We're always ready.

Born ready, yo.

Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

If you listened to Marketplace at all last week, you probably heard some stories from Vietnam about the country's changing economy.

They were part of Marketplaces series, The Age of Work, which has been going on for a couple of years now,

and it's looking at what shifting demographics mean for a country's labor market and overall economic power.

In this case, the team went to Vietnam. So we wanted to bring Kai on

to give us a little behind the scenes and share some of his takeaways from the trip. As you all know,

Kai Rizdahl is the host of Marketplace and former host of this very show. Kai, welcome back.

Thank you. It's good to be back.

What was Vietnam like? Had you ever been before?

We, my wife and I were there. When we were stationed in China with the Foreign Service,

we went down to Hanoi for a long weekend. But that was a very long time ago.

And I'll tell you what, 30 years in the life of a country and an economy makes a huge difference.

So I had been there before, but not to Ho Chichimun City, which used to be called Saigon down south.

And what was it like?

So when we were there, it was, let's see, in no particular order chaotic fascinating crowded and um uh a little bit um well yeah

actually interesting it's warm but not as humid as you would think very okay completely randomly

i was expecting crazy humidity um but it was it, there was commerce all over the place.

And it was just, it was really interesting to see.

It was out on the street.

It was right on from you.

...