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In my experience from travelling through third world countries, they tend to build impressive projects, and then never maintain them and they fall apart. I gue

In my experience from travelling through third world countries, they tend to build impressive projects, and then never maintain them and they fall apart. I guess getting money for maintenance is politically harder, and saying "hey, we have this well maintained infrastructure" is much less impressive than "hey, we built this impressive new piece of infrastructure". Vietnam seems particularly bad for it. They have some very nice new roads, but after a few years they're filled with potholes and an absolute pain to drive/ride through. It doesn't help that they aren't actually that well built either. They look nice when new, but there's actually very little under the tarmac, so when monsoon season comes through the roads just wash out.

latchkey 8y ago
Vietnam is a special kind of stupid (maybe not the right word, but best I can do). The whole country is filled with partially finished and failed projects (not just the roads), right next to brand new construction. I actually consider all of this part of the charm of living here. Makes for excellent urban exploration! Becamex IDC is a company founded in 1976 to build a whole city north of Saigon in Binh Duong. There is nice wide and well-paved roads, sidewalks, schools, multiple golf courses, churches, car dealerships, hospitals, power plants... it is literally sim city in real life. The only twist is that it is still nearly empty. The only people out there are factory workers. The factories even import managers from Korea and Japan, who spend their days playing at the golf courses. The locals either live in factory housing or in really inexpensive places. There is whole communities of housing built up where only a few people live. It is kind of amazing really... the whole country is full of half finished places like this. https://i.imgur.com/GIPMBmT.png https://i.imgur.com/GIPMBmT.png https://i.imgur.com/LRVIX7h.png https://i.imgur.com/LRVIX7h.png My guess is that when the sea levels rise and Saigon is under water, Binh Duong will be hot property... in 100 years.

latchkey 8y ago

Vietnam is a special kind of stupid (maybe not the right word, but best I can do). The whole country is filled with partially finished and failed projects (not just the roads), right next to brand new construction. I actually consider all of this part of the charm of living here. Makes for excellent urban exploration! Becamex IDC is a company founded in 1976 to build a whole city north of Saigon in Binh Duong. There is nice wide and well-paved roads, sidewalks, schools, multiple golf courses, churches, car dealerships, hospitals, power plants... it is literally sim city in real life. The only twist is that it is still nearly empty. The only people out there are factory workers. The factories even import managers from Korea and Japan, who spend their days playing at the golf courses. The locals either live in factory housing or in really inexpensive places. There is whole communities of housing built up where only a few people live. It is kind of amazing really... the whole country is full of half finished places like this. https://i.imgur.com/GIPMBmT.png https://i.imgur.com/GIPMBmT.png https://i.imgur.com/LRVIX7h.png https://i.imgur.com/LRVIX7h.png My guess is that when the sea levels rise and Saigon is under water, Binh Duong will be hot property... in 100 years.