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The Monocle Daily
How the US-Iran war is casting a shadow over the Brics foreign minister meeting in India
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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first
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broadcast on the 14th of May, 2026 on Monocle Radio.
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The BRICS foreign ministers meet in India. But how allied is the alliance? Why won't the United States leave Cuba alone? And is the UK about to get its seventh prime minister since the Brexit referendum of 2016? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello, and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Caroline Frost and Vincent Mcevany will discuss the day's big stories. And we'll hear from regular Daily panelist Ash Bardwaj in Vietnam. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Caroline Frost, the writer, journalist and broadcaster, and by Vincent McEvany, the political reporter and regular Monocle Radio politics commentator. Hello to you both.
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Hello.
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Hello.
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Vincent, you have recently been in Manchester, a dateline to which we shall be returning for reasons pertaining to a possible change at 10 Downing street. But you were not in fact there furiously researching a profile of Andy Burnham.
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A
No, I wasn't. I was at Arrow Park Hospital, which is where the hantavirus evacuees, 22 of them, crew and passengers from the ship had been evacuated to. It had a sort of weird echo of the start of the pandemic because that's where our Wuhan evacuees were.
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So have we been incredibly clever inviting you into a small, enclosed, airtight well
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out of the hospital? Don't worry, don't worry. Just lives outside. But, yeah, so far. So 22 of them, none of them have tested positive. They're all going now into a, after an initial three days in the hospital of 42 days of isolation, but they're going to get 10 new self isolators from the British overseas territories of St Helena and Ascension island because the ship docked there as well. So a little bit of seeing kind of a public health system at its finest, this sort of international cooperation that's going on with all the countries trying to deal with this.
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Caroline, you have been, as I understand it, doing something which sounds remarkably old school. You have been dealing with a magazine letters page. Do such things still actually exist?
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The joy of it, when all around us is chaos and unrest and I stick my nose into the. I'm not going to call it the trough. It's a joyful treasure chest of people's complaints about what they see on TV So if I tell you that a recent Jane Austen period drama caught the ire of a reader who wrote in to tell me that the sonata that was playing couldn't have been played in 1811 because it wasn't composed until 1818, don't you know today's treasure? Somebody writing in to complain about cookery programs and chefs who use the word crispy. The word is crisp. There is no need for the why.
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I think that's a fair point. I mean, how are you receiving these missives? Are people still literally putting green ink to paper?
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Is there is some green ink?
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There was always some.
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When I get the envelope with my name on it, I do sometimes ask somebody else to open it, just in case. No, but generally these people have got very old school complaints in new school technology.
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Genuinely heartwarming. We will start with bricks, the acronym, not the clay blocks which may well constitute your house. Efforts to make bricks, a thing have been ongoing since Maybe the late 1990s, originally around emerging powers Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Six more countries have been welcomed recently. Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. So it's technically now brics. U E I E I Come on, invite Oman and at least make this fun for everyone. The foreign ministers of the grouping are meeting in New Delhi. High on the agenda will be Iran, about which there may be disagreement among the delegates. Vincent, how much of a thing is BRICS really? Is it time?
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I mean, in the words seriously mean girls, stop trying to make brics happen. Every year they kind of get together with mad plans, things about like, you know, having EU style alignment or a kind of single currency or all sorts. And it is, I think, just a bit of a circus. And my favorite fun fact about it is it actually came about for those that think, you know, banks rule the world. The term BRICS originated from a Goldman Sachs economic report in 2001 by Jim O' Neill and then the countries themselves sort of co opted it. So, you know, it is quite a weird organization.
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Caroline. This might be an unusually lively gathering because since they last met, at least one member, that is Iran, has bombed. Two other members, that is Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of whom according to some reports, have also streamed truck back.
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Oh my goodness. So the dinner table seating will be a diplomatic challenge, bar none. Yes, I mean, I suppose the good news is is that they are all in a room. You haven't got a sort of Khrushchev esque walking out. Nobody is yet slamming shoes on tables. Perhaps we should be pleased that this meeting is happening despite, as you say, somewhat conflicting channels going on elsewhere in the world. But, yes, you're also right that there is an enormous amount of conflict and more than a dozen stakeholders. I mean, every single one of those countries that you've mentioned has got skin in this game. And of course, since they last met, we've had the escalation in Gaza and the Israel, Gaza conflict. We've now obviously got Iran and Iran. Well, I mean, so far, the summit has included the foreign Minister saying, please, please, will you exert your power on the US to pull back? So they've presented themselves in the room as not quite the victim, but certainly the poor rel. And it'll be interesting how that is dealt with because, of course, all of them will be having the US Leaders on speed dial in the back room as we speak.
