Vietnamese Food

I thought I would write a bit about Vietnamese cuisine. I have some pictures to contribute to these descriptions which will help you get an idea of what I’m talking about. I was surprised with Vietnamese food and I realized how little I knew about it before I came here. The food here is definitely distinct from other parts of the world. I really like it. I think it’s really good and really cheap if you eat where the locals eat. One reoccurring ingredient I see is fish sauce or nước mắm. At first, I thought the stuff was disgusting. I had a brief bout of food poisoning about a month and a half ago and during that period if even smelled fish sauce I would get nauseous. Now I've learned to like it. It has a very strong smell which can be off-putting but it tastes alright. It can be a nice complement. There is also a more notorious sauce here called mắm tôm. It is notorious because foreigners are supposed to hate it for its exceptionally strong odor. In my experience more Vietnamese people actually dislike it than they like to admit. Mắm tôm is a sauce made from fermented shrimp and if you do eat it you will smell like it for a while. The main staples of Vietnamese cuisine are bún (these are thin white noodles), phở (these noodles are flatter and thicker than bun and they are the noodles you will find in most of the soups here), and cơm which is just normal white rice. Almost everything you eat here will come with one of these three. Vietnamese people also eat a decent amount of bread (called bánh mì). You can always find a nice baguette nearby. This is definitely a legacy of the French.

This first dish is called chả cá. It is a specialty of Hanoi. It is a dish meant to be enjoyed with friends. I was invited to eat this by a lady I do language exchange with and her friend. Basically, it is a fish fry up. There are hearty chunks of nice fish, I didn’t encounter many bones, and fish stomachs. I really like the fish stomach but I am one to be partial to intestines and innards in general. It is nicely seasoned and they bring plenty of vegetables and herbs that you add to it as you go. You have fish sauce and/or mắm tôm on the side to dip the fish or stomachs in. It was definitely a nice meal.

This dish is called hủ tiếu and I believe it is from southern Vietnam. I have only seen a few places in Hanoi that have it. This style is called hủ tiếu khô which is different from other kinds of soups because the broth comes in separate bowl. You can eat the noodles and meat with as much broth as you like. It comes with an assortment of grilled pork, kind of dumplings, shrimp, and things that I have no idea about. The broth was kind of sweet (I hear adding a bit of sugar to broth is a very southern Vietnamese thing to do) and very nice. I really like it and it is only $1.50 for a meal.

These next two are what most people think of when they think of Vietnamese food: phở. There are two main varieties of phỏ:  phỏ gà (Chicken phở) and phở bò (Beef pho). This one is a phở gà and I don’t eat it as much as I do phở bò. Phở gà is usually cheaper than its beef counterpart. There is an important distinction between chicken phởs. The normal phở gà will usually have pieces of chicken skin and other parts of the chicken in it which some people may not enjoy. I think it’s OK as long as there is a decent amount of actual chicken meat. The one in the picture was pretty good. If you see phở gà ta then you know that it is chicken to the Western standards (strictly breast and thigh meat).

I really like beef phở. There is wide variety of small and large restaurants serving phở across Hanoi and it is never obvious if you are going to get a good bowl. From my experience avoid the restaurant Phở 24 and the touristy “Food Street”. Both of those places charge at least double the normal price and are not even half as good as other places. Generally if you find phở on the street and locals are eating it then it is good. The broth is very important and I have found some good places which only charge a dollar for a big bowl with plenty of meat. You can order the beef to be cooked before it is put in the broth (phở bò chín) or you can order (I like it this way) the beef to be put in raw and then it is cooked in the broth (phở bò tái). In my experience the beef has been good quality. The one thing that I honestly have never seen over here which I expected to is the tendons and tripe in phở like you buy in Vietnamese restaurants in the States. Don’t ask me why. Also, phở is generally a breakfast food and is especially nice if it is cold morning up in Hanoi during the winter.

The street BBQs are great (called nướng). They may seem unsanitary but they are a great way to hang out and eat with your friends. They very much like Korean BBQs except you are sitting pretty much on the sidewalk and using a charcoal grill instead of gas. There’s really not much to say aside from you can get all sorts of different meats and seafood to grill along with buttered bread and vegetables. It’s not the cheapest meal but it is very nice. I usually eat BBQ while taking shots of Vodka Hanoi. I’m not sure if this is part of the local culture or if just something my friend who’s been here a long time just likes to do.

