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[insects chirping]
[ducks flapping]
[wind whistling]
[slow music begins]
[helicopter whirring]
[bomb explodes]
- [Shareef] These fields
have witnessed the horrors of humanity.
Ravaged by millennia of conflicts,
[bomb explodes]
Vietnam seemed perpetually consumed by war and instability.
But remarkably, in the span of one generation
since its reunification,
Vietnam has managed to overcome its existential struggles
to rejoin the world stage.
Known for magnificent landscapes,
including the mystic waters of Ha Long Bay,
limestone mountains of Ninh Binh,
and rugged terrains of Ha Giang,
Vietnam now boasts dynamic cities
that rival metropolises around the world.
Driving this resurgence, we find the Vietnamese people,
seventy percent of whom are under 35 years old.
Thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit of a new generation,
Vietnam now ranks amongst the fastest growing economies
in the world.
My name is Shareef.
I'm an avid traveler on a quest to showcase
positive developments in emerging countries.
I'm fascinated by Vietnam's evolution over the past decade,
and I'm eager to find out what's behind the energy
and excitement of the Vietnamese people.
I set out to explore the country,
meeting people from exotic neighborhoods in sprawling cities
to the most remote rice paddies and tea fields.
Join me on this journey
as we fast forward to modern day Vietnam
to learn more and get inspired
by remarkable people from all walks of life.
[horn honks]
- [Thu] So I'm Vietnamese American. I was born in Vietnam,
and when I was ten years old,
my whole family moved to the US.
And so growing up in the US,
I actually didn't know much about Vietnam at all.
And it wasn't until after I ran into the story of Ho Chi Minh.
- [Shareef] It's the break of dawn,
but I'm already dodging heavy scooter traffic
as I meet Thu Nguyen, a thriving entrepreneur
who takes me on a jog around Ho Chi Minh City.
It's the most populous city in Vietnam
with over nine million people,
that's the size of London or New York City.
Previously known as Saigon,
in 1975 it was renamed in honor of Ho Chi Minh,
leader of Vietnam's revolutionary movement for independence.
- [Thu] When he was 22, he left Vietnam.
And, you know, he worked as a cook on a boat
to go to Europe because he wanted to know
what the hell these Westerners were talking about
in terms of freedom and independence.
And then eventually after 30 years he came back to Vietnam
and fought for Vietnamese independence.
So, when I read about that story,
then I became more inspired to learn more about Vietnam
and to ask the question:
"How can I contribute to Vietnam?"
That was when I started learning about Vietnam,
about Vietnamese people, how beautiful the country is,
and how amazing and honest and kind
and hospitable the people are outside of the big city.
In Vietnam, I think the statistic
is that about 50% of Vietnamese households
have small businesses.
And that is how they survive,
that's how they make their money.
If you look back in history,
Vietnamese have always been struggling
and fighting for our independence, right?
So that's naturally in the desire of Vietnamese people,
I feel always. It's that we want to be independent.
So that, being an entrepreneur you get to control,
you get to be in the driver's seat,
you get to do things on your own terms.
I think that those who want to start a business,
first of all, they want to do the things they like
to satisfy their passion.
They want to create their own career on their own feet.
- Looking for some Vietnamese Zen,
I visit a specialty tea house in Hanoi,
founded by Tea Master Champion Hung Nguyen
and his wife Hai Yen.
- [Hung] Our tea path was very interesting
There have been many failures
but we got a thing.
In the meantime we had a stronger urge,
a desire to achieve what my mind envisioned.
- We thought it's just in time
because we also do believe in the magical things in life,
it sounds a little bit invisible.
Like for example, the laws of attraction,
like listening to the signs from the universe.
[cymbals clang]
- [Hung] Hello everybody,
I will conduct a sharing session about the beauty of Vietnamese tea for you.
And before starting the tea ceremony today,
I will do a small treatment to balance your body and mind.
[plays singing bowl]
[insects chirping]
[water splashing]
- [Lien] In the morning, around 4:30,
I wake up, drink a cup of boiled water,
and exercise. [dogs barking]
After that I lit up the fire.
Cook for the pigs, the dogs, the chickens, and for me.
[chicken clucking]
That's the morning. Then I start gardening.
Gardening, taking care of trees, working on the field.
These tea plants... have been here for hundreds of years.
But since I'm here, I always drink from this fresh tea.
- Do you remember since when, what year was it?
- I think... since I was a child, I have seen this tea plant.
But this garden...
we are from the Youth Union, we came here since 1972.
I came here to dig this ditch, and like the elders, we cultivate.
They grow plants.
Then later I bought this land and I took care of them.
- When did you take over?
- When the agriculture reform took place, each household managed some land.
I bought it from the family who managed the land here.
In 1996 I came here. It was wide open.
