The filthy streets of Da Nang: abandoned cars and beach waste

Da Nang is a wonderful place to live if you can ignore a lot of the downsides. All countries have their problems but in Vietnam I think that the waste management system is just atrocious to the point where once you are out of the tourist areas, it is pretty clear the government and people don't really care about how much garbage accumulates. The tourist areas have sweepers all over the place to create this very untrue image about the place being eco-friendly, but it is anything but that.

Once you get, say a km out of the tourist areas garbage is simply all over the place and nobody seems to be all that concerned about it. Business and homeowners will clean up in front of their own place and then walk down the street 40 meters and throw a plastic bag on the ground. This is a totally made up scenario that I have never actually witnessed but if you walk around a little bit in this city and I presume the rest of the country, it is pretty evident that nobody really cares what the places looks like or what they discard or how it is discarded.

This is a rather extreme example of how nobody really gives a shit about what the streets look like. This is about 6 blocks from my condo and it has been parked there the entire time I have lived here. I have never seen the tires have air in them, I have never seen a for sale sign on it, and I have never seen anyone so much as attempt to clean it up.

In college I once had two cars not because I was rich but because someone gave me the 2nd one and it was a lot better than the Ford Escort GT that I owned that was constantly breaking down. It was a roll of the dice every time I drove that car anywhere and I ended up frequently stranded and needing to leave the car behind. I did have plans to fix the car eventually but college takes up a bunch of time and I didn't have much money at the time. When I left it parked on the street for over a month I woke up one day and the car was simply gone. The car meant to little to me so I didn't even inquire with the city about it for over a month. When I did get in touch with them they told me that I owed them nearly $1000 in storage fees and I just told them to keep the car since that was around double what the car was worth.

There was another Jeep looking thing that someone parked in a vacant lot with some sign on it that I presume said "for sale" but I never learned to read Vietnamese. This car sat in this lot, surrounded by construction refuse, until eventually people vandalized it and put spray paint all over it. I was actually there when the car was being removed almost a year later. It was not being moved by any government agency, it must have been the owner of either the car or the land.

I realize that Vietnam is a poor country and I am not trying to put my western ideals on a pedestal. I would much rather have a rather dirty environment to live in than be subjected to the extremely high level of rules that exist in my home country of USA. I just wish the people here cared a bit more than they do about the environment. Plastic bags are out of control and it doesn't seem like anyone cares.

When I take Nadi for walks I don't bring "poopy bags" with me to clean up after her. If she does decide to go to brown town on a footpath I know that i am never further than a couple of steps from a plastic bag.

src

This picture, which I did not take, is a good example of what beach life is like in Vietnam. You can see in the distance that there is some sort of accommodation area where the beach is swept clean. Within sight of the same beach is an area that has no accommodation on it. This plastic covered disaster is what every beach in this country would look like if the resort owners / tourist administration didn't intervene.

When I do take the dog on walks on the beach, I bring a bag with me and pick up the garbage I find. It doesn't take very long for me to fill it up.

The crazy thing is that it is illegal for me to take my dog for a walk on the beach but apparently throwing your garbage all over the ground, well that is perfectly ok.