This next dish may look like rice but it is actually a bit different. It’s called xôi (pronounced soy). It is glutinous rice and is much more filling than normal rice. It is a common breakfast food. Even a small bowl with a bit of grilled meat and vegetables is enough to sustain me until lunch.

This is called bún đậu and is really quite simple. It is the bún noodles but they are cut up into cubes to make them easier to pick up with chop sticks and deep fried tofu. The purple sauce is the mắm tôm I was talking about before. I think this is a very nice and light lunch. Like most Vietnamese foods they bring you assorted herbs, lettuce, and bean sprouts to eat with it. While I was eating this particular bún đậu I was sitting next a Vietnamese guy I didn't know but we talked a bit and he was friendly guy. He ended up paying for my lunch altogether. I get treated to a lot of meals over here. Vietnamese people really do have a nice culture about paying for their friends, and even people they don’t know, food.

This is known as bánh mì sốt vang. The bánh mì is just normal French style bread. You can buy this practically everywhere and you can get good baguette sandwiches with egg vegetables and some Vietnamese style pate. Bánh mì sốt vang however is a bit different. The bowl is full of a nice meaty broth and hearty chunks of stewed beef. This particular one was kind of greasy but I really like this dish. You dip the bread into the broth and scoop up the meat or you can just eat the meat with a spoon.

This is what is called cơm rang which means fried rice. You can get fried rice with beef and vegetables or seafood or all kinds of other things. I think that fried rice is really just fried rice and I don’t think there is anything very distinctive about Vietnamese fried rice and fried rice I've had in other Asian countries. It is nice to order some of this when you are chilling and drinking beer with some friends. I generally don’t eat this in restaurants since it is so easy to make at home.

This bowl of soup, that many of you might think is phở, is called bún mộc. There are two major kinds of soup here and the difference lies in the kind of noodle. Basically bún noodles are thinner and phở noodles are wider but they are pretty much the same thing. (On a side note, there are also miến noodles which are made from something called cassava. They are see-through and I don’t have any pictures because I eat it very rarely.) Bún mộc is a meatball soup. I think it’s good. It’s quite simple but with some hot sauce it can be real good.

This interesting food is called bánh cuốn. I like it a lot and I was a bit intimidated at first to eat it. It is made on a pan that looks like a crepe maker. They use a white mixture (I assume flour and egg and some other stuff) and pour it out on the pan until it cooks into a thin white pancake. They then wrap it into a dumpling type food with various ingredients. Honestly, I have no idea what they put inside those things. I think there’s some kind of beans and meat. They also put some dried pork flakes on top which is nice. You’re supposed to dip in some fish sauce as you eat it. 

I saved the best for last: bún chả. This is a Hanoi specialty and a staple. There are bún chả restaurants practically everywhere. The noodles on the side are the bún noodles and you eat those alongside the bowl of grilled pork. The grilled pork is inside a bowl of a very nice broth which is made from vinegar, fish sauce, some sugar, and some other stuff. A usual side dish with bún chả is nem rán (fried spring rolls). The spring rolls are real good and can come with pork or crab meat. Bún chả is definitely a lunch time food and when I’m out looking for food I can always smell a bún chả place not too far away. This bún chả was interesting because the meat was wrapped in a leaf before it was grilled. 

Overall I rate Vietnamese cuisine very highly. There are a multitude of things I didn’t talk about; mainly because I don’t have pictures of them and this blog is already quite long. I also like how everything I mentioned can be bought for $1-$5 J

Withdrawal Symptoms

It was with a heavy heart that I confessed to the secretary and photocopy lady at my work that I plan on leaving Vietnam in May. Telling my boss was easy. I hardly know him but telling the Vietnamese staff was far more difficult. I invested a lot of effort into learning Vietnamese and getting to know the local staff at the company I work at. The secretary and photocopy lady are the ones that I am closest with and our discussion got pretty emotional. The photocopy lady doesn’t speak any English so I had to speak only Vietnamese and a bit of English to get my point across. I also wanted to speak Vietnamese so my boss and other coworkers wouldn’t overhear what we were talking about. It was a sad conversation and affected me strongly.  Even though I’m not leaving for another month I feel like it is just around the corner. Of course I am looking forward to reuniting with Kristine and starting our life together. I’ve dreamed about this for months now but I have grown emotionally attached to Vietnam and the withdrawal will be painful. I feel like I’m already saying goodbye and it depresses me.