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And the other thing to factor in about the other complicating factor is, you know, India had continued throughout all these years of the Ukraine war being a big customer of Russian oil. And then they sort of, in some, some of the readings, they inadvertently but definitely did sign up to a US Trade agreement which saw them blocked from buying Russian oil earlier this year, which obviously Russia isn't too happy about. There has been a sort of reprieve recently by the Trump administration since the breakout of the Iran war. But that is another, you know, it is a really awkward dinner table conversation.
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I mean, just to follow that up, though, on the subject of awkward dinner table conversations, Vincent, if there's one thing that everybody at this thing other than Iran has in common is that they would like the Strait of Hormuz opened as soon as you possibly can, please. As Caroline correctly notes, Iran has pitched up trying to portray itself as the victim in all this, but it is ultimately, as Iran has demonstrated, up to Iran, who comes and goes via that strait.
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Yeah, totally. And, you know, they can't, they can play the victim card publicly all they want, but I think all of these countries know from their own intelligence agencies that Iran is a nefarious and bad actor in the region. And, you know, and basically that it sort of was very easy for Netanyahu to sort of lure Trump into this war. And that, you know, because of Iran's actions, because of, you know, support for Hamas and Hezboll, it was clear that Netanyahu was very, you know, for years had been working on Trump to get him to this point, and he was going to tip him over the line to this. So I think the conversation, particularly with Donald Trump Being in China at the moment is, you know, long meetings that we've heard, double the length that they were expected to be with Xi initially. He will be putting huge pressure on Xi to, you know, tell Iran to get the strait open. And I think that will be going straight to the brics. Straight the that pressure will be direct to that dinner table at the brics.
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Dare we hope, Caroline, that everybody does gang up on Iran to great effect? Or is this going to be, as I suspect brics summits often are more a nice outing for everybody after which everyone collects their tote bags and flies home again.
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But the stakes are unprecedentedly high, aren't they, because of these absolutely escalating fuel prices around the world. I mean, we'll get to another story which has had knock on implications. And so I think it's in everyone's interest. It'll be interesting to see how strong a set of cards Iran is holding in its hand. I mean, yes, okay, so they agree to open that strait and perhaps oil prices come down, we can all breathe easy and not look at economic crises the world over. But what will they get in return? Because as Henry Kissinger said, it's not a deal unless it's a win win.
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Well, indeed. Just finally on this one, Vincent, we came into this chortling a bit about the idea of brics and people have been trying to make it happen without success for decades. But in fairness too, BRICS, of those six countries that have, well, 11 countries that are now members, those six which have joined more recently have all joined in the last two years. There has been a bit of a rush aboard this bandwagon. Why would anybody want to be involved in this talking shop?
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I mean, that is a really good question for some of them. They think that the world, you know, after the American century, that they think that this century that we're in now is definitely going back to being a sort of multipolar one of global powers, that China is well and truly on the rise and that this is a forum to align yourselves with China and try to play both sides. And some of these countries know that they're not going to get much traction in Europe because of their human rights records or, you know, other, you know, corruption issues. And so why not sort of band together and get close to China at the same time?
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Well, to Cuba now, which has featured more than once in the fantasies of US President Donald Trump of adding a 51st star to the Spangled Banner before he is done. Cuba has, by the estimations of its own energy minister Vicente della Olivi run completely dry of diesel and fuel oil, the result of a US blockade of the island and or the American capture in January of President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, which was Cuba's principal oil supplier. Cuba has some energy resources of its own, oil, gas, solar, but not enough to keep the country's lights on. Caroline, with all due acknowledgement that this is a question that could have been asked about US Policy towards Cuba at pretty much any point in about the last 80 years. Is it clear why the US is doing this?