They abandoned it, it was widely vacant.
- [Shareef] In 1975, the newly united
communist government of Vietnam
implemented a system of collectivized farm cooperatives.
Over time, the country gradually moved
to a system of individually owned farms,
and Lien Nguyen used the agriculture reform
to not only build a thriving tea farm,
but also a lifestyle I personally wish for.
- [Lien] I didn't decide to move here.
I came here to build a farm, a business.
I wanted to make money to provide for my family back home.
I came here to plant trees but then I enjoyed living here more.
Because I'm surrounded by nature.
When we love trees, they love us back.
When we love something, it loves us back.
Living like this, it's peaceful.
In here, it's quiet.
I protect the environment.
When I'm tired, I just look out the flower garden with the birds and butterflies.
It makes my body feel comfortable.
When my mind is clear, I work more efficiently.
- This already splits, one bud into two leaves.
This branch will continue to grow. It will grow two branches.
[playing singing bowl]
[machine whirring]
- Every day I drink four or five cups per day.
I feel like really hard for me, you know, to stop it
because I think I got a bit addicted with coffee.
So I fell in love with coffee when I was like four years old
but my great-grandparents were the first generation
that led us to love coffee.
- Why coffee?
- Since like 1980, the coffee become more popular,
so, you know, a lot of farmers started to cultivate coffee,
especially in our area we have like 99% growing coffee.
In general, like coffee globally in Vietnam is the second largest.
- [Shareef] That's right.
Over the last 30 years,
Vietnam went from producing very little coffee at all
to becoming the second largest coffee producer in the world.
Rolan Colieng and her brother Du Lick Moul
are part of a growing movement of farmers in Vietnam
who specialize in premium varieties of coffee.
- We only grow Arabica coffee so for this coffee is
preferred high elevation, also cool climate,
compared to Robusta coffee growing in low elevation
and warmer climate as well.
Most coffee grown in Vietnam is Robusta coffee, which is more than 95%,
but Arabica coffee is only 3 to 5% so it's premium quality.
-Arabica coffee? -Yep.
The flower lasts three to five days
and then it becomes a tiny berry like this as you can see.
It takes the berry eight months for it to grow from green to red, or
from green to yellow depending on different varieties too.
So this is cascarati,
the first layer of the cherry outer skin, we use this part to make a tea, cascarati.
- [Shareef] Oh, okay. One bean.
- [DuLick] We have to prepare 200 grams of the green bean
and when the bean is already dry so actually very hard like a rock
so you don't have to worry you're going to break the bean.
Going to sort all defective bean,
the broken bean, also the bean is very small.
- Like a broken bean, these are gone, the small bean
so you are hand picking all of these off.
- So those beans, low quality, will go to instant coffee.
- Next time you drink instant coffee, you know that,
that's instant coffee right here.
- [DuLick] So the more you roast coffee, some flavored coffee will get burned,
so darker roast is more bitter.
And this is medium roast, balanced acidity and bitterness,
so people prefer medium roast more.
It's good for like Espresso,
American or French Press.
And this one is light roast, this keeps the most flavor
of your coffee and easy to tell how good is your coffee
if you roast it light than a medium or darker roast.
- [Rolan] So actually, six years ago this area
was completely with the coffee plantations
so we were so excited to continue work,
so we worked so hard, like all day and night
we're working really hard to help this area grow up,
especially keeping all of this coffee alive.
With our cooperative,
I am actually the one who controls the quality
and helps the farmers how to do the process.
But me, I followed my dad since I was four.
So, to be here, to work with this cooperative
and this organic coffee is my dream,
and I think that God really complete me with this dream.
[playing singing bowl]
[crickets chirping]
- This is the actual rice
that they put in the mud before and grow, and then when they come back,
each one of these is what has to go in the rice fields
to plant the rice.
- How many bags of rice can you get every season?
- One season?
This place can give ten bags.
One bag is about 30 kilos.
- So about 300 kilos of rice in just this field.
- Just this field.
- [Farmer] For me, this is tradition, from when I was 12 years old.
My daughter just got married, we held the wedding last month.
- She's pregnant for how long?
- Seven months.
- [Shareef] So when I look, I just see women.
Where are the men?
- Normally, only women work.
If men understand, they work far away. If not, they just stay at home and drink.
- You still use a hand sickle?
- [Farmer] Still use a sickle, farmers here still use a sickle.
Do they sell rice to other people or just for this village?
- [Interpreter] It's just for their families.
-This is just for their families? -Yes.
- Oh, okay. Wow.
Psychologists believe
that the backbreaking labor required to cultivate rice
has produced a distinctive work ethic in countries
that traditionally produce it.
In Vietnam this rice culture also extends to the sea,
where fishermen struggle for a living
in independently operated boats.
