To those of you thinking about Vietnam Online Store, I was recently in 'nam and paid a visit myself - I was backpacking the country and on the look out for some bootleg software along the way - To this end, I entered this large store in the main backpacker district of HoChiMinh City.
At the time I wasn't aware of it's name, entering it on the basis of its apparent large selection of titles piled up on shelves.
I found the place to be clean and professional and ended up walking out of there with a whole stack of software - all of which has so far worked for me. The receipt indicated that I in fact visited 'vietnam online store'. The staff pointed this out to me before I left, saying that I could order more software at any time by going to the url on their business card.
Something important to note is that the physical Veitnam online store only contains stocks of audio CDs, audio & video DVDs computer and console software - no clothes, paintings or such. The area in HCMC where the store is located is a backpacker zone. Those of you who have been around asia would be familiar with such zones - all along the main street and dozens of t-shirt and local craft shops, as well as: unique to HCMC, reproduction painting studios. Presumably the staff from the store will go out in the street and purchase whatever you want from the various stalls and stores nearby. This also explains the massively inflated price.
In HCMC the mona lisa is roughly 30 USD depending on how large you want it. only the very largest knock offs of renaissance paintings crack the 100USD Mark
The question it raises is supply and demand. The painting studios have a couple of artists copying various works from books constantly, but they take time to produce an artwork so there is very little 'made to order' trade in this part of the city. Mostly, they pick major works and produce them, anticipating the demand of the backpackers. This means - it might be dicey getting what you order from the site in terms of paintings.
That said, the paintings are amazing. I came home with a Van Gogh, a Picasso and an intricately painted movie poster for 'metropolis' by fritz lang. They all look fantastic in proper frames.
Right now I plan to try the online order service to update a few items in my software collection so I will keep you posted how this goes. But rest assured, at the very least Vietnam online Store exists, it is a real building staffed by real people - and it has an absolutely amazing selection of bootlegged media (yes its all fakes - you can't get real dvds for 2 bucks kiddies). As for weather they honor their mail orders, I will let you know, but I am optimistic, seeing how slick the operation was in HCMC
PS - the software I got from Vietnam Online Store is all branded dvd111.com which I believe is where the re-direct takes you if you type in [broken link removed]