Some people think I’m foolish for leaving so early. Financially it would make a lot of sense for me to stay and work for another six months or so. I could come home with a tidy treasure but that is one thing I cannot do. I have followed my heart when I made all of my major decisions. I decided to go study in Hawaii on a whim. I just wanted something new. I had originally gone to university to study biology or some kind of science but I developed a strong interest in Asia under the tutelage of Professor Michael Aung-Twin. I took his class on South and Southeast Asian history and it inspired me. Michael Aung-Twin is a very a nice guy from Myanmar and a great teacher. However, he is one of the few major sympathizers of the military junta ruling over Myanmar which makes me question his ethics. I originally had wanted to study Vietnamese but I got confused over the schedule and enrolled too late. I then decided that Chinese would be too difficult so I chose Japanese. From that point on my interest was in Japan and all of its culture and history.

Japanese language proved to be one of my most difficult endeavors but I believe that I have largely conquered it. I’m by no means fluent as a native speaker but I can tutor people in Japanese, teach it in a class, and carry on a conversation. Japanese language and my study of all things Asia really opened my mind to this part of the world. I had planned on teaching English in Japan for a year but was denied a nice job due to some run-ins I had with the Pittsburgh police. At that point I made a commitment never to let some stupid mistake ruin the rest of my life. At this point my record is clear and I intend to keep it that way. I lackadaisically chose to go to the Philippines and volunteer at a Japanese NGO. The Philippines had its ups and downs for me but it was an experience that shaped who I am today and I regret nothing.

Coming to Vietnam had been my plan since January last year. I met Kristine over the summer but I decided to stick to my plan. As difficult as this long-distance has been I’m glad I made this decision. I’ve made a lot of effort to learn the language here and understand the local culture. One of my motivations for studying Vietnamese comes from a family friend back in Pittsburgh. He was a retired school teacher that had been terribly ill and had been unable to get out of bed for years. He was basically on life support but he devoted his time to learning foreign languages from all over the world. Unfortunately, he passed away shortly before I came here. The last language he studied was Vietnamese. His widow gave me the textbook he used to learn the language and I promised her that I would do my best to learn it as homage to him. I’ve learned a lot about Vietnam and myself in my short time here. Vietnam went through one of the more terrible and unnecessary wars in recent history but you could almost not even realize it coming here. The scars of war and bitter resentment I expected to encounter just aren’t here. Vietnamese people have been genuinely friendly with me. This is something I was not prepared for. I have made so many good friends here; both Vietnamese and Western. It’s really going to be hard to say goodbye. After Vietnam I will be entering the toil that is working in the United States and entering graduate school. It would be a lie to say that I am not anxious about the next stage of my life but knowing that I will be with the woman I love gives me strength. 

Microfinance in Vietnam and My Failure

I have decided to quit my volunteering post at MACDI. My real problem was that I just didn’t have enough work to do. I don’t think they’ll miss me. I always have a sense of disappointment when I quit something; be it karate or volunteering. I must have failed somewhere but that’s not really important at this point. I’m going to fill up a lot of this newfound free time with meeting with more Vietnamese people to do language exchanges. The language exchanges are probably the most interesting thing I’ve done here. I really value the time I spend talking to Vietnamese people and learning their language. I also really like teaching Japanese; a lot more than teaching English. For me the English language is not a subject of study. It’s just how I communicate. I have been unable to dissect it in my head in the same way that I’ve done with Japanese and Vietnamese.

So, microfinance… Microfinance in Vietnam is very different from other parts of the world. More than three quarters of the microfinance activity here is done by public sector. It is very difficult to open and operate a private microfinance institution. There are steep capital requirements which most startup companies can’t afford and there are many other regulations they have to adhere to. The government-run microfinance institutions also charge a subsidized interest rate that is far lower than the market rate. This makes it very difficult for the private microfinance industry. The conventional wisdom among economist is that private businesses function more efficiently than state run enterprises. In a lot of ways I see their point. As we are seeing now in Europe, governments can be very irresponsible with their finances. Aside from the mismanagement there is also the problem of corruption. Vietnam, like most Southeast Asian countries, has major problems with corruption. The government really just puts itself in the way of businesses and private citizens to extract more money. I think it has been the major issue holding the Philippines back from developing economically as we all want it to. Vietnam has the same stubborn problem of corruption with the government and police. There is a lot to be said about corruption and I think it is a very important issue to debate. One thing that is for sure is that it is not a cultural thing. This is a fact of life and part of the human condition.