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Because Donald Trump needed to fill an hour between breakfast TV and the Gulf in the afternoon. I mean, it's very, very strange. He has said he wants to be the president who has the honor of taking Cuba. I'm not quite sure how that fits with him also wanting to be the president with the honor of earning the Nobel Peace Prize, because it doesn't seem to be very pe for what he's doing. It's a humanitarian crisis in, in the starting and we've not even heard the worst of it. I'm fascinated that this has come to pass and it's barely made the news headlines. It's so low down on, on particular, well, you know, certainly European interests, and yet it's an absolute disaster. It'll be interesting to see, of course, in times gone by, Cuba has made the phone call to bigger, stronger friends of theirs and we've managed to. Everybody walks away from the cliff edge. It'll be interesting to see what happens this time around.
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Well, I mean, I know we give Donald Trump a lot of credit for a lot of chaos around the world, but I've got to say there is someone behind all this, and it's Marco Rubio. This for him is a lifelong ambition. He is a Cuban American. He has always wanted to take down the regime in Cuba. I think he only got Trump on board with doing Venezuela because his end game was to cut off Cuba. If he does do that and there is some kind of massive change in the island because of this collapse with the energy, he is going to have secured himself the nomination. He will have won the Latino vote around America. He will have huge. The sort of Cuban American backers in Florida will swing behind him, that money will come in and he'll be sort of hailed as a bit of a hero. And it's probably the biggest for a Secretary of state, sort of the biggest kind of development that one's done in decades.
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Is there no sense that that's all very well for the Cuban Americans, but for the Cuban. Cubans in the meantime, it's an absolute tragedy.
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Oh, I'm not taking away from that at all.
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I'm just interested that he wouldn't factor that in.
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I think he thinks, look, if you should have got out, I think his attitude would be you should have gotten out before now. If you haven't done and if you're still there, you're sort of supplicant to the regime and you're happy to let it go. And that's it. Because, you know, over the last decade, there's hundreds of thousands of Cubans have left as things have got worse. And I think he just thinks they're going to have to grit and bear it.
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I mean, do we suspect nevertheless, Caroline, that in Trump's head there is still this idea of enlarging the territory of the United States on his watch? I mean, he may have got the two countries muddled up, who knows? But he did very recently post an image of South America with the US Flag overlaying the territory of Venezuela.
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Well, we also know that, I mean, if he's capable of commissioning architects to devise a new Tel Aviv strip in the middle of that conflict, I am sure that there is an equal and opposite strip being built, or at least designed to go down the main high street of Havana. I mean, Trump is a commercial person, he's using politics as his Paradigm, as his M.O. but he's ultimately a man with his eye on the main chance, isn't it? I mean, I appreciate the fact you have to ask to explain what Trump thinks he's up to, but we've had bigger brains than mine. Political commentators like Vincent having to apply all their serious chops to something that isn't is an unserious case study. And that makes it very difficult.
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But nonetheless, could this get serious? Vincent, however weird it might seem that Donald Trump of all presidents, would wish to annex an island of 11 million broadly left leaning, Spanish speaking Hispanics.
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I mean, yeah, it could get really serious. And I think that the problem is, you know, had, for instance, I think the Cuban regime collapsed under any other US President, a plan would swing into place for humanitarian aid and you would see those USAID bags going in.
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Hearts and minds.
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Yeah, hearts and minds, exactly. It would be about winning the people over. Trump, if he does manage this on his watch, is going to be triumphalist and he's not going to be interested in sending them aid. He will simply want, as we said, to see it as a land deal, to exact as much as he can from them and to use it as a distraction if Iran is going badly or if the Epstein files flare up again, he's just going to use it like that. He's not going to come up with an effective plan to try to transition it into some kind of kindly neighbour that gets on well with the us.
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I mean, there is just finally on this, Caroline, there are one or two historical pretexts for American military action being taken against Cuba on somewhat dubious pretexts, but nonetheless, trying to conjure one in this instance would be a reach even for Trump, wouldn't it? I mean, this Cuba is not by any definition a threat to the United States right now.
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No, in the history of Cuba, it is at a benign plateau. But of course, we know that if Trump is a master of anything, it is reverse engineering and it is making up reasons on the fly while walking from his seat to the press section of Air Force One.
