By Unorthodox Black Sheep VN (aka A Vietnamese Reader) for The Saker Blog

I find out that my late article “What Wrong With Vietnam Today?” is too general about the corruption in Vietnam in both so I decide to go more details on the problems. The corruption stories is what I heard from the Vietnamese who was experiences in the painful ways, including me also get experiences from it. When I review the comment in my late article, I found out that many foreigner who currently live in Vietnam right now also have experience on Vietnam corruption but possible different from mine so I encourage you guys, who currently live in Vietnam, give me feedback if you truly have experiences on Vietnam corruption because I believe we need a discussion on the problem so we can find out what is going on, and why Vietnam locals experience on corruption is different to each other. I decide to describe Vietnam Corruption more details.

By the way, I decide to give myself nick name Unorthodox Black Sheep VN because I find out, in arrogant way, that my views and knowledge pretty unorthodox to many Vietnamese, they had trigger one anonymous Vietnamese in the comment from my late article, and some people in the comment may think that I’m not Vietnamese, they think I may be a troll or the South Vietnamese Yellow/3 Stick Flag. Yellow/3 Stick Flag is the term Vietnamese, who currently live in Vietnam, use to mock the hypocrite of the so-called remnants of Republic of Vietnam who parade the stupid useless flag every years, and I hate only the parade one not the reasonable Vietnamese American I met. I know what I say is pretty arrogant or narcissistic but I afraid that very few Vietnamese like me have the unorthodox views and knowledge like I have describe in “What Wrong With Vietnam Today?”

My rambling is too long now so let begin.

Corruption in Vietnam right now is not stop only at government and police but also at the work places like health care, education, etc. Corruption in Vietnam is very rampant in the big city.

*Corruption of Vietnamese Education:

In Vietnam, Giáo Viên Chủ Nhiệm (Homeroom Teacher or Head Teacher of The Class if I translate correct) is the responsible on student behaviors at the school. For example, teacher A will take responsible for the student of the class 6A1 as the head teacher of the class, and if students from 6A1 had bad behavior, head teacher of the class must take responsible for their mistakes and solve the problem. To help you guys understand easy, let image that classes system is similar to classes system from from Harry Potter.

Every Vietnamese also know that education in Vietnam is extremely corrupted, and bribery is unwritten law in the school. Today, every parent have to give the teacher some gift or money in envelope to make sure that the teacher will teach their children well in the school. If they don’t do it, the teacher will bully the student, and make student life like will with many method like cherry picking on the smallest mistakes, giving bad grade to the homework or exam, etc. and the thing like that also happened in kindergarten.

From elementary school to high school, there is two type of class: good or bad. The good class is the class with the good teacher and the good student, and the bad class is the class with the bad teacher and the bad student. Students is selected to good or bad class base on their graduation grades, bad then go to the bad classes, good then go to the good classes. This is the reason why parents sometimes ask relative or using bribery to make sure that their children go into the good class to process their children future (Cannot blame the parent for this).

There are two type of school: private school and state school. Private school is opened by a private person, and state school is opened government. Private school is usually expensive than state school, and Vietnamese education system anti private school in many way like does not accept the degrees or transcript from the private school. For example, if student graduate from the private elementary school then transfer to the state middle school, the state middle school may now accept the private school transcript. This is reason why many parents always send their children to the state school.

Graduating to University in Vietnam is the most important moment in the life. Student must pass the graduation exams to go to the university. Students who fail the exam always don’t have other choice, and the only way to process their future is joining Vietnamese People Army volunteer. Even after finish their majors at the university, finding job is really hard to them because Vietnamese companies love foreigner degrees, especially the First World ones like USA, than their own country degrees.

*Corruption in Health Care System

The corruption is possible responsible for many unnecessary death of the patient because doctor or nurse usually try to milking money from the patient in many ways.

Example 1: doctors or nurse usually give the patient and even kid too many unnecessary drugs to make more money from this.

Example 2: doctors usually want patient spend more time in the hospital than usual to make more money from service fees with extraordinary prices.

Example 3: hospital usually hide many accident murder cases like patient death by giving wrong drugs.

Example 4: In 2018, I saw the board prices like that in a hospital (I hope my translate give you guys more ideas about this):

Check and Treat by Professor: 350,000 VND/patient (15 USD)

Check and Treat by Associate Professor: 250,000 VND/patient (11 USD)

Check and Treat by Deputy Department Head Doctor: 150,000 VND/patient (6.45 USD)

VERY CREATIVE WAY TO MILK MONEY FROM PATIENT (LAUGH OUT LOUD).

Every Vietnamese hospital, especially Hanoi, is always too crowds because many patients are not actually Hanoi ones, and they come from the poor county, or the poor town because the location does not have the health care system like the city.

