Vietnam is blessed with free wifi at nearly any cafe even if it doesn't always work as advertised, like most things in Vietnam. Vietnam is also blessed with cafes on nearly every block. So finding a wireless access point to get online is pretty easy for anyone traveling or living in Vietnam.

Hackers can see what websites you're visiting and then log into those websites as you

The problem is security. Many times cafe owners will leave their wifi access points completely open without needing a password to get on. This makes it basically trivial for a hacker to sniff the airwaves and see everything on the network. If you are on such a network you should secure your connection with an SSH tunnel or a VPN.

If they do have a password, they may be using older security schemes like WEP or WPA, rather than WPA2. Without WPA2 or more secure systems that require the network owner setting up an authentication server (too much to ask for any cafe owner) it is also possible to break the encryption.

Security setting: WPA2

For now, insist on at least WPA2. If you're setting up wifi at your house and you don't want people to sniff your traffic, use WPA2 with a long random password and be sure to change the SSID from the default network name provided by the manufacturer. (The reason that using a default SSID is less secure is that rainbow tables exist for these, making password cracking potentially easy.)

Using WPA2 means that it's harder for crackers to guess your network's password and then either use your network connection or sniff your traffic. But if you give out your password, anyone with the password can do the same. With WPA2 it's harder for other people to sniff your traffic, but there are ways (ARP poisoning) around it. You should thus still create an encrypted connection (for normal people I would recommend using a VPN) to an outside server and tunnel your traffic over that connection.

Besides sniffing your traffic, a hacker who steals your cookies can then login to websites which you're currently logged in by pretending to be your computer. So they could post on Facebook as you, send emails as you from Gmail, or worse.

MAC Address Filtering

What else can you do on your home wifi network? Since you usually know what computers you want to allow to access the wifi router, you can set it so only known computers are allowed on the network by using MAC address filtering. The MAC address the hardware address built into your wireless card or in the wireless hardware of a laptop and it's very difficult to lie about what your MAC address is so this will help keep the riff raff out.

Advanced users can install DD-WRT or OpenWRT firmwares onto their wireless access point, thus enabling tons of extra features and the ability for finer grained security controls.

Recently I attended a BarCamp where there was a session about monetizing blogs for a very modest monthly income, although an amount that amounts to a lot for a local blogger. With Drupal, setting up Google AdSense content is easy.

First, just copy the code generated from Adsense into a new block using the block admin interface. Be sure to save the node with the PHP Input Filter (you may need to give yourself permission in admin/permissions to use this powerful filter). Full HTML filter is not sufficient for AdSense code as it will break the finicky JavaScript, so use PHP which performs no filtering or transformations or create a new input filter that does no filtering.

You may want to create a special region (by editing the .info file for your theme and adding a new line, then refreshing cache to see it in the dropdown in blocks admin) for your ads otherwise use an existing region to place the block. If you already have regions like a sidebar that has space for content in the same dimensions (especially width) as your chosen AdSense ad then you won't need to do anything. If you want to optimize your ads though it's recommended, even by Google themselves, to choose larger ad sizes - especially large square ads.

For placing the node somewhere within the node's content, it's trickier as you can't place it use the block admin interface which only deals with regions that are defined in .info and made available via preprocess functions to your page.tpl.php. You can still use blocks to contain the code though. So create a new block, then look for the number in the URL which is the block id. Then you can manually place that block's content anywhere with this code:

$block = module_invoke('block', 'block', 'view', <BLOCK_ID_HERE>);
print $block['content'];

When publishing your ad blocks, if they don't appear at first and you see "Bad Request 400" in Chrome's Developer JavaScript Console, you can try waiting and may magically go away after awhile. That's what happened to me.

There's also an AdSense module (http://drupal.org/project/adsense) which makes this all a bit easier, but as you can see it's not hard at all to do manually, which means one less module on your system to complicate things.

But here are some other things the Drupal AdSense module can do:

The module provides easy-to-use ad blocks.
You can easily disable the ads for certain roles.
Provides simple controls for troubleshooting the ads before going live with the site.
If Google changes some minor details in the script in , your script can be updated site-wide just by upgrading the module.
If you want to do ad revenue sharing, there's really no other option

This technique can be used for other online advertising networks besides Google AdSense. It could just as easily be used for Amazon.com's affiliate program. If you're in Vietnam you might consider one of the burgeoning number of Vietnamese online ad networks, although they won't have anything like the inventory of Google.

What to do if you're a content provider in Vietnam?