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Well, here in the United Kingdom, it would appear to be officially on vis a vis a challenge to Prime Minister Sakir Starmer for leadership of the governing Labour Party, and with it, the keys to 10 Downing Street Secretary of State for Health Wes Streeting, one of the principal pretenders, resigned earlier today, setting up the prospect of a leadership contest, possibly also to involve former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, among perhaps others. Starmer insists he is not done, though his numbers are horrible, which is kind of how we got here. According to YouGov, 22% of his fellow citizens think he is doing well, 70% badly. Vincent, first of all, what do that 70% actually want from him other than to go?
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I mean, this is the problem. Is it now an impossible job being Prime Minister of this country? This country has been divided, you know, a decade ago on Brexit. And you've also had, you know, you had the 2008 crisis, you had Austerity, you had Brexit, you had Covid, you had Liz Truss, you had Boris Johnson. It has been a sort of almost now 20 years of feeling like perma chaos.
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It's been quite a wild ride.
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It's been quite a wild ride. And I think that people feel pretty exhausted and our patience with prime ministers has really gone. But it is alarming now that, you know, you're only given two years to. Not even two years, in Keir Sama's case, to turn things around. And even with the best one in the world, if he had greater communication skills and was able to spin a better narrative and maybe had a bit more of the. The X factor, the charisma the magic stuff, the realities of what he's facing is still very much high inflation, international chaos, war in Europe, war in the Middle east, you know, the idea that any magic person could come in and we saw this, you know, this kind of magical thinking in the pandemic, that Boris Johnson would sort it all out. Well, no, that's not in the power of a Prime Minister anym, because just
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today, and I'm sure this irony is probably not amusing the Prime Minister right now, there's been quite good results for NHS waiting lists, the economy, jobs numbers, immigration. Net immigration is way down for people who are wound up by that kind of thing. Why doesn't any of that stuff stick?
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Because, well, all sorts of reasons which we touched on earlier while we were discussing this is one of the main reasons I'd like to highlight is that the right wing press, press have it in for the relatively left wing Prime Minister and so he doesn't get the luxury of say, I don't know, FDR post Wall street crash, where he can disappear into the bunker of 10 Downing street and come out with a two year plan that everybody implements. Instead we've got this relentless, tireless news cycle and what used to be filled with political journalism and policy scrutiny. And as you say, perhaps highlighting some of these successes has become effectively what used to be a diary column of who's been seen going into which room discussing who. It's, I mean it's like Love island in there. It's, it's, it's cheap and it's cheap journalism and it's, it has a cost to our democracy and that's what we're seeing. We're seeing Keir Starmer doing what Barack Obama had to do with Sarah Palin, which is that every single news cycle is just governed by having to deal with what Nigel said about what Andy did because Angela told him to.
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I mean, we were discussing upstairs earlier, Vincent trying to think of people who had come back from apparently impossible positions to make a successful career in politics. And we did think of a few. John Major, who won an election that he was not expected to win in 1990, exactly challenged his own party in 95 to back him or sack him, ended up staying in 97 and I think has actually become remembered by posterity, certainly relative to a lot of what followed him as an actually pretty good Prime Minister in the circumstances and decent
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human being as well. And a lot of things that he didn't get credit for at the time. Getting really the path to the Good Friday Agreement going, you know, Lots of other things that he did, you know, introducing the National Lottery, sorting out Olympic funding. There were things that he implemented at the time that took years to kind of come through.
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We also thought Caroline, from my own home country of John Howard, who at one point during yet another of his apparently terminal disappointments, said he wouldn't ever be coming back because he said that it would be like Lazarus with a triple bypass. He went on to become Australia's second longest server. Prime Minister Joe Biden, written off repeatedly like his first run for president in 1988, crashed and burned when he got rumbled stealing lines from Neil Kinnock and yet ended up doing a lot.
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I'm not sure that Joe Biden will be bringing the comfort that Keir Starmer needs right now.
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I mean, granted, it took him a while.