Sometimes, I depart at 4 or 5 pm this evening
I can return by 4 or 5 am tomorrow. I anchor at the dock.
So about almost 12, 13 hours, or 12, 14 hours.
And then he comes back and sells everything to the market.
So you built this boat yourself?
- [Fisherman] I bought it from someone else in Hoian... brought it here.
When I first bought it, I fished with clap net.
[engine whirring]
Then I found it was not profitable, not suitable for my wife.
So I changed to this job.
I saw this job, catching small shrimp is right.
I started to stick to it. Follow this path.
Are you planning on having another boat?
Or this is your boat and you're going to retire now?
Yes, after this... because I am quite old now.
More than 50 years old. I cannot do it anymore.
I've been putting out to sea since I was 13 years old.
At that time, it was not an option due to my family's financial difficulty.
I left school to help my family.
- [Van] I think the main reason for people
at the moment to work hard
because they need to survive.
I understand that Vietnamese people, especially women,
they are very hard working,
they do many different jobs to survive, to take care of their children,
take care of their families, and even their parents too.
- [Shareef] Van Dang is a technology entrepreneur
based in the capital city of Hanoi.
In 2017, she was recognized by Forbes
as one of 15 Global Leaders To Watch.
- So, I was born in a small town in the north of Vietnam.
They are very poor over there.
When I was seven years old, I normally sell peanuts in the market.
The reason that I do that because
I think we need to survive.
It might be strange for other people in the modern countries
that a seven year old girl has to do that kind of work,
but for us many children in Vietnam,
especially in the countryside, it's very normal work.
So, some people told me that I got entrepreneurship myself
since I was small.
- [Shareef] When Van was fourteen,
her father bought a computer to rent out to the local villagers,
which gave Van a chance to fall in love with computers
at a young age.
- So come back to when I was younger,
I wanted to be a scientist,
so I studied computer science
and I believed that computer science would bring me
a lot of opportunities to learn the new things.
When I graduated high school,
I was about to apply to four universities and my dad told me that,
you need to apply at least one teaching school
so I can become a teacher like my mom.
[laughs]
He really wanted me to become a teacher
so I can have time for my kids.
He said that I'm a girl, I don't need to study hard.
[laughs]
- Just become a teacher and a housewife, you're good to go.
- But in four uni that I applied, there's none about teaching school.
- Wow.
- Because I didn't like it at all,
I don't want to be like my mom, she worked so hard
and she still hasn't got many things that she wants.
- [Huong] One day I talked to my mother and asked her,
how could you raise us up by yourself being a farmer?
So I think we're empowered
and we have the role model of our older generation.
I think as a woman,
I always wanted to have my own family, that's the first thing.
The second thing is I want to create a bigger impact
in the community.
We try to also create an ecosystem
to support young entrepreneurs
but also women in particular.
[soft music begins]
- [Shareef] As reported by the World Bank,
Vietnam has 73% female workforce participation,
a rate that surpasses
many of the world's leading economies.
Huong Dang is a passionate social entrepreneur
working on the front lines of this social impact movement.
- So, Koto is a social enterprise in Vietnam.
We run a training program
for two years in hospitality operations.
We have two restaurants, one in Hanoi and one in Saigon.
Over the last two years,
we trained about nearly 1000 street kids
and disadvantaged youth
who are now the CEO of a travel agent, restaurant owners,
entrepreneurs, trainers.
100% of our trainees get jobs in five star hotels
and in restaurants after two years in the program.
Apart from that, I also started a social project
called Hope Box,
so it creates jobs for women
who have escaped from domestic violence.
I want to help other women who have less opportunity,
not just focusing on creating jobs
but also raising awareness as well.
We were born in a country that everyone knows about,
the number one thing they know is about the war,
and the second thing they know is about pho the food.
But us women we are empowered by the old generation,
our grandmother, our mother.
- When I finished high school,
I got a chance to go to Australia to study,
and when I come to Sydney,
I talked about I'm from Vietnam
and still many people didn't know
where Vietnam is on the map.
[laughs]
And I studied the first semester
in Hanoi National University before,
which for me is very big university already,
and the number one uni in Vietnam
but when I told my friends in Sydney about my uni
but no one know about my uni.
[epic music begins]
Why Vietnamese people when I think
they are very hard working, they are very smart,
but they haven't been recognized in other countries.
And that question go with me for a long time
when I stayed there, and even when I come back
I still want to prove that we can do the best,
we can do a lot much better than they think.
- [Shareef] True to her word,
Van returned home to Vietnam
where she founded an international technology company
that employs Vietnamese engineers
to build enterprise software
for businesses around the world.
- For me, I don't think tech is hard as many other industries
but people think that tech is hard.
