>Vietnam seems much more open. Their internet is largely open and accessible. Even easy to register sims. They have no quarantine or vaccine requirements for entry or visa etc.
This is patently false. I do not know what time period you went to Vietnam but recently their country literally went into lockdown and did not open until much later. They still require proof of vaccination to enter the country and I was told to present my ID and visa before I was allowed to get a sim card. They also blocked many social media and news sites like BBC. Any content remotely critical of the party over there is blocked and their authors arrested. It is very reminiscent of early China.
They definitely can ramp it up once they get their hands on more surveillance tech.
I was in Vietnam last month. I also work in IT and had both my personal and work laptop with me. I waited to reply because i still had friends in country at the time.
There is no proof of vaccination required and hasnt been since at least the beginning of this year.
I did not notice any blocks of internet on Viettel (and BBC is in my news feeds).
I would periodically hop on a VPN i own and use Firefox Focus if i was googling something that the government may have viewed as controversial. But I wasnt given a reason to, I am just a bit of a privacy freak and assume they are logging traffic.
And the sim card did not require any ID. When we arrived one of our friends handed them out, about 10 of them to all of us. I even went as far as to call and upgrade it to a higher plan as 1GB/day wasnt sufficient.
This is patently false. I do not know what time period you went to Vietnam but recently their country literally went into lockdown and did not open until much later. They still require proof of vaccination to enter the country and I was told to present my ID and visa before I was allowed to get a sim card. They also blocked many social media and news sites like BBC. Any content remotely critical of the party over there is blocked and their authors arrested. It is very reminiscent of early China.
They definitely can ramp it up once they get their hands on more surveillance tech.