So what are the upsides of the Vietnamese microfinance system? Well the average people do spend considerably less on interest than their contemporaries in other parts of the world. Mr. Yunus’s goal was to help impoverished people improve their own lives without just receiving hand-outs. If poor Vietnamese can get access to cheap microloans from their government than I don’t see anything wrong with that. There have been plenty of examples of market failures and microfinance done wrong; like what happened in Andhra Pradesh. Really the mission of microfinance is to help poor people; not make them poorer. Has the Vietnamese microfinance program had success in last two decades? In the beginning of the 1990s almost half of Vietnamese people were living in poverty. Now that number is around 12%. That is some major improvement but I don’t think the microfinance program was the game changer that was the turning point in Vietnamese history. Vietnam has developed off the backs of hard working people and new private business opportunities that government decided to tolerate. I’m sure plenty of Vietnamese have bettered their lives due to the fact they had access to affordable credit but I think having a job or an education opportunity is more valuable than being able to borrow $100 with cheap interest.

The government of Vietnam has all the same problems that governments face. There is mismanagement, corruption, nepotism, etc. At the same time, their track record recently is quite good so you have to give credit where credit is due. I do believe that the microfinance institutions will probably have long term financial sustainability issues and the government will have to be gradually pushed out. The government should of course still be involved with regulating the industry. It’s important that there’s oversight but the distinction between hindering and effective regulation is very hard to draw.

Vietnam still has major problems with poverty, especially with the ethnic minorities. The recent development of Vietnam has not benefited all people in Vietnam equally; far from it. These are serious issues and I’m sure the government will take some action. Whether or not it will be the right course of action is anybody’s guess but I’m sure the Vietnamese people will weather the storm like they have the last hundred years. 

In Lenin's Shadow

On my journey back home every night from my evening class I walk past the robust statue of Lenin in Ba Dinh district. It is located in the aptly named Lenin Square. It’s probably the only place in the world that Lenin is surrounded by palm trees. During the day there are tourists milling around to visit Uncle Ho along with the other sightseeing points of interest in this historical neighborhood of Hanoi. At night however, the scene is dominated by the Vietnamese youth. Every time I walk past I see something different. I’ve seen young people break dancing and middle aged ladies aerobic classes. I’ve seen football (soccer) games and skateboarders doing their thing. The one thing you can’t say is that Hanoi is not lively at night. A common complaint among expats and party seeking travelers is that Hanoi’s nightlife is subpar compared to Ho Chi Minh City. This is true if you are only looking for clubs open all night and cheap bars catering to Westerners. Perhaps they are looking in the wrong places. This is the essential difference between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Ho Chi Minh City accommodates foreign people. Hanoi forces you to accommodate to it. This is of course a massive generalization but I think it is one that fits in this context.

Vietnam emerged from the fury of the war with a government that was bent on transforming Vietnamese society into an agrarian utopia. They followed the example of Stalin and Mao and the results are up for debate. Their US imposed isolation from the international economy subjected the Vietnamese to a harsh economic reality. The Vietnamese government has been pragmatic however; unlike the North Koreans. During the 1980s Vietnam began opening its doors to foreign investment and the tides of globalization. It is still up for debate whether the government really rescinded its control over the national economy but what is clear is that Vietnam has been a success story ever since. Bill Clinton (who is Vietnam’s favorite US president according to the people I’ve met) removed the embargo and thus aided the rapid economic development that Vietnam has been experiencing. There are still some very difficult issues surrounding Vietnam’s current success such as the growing disparity between the rich and poor; the urban and rural. The government is apparently taking steps to rectify this situation but we will see how they react in the years to come. The Vietnamese government is not the most transparent and their decision making seems to happen behind closed doors.

The conventional term to refer to current Vietnamese society is “soft communism”. I think this characterization is adequate but it does not illuminate the entirety of this transformative phase that Vietnam is in.

Vietnam has painfully torn from its traditional roots and jettisoned into the global politics by French colonialism. There was initial resistance which was crushed by the French military. By the beginning of the 20^th century the French had consolidated power across Indochine and this was a period of intellectual ferment in Vietnam. There were conservatives advocating a boycott of foreign values and there were forward thinkers trying to incorporate aspects of Western society into the society of Vietnam. Most intellectuals fell in between. Ho Chi Minh is a product of this period. Ho Chi Minh was a visionary for his country and although Vietnamese people still debate (behind closed doors) his political legacy he is a great hero of the nation.