So I really want to send a message
that tech is not hard at all once you have fallen in love with it.
Did you know that more than 100,000 people graduate in IT every year?
And I believe this number will grow more
because we put the IT subject in school
from primary now.
- What are the real competitive advantage in Vietnam?
And I said, well we can grow anything.
You just put stuff down and it'll grow in Vietnam, right?
Also, the tech industry,
there's no barrier to entry, really.
Vietnamese people are already very tech savvy.
And then the third piece is that
everywhere in Vietnam is beautiful, naturally.
So when I look at the real competitive advantage,
I look at tourism, technology and agriculture.
So, at 22 years old, I said
I want to help build businesses in Vietnam
because I wanted to contribute
to economic independence and freedom.
Everywhere in Vietnam people can visit
and have an amazing time, right?
Whether it's at the beaches, or the mountains,
or the rice patties.
So I was telling people,
get on a motorbike and go see Vietnam.
And I find myself talking to everybody like this,
so then I recognized, I'm like, that is it,
that's where I should be investing my time into,
the tourism industry in Vietnam.
- [Shareef] Tourism is a big industry in Vietnam
with over 18 million visitors in 2019,
already four times as many as a decade ago.
As founder and CEO of a top ranked travel company,
Thu is building a platform
that allows local micro entrepreneurs
to benefit from the influx of visitors.
We tried out his platform with Loan Vuong,
a law student that moonlights
as a freelance tour guide
and offers visits to Ho Chi Minh City's
historic Chinatown district for one dollar.
- [Loan] One dollar is kind of enough in Vietnam
for just a meal, snack.
But it depends on my purpose.
My purpose is...
I want to improve my English
and exchange knowledge,
exchange culture with the foreign guests.
I run a tour for one dollar
because at that time when I was a student
I wanted to practice listening and speaking skills.
I want to meet more foreigners and exchange everything,
the knowledge, the culture, education,
they want to know more about Vietnamese so I can share with them,
and I want to know more about every country in this world.
- So by building this tool,
we're basically empowering people to operate at the smallest scale,
to work for themselves, to run their own business.
When you empower local businesses
to participate in the tourism industry,
that money stays in the local community
and gets reinvested in the local community
as opposed to getting extracted outside of the community
by an international company,
and they pay people at the minimum wage,
as little as possible to be able to run the business,
but most of the economic is sucked outside of the country.
Vietnamese startups need more philosophy.
Thinking a little bit more about the impact that they have in society,
the kind of work that they enjoy doing,
and how can they contribute to others
and at the same time
be able to build something sustainable for themselves.
- If you've got passion, you can do everything.
If you love, you can do everything.
So nothing difficult in this life.
If you never give up, working hard,
love what you do,
you can make everything impossible become possible.
And then you can be successful.
- [Shareef] Outside Ho Chi Minh City,
I meet Master Chef Tan, a farmer working land
that used to be an American strategic bombing target.
- [Chef] Do you know what is this? This location we got, you know,
a very big and complicated like spider web of tunnels, 250 kilometers.
That's why Americans put too much bombing here because they wanted to control here.
Because I put all the bombs up here, on the surface nothing happened.
But why do you see people still got food to eat?
Where the food come from? Welcome to this plant.
Oh my God, helicopter come up,
the tapioca tree gets broken,
every base is broken like this, a new plant come out.
One plant like this,
oh my God, four kilo of tapioca,
look after for people a day like potatoes.
We sing a new song, more bombs come up please,
more tapioca it is, more people survive.
So we never worry for bombing
because we stayed underground for four to eight
to twelve meters deep, a bomb, B-52 whatever,
doesn't affect it.
This location, 160 million tons of bombs
from Americans fell in here.
I go to local people to see, oh my God,
it's all empty space. How I do the farm?
But I see one thing very potential.
Look out there, cow, cow, cow, cow, and cow.
What are cows eating? Only one thing survived.
It is the grass.
That's why, we cannot eat them, cows eat them.
After cows eat, what happens to come out? The poo comes out.
[laughs]
Then, with a location like that,
with this way I go to local people to buy cow poo,
I put to the soil to innovation for soil,
then I can plant whatever I can.
- So basically, you got the manure, cow manure,
you buy it somewhere to bring it here
to enrich the soil to make sure that it can grow plants.
- Exactly.
And then whenever we start milking the cow,
we open romantic music on. No hip hop music, ah?
Because for us we have no machine like Americans.
For us we got our hands to milk it up,
so when we get romantic music, our milk get more and more.
One cow gets us 20 liters.
Normally our local people only get 15 liters but we got 20 liters
because we are treating the cows like people,
making them happy, they give us more benefits.
Remember this one, very important.
- [Shareef] Chef Tan has been focused on expanding
the farm to table concept in Vietnam.
