Well, after visiting the Netherlands, Germany and Swiss, I thought it would make a nice addition to that little Iron Tour 2015, to see how they do on the other side of the planet...
So I took a flight to Vietnam. No less
Man ! Talk about a contrast !!!
I've found two shops during our stay, musing around in old pedestrian streets of Saigon.
The streets were so narrow that in both case, I even wonder how they got the machines in in the first place...
Want to see a shop ? Follow the three phased wires !
Those were minuscules shops with open doors on the street, in such a way that I could get in and take a look at what the guys were doing without having the feeling of disturbing or bothering anyone... Of course, not beeing to speak a single word of vietnamese didn't help, but it seems like machinists always find a way to understand with each other in the end.
I've seen people working on crude, old, probably totally worn out machines, using a minimalistic equipment, without any safety gear of any kind, in such a heat that they probably have to oversize the parts they make by 1.2 (at least !) if they want them to be within tolerances at 20°Celcius...
I tell you it is imperial / metric !!! if you have the gear set, that is...
The ancestors altar is a nice addition to any machine shop over there...
Of course, one could laugh at those guys working shirtless swith flip-flops, but they obviously make do with what they have and that is obviously not much.
I've found very nice people, surprised to see me interested in what they were doing, but always welcoming and encouraging me to step in and take a look, with the same smile I saw on almost all the faces I saw in that country.
Was a nice experience really, and I wish I could spend more time in that kind of places... I especially regret not beeing able to visit some much bigger shops I saw through the window of the car in the Hai Phong suburbs (probably working for shipyards and the such) but we were on our way to the Halong bay and that time, my travel mate was not Peter...