Staying put in Vietnam the safe choice for foreigners

I’m happy that today our kids are content to just clean the apartment, and work on little art projects. A five-year-old has a lot more attention to devote to these things than a little boy who’s not quite four… They also can’t just amuse themselves on a computer. Nor would I want them to.

Since HCMC has been steadily shutting down non-essential services and advising people to not leave their homes, the net tightens a bit more each day. A trip to the market to get daily essentials may have to be replaced with a mission to stock up at a supermarket and avoid the outdoors altogether for an extended period. How our children will handle this in the coming days remains to be seen.

Everyone is online, it seems. I’ve chatted with friends in Vietnam, Canada, the UK, the United States, Australia and elsewhere the last couple of weeks. The daily monitoring of the death toll is having a toll of a different kind. Information overload. Theorizing going off in random directions. Governments shaming one another.

My homeland, Canada, has its issues, but is weathering the crisis a lot better than a number of places. For now. But what’s on my mind is how quickly things can change in the predicament we’re in. Having a residence card, property and a Vietnamese wife kind of dictated to me that going to a country that is two months behind the Covid-19 fight compared to the one I currently live in would be unwise.

We own a home in Nha Trang, which is currently occupied with tenants. We are cutting them some slack on paying the rent, which I expect is becoming a pattern in Vietnam. So far I have been on reduced pay from my employer, which is still better than having no job. I have been making ends meet with supplementary income.

My wife’s hotel is now closed for the next few months, while her sister’s is the same ownership group. All of these enterprises had considerable financial backing; I can’t imagine that ventures which were getting by month-to-month won’t be back when the dust settles. And this isn’t a Vietnam issue, by any stretch.

The upcoming period will be telling, with the virulence of the outbreak expected to begin peaking in terms of positive tests and fatalities. Most foreigners I have spoken with here are content to stay put as well, feeling that being in Vietnam is generally safer than returning to their home countries. Issues like visa extensions, work, flights and more are obviously considerations, but in a period like the one the whole world is going through, Vietnam is as good a place as any to stay safe and healthy.

By Harry Hodge @ The Saigon Times