But he wasn't always a farmer.
- 'Cause you know, if you look at my career,
you would think I'm the most crazy man.
Because I am a doctor first.
I'm qualified doctor on Vietnam on 1995.
Be a bachelor accounting in 2000.
Then a butcher.
Then a Western chef in Italian, French, American,
and whatever cuisine Western.
Then the Asian cooking channel,
do a lot of Asian cooking channel. Now I'm a farmer.
No money, no honey.
[Shareef laughs]
People say farmer is stupid.
And I want to confirm with you,
no job is smarter than farmer.
Farmer is the job of everything.
They must be into science,
because they must understand
what the hell is going on before they're planting.
They must be very good marketer
because they need to understand what demands the customer
before they're planting.
They must be a good doctor
because they need to kill too many different insects
and kill different viruses from the animals when they get sick.
They need to get very good communication skills
and leader skills to deal with the people that have no brain.
[laughs]
Too much thing happens, never an easy job.
Welcome to my mushroom house.
It's the magic house, also the key thing
for my farm to be successful here as well.
So we have DNA of oyster mushroom.
You put tapioca stick, coconut juice,
gelatin, and vegetable powder,
into the bottle like this size.
Then we steam the bottle in 120 degree in two hours,
to kill bacteria, to make some moist come up,
and activate some good bacteria.
After that, two weeks later, the white bottle like this
they will start to get a mushroom come out.
Then it will be big enough today, tomorrow comes again.
One bottle like this you know how many kilos we're collecting?
-How many? -Twenty.
How much cost the kilo in America? What do you think?
-A kilo of this? -Oyster mushroom.
- Oyster mushroom, pretty expensive, say, 20 dollars.
- Exactly. It's never cheaper than 20 dollar a kilo.
How much does it cost in Vietnam?
Two dollars.
How much a farmer like me we sell it?
- Ah, one dollar?
- No, I only got 10 cents to maximum 20 cents.
- So you only charge ten cents a kilo?
-You know why? -Why?
- Because look at you the seller you are so handsome,
look at me farmer I'm too ugly.
The ugly farmer like me cannot sell it for the handsome farmer,
we need to sell for the middleman, middleman, middleman, seller and customer.
When customer girl sees the beautiful handsome boy,
they pay whatever, farmer working so hard we got nothing.
Therefore I get back in Vietnam in 2011
and open the first concept in the country, farm to table.
My farm right now here is small,
I provide 100 kilos mushroom a day,
selling 10 cents to 20 cents,
I got 10 dollars to 20 dollars a day,
I won't have money to pay for my family living.
But I'm selling for the customer one dollar,
I got 100 dollars, I can pay for them.
So farm to table is the best idea for a small farm,
who gets passionate like me can survive for.
[playing singing bowl]
- [Hung] When I meditate, I see very clearly that life is too short.
So why are we continuing to do a regular job
and not having any happiness like that?
At that time, I got married to my wife and shared a lot with her.
She told me to quit my job and choose to do what I love.
In Vietnam, when you have a permanent job
but you quit that
to work in agriculture, to grow lotus,
you are considered to be exceptionally insane.
I went back to tell my family, a lot of people protested
because they worried about me.
At that time it was quite hard because we were expecting our first son.
We both quit our jobs at the same time and chose to follow tea.
Incidentally, there was a contest called Tea Master Cup.
In 2016, it was held in Vietnam.
We attended and were also very lucky to be the champion.
That was the turning point to let us open a tea shop,
and we have built it together everyday, to create a unique kind of tea.
The lotus is in the tea, the tea is in the lotus.
And when you drink tea, you can feel the fragrance
slowly spreads throughout your body.
And at the moment that the tea, the lotus and your body emanate together
you will also become a lotus yourself.
[cymbals clang]
- [Shareef] So that was kind of my question,
is just the core of Vietnamese culture and the people,
I see it in the villages,
I see it in the cities, I see it everywhere,
you know, where they just start the business.
And it's like that is not normal in every other country,
you have to go to college, you have to do this, you have to follow this process,
you have to follow these rules, right?
Here it's like, no, I'm just going to start something.
What do you think in your opinion is that?
Why does that happen with Vietnamese people?
- We just got the independence about 44 years ago,
so inside our blood, always desire for the independence,
the freedom, and we're very brave people.
So, like for example for us.
[laughs]
We just think: quit the job.
Start something that we're really passionate about,
and we just do it.
[calm music]
- [Hung] Now I invite you to enjoy
one of the most famous type of tea in Vietnam.
The lotus tea.
In the past, this tea was only used by the high classes of Vietnamese society.
But nowadays, thanks to economic development,
this tea is becoming more popular.
As you all know, when it comes to Vietnamese tea,
people immediately think of the lotus.
