In addition to the students going to school 6 or 7 days a week, the adults go to work just as much. The average work week here is 6 days a week, even if you work in an office. (If you work for the gov't, you get some benefits. For example, employees of the HCM Palace get a 2 hour lunch break every day even though they only work about 6 hours. That means you, the tourist, better not show up at the gate at 12:31pm.) Many, including the office staff in my school, work 7 days a week. This doesn't make any sense to me that the employees accept this exploitation of their labor, but I'm not Vietnamese. And they haven't experienced the rest of the world.
Last night I met a university professor who teaches law. She works 6 days a week too. Not only does she work 6 days a week, but when she works, it's 3 different shifts - mornings, afternoons, evenings. She has 2 small children. I don't think she sees much of them.
Yen, my neighbor downstairs, makes the average salary in Vietnam even though she works in an office - $150 a month. When you calculate the hours she works every month, it comes up to nothing per hour. Good thing she has free housing from her aunt.
And so this is how the world we live in functions - yet another overworked, underpaid society, where there are only 5 national holidays a year (one of the fewest in the world) and nobody's complaining or taking to the streets.
To view the truth about the poor and what they are often forced into doing, please watch the video on this page link by the British band The Muse...
