Neel Patel · Lives in Vietnam 7 yrs, qoura.com

I’ve been living in Vietnam for a year plus and it’s not a bad place to live if you are middle class or above in the large cities. Lots of foreigners are teaching English and earning $15+ an hour, which is a lot of money in Vietnam. I realize that is way more than the average Vietnamese salary (around $300–500 a month in Saigon I believe). But a lot of these people would be earning a similar wage back in their home country, but the cost of living would be 2–10 times more. For instance, my Vietnam apartment would cost at least 4–5 times more in a large US city like NYC or SF. I spend $4 a month for 3.5 gb of data, in the US that would cost me at least $60 or more. I can get a nice meal for $2 if I wanted, even more expensive restaurants are only $5–12. Even a hole in the wall restaurant in the big US city is $10+ nowadays.

And people are very nice and genuine. Girls are very beautiful. The country’s economy is doing. People are hopeful and pleasant unlike in the US. The weather is always warm and you can easily travel to many nice beaches and cool areas around Vietnam and SE Asia.

It’s also safer than the US (no guns). If I get sick I can just go to the hospital or doctor and pay out of pocket and not worry about it being a huge bill whereas in the US even with insurance you could get an insane bill and go bankrupt.

I know that for poor Vietnamese life is not easy but life is not easy being poor in the US either since you don’t really have much of a safety net there unlike other rich nations. At least poor Vietnamese still have close family and their culture whereas Americans usually live isolated depressing lives.

And if you are educated or middle class or above in Vietnam life is not that bad honestly. Yeah there is traffic and pollution but that exists in most big cities. There is always good and bad. Vietnam is a nice place to live. Too many Vietnamese have this “grass is always greener” outlook and think the US or western countries are paradises. They aren’t which is why more and more people from western countries are moving to developing nations.

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