DIFFERENT COSTS

I just paid our monthly building management fee. For our apartment it is $33 a month. I can hear you apartment dwellers gasp with jealousy. However I hasten to add that our building does not have an exercise room, or a party room, or a pool. No one cuts our lawn or removes our snow. (We don't have either.) On the other hand the apartment is well monitored by numerous security guards and well cleaned by numerous maintenance people.
A lot of items here in Vietnam cost about the same as in a Canadian city. This is especially true if they are imported for wealthy Vietnamese and expats. Some, like automobiles are more expensive. On the other hand, many things are inexpensive because labour is so cheap.
Many people in a full time job as a security guard; as a clerk in a grocery or department store; or working in a KFC (they are the dominant foreign fast food providers in Ho Chi Minh) may be paid only $30 or $40 a week. The equivalent of $1 per hour or less! And yet as in most countries, people continue to flock to the big city, looking for work and more income.
Cheap labour is why in many stores it seems clerks outnumber the customers and often seem to get in the way because they stand around with nothing to do. Rarely do you experience the common North American problem of not finding a clerk to serve you.
So we are thankful for lower living expense. Yet we remain aware that tipping 50 cents or a dollar to a taxi driver, a delivery man, or almost anyone in the service industry (apart from places that service only wealthy people) is greatly appreciated. Income and values here are quite different.
We just bought a large needlework wall hanging for about $25. One of the salespeople told us it would take a village woman about two weeks to produce it. I wonder if she made even 25 cents an hour for her talented labour.
Thank God for secular and Christian NGOs that are working to relieve poverty in numerous places.
We are thankful that the average income and standard of living in Vietnam is slowly rising. And we are thankful for the abundance we enjoy and are able to share with those who have much less.