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It didn't end well. He got there. Well, Keir Starmer got there relatively quickly. And I mean, unlike so many of these people like Andy Burnham, Keir Starmer has a political a, a professional hinterland. You know, he, he does know about people out there because he has defended them in court and he has prosecuted them. So he does know about real life in a way that some of these, these young used to be whippersnappers now turned into sort of, they've bypassed being political leaders and they've become elder statesmen of the party. I do cite, I include Andy Burnham in that. It's very, very easy to snipe from the sidelines and decide from whether that Keir Sama is either too left for some of them and clearly too right to fight off reform, you know, for the other lots. So I mean, careful what you wish for, folks, because we haven't had a grown up in 10 Downing street for a very long time and we have one and they are basically chasing him
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out with a broom, as Caroline has correctly intimated. Vincent, the media's insatiable desire for grounds for inane speculation is very possibly a big part of the problem. Nevertheless, I will conclude this item by asking you, intern you first, Vincent, to speculate inanely, is Starmer going to survive a leadership challenge? And if he doesn't, who is the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
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I sort of learned long ago not to make these kinds of predictions. But I will just pick up on a point that you made that a lot of Labour MPs might be forgetting in their rush to replace him, that in the last 50 years, aside from Keir Starmer, there's only one other Labour leader that's won an election, Tony Blair.
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There.
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Whereas you've had multiple Tory leaders win an election and now that paradigm of the two of them is broken. We're going into the unknown with the rise of sort of the Greens and reform and Labour has only won elections when it has been in the center. And it can go a bit left of the center. Sure. But if it does something really radical, then as much as it, you know, thinks that that's what it's. That's what people want. It might be what the members want, but the general public, they've definitely shifted. So if this does kick off, Andy Burnham has to win this by election first in order to have this race. Keir Starmer seems up for a fight. He's not throwing the towel in and he does sort of do better when he is under pressure. We will see whether. And I think the wider context has to be if this quote unquote, ceasefire collapses in Iran and we're back to full scale war, we really still haven't. We talk about the sort of we're going to run out of jet fuel and this is going to happen and these supplies are draining. We haven't got enough fertiliser. We haven't even felt the real shockwaves yet of what's going to happen economically with the strait Hormuz being closed for this long. And it might seem indulgent for Labour to be having a lengthy leadership crisis whilst the world is on fire. And they'll get punished for it.
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Indeed. So, Caroline, going further to what Vincent was pointing out, the last British Prime Minister, I looked this up earlier, to win a majority for his party at a general election and serve a full term. Tony Blair in 20 2001. We're a quarter of a century away from that. So I will leave on that happy thought. Does Starmer survive, Caroline? And if not, who succeeds him?
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I'm going to say I hope he does because for all the reasons that Vincent has.
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You're one of the 22%.
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I am. I think that there is a majority of 413. Is it? And if they, if he just keeps his nerve, I really, I, I'm, I have. I'm a Starmer, Stan. I have been talking about him for a long time and saying, I wish people knew more about everything he's done in his life. Get to this point. He could be. He's a barrister, he's a. Is he a kc? He could be absolutely sitting back working for a bank, counting his millions. And he is down there in the bunker day in, day out because he believes in trying to do well by this country. And I just think we need to be really, really careful what we wish for.
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C
Well, to South Korea now, where it seems that inflation is afflicting the protocol surrounding wedding gifts. It has long been standard practice to present the happy couple with a cash gift of 50,000 won, which shakes at about €30. This is being steadily supplanted by a new norm of 100,000 won. You can do the rest of the arithmetic yourselves. The average outlay on other wedding gifts is also creeping upwards more globally and with due acknowledgement that in most consumer fields it is possible to find authoritative research confirming whatever topic on a current affairs discussion program you are trying to stand up. There are suggestions that expensive weddings and associated beanos such as stag and or hendoos are waning somewhat in popularity. Caroline, first of all, do you have a hot tip for wedding gifts? Do you have a go to for wedding gifts?
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B
Oh, goodness me. I always think of my mother in my ear saying the bigger the wedding, the shorter the marriage. When I read reports like this go to wedding present. I think probably it used to be sort of trail finders, vouchers. Oh, go fly together, go off, I'll pay for your, for your trip where you discover just how little you have in common. No, I can't say that I do. I'm very traditional in that. So sense.
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C
The scorching hot tip I will pass along because I thought it was brilliant. A wedding I attended many, many, many years ago. Their tip for gifts was like, we've been living together for ages. Like we've got a house and all the stuff you need for a house. If everybody, each of you brings us just one really fancy bottle of wine to enable us to like stock up like a properly good seller. Yeah, I thought that, I thought that was smart thinking.
