I really dislike the way in which this country handles its waste. It seems as though almost any aspect of the landscape can and will become some sort of garbage depository no matter where it is or how it is maintained.
In the past two years or so the city of Da Nang has really been pushing these "walking streets" near the beach in an effort to create an attraction of sorts and boost the economy of this part of town that has historically been where a lot of the tourism ends up anyway.
Unfortunately, the walking aspect of the walking streets hasn't really been all the effective and this is partially because of the fact that the businesses that are on these streets are all the same. Aside from a shop or two here and there it is the usual pizza place / coffee shop / massage place where they harass anyone that walks by / and tourist trinket crap that nobody really wants anyway. Basically, there isn't really any reason at all to come over here even if they do block off all cars and motorbikes from interrupting the ability for someone to walk somewhere.
They also installed these rather strange seating areas that I guess were originally intended for people to take a load off during their "walking" but I was not at all surprised when they were almost immediately turned into trash cans.
This is something that if you live in Vietnam you will see frequently. An idea is put forth that I guess makes sense to someone in the government as far as beautifying the area is concerned but when it comes time to implement it, they do it halfway and then walk away from it. Then one day someone puts an empty plastic bottle or bag in there, and then others follow suit.
These seats were ill-contrived from the start because they are exceptionally uncomfortable and can only accommodate a few people despite their rather massive size but the idea was that the areas in the back were meant to be planting areas for something nature-like.
This was the idea. Yet out of the 14 or so of these that I counted, only 1 of them actually contained any plants or even dirt. The rest of them were simply ignored or the people charged with it lost interest. I suppose it's just as well because other nature-oriented projects that the city has attempted have mostly been walked away from as well. There is a walkway not far from here where nice, and matching plants were all put in one day. Then the city never came back to maintain them so they almost immediately got completely covered with weeds and became overgrown. The weeds choked out the intentional plants and now they look worse than when the areas were simply cement.
Da Nang is the only city that I have spent any sort of realistic amount of time in here in Vietnam, but I would imagine that the rest of the country is likely the same. They seem to have these grand ideas but then when it comes time to implement them, they just drop some crap off and walk away.
While these benches are ugly and impractical anyway, the fact that they have now become dumpsters that are never emptied makes it even worse.