If you're fairly established as a Party-affiliated Vietnamese newspaper then you have probably been selling banner ads for years on your online properties. Maybe you have enough online properties that they constitute a small ad hoc online ad network which you can sell to advertisers. If you're smaller than that then you should be concentrating on producing content rather than developing the ad selling product. So you'd need to find some service to take care of selling your available ad space inventory.

How online ads are sold outside of Vietnam

The first online ad marketplace that should come to anyone's mind is Google with its AdWords and AdSense products (which complement each other as supply and demand). I've played around with Google AdSense (the advertising product for publishers) on this site but it may not be appropriate for Vietnamese publishers. As an American it's easy for me to connect to the US financial system. Vietnamese people would have trouble opening up a US bank and the Vietnamese banking system is barely connected to itself (making homegrown PayPal clones even more difficult to pull off) much less to the US or international banking system. It's hard to move money into and out of Vietnam, although regulations make inflows of cash much easier than outflows. And due to the large amount of fraud originating from Vietnam it's hard to get outsiders to allow normal Vietnamese people to receive money, since once it enters Vietnam it's hard to get it back out if there are any problems, outside of the remittance networks. Until very recently it wasn't possible to use PayPal as a Vietnamese person here and it's still extremely rare.

If you're one of Vietnam's major publishers then you don't care too much about homegrown ad networks since they only reduce your monopoly on ad space, while pushing down prices and encouraging transparency which could force you to be more honest about your product and push prices down even further.

Vietnamese ad networks for Vietnamese content websites!

But having more available ad networks to Vietnamese content producers helps develop a strong web ecosystem for and by Vietnamese people, giving them ways to earn money both domestically and from foreign companies wanting to market to Vietnam. Blogs and other content websites could potentially give Vietnam's economy a tiny push in the right direction although currently it's risky to plan a business around content websites in Vietnam for a number of reasons and monetization is just one of them. (Just recently, Zing, a large content network with news, a social network, and lots of downloadable but unlicensed (pirated) music got dropped by major advertisers like Samsung, Coca Cola, Canon, Yamaha, Intel, etc. precisely because of the latter - they didn't want to associate themselves with an illegal music downloading site, but without the mp3s it would be hard for Zing to get traffic.)

So without further ado here are the online ad networks in and targeting Vietnam:

- ComScore put Innity in first place (of only two measured competitors?) for ad network size in Vietnam in February of 2011 with 900,000 average daily visitors. I really can't say whether Innity, from Malaysia and serving all of Southeast Asia, is the biggest ad network running in Vietnam.

- VietAd, part of IDG Vietnam's portfolio, running since May of 2007. According to them:
"VietAd Ad-Network is an intermediate system connecting sellers and buyers of online advertising. In other words, VietAd operates as an trading platform helping website owners to sell advertising, individuals and enterprises to advertises; both of them can save time and cost while they still have effective advertising campaigns."

"After more than two years on the market, VietAd attracted nearly 1,000 quality media, news, commentary and entertainment websites in Vietnam, served more than 3 billion Ad views and reached 400 million website hits per month."

- AdMarket, a product from AdMicro which is part of BarCamp Saigon sponsor VC Corp. (not to be confused with MicroAd which just entered Vietnam from Japan). Online advertising from 900đ/click and reaching up to 25 million people.

- AdNet.vn from PeaceSoft (NganLuong, eBay.vn, ChoDienTu)

- Ambient Digital Network (minimum payout payment of 300,000 VND) based in Ho Chi Minh City.

- VietBUZZad

- AdMax Network in South East Asia, based in Singapore

- AdBay, partner of PeaceSoft and VietBUZZad.

- AdBay.vn in Hanoi

- CleverAds, a local Google AdWords partner who helps companies set up their AdWords campaigns, also claim to have their own AdNetwork.

- Some hints of an ad network (Fmob) coming from Joomlart. Will have to ask him about that soon.

- New from FPT, eClick.vn

As mentioned, large news sites have their own ad networks. I skipped some really pathetically small ad networks. If you have anything to share about the ad networks listed above -please- post a comment. :)

One question I have and I welcome any theories:
How long before MJ Group (NhomMua, DiaDiem) or Rocket Internet, both big consumers of online ad space in Vietnam, decide to roll their own ad networks?

Awhile ago, some time after I undertook a bicycle trek from Nha Trang to Mui Ne, I was contacted by a reporter from Tuoi Tre News to write something about it. Only a tiny bit of the information I provided was actually used and I've since lost track of the article so I'll just post what I already wrote here.

1. How do you think about this new trend: travelling across the
country by bicycle. Is it popular in your country? Did you ever make
it or finish it shortly?

