They do not spend premium amounts on items in their home that their friends will not see.

Personally I prefer the elegance of ios vs android. I have no problem installing whatever I need on my iphone or ipad. One immensely useful app is Turboscan. You can use it to scan documents and create high-quality pdfs just by taking a picture. It costs a few dollars but it saved saved several hundred dollars I would have spent on a scanner.

Comment on Starbucks won’t kill coffee in Hanoi by SKM

SKM — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:03:59 +0000

Actually, the coffee scene in Ha Noi and most other cities in VN is often over-stated. Having lived in the country for well over a decade, and having had the chance to see the rise and demise of various cafes/coffeeshops during that time, I can state, categorically, that Starbucks will be a behemoth, a Godzilla crushing local Bambis, a caffeine-fueled steamroller flattening wanna-be Starbucks-look-alikes like JOMA. Local coffee consumption is certainly on the rise, but most locals still don’t know the difference between Arabica and Robusta or between an espresso and a machiatto. VN coffee quality is horribly low. The varieties grown are used largely in instant coffee formulas, candies and confectionaries. No true coffee afficionado would be caught dead drinking a “ca phe sua da”. These street cafe formulations are hold-overs from a time when commodities such as fresh milk were a rarity and people were rationed food through a voucher system. Before this, French soldiers and “colons” used canned sweetened milk only when they had no other choice. The habit stuck with the locals. When real coffee culture hits here, it will be with a vengeance. There are small signs of this here and there, and it will be very interesting to see what happens to Cafe Mai (1930s) and the handful of other very old coffee shops around town. I wait with mug in hand!

Comment on Starbucks won’t kill coffee in Hanoi by Sang Starbucks | cà phêinated

Sang Starbucks | cà phêinated — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:01:37 +0000

[...] Others have written much more informatively about their assessments of Starbucks’ prospects here in Vietnam. Excessively offended condemnations veer a little too close to the bullshit pristine exotica fallacy informing so many crimes, especially the type that arrogate expressions on behalf of Vietnamese people instead of by them. The brand’s another evocative icon of cultural homogenisation. Starbucks offers me nothing. Đen không đường. It’s right there in the title. Nâu đá is an almost unbeatable dessert, and even those with espresso hankerings can satiate themselves with something far more interesting and deserving of support. Ultimately though, the Seattle siren’s fate is equally as divorced from me. Indigenous aspirations create an irresistible niche. Sad, yes, but dwarfed in scale by other pillages, both real and potential. If you can emerge from globalisation wearing an “I integrated into the international capitalist system and all I got was this lousy coffee” t-shirt, you’ve done pretty damn well for yourself. [...]

Comment on Nu Skin in Vietnam by Joe P

Joe P — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 05:59:23 +0000

I ‘ve been researching this “business opportunity” after getting constant recruiting calls from an acquaintance. Seeing her persistence, I agreed to look into it…not just listen to the webcast sales pitch, but gather some info myself. I found the earning disclosure from the Nuskin website…something that I asked the recruiter repeatedly but she was either very evasive about it or didn’t even know of its existence. I suspect that the company is required by law to have this in place somewhere and does not readily hand it out. Read it and decide for yourself your chances if succeeding in the business.

http://www.nuskin.com/content/dam/global/library/pdf/distearnings.pdf

To quote the document: “The average commission paid to U.S. Active Distributors each month was $118.05, or $1,416.60 on an annualized basis.”
What if you are ambitious and don’t want to be average, and feel that you can be the top 10% of active distributors? Extrapolating from the numbers in the document, at the top 10% you probably make around $500 a year. Top 1% will get you around 15000 a year. Want to make 100K or more? Sure it’s possible, but you would likely have to be in the top 0.25% , or 1 in 400 active distributors. Keep in mind that “active distributors” are probably the ones taking the time to commit to the business, and the earning numbers don’t count the large number distributors who have given up or discontinued the business, To put it bluntly, the numbers say that the mean income of of a Nu Skin distributor is about 1/10th of a minimum wage worker.
Sure there are success stories as I have been repeatedly told, but how often do they happen? “What do you have to lose?” I was always asked. Assuming that this “business opportunity” doesn’t cost me anything in terms of money (which it does…i think you have to commit to certain personal minimum order per month to maintain your distributor status), what about the cost of time? or the cost of personal embarrassment for selling to friends and relatives overpriced supplements, or worse, things with dubious and far fetched medical claims?

While I have a lot of admiration for the entrepreneurial spirit of those who start their own business, I advise people to search and investigate the facts themselves, and not relying on the sales pitch from those who benefits from your recruitment.

Cheers,

Joe