I have been thinking today a bit about Vietnam :). My line of thoughts was that Vietnam is experiencing tourism for a few years now (I don't know how many but I would guess at least 10). Tourism will only grow and it is something the government is trying to achieve. My assumption would be that learning English is a high priorty and that everybody between ages 12 and 16 should already know english on a very high level. I don't see that! Not At All :( !

There are parents driving their kids to schools and probably extra lessons after school to learn things to become successfull (in the western understanding of the word), but what do these kids learn? When will this generation grow up to make Vietnam great? in 10 years in 20? So this is something I was thinking about... and then (same day later on) this happened. 

First of all I need to answer the question in the title, number one tool is calculator - you will see it EVERYWHERE! it is good for its direct usage and it is very good to type in a price when you don't know how to say it in english. But I know that vietnamese people are very good at selling stuff and everyone who has a shop will try to squeez maximum amount out of you. So logically next step is that they are very good with numbers. WRONG! 

Today we went to get some vitamins to a farmacy and we ended up buying 2 bottles one of which was 130k and another 150k. I gave 300k and the lady was waiting and waiting for me to give her more money. She took out a paper and a pen to write the prices of each bottle to show me (maybe she thought I misunderstood her) but the prices were 130k and 150k. Naturally I was expecting 20k back, but obviously the lady was expecting some more money from me. Then she did column addition of these 2 numbers and gave me my 20k back. (good thing she didn't use calculator for it, but it was right there - she was old school lady). 

Later on we went to another shop and did some extensive shopping where each item was added with calculator and ended up being 385k. I gave 500k and got back 105k. I was holding the 4 bills (100,2,2,1) like a fan in front of the lady hoping she will realize her mistake (or intentional mistake) which she did and gave me my 10k more. 

these were not the only cases which made me suspect that basic education is not a high priority in this country or at least it wasn't when these shop owners went to school. I hope it will change because if a country wants to prosper it needs smart people to drive it.