Why do I love my country - Viet Nam so much? Especially during this corona time

I am Vietnamese and I am so proud of being Vietnamese. In this blog, I will share with you guys how I think of my beautiful country - Vietnam, especially during the corona crisis.

For somebody does not know about Vietnam, Vietnam belongs to the South-East Asia. On the land, we share border with Laos, Cambodia and China. Vietnam is not a developed country, we are poor and we are one of the very rare communist countries in the world. In total, we have almost 100 million people. Our political capital city is Hanoi, and the economical capital city is Hochiminh (Saigon). However, in my opinion, the best city to live in Vietnam is Danang (belongs to middle part of Vietnam) and Halong (belongs to Quangninh province - my hometown).

Sunset Sky in Halong Bay - Vietnam

So why do I say that I love my country so much especially during this corona time?

Firstly, Vietnam is not rich, our economy depends a lot on agriculture, exporting and we also need a lot of foreign investment to develop. Tourism industry is booming in Vietnam, each year we received a lot of foreign visiters mostly from China, Korea, Russia and Europe. When virus corona started to spread in China in January and February, Vietnam still received a lot of Chinese visitors and since we share the border, Vietnam and China have a lot of businesses together. Therefore, Vietnam was one of the first country except China has people with coronavirus. Because of caring for Vietnamese people health, our country was the first country in the world limited transporting and started to close the border. Vietnam government also provided airplane to flying back Vietnamese people in the infected area back to their home country for FREE. All the plane were provided by Vietnam Airline. Meanwhile Russia brought back Russian people by military plane without proper seats and toilet.

Hoi An Ancient Town Vietnam - World Heritage Site

Secondly, even we are poor, we know when the money need to be given. When Wuhan was in the difficulty and so was Vietnam. We sent medical masks, medical protectional gears... to Wuhan equal almost 0.5 million US dollar. 7 provinces which share border with China also need to support Chinese. Furthermore, anyone foreigners or Vietnamese who get coronavirus will be cured and taken care by Vietnamese doctors and nurses for free. We applied national quarantine and tracked the virus spreading route. Everyone who is related or flights back the country will be isolated. However, accommodation and food are provided for free. The Vietnamese government applies national coronavirus test and temperature check.

Europe, the US and other countries are struggling with the virus covid-19. Italy has more than 21.500 death cases till 16th April 2020. Vietnam with almost 100 million of population, has in total 268 cases with 0 death and 177 recovered till 16th April 2020. It is insane!!! Unfortunately, not much global newspaper and presses mention it. How sad it is! I wrote once in my post on Facebook that I dont understand why not so many global presses mention it. However, even when I search in Vietnamese, there are not much information either. In every online news and official news, they just update the situation of the virus and caution Vietnamese people to be careful. Basically, as a marketing teacher, I can say we - Vietnam, dont know much about marketing. What we care is the safety of our people.

As a Vietnamese, I know even we are keeping at very a good rate in the fight with coronavirus at the moment, but we are losing big time in the economical fight. Vietnamese economy depends a lot on China, Europe and developed countries. At the moment, in the economic field, we are losing everything: high rate of unemployment, high rate of bankruptcy, losing a huge amount of foreign investment... We will have an extreme difficult time to recover after the crisis. We would never know if we can stay in the list of developing countries anymore and how long it would take for us to recover. However, we know if we do it together, we can create incredible things like what we are doing with the corona crisis right now.

Vietnam is always in a complicated situation such as the war with France, the war with the US, the conflict on the sea with China. We are communist, so other countries hesitate to work with us. However, as a Vietnamese I hope after the crisis, the world can see Vietnam with different eyes, we will be recognised by the globe.

Thank you for reading and for the last word I would like to say "I love my country - I love Vietnam"

Sunset in Phu Quoc Island - South part of Vietnam

References:

Switzerland Federal Office of Public Health FOPH (2020) New coronavirus: Current situation – Switzerland and international. Available from: https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-epidemien-pandemien/aktuelle-ausbrueche-epidemien/novel-cov/situation-schweiz-und-international.html

Worldometer (2020) Available from: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/viet-nam/

Quang Dan (2020) Trung Quốc đã nhận được bao nhiêu tiền và vật dụng y tế từ thế giới trong cuộc chiến chống virus Corona? Available from: http://tapchitaichinh.vn/tai-chinh-quoc-te/trung-quoc-da-nhan-duoc-bao-nhieu-tien-va-vat-dung-y-te-tu-the-gioi-trong-cuoc-chien-chong-virus-corona-318526.html