Vietnam today is being transformed yet again as it was in the early 1900s. I believe this is a turning point in the history of Vietnam. I’m not sure but I think that people in my age group ad younger make up the majority of the population. There are intellectuals debating the future path of Vietnam. There are the opportunists trying to make a profit on the economic boom. And there are just normal people trying to make a living in these interesting times. Vietnam is changing in fascinating ways and the vitality here is unquestionable. It is anybody’s guess how it will look in a decade or two but I’m sure there will still be the youth expressing themselves in Lenin’s shadow. 

Some thoughts about Microfinance and Andhra Pradesh

I have been thinking a lot about microfinance recently. This volunteering has allowed me to spend more time researching about microfinance and other aspects of the world economy. I have now read over a dozen accounts of what happened in Andhra Pradesh and why the Indian microfinance sector is imploding on itself and I think I have a decent mental framework of the situation.

Andhra Pradesh was the initial hot bed of microfinance in India and expanded much faster than the rest of the country. The microfinance institutions (MFIs) generally followed Yunus’s example and his Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. One of the larger MFIs in Andhra Pradesh is known as SKS and is run by a man named Akula. He made a controversial move which apparently upset Yunus. He decided to make the MFI public and allow foreign investors in the picture. Yunus was against this because he thought allowing foreign investors to have a stake in an MFI would askew the essential mission of an MFI. To be clear, Grameen bank is also a for-profit MFI but there are some important differences. Grameen bank has a policy of forced savings and borrowers are forced to buy a share of the company, giving them partial ownership of the enterprise. The savings serve as equity to cushion against the risk of loans defaulting as well as allowing poor people access to saving as a financial service. The idea that the borrowers also own a part of the bank is a nice idea but I get the feelings that this is really just smoke and mirrors. I think that the vast majority of managerial decisions made at Grameen Bank are still made behind closed doors. The borrowers do occasionally get some return on the shares however which is definitely a good thing.

The regulatory environment in India is a completely different story. The MFI’s in India are not legally allowed to take any deposits as savings. I believe that this policy can be attributed to a legacy of Indira Gandhi and her program for nationalizing banks. At this point the government of India still has a grip over the financial industry; both macro and micro. It seems there was tension between the entrenched government authorities and the private MFIs; some kind of petty political fight over control. If MFIs could take deposits and thus operate like legitimate banks they would threaten the dominance of the state controlled banks.

Akula himself used to work for an NGO funded through development grants and philanthropy and he was apparently disillusioned by how little outreach his organization was able to accomplish. They had to continually turn people away because of lack of funds. He found this really frustrating and decided to try and develop his own for-profit, financially sustainable MFI. He thought that if it could expand on its own that it would grow much faster. I sympathize with this idea but the problem really came with the inability of private MFis to take savings. In order to maintain steady growth and keep up with growing demand he was pressured to open the doors to foreign capital. Once these doors were open he was subjected to even stronger pressure from these investors. Investors expect a return on their investment. Investors generally have a herd mentality and so if SKS would show signs of slowing down than some would jump ship which would pressure others to do the same. Some investors jumping ship would cause the shares to decrease in value and thus make the prospective lack of financial liquidity a self-fulfilling prophecy. The microfinance industry continued to boom in Andhra Pradesh and it became clear that there was a bubble forming. The market was getting saturated with MFIs. SKS in order to placate its weary investors was forced to become more aggressive in its loan collecting methods. They used much more coercive means to collect the money.  There were around 300 suicides in India by microborrowers which ignited this crisis. At this point I believe there have around 13 suicides attributed to SKS’s “coercive techniques”. One story goes something like a microborrower was struggling to pay off her loan to SKS. She took out numerous loans from other MFIs but she could not get out of the spiral of debt. One of the loan collectors told her that if she could only get out her debt if she drowned herself. The next day she did.

The Indian government has been cracking down on MFIs and the entire industry has been collapsing. There are some lessons to be learned from the crisis in India. There is a difference between growth bubbles and actual development. Just because there was a lot of money circulating around the rural communities of Andhra Pradesh doesn’t mean that there was real wealth creation. The kind of financial bubble that occurred in Andhra Pradesh could prove to be more harmful than beneficial. Without a sustainable policy of savings/deposits MFIs could end up becoming mere pyramid schemes.