If it really is a trend rather than just a few outlier cases, then I
think it's great and it should really be encouraged as a wholesome and
healthy activity as well as a way to travel. In the US, it's actually
not a common thing to do although there are clubs which regularly meet
and do long-distance rides together, which may also include camping,
if the weather is agreeable. But I would like to see more people in
Vietnam ride bicycles for sport and exercise and also as a means of
transportation, not just for slow but far journeys like the one we
took. Besides the possibility of extremely cold weather in my home
country, there are many other ways in which Vietnam is a more ideal
long distance cycling destination which I hope to blog about someday.

My father is a cyclist and I joined him on a ride through forests and
countryside before I came to Vietnam. Unfortunately, I don't have a
bike to ride with me now.

2. According to Vietnamese traditional lifestyle, youngsters all
should follow the same way: finishing school, going to work, getting
married and living in peace for the rest of their life. Youngsters who
choose to go other ways like: doing gap year, going through other
countries by bicycle in a long time… means something crazy and
undervalued. How do you think about this way of thought?

Actually, I think most people can fit a cycling trip into an otherwise
traditional education since it can easily be organized during a break
and can be done on a budget. I don't think it's crazy at all, nor
should traveling to other countries or taking off for a gap year be
considered especially crazy. If you think so then your bar for what is
crazy is set too low. I do think that Vietnamese youth should be
willing to try new things and not constrain themselves only to what
the mass majority has done in the past. And definitely learn from what
people are doing around the world, not just the world around you.

3. According to your opinion, what is the thing that youngsters
gained and you lost after this trip?

I lost some weight, haha. Otherwise, there's really nothing to lose.

I gained some new friends who I now have a lot of respect for. I
learned things about myself as well. Any time we travel we gain new
experiences as well as learn about ourselves. And of course seeing a
country at the slow pace of a bicycle is much different from a car on
a highway. On a bicycle, not only do you see the terrain but you feel
the gradients, the shade from every tree, and the difference in wind
from province to province. What I gained was a new perspective on
Vietnam and especially the Vietnamese people.

In South Vietnam, like the rest of tropical Southeast Asia (but not North Vietnam), there are only two seasons: rainy season and dry season. Hanoi has the traditional four seasons with mild but cold winters.

The actual timing of monsoon seasons varies from country to country and there are many regional monsoons throughout the world, including the United States. In Saigon and the Mekong Delta the dry season is from about November to February (around Tet) after which the weather transitions into rainy season around June. April and May can be uncomfortably hot without the respite provided by rains.

The difference is not just in precipitation but also temperature. The temperature range for Ho Chi Minh City throughout the year is generally 25C to 33C, whereas in the hottest days of May it may reach a max of 35C and the coldest nights of December may reach as low as 20C. For travelers who want to enjoy the coolest and driest weather then the months of November, December, and January would be the best, although travelers to Da Lat can come any time of the year and enjoy cool weather.

Tropical Storm Weather

During the wet season, there are also many tropical storms and typhoons off the sea to the east. These storm systems often batter the Philippines and then head to central or northern Vietnam and usually only cause heavy rain to fall on Saigon which rarely gets directly hit.

How should you prepare for Vietnam's weather?

1. Bring an umbrella! Vietnamese people seldom use umbrellas and when they do it's to block the sun not rain. Umbrellas are not that easy to buy in Vietnam.
2. Most of the year it can be pretty sunny although the cooler weather is accompanied by overcast skies. Vietnamese people generally cover their skin with long sleeves and pants (and extra socks, gloves, and face masks) to avoid sun exposure. More foreigners don't, and so may want to use some sun screen which can be purchased at Western-style pharmacies here.
3. You can buy various rain coats here but mostly they are targeting bike riders, who need freedom of movement of their legs thus exposing the legs to rain and puddle splashes. You can buy them for around $1. You can buy cheap and easily ripped ponchos for around 4 per $1 and these come in small enough packs to carry with you. There are some interesting only-in-Vietnam raincoats such as ones with two head-holes so both the driver and passenger on a bike can share one rain coat, and also rain coats with a clear window in front in order to allow a bike's headlights to shine through.
4. Wear comfortable walking sandals. Most tourists walk a lot and they stick out because they're the only ones walking. When it rains your feet will get wet and you may be forced to walk through puddles. You don't want to wear socks or shoes that don't wash and dry easily.

When it rains, it pours

During the normal rainy season, there are many consecutive days where it will rain shortly every day. People who get caught driving in the rain will often pull over and seek shelter in front of shops or at bus stops. They should probably just ride busses more during the rainy season, but that's another topic altogether! It's best not to have any set schedule during the rainy season that way you can wait out any sudden downpours rather than trying to make appointments. You will find that Vietnamese people will use heavy rain as an excuse for not coming somewhere on time.