In conclusion, Vietnamese health care system is very corrupted.

* Corruption in Police System

I heard many stories about Vietnamese police corruption, and I am sometimes consider the police corruption like dark humor. The corrupted police, ironically, is also the victim of the corruption of the police system, and they HAVE TO make money from bribery to pay their own taxes and fee to the their supervisor. Let get to the traffic police, before becoming traffic police, they have to bribery so much money to the high authority police so they can become traffic police. Traffic police also need to make more money as much as they can for their family, paying taxes, and paying “working fees” to their supervisor. If the traffic police does not give the supervisor enough money then they get fired (laugh and cry at the same time). In conclusion, police corruption is happened from top to low.

Let me tell a comparison between Ha Noi police and Da Nang police:

Da Nang traffic police never receive bribery but when raining, raining causes traffic crowd, they go into police station to rest.

Ha Noi Traffic police receive bribery but when raining, raining causes traffic crowd, they must go outside volunteer or not, work under heavy raining to keep traffic order.

* Corruption at Economic Project

First Example – Hanoi BRT or Hanoi Bus Rapid Transit

Hanoi BRT or Hanoi Bus Rapid Transit is a transit bus system with large roadway shelters in Hanoi, Vietnam that opened on 31 December 2016. The stupid project waste so much money and causes more traffic crowd than ever. To give you guys more ideas, let look at the picture below:

(Credit: Wikipedia)

No word on how stupid it is. You guys no need to be traffic or architecture genius can point out how ridiculous it is. According to the traffic law, only Hanoi BRT bus (The green one on the middle right in the picture) can use this lane (The right lane that is separated with solid white line on the middle right). To give you guys more ideas, let watch an youtube video:

Bài học rút ra từ BRT Hà Nội | VTC1 (Lessons fromBRT Hanoi-VTC1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYtEYKMyjb8

You guy don’t need to understand the Vietnamese, just watch the video and you guys can get more ideas on how absurd HanoiBRT is.

Example 2 – Vietnam North-South high-speed railway

The project is destroying Vietnamese Economic day by day, thank to the Vietnamese corrupted official. They don’t even know how to use the Chinese fund. In fact, they can use the funding money to fix and maintain the whole railways system in the whole Vietnam. The picture below describe why Vietnam Railways need to be maintain, repair and upgrade:

(http://cafef.vn/vi-sao-nganh-duong-sat-viet-nam-lac-hau-so-voi-the-gioi-20170816102021819.chn)

(http://vnra.gov.vn/diem-tin-bao-chi/duong-sat-viet-nam-se-%E2%80%9Clot-xac%E2%80%9D-sau-khi-duoc-cap-them-7-000-ty-dong-a2024 )

That give you more ideas about how the corrupted one only care about putting money into their bag, not using them.

Example 3 – Line 2A, Hanoi Metro (Đường Sắt Cát Linh – Hà Đông)

This is the metro that causes high polluted in Hanoi right now, it swallow so much spaces and pretty dangerous. The pictures below:

(Credit: https://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/news/vietnamnews/the-prime-minister-asked-to-run-catlinh-hadong-railway-soon-09122019092413.html) I just use image from RFA, CIA website, not information.

(Credit: https://vietnamnet.vn/vn/thoi-su/an-toan-giao-thong/duong-sat-cat-linh-ha-dong-co-hien-tuong-pha-hoai-trong-qua-trinh-hoan-thien-516955.html )

You guys don’t have to be genius to tell how dangerous, stupid, and illogical Hanoi Metro is. They should use the money to fix and maintain the railways systems instead.

* Growing Immoral in Vietnamese Society.

Thank for the pro-US mind set, Vietnamese today import many immoral thing from the US or Western countries. I will quote directly the paragraph from Linh Dinh article “Multicultural, Progressive, Totalitarian Vietnam” from the Unz Review:

“With its American fast food joints, foreign models, black star athletes and the beginning of black neighborhoods, Vietnam is looking more multicultural and progressive (in the American sense) by the day.

This transformation also includes annual gay parades, of course, with the first in 2012. The Atlantic, Guardian, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, NBC, BBC and CNN have all praised Vietnam’s progress on the LGBT front. A Hanoi photographer, Maika Elan (real name Nguyễn Thanh Hải), won a World Press Photo Award for her series depicting gay couples at home, and a Saigon transgender bodybuilder, Kendy, was profiled by Narratively. Hanoi’s Kênh14 now has an annual feature, “Ten Most Beautiful Homosexual Relationships of the Year.”

In conclusion, immoral is growing in Vietnamese society.

I hope the corruption things I list above can give you guys more details and ideas how corruption Vietnam is.

That all. I hope you guys can give me feedbacks (and hate comment too because I find out, only me not anyone else, that reading hate comment is really entertainment).