MACDI vs. Bloom

So I have eased my way into a pretty decent schedule. I teach full time on Saturday and Sunday from 8 AM to 6 PM and I have a Monday, Wednesday, Friday class in the evening, I volunteer at MACDI in the mornings Tuesday to Friday, and I meet with three different Vietnamese ladies (trust me it’s all very innocent) throughout the week to practice my Vietnamese. I wake up at 6 AM every day except for Monday which I can sleep in to 7. All in all it’s a pretty busy schedule and I spend most of my time trucking around the city. As I continue teaching I will inevitably take on more classes and I will get even busier which unfortunately will probably interfere with my studying of Vietnamese. I really enjoy this life style. The challenge and stress of each day inspires me. Melancholy no longer hangs over me as it did during the month where I had literally nothing to do. I have to continuously stay busy to escape my history of depression.

Anyway, I have been volunteering at this microfinance organization known as MACDI (Microfinance and Community Development Institute). I have been brought in to help MACDI set up a tourism program. I’ve been doing some research and apparently the government of Vietnam has been actively pushing rural tourism as an important tool to alleviate poverty in rural areas of Vietnam. Anyone who has travelled around Vietnam can attest to the stark disparity between the quality of life in the rural provinces and the city centers. Vietnam is developing fast but the wealth creation has been concentrated in larger cities such as Hanoi and Saigon. I believe this phenomenon is quite common in developing countries.

Microfinance has an important role in helping the economic development of rural Vietnam. MACDI operates in provinces surrounding Hanoi. Last year MACDI commissioned a small charity known as Bloom Microventures to set up a tour to some of the villages in which MACDI operates. The tour is a day trip out to the Vietnamese countryside. Bloom organized the itinerary of the tour and it consisted of picking up tourists in Hanoi, busing them out to a small idyllic village where they met with a woman (98% of MACDI’s clients are women) who is an example of microfinance success story. The tourists can hear her story via translators and then they are guided around to points of interest in the surrounding area. Then they enjoy a traditional Vietnamese lunch and lastly visit a person in need of a microloan. This microloan in theory comes from the money the tourist paid for the tour itself.

It is a very nice idea and is definitely a good attempt at sustainable tourism. The tour was going great for about a year but Bloom let their success go to their head. At the beginning of the tourism program, the tours usually consisted of about 10-12 people and the customers only had to pay $40 per person. The deal was that Bloom had to pay MACDI $100 for each tour (this money would go directly to the microfinance operation) and the rest of the money should just cover their expenses. Bloom is a registered UK charity after all and not supposed to be in the business of making money. Bloom itself is not a microfinance institution and is only granted access to the rural commune because of their contribution to MACDI which is the actual microfinance institution. The tour was so successful and the popularity of the tour grew so much that they even will get a mention in the next Lonely Planet Vietnam. They have subsequently raised the price to $75 dollars per person and run tours 1-2 times a week with 15-20 people each. The problem is that the cost of running the tours has only marginally increased because of the increased volume of tourists but they still only pay MACDI $100 per tour. This means that there is a great deal of money that is unaccounted for. The director of MACDI has asked Bloom to renegotiate their agreement and she asked for more transparency about Bloom financial status. The head of Bloom refused both and thus MACDI has formally cut them off. There are two scenarios which initially come to my mind. Either they are merely pocketing the money which would be highly unethical or they could be raising capital with the profit in order to become an actual microfinance institution which is less bad but still is taking advantage of MACDI. I am very puzzled by the decision of the guys at Bloom. It seems to me that either they let their success get to their head and disregarded the danger of biting the hand that feeds them or I am only getting one side of the story. I am leaning towards the latter because I don’t think the people at Bloom can be that irrational or unethical.

This is where I come in. MACDI wants to set up a tourism program independent of Bloom and I am part of this effort. At this point I have only drafted some brochures and other fact sheets and flyers to post around. I am going to help them create and promote this tour. It will be pretty much the same tour as what Bloom had so it shouldn’t really be difficult to set up. It’ll just take some legwork. I haven’t really done all that much since I have started volunteering there so I have used my idle time there to do further research about microfinance in Vietnam and around the world. I found the microfinance crisis of Andhra Pradesh very interesting and I think you should check it out.

Microfinance is not yet a mature market and is developing around the world very differently. Some people view it as a tool to empower women, others see it as mainly a tool to alleviate poverty, and plenty of others see it as a new market to make money in. I have my own ideas about microfinance but I try to avoid being dogmatic. I do believe that microfinance has had a positive impact of the world and has raised millions of people out of poverty already. There have also been market failures, such as Andhra Pradesh, and other abuses of the system. I am so happy to be able to see how microfinance works from inside an actual microfinance institute. My real reason for coming to Vietnam was to understand how microfinance works which is kind of funny since Vietnam is one of the worst markets for microfinance. I’ll tell you about that later.