The lotus is a symbol, the national flower of Vietnam
and also the symbol of Buddhism.
At the beginning when we first started, I told my wife:
"Let's try to make lotus tea exactly the way we understand it."
We both usually had to wake up very early, queueing at a lake,
in order to get the lotuses that have morning dew.
In one kilo of lotus tea we usually use up to 1400 lotuses.
And the production process is very sophisticated and careful,
which requires the producers to have a peaceful mind.
We always lift the tea cup with both hands,
it shows our appreciation to nature who has given to human
such a precious tea product.
And also to express gratitude to the farmers, who worked hard,
and made a lot of effort to create such a high quality tea.
- [Lien] I love drinking this tea.
I don't use pesticide or herbicide, I just dig them up in a primitive way.
I turn over the soil
and the chickens also dig up dirt to find worms.
That's all, there's no fertilizer.
But I feel like drinking this tea,
I'm not sure but since I've arrived here
I rarely got sick.
I still have the same weight.
My stamina since I was young
I still keep it even now.
- Food is the key thing to make you survive.
Good food makes you survive longer,
enjoy your life better, and do whatever you like.
When you've got health you can do everything you like.
When you have no health and you've got money, you cannot do everything.
That's the big problem.
- [Shareef] Chef Tan also runs a culinary school
on his farm where he trains chefs
from around the world in Vietnamese cuisine.
- Cooking with me is about life.
Food, life is connected.
People say man handsome, power, strong,
to protect the girl, but is never romantic so much.
So we say man is very salty.
Salty for American man is different
than Asian man, different than Vietnamese man.
American man or Western man we call salty
but their salt is from sea salt.
Salty of Asian is soy sauce.
Salty of Vietnam is fish sauce.
- [Shareef] Aah.
- A man, can you stay single?
No, you get married.
We cannot stay single. We need a lady.
Who lady? Beautiful, sexy, and sweet.
Woman in Western can be honey, can be pineapple juice, can be orange juice,
but in Vietnam is sugar,
in Asian is sugar.
So whatever you're cooking
Western food, Asian food, Vietnamese food,
we need a man, we need a woman, we need a salt, we need a sweet.
Because different woman, different country, different flavor, right?
Different man, different country, different flavor.
They all salty, they all sweet, but different flavor.
So the first thing, we want to mention about dipping sauce.
We need man, we need woman.
Dipping sauce is something salt, it's appetizer.
[Male Mmm]
Like when you know a woman, just know you start to love,
[Female Mmm]
you need to be understandable, right?
We get engage, discover them,
by going on dates, whatever, to learn more.
We need acidity, right?
We need sour.
- [Shareef] So you need acidity?
- Yeah, sour.
And then what happens after?
This is just a time you know
that you're not really in love yet.
You just want to discover, discover that lady or that man only.
We need some lighter, like enjoy, we need lighter,
we need no flavor, no color, we call water.
Then?
Then, love is challenge.
Challenge means spice. We got spice.
Easy? Not every couple is fighting,
some couples love, is just love,
no fighting, no argument, but some couples love spicy.
So whenever you make a dipping sauce in Vietnamese, Western, Asian,
we need one salt, one man is one woman,
one salt is one sweet, is one sour, is one no.
Everything equalized.
Just spice is optional, it's up to you.
- [Shareef] It's up to you how much spice you want in your life.
Alright, now we're making the first dish.
Asian people everything is balanced.
Western people enjoy a single flavor,
too salty, too sweet, too sour.
Vietnamese cuisine is different cuisine in the world
because we got a fusion of every cuisine in the world.
Thus the people in Asia always say one sentence:
"Asian food look like cow shit but flavor amazing,
Western food look amazing but flavor sometimes like cow shit."
[laughs]
So I want you to get a different idea.
Asian people can look very pretty and flavor can be amazing,
and Western food also can do that too,
it's a fusion and welcome to Vietnamese cuisine.
- [Lam] Everything is here.
Vietnam, generally, can be described in one word: cocktail.
- What do you mean "cocktail"?
- Cocktail. A little bit of different flavors, everything is here.
- [Shareef] To explore Vietnamese food further,
we meet up with Lam Thai,
a local tour guide in Ho Chi Minh City
with his own story of entrepreneurship.
- [Lam] In the early 2000s, at the time that motorbikes were imported to Vietnam,
we started to have the first few foreigners.
At that time, I thought that English
could be a perfect tool to communicate and work with people
from all over the world.
Actually, I worked for a small tour agency organizing adventurous tours.
- And then at one point you said, I'm just going to work for myself.
- Yes, when clients and tourists
want to have different things
away from the written tracks of the tour agencies,
so I'm ready to tailor for them whatever they want,
to meet their desire, their expectation of what they want to see.
