The Little Firewall of Vietnam

I almost forgot that Vietnam is still a one-party dictatorship that censors the ways people access information. So when, after I left Ha Long Bay, it became impossible for me to update my blog time and time again, I became really annoyed and blamed Blogspot. I sent them an email to express my displeasure.

Then it dawned on me that maybe it's because blogspot and other blogging sites are blocked in Vietnam. I did a search of discussion boards and, what do you know, my suspicions were true. Vietnam has set up its equivalent of the Great Firewall of China to control access to websites that may potentially be damaging to those in power. Blogging sites ... dissidents ... open and free discussions ... The government wasted no time to set up a filter to block them. I got onto a proxy server and there it was, my blog, just sitting there doing nothing.

Apparently the filter isn't working all that well, considering I was able to update my blog in Hanoi and Ha Long City. But it works well enough that I haven't been able to access it for more than two weeks. Now I'm in Mui Ne, 200 km northeast of Saigon, and by luck I came across an internet cafe that gives me acess to my blog again. Well, not quite - a lot of characters are not being displayed properly.

For the last two weeks, I've been emailing blog entries to myself. After I get out of Vietnam and find a reliable internet connection, I'll post the back-dated entries with pictures.