A reverse migration

Location: Phan Rang, Vietnam
Time: Tet 2012

Person talked to: Huy
Old Occupation: unknown
Return date: some time in 2011
New Occupation: beer distributor
Reason: financial hardship

Person talked to: Minh
Old Occupation: bike mechanic
Return date: Tet 2012
New Occupation: loan shark
Reason: financial hardship

Person talked to: Doan
Old Occupation: port helper
Return date: Tet 2012
New Occupation: quan nhau owner (possibly)
Reason: financial hardship

Person overheard: Chị Bé
Old Occupation: shop helper
Return date: some time in 2011
New Occupation: selling clothes on the streets of Phan Rang
Reason: financial hardship

Person overheard: Hiep
Old Occupation: truck driver
Return date: some time in 2010
New Occupation: unemployed (on paper), gambler (otherwise)
Reason: hiding from the Saigon loan sharks due to unpaid gambling debt

These young men and women after high school moved from Phan Rang to Saigon in search of a better life. Instead they found hardship. In the end they returned.

Street race in Vietnam during Tet 2012

Its New Year’s Eve. The country boys are out with souped up bikes and hearts filled with bravado

Tet train 2012

Hart-seat compartment, packed to the rim with 2,3 people per bench. Even the aisle is filled with people sitting on little plastic stools (how they can do this for 2 days straight is beyond me). Some buy a mat from the train staff and sleep beneath the wooden bench

The sun sets as we cross Phan Thiet

The lunch cart making its round. For 15K you get rice, cabbage and fish cake. Plus soup from a big bucket.

Father and his 2 kids at the hallway adjoining 2 compartments, right in front of the toilet.

Idrink anyone???

I m not sure about apple-center, istudio or icenter but idrink is most definitely an unauthorized reseller of apple products.

Free coworking space in District 1 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

When I lived in Manhattan last year, I used to frequent a few coworking spaces in the city. None of which was free except one called Wix Lounge. It became my regular hangout spot where I could code, drink free coffee, enjoy their fast speed internet and comfy sofa.  It was also a place where I met, talked and occasionally brainstormed with like-minded people, which kept me rejuvenated as I continued working on my startup.

I m in Saigon now and I want to pay it forward by making my own office a coworking space. If you are a software developer or working on a creative project here in Saigon, please leave a comment below telling me a little bit about yourself and I ll send you an invite.

Below is a picture of the office. Note that all the books have been moved upstairs.

Picking up chicks in Vietnam is easy

I keep hearing this statement over and over again from my expat/vk friends and I think there is some truth to it. It is easy to pick up chicks in Vietnam. But the chicks are:

-gold-digging

-white boy specialists

-naive  (from the village speaking 0 word of English…)

-ugly (busted teeth, fizzy hair, no ass, skin and bones,etc)

Try to pick up a chick who is gorgeous and smart.  Then you tell me whether it is easy or not.

Cost of living

A year and a half ago coffee was 6K,  sugarcane juice was 5K, gas was 16K and scooter parking fee at Lush was 10K. Now it is 8K,7K   (8K as of Jan 4th 2012), 20K and 20K. WTF Saigon?

LBHs

Dear LHB,

You may feel like you are the shit living here in Vietnam, what with the cushy job, the local girls,etc but please wake up. The moment you go back to wherever the fuck you come from the reality will set in and you ll realize it was all a temp fix and you are still a fucking loser.

Sincerely,

Dat

How to have 2 web addresses point to the same index.html

Lets say you have an index.html currently hosted on offover.com and you just bought another domain ndat.org. Here are the steps you need to do so that whenever user types offover.com or ndat.org, the same index.html file is displayed (note that I host on rackspace and bought my domain on godaddy):
1. Go to godaddy.com and change your DNS server to DNS1.STABLETRANSIT.COM DNS2.STABLETRANSIT.COM
2. Go to manage.rackspacecloud.com, click on cloud servers, click on the name of your box, click on DNS, click on Add
3 Add various entries so they look sth like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Go to ndat.org. Your index.html should be there (Note I also changed my blog and my mail entries so that things still work whenever users type mail.ndat.org or  blog.ndat.org

How to copy a django site and run it on the same hosting provider

After you set up a site on your beloved host, and it s working fine, you may get ambitious and create another site. But you don’t want to buy another vps. Here is what you do to copy clone a working site to a new site:
1. Ssh to your vps and configure your virtual host. http://library.linode.com/lamp-guides/ubuntu-10.04-lucid
2. cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and cp oldsite.com newsite.com. Edit newsite.com accordingly
3. cd /srv/www/ and cp -r oldsite.com/ newsite.com
4. cd newsite.com and edit it accordingly (settings.py, urls.py,django.wsgi)
5. a2ensite newsite.com
6. /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
7. visit newsite.com. It should work.