We eat a lot of rice, we cannot live without rice.
So the stuff that is rice and water,
we call banh canh.
That's a quail egg and that's a chicken egg.
Quail egg, one, two, three, four, and another four chicken eggs.
- Is she going to eat with us? Because there's no way I can eat all of this.
[laughs]
- At the top, that is deep fried pig fat
and scallions also for flavor.
Cuisine and local cultures
can be very well influenced by
the way they eat, the way they talk to each other,
the way they behave to each other.
So, I treat you today how Vietnamese people eat,
what we eat every day, or at least how is our cuisine.
- [Shareef] Over 50% of Vietnamese households
have small businesses,
many of which are food carts that form Vietnam's vibrant,
and sometimes crazy, street food scene.
So, Lam, this looks like a very interesting dish,
it's kind of scary almost to me,
especially from what's inside.
- [Lam] These are all the organs of the cow.
- [Shareef] The intestines and the stomach of the cow.
Would you call this the stomach soup of the cow, right?
- We call it pha lau, according to the Chinese Cantonese.
- So why don't you try the stomach first before I get a heart attack?
[laughs]
-Okay. -Let's give it a shot.
Wow, wow, that's a lot of flavor.
Okay. So the one I'm afraid of the most,
I think, is this intestine thing.
- [Lam] Don't be lazy, be crazy.
[laughs]
- Oh man. Okay, it's not that bad.
- So experience the differences to enrich your life.
You're enriched now, man, after taking that.
- I've been enriched.
I have the intestine of the cow in my stomach.
[laughs]
- [Lam] So this is the testicle.
- [Shareef] This is the testicle.
- [Lam] And this is the tool, the gun, the shotgun.
- Ah dude, I feel like when I watch it,
it feels like aah, I'm going like this,
like oh God, no, no, no.
[laughs]
You don't feel it?
It's like ugh, dude.
-[Lam] Ah, no. I'm looking, I'm just looking.
- [Shareef] I guess you have balls of steel then.
Baby spinach with goat penis and lotus roots.
Who invented that?
- [Lam] One of the reasons we have 96 million people.
Makes you strong on bed. [laughs]
- Yes, of goat penis soup.
Man, I'm just going to swallow that penis because it's a little chewy.
Ah, man you gotta help me, one chicken feet.
- [Lam] One chicken ass.
- [Shareef] It's really fatty.
- Every ass has fat.
[laughs]
Right?
- [Shareef] As it turns out,
the nightlife in Ho Chi Minh City
is as vibrant as its street food scene.
I walk into an intimate live music venue
where I am intrigued by a unique performance.
[violin playing with live rock band]
This genre-bending music venue
is the brainchild of Le Quang Minh.
- My parents wanted me to be a lawyer.
- Of course. Not a doctor?
[laughs]
- Okay, lawyer, I'm okay.
But I love music, so I passed an examination
with high score in conservatory
and I get a scholarship about drumming because I'm a drummer.
I learned in three universities at the same time:
lawyer for my parents, music and graphic design for myself.
[laughs]
- I got to make my mom and dad happy, and then I have to make myself happy.
- Yeah. [laughs]
I made a band in high school called Little Wings.
We followed Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day,
and in 1997, I composed an English song by acoustic sound.
We're champions in this prize,
it's very big, like a bands idol,
Vietnam's idol, something like that.
-Ah, it's like American Idol. -Yeah, like American Idol.
After this prize we started to play in the bar.
Recording music and advertising is in the day time,
and playing music in the bar is my night time.
- Wow, two jobs every day.
- Two jobs every day.
And at 2006, I think, okay, I played music
over ten years at the bars,
why I don't open my own bar to play the music I want?
So I opened a bar first, I want to do different.
You see, I'm explaining to you, music is music.
Maybe you play Britney Spears
and people that like Britney go aaah,
and you play Led Zeppelin and people over here love Led Zeppelin.
And the people that like Britney Spears they doubt,
oh what kind is this song, maybe this is a good song.
And, from my opinion,
I'm bringing the rock music not to the rock people,
I'm bringing the rock music to another people
that don't like rock music but feel they love from rock music.
But if you play a lot of kinds of music,
in the whole room the people can enjoy,
and people can recognize, oh maybe rock music is nice.
[violin playing with live rock band]
- [Anh] I am currently working at the Ho Chi Minh City orchestra
and every night on weekends, I perform at the Acoustic Bar.
And this place is like my second home.
[band continues playing]
- I think that everyone only sees the violin as a classical instrument.
But I want to pursue a modern style.
And I want to combine the violin with the band
to perform a wilder style.
In the future, we can unite them to create a new style called rock symphony.
We can perform with both the rock band and the orchestra.
This place makes me feel excited whenever I have a performance
and inspires me the most.
