As an American who is living in Vietnam and has travelled around Asia a lot (including North Korea), I take issue with a lot of the points in this article. 1.

As an American who is living in Vietnam and has travelled around Asia a lot (including North Korea), I take issue with a lot of the points in this article. 1. There are more American flags in Saigon that I've seen almost anywhere in the US. Being American here has more cache here than being British, Australian, etc. Probably because American ex-pats are kind of rare here, not counting the Viet Kieu. Maybe this isn't true the more north you go, but it is in Saigon for sure. 3. I'm totally not sure where he gets the idea the Vietnamese think the "American War" (what they refer to it as) being about China when it was clearly about expelling foreign occupation and re-uniting the country. Maybe he has it confused with the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in the 1970's which had more to do with the Khmer Rouge aligning with China, while Vietnam was aligned with Russia. 5. If you think the quality of life isn't great for the average American, come on down to District 4 and grab a bowl of pho with me. Or we could go to PR Karaoke and have the hostess girl tell us about why she's working at karaoke. 6. Bangkok is kind of a shit hole. But it's a much nicer shit hole than most of it's SE Asian neighbor's big cities. And of course the world is predictable and all people everywhere have common sets of problems. But my experience is that the severity of those problems, on a whole, are much more severe in developing countries than what most people face in America. 7. Agree whole heartedly. 8. This is what makes America special though. Try training iPhone developers in Vietnam for a few months and you realize it's that "you are special" thing we are taught from childhood that makes the difference in our skillsets. I think a mild level of arrogance is healthy.