Most internet cafes cater primarily to gamers and chat enthusiasts, making it quite difficult for those wanting to use office applications, as the owners often do not install them for fear of slowing down the machines.
Two young men from my group shared their recent experiences during a business trip to Cao Bang. While at a café in the town center, they spotted two fashionable mountain girls dressed in flashy outfits, with lipstick, glittery eyes, and perfectly groomed eyebrows, and approached them to chat.
The two girls introduced themselves as students at Viet Bac College of Education and regular patrons of the café, known for their beautiful singing voices, which captivated the two young men.
After some flirtatious exchanges, the night grew late, and as the café prepared to close, the two young men reluctantly asked for their contact details. “Do you have an email? I’d like to send you a message occasionally.”
Suddenly, the girls seemed flustered: “I only have a chat nickname!” The young men were taken aback, looking at the two beauties as if they were aliens.
One might think that such a lack of technological understanding would only be found in remote areas, yet here in Hanoi, the situation was equally perplexing. I needed to send an email to a friend, so I went to an internet café with a large sign on Xuan Thuy Street in Cau Giay.
I struggled to find Microsoft Word to type my document and ended up typing a few lines without accents before sending it. I visited several more internet cafés along the street and even in the Từ Liêm district and Thanh Xuân district, but none met my requirements.
It seemed that no customers had needs similar to mine. When I asked a young café owner about this, he simply replied, “Who comes to a café to work like you?”
People flock to internet cafés just to play games or chat. Even sending a letter was dismissed as a chore, leaving me at a loss. A café owner on Nguyen Trai Street (Thanh Xuân) was deeply engrossed in chat and reacted irritably when I inquired about Office software, saying, “We used to have Microsoft Word and Excel, but we deleted them. What’s the point of having them if no one uses them… it just slows down the machine?”
The two mountain girls were understandably unaware of the full potential of the internet. However, the disregard for the useful applications of the internet in the cultural center of the country, Hanoi, is truly concerning.
The advantages of the internet are vast and convenient, yet most young people visit internet cafés solely for gaming and chatting. Some even proudly declare they’ve been using computers for years, yet when asked how to send an email, they seem completely lost. It’s truly baffling!
Phuong Hieu
