I’m back in Nevada, fighting off jet-lag, whose main effect now seems to have made my brain slow down. The trip to Vietnam went very well, giving me both a chance to relax and to do some interesting sight-seeing. The highlight was a four-day trip to Cambodia where we visited Phnom Phen and Angkor Wat. However, since this blog’s focus is on sound and audio, I’ll focus my report on that.
Every big city in Asia has a street or district dedicated to electronics. In Saigon (officially called Ho Chi Minh City), that street is Nhat Tao.
Facing the street are little shops where whatever is being done is done right out on the sidewalk. Here is somebody repairing speakers:
Behind the shops are a maze of passages with little stalls, each specializing in selling a particular type of component, i.e. capacitors, resistors, semiconductors, wire, etc. This is very similar to what I’ve seen in the Akihabara district in Tokyo, although the technology is more down-scale. In the far back are parts that have been scavenged from old equipment - nothing goes to waste.
The average level of consumer audio is fairly pedestrian with lots of local “no-name” brands. Very popular are karaoke systems - these are the boxes with all the knobs. Looking at one of these closely showed that it featured “Around Sound”, hopefully something better than surround sound.
I did see one “high-end” store, which I planned to visit after the Cambodia trip. However, we returned on new-year’s eve (Tet, or the lunar new year), and between then and when I flew back to America, all the shops were closed for the holiday.
The kids in Nhat Tao keep busy, but not necessarily with electronics:
Given that Vietnam is a Marxist-Communist country, it is filled with propaganda banners and hammer and sickles, which is a bit incongruous with the rampant capitalism happening at the street level. Of course there are the heroic statues (this one is just outside Can Tho):
One down-side of the communist government is the omnipresence of the propaganda speakers. These are closed-circuit PA systems that broadcast music, “news”, and other propaganda through towns and villages. The technology seems to be fiber-glass re-entrant horn PA speakers mounted on power poles or atop government buildings. This was mainly used during the hard-core communist era, but thankfully seems to be to be in retreat. I only heard them in a few small villages. This is not just a communist phenomena - this was present in Thailand, and I heard them spewing right-wing propaganda while I was there in 1993. From an audio point of view, it was quite obnoxious, even though I didn’t understand much of what they were saying.
I said that I wouldn’t stray from the audio theme, but I can’t resist showing a bit of Cambodia. This is what happens when you let the plants get out of control (at Angkor Wat):
I’ve got a bunch of experiments lined up, and hope to report on them soon: RF parasitics in tube amplifiers, driver tube behavior, and DHT differential-mode noise rejection (inspired by Lynn’s post below).
Happy to hear we are not the only country currently suffering from rude noises being made by portions of our public service organizations
Welcone Home!
John,
You may want to go to Hanoi where I understand there are a few high-end audio shops there. However, the Viet love to buy products on Ebay (they rely on overseas friends) than from stores and that explains why you don’t see hi-end shops there.
BTW, Our family took a 2 day trip to Angkor in July 2007 and was very impressed with the scenary.
Don