Can Vietnam’s Energy Boom Loosen China’s Grip? eyesonvietnam Ask who powers Vietnam’s future and you will hear a confident story: solar fields across the south-central coast, wind turbines on the horizon, giant batteries to hold it all together. Ask whether this makes Vietnam independent from China and the honest answer is more complicated. Vietnam is…
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What the Viet-Uc and AquaEasy Deal Means for Vietnam’s Shrimp Boom eyesonvietnam First, a correction In my earlier shrimp article I described this as a “Viet-Uc and Bosch” partnership. That was imprecise. The commercial partner is AquaEasy, which is a spin-out from Bosch’s innovation hub, grow, so Bosch is its origin and not a direct…
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Vietnam’s Shrimp Boom and the Race to Make It Sustainable eyesonvietnam The catch of the century Vietnam is the world’s third-largest shrimp producer, and the industry is a pillar of the economy. In the Mekong Delta, shrimp ponds spread as rice fields were converted and mangrove forests were cleared. Output keeps climbing. Ca Mau province…
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How Drones Took Flight in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta eyesonvietnam Chapter 1: Empty Fields The traditional image of rice farming is a bent figure wading through a flooded paddy. Along the lower Mekong, that picture is out of date. Fifty percent of Vietnam’s rice crop is grown in the Mekong delta, and the fields are often…
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How Vietnam Is Learning to Live With AI eyesonvietnam Walk into a Hanoi café or a Saigon co-working space and you’ll see it quickly: students translating with a chatbot, shop owners drafting product descriptions, designers generating mood boards. Vietnam is not approaching artificial intelligence with fear. It is approaching it with something closer to appetite,…
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Vietnam’s Artisans and the New Creative Economy eyesonvietnam On a quiet lane in a village outside Hanoi, the clack of a silk loom has barely changed in generations. A few hours away, in Bac Ninh province, a carver cuts a pearwood block for a print that once hung in nearly every home at Lunar New…
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eyesonvietnam Picture a long, S-shaped country where emerald rice terraces, limestone seascapes, and ancient imperial cities sit just a short flight or train ride apart. Here’s a route from north to south. Ha Long Bay and Lan Ha Bay Your journey begins in the northeast, where nearly 2,000 limestone karsts and islets rise from jade-green…
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eyesonparaguay Most travelers plan their South American adventures around Patagonia, the Amazon or the Andes. Paraguay, tucked into the middle of the continent, rarely makes the list, and that is exactly its appeal. Its waterfalls have few crowds, its trails have few footprints, and its wetlands and forests hold wildlife that has all the space…
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eyesonparaguay Paraguay is one of the few places in the Americas where an Indigenous language is spoken by most of the population, not just a minority. Guaraní lives in homes, markets, songs and jokes. That fact explains much of what you see in the country’s crafts. Here, the colonial encounter between Guaraní communities and Spanish…
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eyesonparaguay In Guaraní, ñandutí means “spider web.” The name fits. Each piece of this lace begins at a single point and spreads outward in rays, then fills with tiny stitches until the cloth looks like frost caught in a morning web. Behind each piece are hours of patient work, usually by women who learned the…
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