One thing that my friends who live in other SE Asian countries complain about on a regular basis, and in particular in Thailand, is that the power grid is horribly unreliable. I had heard about this before I ever moved over here and it was something that really concerned me since I work online and this is something that could seriously interfere with my ability to make money. Here we are, many years later and aside from planned power-outages where they were performing maintenance or upgrades on the electrical grid, the power has NEVER been out. The times that it was out for maintenance it was announced days before-hand and they always finished hours earlier than they said they would.
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I've seen pictures from other parts of the country where their power is supplied by a crazy and chaotic looking mess of overhead wires. I think part of the reason why I have never experienced power outages is because this part of the country that I live in didn't really exist 30 years ago and there are almost zero historical buildings on this side of the river. You see, the area near the beach didn't have much purpose other than an Air Force base and fishing in the past, and basically nobody lived or worked over here until recently. Therefore almost all of the wiring is underground and very reliable.
I don't know exactly what they did correctly but it works for me!
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almost none of this was here 30-40 years ago
In addition to what appears to be an incredibly reliable power grid, the city, and perhaps the country, has a building code that any building with an elevator/ lift must have a generator capable of powering the building. I have lived in a building with a generator in it for years now, but prior to that I lived in a building that did not have one of these and even then, outside of planned outages that were announced by the landlord well before-hand, I have never had a power outage that lasted more than a second or two.
I think that many times people in the west probably look over here and think that it is 3rd world. I don't think that is true. In many ways I would say that the utilities are actually far more reliable over here than my memories of it in the West. Add in the fact that our electric bills are generally so small that they are almost meaningless, and you have yourself another fantastic reason to at least have a go at living in Vietnam.
Now we just need them to sort out the visas so that people can actually legally do that.
I just saw that there was a huge bunch of cables on the pole
yes, this is quite common in Vietnam and from what I have heard, most of the rest of SE Asia as well.
You are probably right with your assumptions that where you stay is more modern infrastructure in place.
well with all the construction that is going on constantly it better be more modern. :P
I am in Australia and there was bad weather which caused a power outage for several hours. It's incredibly frustrating. I am glad you live in an area where this doesn't happen.
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Your post reminds me of conversations I've had in the USA with friends. They can't understand why Cambodia has constant power outages but yet cell phone coverage nearly everywhere and access to the internet at affordable to anyone rates.
I always explain that in the USA we're plagued by old and outdated infrastructure that is costly to keep going and in many cases almost impossible to replace because of the logistics involved. When I lived on the Vietnam border, power cuts almost never happened, and only when Vietnam needed to cut us off during peak usage so they could meet their own needs.
I was not aware that a place existed in Cambo where Vietnam was supplying the power. That must be a complicated bill collection procedure.
I was wondering the other day why cell still works when power goes out, even planned power outages that affect almost the entire peninsula. As it turns out, cell towers have massive battery and generator backup that lasts 3-5 DAYS. According to one website I saw that if the power actually does go out for a cell tower it can be rather big problems for the company involved because rebooting is problematic and dropped calls means lost revenue. Basically it was more cost-effective for the company to ensure that these towers stay on no matter what.