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Okay. I mean my go to is I go for a picnic basket because I think it's something that people don't buy themselves girls. And it's a bit of a, like it's quite jolly. They'll use it for different events kind of in the decades. It's not something you ever need to replace. Yeah, exactly. It lives on.
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B
I, I can I tell you that I went to a wedding in Moscow. I mean, no expense spared. The, the maitre d was in fact a very well known high profile TV presenter that they hired for the day. So that was the level on which they were operating. And there's this Russian custom where a piece of cake is served up and you have to bid for it and the Bid becomes the dowry and helps join the sort of the fund for the newlyweds. And my friend had drunk so much Russian caviar and vodka that he misunderstood and he just said. They said. Right, so any bids? Who's going to start? Obviously you're meant to say about 10 drachma and it's meant to go up for the next two happy hours. And he just said $500 and that was the end of the game.
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C
Yeah, that's like. It's like waving at someone at an auction. You never ever do that. See, I have reached the point in life at which Vincent, the only weddings I'm attending are those of friends who are game to go round the second or perhaps third time.
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B
Oh, Andrew.
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C
So I don't know what the most recent ones you've attended are, but has it been your observation that they are getting any more or less extravagant?
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A
I think less extravagant, more individual is what I would say. Interesting.
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C
Interesting.
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A
No two weddings really the same anymore. I think there are different. I go to sort of British weddings and I go to Irish weddings and there's definite difference there in Ireland, I mean like the minimum buy in is an envelope with about €250 of cash. I mean it's not like a gift lift. It's like there'll be a post box and everyone will give that because it's normally quite a big effect. I mean you're talking about going to weddings where there's like 300 or so people because the size of families are storming.
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B
That will effectively pay for the wedding.
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A
It basically does. Basically kind of.
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C
So is the hot tip here if you're going to get married, marry an Irish person?
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A
Quite possibly, yeah. Because you know you're bankrupt. But no, I think I don't feel like they're getting lavisher. I think there is a bit of a reining in of the like, let's go away and spend a load of money on the stag or the hen that seems to have died off a little bit and it's more kind of staycationly. But I think they're definitely. You know, every wedding I've gone to in recent years has been totally unique and I think very befitting to the couple themselves.
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C
Caroline, on that thought of the sort of epic away weekend or week or whatever, stag or hendo. I know a sizable number of cases of friendships genuinely sundered over that over. Either because the trip itself turned out to be an absolute disaster and everybody had a rotten time or people massively resented the just the assumption that they were willing to take off five days and spend a fortune.
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B
It's a political hot potato now how much to spend, whether the, especially if
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they're doing destination weddings again, the double
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B
that is is so and, and you don't know whether who's paying for the hotel, who's paying for the flights. You know, it's, it is a real hot potato. And I think you're so much better off, as you say, reaching into the individual. I mean the best wedding I ever went to was a couple who had the match of the day theme as they walked down the aisle just because they both, they met at a football ground and it was important to them that cost, well, I've probably blown it now. They probably pay some royalties. But it was a very relatively low key wedding and, and yet beautiful and memorable.
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C
Well, on that uplifting note, Caroline Frost and Vincent McEvany, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, it is 30 years since Vietnam lifted freedom of movement restrictions for tourists. And today the country is a tourism giant. Vietnamese cuisine is now a global hit. And the social media icon that is Train Street, a narrow road where visitors brush shoulders with an actual train which runs directly through it, has only increased international attention. So how has the country's self perception and the tourism market evolved, evolved over the last three decades? Ash Bardwaj sent us this report speaking to some of the original tour guides as well as their modern day successors. And he included of course, a visit to the infamous Train Street. Let's have a listen.
- [30:43]
D
I'm in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam because this year marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of Audley Travel, now one of the world's largest bespoke tour operators. And they began with trips to Vietnam back at a time when it wasn't on most tourists radar. Not long after they began those trips, the Vietnamese government lifted movement restrictions for foreign visitors. And that led to a tourism boom that has shown no sign of slowing down since then. I'm looking around with Long Lee Long is a guide who's been working with Audley since those very early tours. Because I interested to learn how tourism in Vietnam has evolved in that time and how tourism has changed Vietnam.
