Nail Biz Saigon Tape

The Business of Nails
NAIL-BIZ by the Dragon

The subject is the typical background of a discount nail shop worker/owner.
Because in the past some have asked "Why do these people take the short cuts .... why do they feel that it is okay to perform shoddy work .... why are they so unconcerned about sanitation".
And in the past I have replied that they were born and raised in a society that is so poor and geared to the survival of the fittest and so much 'buyer beware'.
And people have said "but I was raised poor too and I have higher standards:'
And I say not the kind of poor that they were raised in.

So I just had a Vietnamese friend return from a visit to Saigon and he gave me a video tape quite unlike any other video tapes that I already have of Saigon and Vietnam (and I have plenty).

This video tape shows the 24/7 street scenes of Saigon life -- a city that never sleeps -- a harsh world with little mercy.
Continue reading (if you are not too sensitive) and maybe I can get across what real poverty is like ... and maybe you will have a better understanding of why so many discount nail people have so little concern for the rules and regulations.

The tape shows the hospital where my wife was born ... what a pigpen a vets business would be cleaner.... now a days the government has a new policy ..... only 2 children allowed .... anymore and they strongly encourage you to abort. There is also a visit to an orphanage (one of our nail tech friends came from an orphanage ... brought out of the country when she was 16 to be adopted by a couple in PA ... that kind of thing affects you for life .... she is a nice person, but one soon notices that she is not an attentive mother to her own children). By the way, most all the orphanages over there are supported by American organizations. And there are far too few spaces for all the orphans .... the street are crawling with them ... they live and eat and grow up and sleep on the streets.
(( yes the foreign funded orphanages are very clean, like heaven compared to the streets .... just that they need so many more of them if they were to take in all of the orphans))

Drive the less traveled boulevards at night ... filled with street walkers. In one mile the tape must have seen 500 street walkers .... there are thousands of them .... and they taped the inside of a brothel .... the thing that you notice in a truly poor country is that there are no unattractive prostitutes ... the competition is too fierce .... they are all young and beautiful and as numerous as leaves on a tree.

The food and restaurant scenes are something else ... everything is eaten in poor societies .... witness the butchering and preparation of dogs, snakes, turtles, 18 inch long lizards ...... Yet fruit and vegetables are plentiful and cheap and displayed and sold in abundance. The street markets are filled with produce from the countryside ..... at night they replenish for the coming day .... activity never stops ....

So much prepared food is served from push carts. Few actually own the food push carts. A rich owner booth rents them out .... at night the carts are loaded with foods at the main terminal and the renters that them out throughout the city .... they must split their take with the cart/business owner.
Same for most of the bicycle pedicabs .... they are rented ... and most all of the drivers have no home, but live and eat and sleep on their rented pedicab.

The sidewalks and doorways and nooks and crannies are filled with these food workers at night ... sleeping where ever there is space .... they have no homes ... no sinks ... no toilets ... no beds ... no showers ..... they sleep on the street and serve food the next day.

I have lived here in the south for most of my life and never seen those infamous cock fights ... but they are on the Saigon tape .... they tape a sharp pointed hook to the cocks backside of their feet (only time on the tape that I saw a nail file used ... used to sharpen the hook) ... and fight em to the death.

Do you get it? There are no laws to stop it. No rules that you and I are accustomed to ... no society protecting the individual. It is a lot more of a dog eat dog world than you our I have ever been exposed to.

In one restaurant the serving and the bartender staff is all female and I asked my wife .... hey some of those girls look to be about 14 years old ... my wife said yes, they are. There is no law that says a child cannot work as a bartender.

Then there are the handicapped. Born without sight ... born without arms .... have lost a foot of a leg. My little girls watched a young boy born without arms and how he used his toes to feed himself .... he lives on the street with other homeless boys.
Oh and the trash pickers ... going through the trashcans and the gutters and the marketplaces and the riversides searching for anything that can be recycled ... worth only pennies ... it is a huge business .... they gather together their bags of trash at the collection points to be paid. Tons of it eventually gets shipped to Japan to made into new beer cans, new bottles, new plastic containers.

My wife explained to the kids about the thousands and thousands that live aboard rundown boats in the rivers and in the canals .... that they pee in the water, that they po in the water, that that bathe in the water, that they drink the water.

Personal services. Available on the street. Want a massage in the evening after a hard days work. They lay a blanket on the sidewalk under a streetlamp. Lay down get your massage. It is a kind of twist, roll, pinch, chop, pound type of massage .... they also do the face and the little glass cups. Little glass cups .. my wife does that too. Got a cotton ball soaked in alcohol on a metal stick, burning. Pass it into a glass cup to heat it and then place the cup on the back. The heat causes a vacuum and sucks up the flesh..... pulls the blood to the skin surface.
Haircut ... on the street. No electric clippers thank you ... the old fashion squeeze and clip kind.
Ear cleaning ( I once had it done ) on the street ....they use a very unsanitary implement to painfully dig out the ear war .... ummmh.
Want a street pedicure .. yes you can get one .... just terrible ... you would need to see the tape to see how gross it is.

I can't recall everything ... I'll probably come back and add more later if I watch the tape again.
Oh the duck eggs .... my wife eats the duck eggs here in the states ... she loves em .... my kids used to eat em but like them less as they grow older. These are duck eggs with a little baby duck inside them ... boil them and crack em open and eat em with a spoon. I can't.

My wife kids me about this ... but she knows those who did it and she will agree ( I'm old and fat and not easy to get along with but ) I could fly to Saigon tomorrow and arrange a marriage with a beautiful, educated 20 year old girl with no problem. So many are that desperate to escape .... and they all think that America is the famous "Gold Mountain" of oriental legend.

So what I am saying that there is a background that influences how so many in the discount nail biz operate. They never had taxes in Vietnam, so they go the great lengths to avoid declaring taxable income here.
They paid bribes ... to postal workers, street cops, mailman, for an official papers .... so have the state board fine them an small amount here and okay, they figure it is just a cost of doing business... doesn't stop them.
Laws protecting workers.... they never had that.
Laws protecting children .... nada.
Laws protecting customers .... no.
Sanitation ... they really don't know the meaning of the word.

Vietnamese immigrants are a group that has a huge proportion of TB.
Vietnamese immigrants are a group that has a sky high percentage infected with Hepatitis B.
Combine those facts with their ignorance of sanitation .... and you bet I think that the public is foolish to take the risk of getting cut by a discount shop nail worker.
But the public doesn't understand about the risk.

Please be aware that I am not trying to condemn a group of people .... I am married into this group of people.
But maybe I can help you know why they operate the way that they do ... and why their lower prices never will be worth the sanitation/health risk.

And knowledge is power ... and you can form your own response to people who ask .. "hey why do you charge me more for nails than the discount shop?"

PS: I don't like to stereotype. I have other articles on this web site explaining the difference between discount shops and POORWORK ((NSS) discount shops. Other articles about the discount nail business segment.

There is a growing number of discount nail shops that are licensed and clean and paying more and more attention to the rules and regulations and to quality nail services and to correct sanitation procedures.

But of course, how does the average nail customer know if the are walking into a 'good' discount nail shop or are walking into a 'bad' discount nail shop.

However, at this point in time, I feel that the majority of discount nail shops are lacking ... that the majority should be classified as POORWORK or NSS.

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