Hacker Abroad: Vietnam’s Electronics and Hardware Markets

Ho Chi Mihn City is the hub for sourcing the materials and tools driving the growing Vietnamese economy. Whether you’re building new, or keeping existing equipment running, the supply chains and service companies aren’t yet in place and the markets of HCMC are the go-to for parts and equipment. Let’s get a little taste of what I saw in my tour of the markets.

Forget Radio Shack: HCMC Electronics Markets

I’d love to have a market like this in my city. The electronics markets are far better stocked than any local store I’ve encountered. One of the first booths we walked past included these waist-high stacks of crates containing reels of SMD passives, boxes of axial resistors, and those are sheets of copper clad sitting on top.

You’ll also find well-organized glass counters full of components like the trimpots shown here. There was another with all sorts of segment displays (7-segment, bar graphs, double arrows, and 8×8 dot matrix varieties are all visible). Elsewhere you can get LED strips of all kinds, and RGB LED panels. Sean Boyce was my guide on this tour and mentioned that once in a while stock will run low at some pinch point and whatever that is will become unobtainable for weeks or months. Even so, what I saw here gave me candy-store-like glee.

There’s some more colorful booths as well. We encountered a couple places that will sell you the name plates for whatever brand you like — Peavey, Panasonic, JBL, Toshiba, Bose, Sony, etc. The second floor of this market has a large laptop repair booth. Those shelves are full of laptop case parts, with logic boards and other add-ons below.

Everyone needs a hacker, and this is the electronics market’s resident hacker. He signals his talent with the blinky examples in the display case (and the LED cube hanging over his shoulder). The gentleman to the right brought in a module for some unknown equipment. That iron is kept hot and the repair began on the spot.

There is a drive-up nature to the street-side stalls. Throughout Ho Chi Minh City the sidewalks are as much for scooter parking and chairs for dining as they are for walking. Here you can see a booth that sells remote controls for air conditioners and shortly after snapping the photo I saw a man drive up and make a purchase without ever leaving his scooter.

If you look around this neighborhood it’s not hard to find piles of discarded CRTs. The copper windings have been removed and we saw more than one booth where people were winding transformers, likely with salvaged wire. Next to the discards there were carts full of salvaged speakers and logic boards which appeared to come from home audio systems.

For a complete guide on these electronics markets, Sean Boyce put together a article a couple of years back.

HCMC Hardware Markets

The hardware markets are in a different part of town and cater to a more industrial audience. I found the closet packed full of springs to be particularly interesting. Under the same roof you can find a booth selling graphite slugs. The small ones with wire leads are obviously brushes for motors but what about the huge cylinders? They could be for industrial-sized motors, there was a booth of shink-wrapped industrial controllers so I imagine the maintenance staff for local factories and utilities frequent this market.

For the hardware hacker, these markets are just as interesting. Sean and I pined over the fun you could have with the salvaged dials found in one booth. You can also grab a wide range of multimeters in another street side shop.

The Food of HCMC

Ho Chi Minh City gives every appearance of having a deep addiction to delicious coffee. In fact, cold drinks in general are really big here.

Monday morning got off to a great start with a coffee from a cart on the street. The coffee is brewed in advance and delivered as a shot of thick syrup from a used soda bottle. The concoction this gentleman served up clings to the ice in the glass and doesn’t slosh around. But it certainly wakes you up! For a liquid dose of refreshment, I also recommend trying a fresh coconut which is split open as you watch and consumed with nothing more than a straw.

For breakfast Minh took us to her favorite spot for Pho. It was delicious and slightly different from what I’ve had before, with a slightly sweet broth and thicker noodles. I love fresh spring rolls and we made time to stop for those. Dessert at lunch time was a tapioca in thin cream sauce — not overly sweet and the chilled treat really takes the edge off the mid-afternoon heat (about 94 °F / 34 °C and 90% humidity). This is the second of three coffees that day. It’s common to get your cold drinks with the cup inside plastic bags or a plastic sling like this one. It keeps your hands from freezing.

This was my final day in Asia. I had an incredible time, and shared as much as I could in this Hacker Abroad series. I recorded a lot of audio for the Hackaday Podcast which needs a lot of editing time. I will do one more article to round up all those audio segments once published, so keep your eye out for one final post in this series.

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