I love most of the things about living in this country but one thing is something that people who leave the tourist areas are going to notice almost straight away: This country has an absolutely terrible waste-management system. A lot of the litter that you see almost anywhere that isn't where the fancy hotels are, is going to have a ton of garbage all over the place. I have seen the way that a lot of people here just treat any land as if it were a landfill and we have a saying in this country about how "you are never far away from a discarded plastic bag."
They do have garbage collectors that come by on a regular basis but in the end it simply isn't enough or the people just don't have a mindset of putting garbage in the correct place. Also, with larger items the trash collectors wont ever pick it up so there is no point in putting it out by the curb. In these situations your only choice is to burn it, or i guess find a plot of land that doesn't have a fence around it and dump it there.
That truck hasn't moved in months either
What makes this picture particularly sad is that this actually IS in the tourist area. You can see in the top right of the picture there a rather large, sea-view hotel that has around 60 rooms and is quite popular. Yet every time the guests come out the front door they are greeted with a giant pile of garbage across the street that grows every time I walk past it.
Some of this garbage isn't even something that is likely to be moved until someone decided to put a building on this plot of land.
Like this stone for example. This weighs a lot more than a person can carry, perhaps more than 2 people can carry. So this means that trucks must be coming by this spot and just dumping whatever they have in their cargo. Other items are things that are just going to rot and probably house rodents.
Tired of your upholstered furniture and can't find anyone to give it to? Just chuck it in the open plot of land and forget about it!
This would be an eyesore anywhere but this is literally one block from the beach and when the wind blows I'm quite certain that a lot of this loose garbage finds its way to the water and just floats around until eventually some fish mistake it for food and choke to death on it.
Vietnam is not a rich country and I understand that there is only so much that the public services can accomplish. I'm surprised they do as good of a job as they do because as far as I can tell no private owners actually pay for this service. It's just a bit crazy to me that basically any open plot of land is seen as a place to just throw your trash. The city is simultaneously trying to make this area a more and more popular tourist destination when these private trash dumps are all over the place.
I know that if it was me and this was where my vacation was, I wouldn't be very keen on my hotel being across the street from a garbage dump infested with rats.