I was fortunate early in my working career to work in Vietnam twice for extended periods - once building a sugar mill for an Australian company for around 6 months, the second was for a one month contract that ended up being extended & became a 2 year contract - I was one of the very last expats out & was asked to stay to be the warranty engineer (which I foolishly knocked back).
I've not been back for 20 years & had booked a trip this year to visit - cancelled due to COVID.
Between my first & second projects I got to see what can happen in a developing country that gets the educational & economic settings right.
First project - English language a barrier in the capital City of Hanoi which filtered out into the workforce - communication between our company management & the construction/commissioning workforce was difficult. Lots of things took longer & did not necessarily translate into the outcomes we were looking for. Finding a supermarket in Hanoi, next to impossible. Even simple things like milk were difficult to obtain.
Refrigeration, lighting, TV etc, rare in the village we were accommodated in.
Second project - only 5 years later the majority of our tradesmen spoke passable English, Tourism boosted in Hanoi meant restaurants, shops, ie pretty much any one dealing with the public could do so in English or find someone quickly who could. And the enthusiasm of everyone as the standard of living improvements were literally happening in real time, were something else. Then the US restored normal economic trade with Vietnam, I left around that time, so I'm positive it went into hyperdrive after that.
Of any location I'm most excited about TNG potentially working, it's Vietnam. They really do seem to aim to be high achievers & the push for green industry is not only being talked about, it is being acted upon :
https://www.pv-tech.org/vietnam-rooftop-solar-records-major-boom-as-more-than-9gw-installed-in-2020/Throughout 2020 rooftop solar installations in Vietnam grew by a major 2,435%, rising from a 2019 base of 378MWp to 9.583GWp, spread across almost 102,000 systems.