- [Minh] You know, everything I do,
I want to bring like the good music, like the real music.
- So what you're doing is, you're basically introducing
different genres of music
to each other so they can appreciate it.
- Yeah. Firstly, I need to make all the people
love this place first,
and secondly I put some old school and real music inside.
Because business is business.
We have to find a way for music to bring good emotions
and make the people feel no stress, happy, smiling by music.
- I rather figure out how to build a business
that stands on its own,
that empowers people in a sustainable way
and helping people to work for themselves
and then as a result making the world a better place,
contributing to their local community and society.
- [Huong] It's a life transforming journey.
It's not just giving someone a fish to eat today
but also teaching them how to fish.
Koto is always based on the philosophy
of know one, teach one.
If you know one thing, you can teach one thing.
If you know one person, you can teach one person.
You don't have to wait until you have everything.
So I became a Koto trainee in 2006
and graduated from the program.
As part of my sense of giving back,
I always wanted to contribute my knowledge
and skills into the organization that changed my life.
I was born in a very small village of Vietnam
in the northwest and my mom was a single mom.
One day when I finished year seven,
I realized that my mom was facing a kidney infection
and she was very, very sick so I decided to leave school
and then I went to Hanoi to work and earn money.
- At age twelve?
- At age twelve, yes.
I literally left home at age twelve for the first time
living far away from my mom,
and Hanoi is the capital city of Vietnam.
It was so busy.
It was totally different to my countryside.
I looked after a four month old baby boy, doing babysitting
and it was like a baby looking after another baby.
So I earned about ten dollars back then per month,
working hard from 6 a.m to 12 a.m the next day.
With that entire money, I sent back to my mom
to help my brother and my sister
remain at school and help her a little bit with her health problem.
At that time, girls from 16 to 18 in the countryside,
they ask to get married so I saw all the women
getting married, having kids, working hard on the farm,
being domestic violence and all those sorts of stuff.
And somehow, I decided that wasn't my life
so I chose to stay in Hanoi by myself
and there was no family, no relatives, no friends in Hanoi.
So I became a street kid
and I ended up living most of my time on the streets
and living under the staircase of a landlord
and I was treated very badly by the local people.
They took all my money and didn't give me anything in return.
When I looked for a job and without education,
I couldn't do anything.
So, I decided to go back to school
for more education training at nighttime.
I cooked sticky rice every 2 a.m morning,
sold it on the street,
working as a cleaner during the day
and sold cake in the afternoon
and at night I went to study
and came back to sell cake in the street again.
So basically, every day I managed to have
only two hours of sleeping.
Don't know how I did it back then
but life back then was very dark.
It was like gray, no hope, no future.
I didn't know what direction I headed up to.
But just one thing I knew,
that education would somehow one day change my case.
So I came and visited Koto, I checked it out first
and that's what changed my life.
After finishing Koto,
I was offered a job at the Intercontinental Hotel Group
so I worked as a waitress there for nearly three years
and then I came back to Koto as marketing officer.
Then two and a half years later I was offered a scholarship
to go to Australia to study.
You know, working from the streets,
I never knew that one day I could go overseas,
it opened up a whole lot of opportunities for me.
- Why do you think Vietnamese people in general are so entrepreneurial?
- I think because Vietnam now is not too regulated
and the opportunities are out there in every corner
so everyone here is an entrepreneur.
I was an entrepreneur selling sticky rice before.
[laughs]
- [Shareef] They say Vietnam is the land of a million smiles.
- People are really happy and curious.
They're very inviting, and I think that is natural
of Vietnamese people across the country.
- I think that Vietnamese people are very brave
and they always desire for their freedom
because we've been in the past, for countless wars.
- Fortunately, as people say about the law of attraction,
when giving goodwill, there will be corresponding frequencies.
When I meditate, I can see myself clearer,
which means doing something that is truly meaningful in our lives.
- In this life, nothing impossible.
Everything impossible can become possible.
- We have a very good community here
where we help each other
because I can be good at some points
but I must need help at some other points too.
- There are so much opportunities for everyone
but women, you know, they take it.
Like myself, we seize the opportunity and we take it and we have the tools.
- Even like, you know, I tell the band singer,
Vietnamese people, if you learn a cover song,
you need to know about the meaning of the song
because if you know the meaning of the song, you sing very good.
You put the meaning of the song in your life
and you sing like by your heart.
- [Shareef] From the energetic farmers
to the ambitious entrepreneurs
to the dreamers still building on a majestic culture.
Their remarkable human stories have inspired me
to follow my own dreams wherever they may lead.
- And the young people, it's just amazing.
They just want to move on and be able to build the country
that Vietnam should have always been.
- I am a Vietnamese woman.
I always have the love of my homeland, my country.
[gentle music begins]