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The OP says several time that Saigon has lots of startups, but doesn't mention any. What are they? Also, he says the Vietnamese use the English alphabet. That'

• ketralnis 11y ago
  > he says the Vietnamese use the English alphabet. That's not quite right What he says is: > The written language uses English letters that you can learn to pronounce. So memorizing street names is a bit easier. He's not trying you say that you already speak it, he's just trying to distinguish it from languages that use thousands of characters that--without actually learning the language--you have no hope of being able to use for the basics like street names. And to that end, it uses an alphabet close enough to English's that, yes, you can learn enough of to pronounce street names. Here's how you spell Beijing in Chinese: 北京. Or Seoul in Korean: 서울시. Or Tokyo in Japanese: 東京都. Or Bangkok in Thai: กรุงเทพมหานคร. Here's how you say Ho Chi Min City in Vietnamese, in the Vietnamese written alphabet: "Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh". You do indeed have some hope of pronouncing that and explaining it to a cab driver without actually speaking Vietnamese. You can probably learn to do it for any street or city name, in a few hours or less. You can probably get there with a little more effort in Korean or Thai because they do use alphabets, but you're not already immersed in it like you are English. And no amount of learning how to read the Chinese 北京 will help you in reading 长安街 or 王府井.