- [31:30]
E
That is a big question. You know, it changed a lot. It jumped from, you know, just a couple of hundred thousand tourists into last year we had something like 23 million tourists visiting Vietnam which is an amazing number. We usually to have traditional nationalities visiting Vietnam such as French Americans from other English speaking countries. But now we have tourists from all over the world, we have the biggest number of tourists coming from a very friendly country to Vietnam, which is China, and then South Korea, Taiwanese, Japanese, and American. And I have to say, people, now everyone is going to Vietnam. I mean, you know, the one who like traveling. And what is change in Hanoi? The one big thing is the trans straight, you know, which is a piece of 300 tons of metal on the move at the speed of 50 km, being like few inches away from you. And that is not only a watch, it is a feeling, you know, I mean, you discover some Hanoi which is different than normal. And you also can do something adventurous, like by being that close to the train. And to be honest, officially it is not legal.
- [32:59]
D
In the mid 2010s, a photographer running photography workshops in Hanoi came to a narrow alleyway where there's a train track. And the train runs through that alleyway, and there's a couple of feet either side of the train to the houses where people lived. It was a fairly deprived area back then, but once those images ended up on YouTube and Instagram, every tourist coming to Hanoi wanted to come to what became known as Train Street. The people that lived here, that was an opportunity. One or two of them started to sell coffees and beers. The tourists who wanted to watch the train go past in this very dramatic location. And then everyone else saw an opportunity. And today there is a thriving community, thriving industry, thriving economy around people coming to sit and watch a train go past inches from their face, taking photos and videos and uploading it to their own social media. Every now and again, the police in Hanoi tried to. To shut it down for safety reasons. But this has changed the lives of the people that live here. And it's just an interesting example of the intersection of opportunity, tourism, travel, how it can change lives.
- [34:14]
F
My name is Harry.
- [34:15]
D
This is your home, is it?
- [34:17]
F
Yes, it is. Yeah. This is my place. Yeah.
- [34:19]
D
So it's changed a lot since you grown up.
- [34:21]
F
It's changed a lot. I mean, like, thanks for the social media. Like, some videos went viral. So a lot of tourists, they know this place after that video. So somehow this place is very chaos when the train is about to come.
- [34:38]
D
Looking up and down the train track, I can see these buildings that are like 2, 3 meters from the train and the people that live here. There's shops all over the bottom floor selling coffee, selling beer, selling food, selling T shirts. So it must have really changed life for the people that live here.
- [34:56]
F
Yes, it is. It's changed a lot. Like. Like back in, like, just five or six Years ago, like all the people who live in here, they had the recent job like at the office or like whatever they did. And when they see like a lot of tourists come here, they see an opportunity to do the business at home, which, which is like they don't need to pay for the rent, they don't need to pay for the stuff or anything like that. They just need to arrange a little bit on the first floor to customize it to look like a shop and then the business gonna stop.
- [35:27]
D
So it's created opportunity. Tourism has brought something.
- [35:30]
F
I mean it's quite good like for me and for the other people, local people, they feel like a little bit annoying for the people who doesn't do the business business at home. But when we do the business in here, we take responsible for every single one who sit or stand in our property. So to make sure like everyone in a safety spot and every now and
- [35:51]
D
again they close it. But is that, how is that for you guys? It's like you lose business when that happens.
- [35:57]
F
If they close the train street. So yes, we will lose the business. We have to do the other things like find another job or start a new business like that. But you know, it's just a plan. It's already have a plan since 2009. Now 2022, 2026, you see, everything is still here, even like the old buildings, old houses is still here. They. They threaten us, they're gonna demolish the whole area. They're gonna remove the old business and the shop, something like that. But like nothing happened yet. So we are here happy for now. We're still happy for now.
- [36:33]
D
So for you guys, you're glad that people are coming here to see this?
- [36:36]
F
Yes, of course I'm glad. Like, come on, just bring more tourists. Come here.
- [36:41]
C
From tonight's premiere of the Urbanist, that was Ash Bardwaj reporting for Monocle in Vietnam. That is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Caroline Frost and Vincent McEvany. The show was produced by Tom Webb and researched by Josefina Astrid Nagla Gomez El Sando engineer was Christy o'. Grady. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.