Vietnam's doing pretty well, and has popular support. They're still pretty capitalist, but with some socialist policies. They recently removed the state level of administration, empowering the more local level.

The South government was the evolution of the colonial French government and the Viet monarchy, who went through cycles of brutal military rule and subversion of democracy (winning 133% of votes etc), outside of the rich they were extremely disliked and "the bad guys".

Vietnam was a proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union, and the North/South Vietnamese were just the toy soldiers they moved around on the playing board. Neither the North or the South were "good guys" or "bad guys," they were a poor country being exploited by Imperialists from thousands of miles away.

Vietnam wasn't good or bad, they were the victim. America, The Soviet Union, and France were the Bad Guys.

South Vietnam was a shitshow even by the low standards of Cold War shitshows. First it was ruled by a fundamentalist Catholic dictator in a Buddhist-majority country - you can guess how that turned out - and then after that dictator was couped and executed, a series of juntas whose leaders were not all that militarily competent, and who only held show elections crudely imitating multiparty democracy.

Effectively, the only popular support South Vietnam had sprung from suspicion that the Communist North might end up doing a little bit of purging should they win (a suspicion that was not wholly unfounded, unfortunately), but that fear only offered lukewarm support to the corrupt and authoritarian South Vietnam government, which did plenty of political repression of its own.

Effectively, there were no 'good guys' - arguably there never are, but nothing to the tune of 'Allies vs. Axis'. Of the two polities, North Vietnam had much more popular support, and was about as repressive as the South, at least after Ho Chi Minh was sidelined by hardliners in the mid-60s.

Vietnam is doing alright now. They had market-oriented reforms in the late 80s or 90s, and now they're one of the most pro-US and pro-free market countries in Asia. I'm given to understand they still struggle with corruption, but what developing country doesn't? Unfortunately, they remain a single-party state and fairly politically repressive. Ironically, these free market pro-capitalist reforms have all taken place under the single-party domination of... the Communist Party of Vietnam, the same one which ruled North Vietnam and overthrew South Vietnam.

but from my understanding the South Vietnam govt were the good guys

That's and understanding you need to amend. Especially the whole good guys/bad guys which is an incredibly American way to look at history, and basically makes it impossible for any nuance. However the South Vietnemese government was a murderous dictatorship propped up entirely by foreign powers.

They ended up reforming their economy to be more capitalist because after the war, America embargoed them till they reformed (plus some other stuff like war with China and Cambodia that fucked up their economy). So now its kinda just a mix of state capitalism and regular capitalism like China. They suffer from a lot of corruption and poor management, plus pretty much abandoning any real socialist policy, so not a great place.

During the Vietnam war its important to remember that the Viet Minh (communists) had initially risen up to free themselves from colonialism. The treaty that was passed though split Vietnam in half with the communist north and capitalist south. Furthermore that South Vietnam was a hell hole. An insanely corrupt, violent, and oppressive anti-communist dictatorship. The Viet Minh were by no means angels, but compared to South Vietnam they were certainly the good guys. I want to stress comparatively.

Pretty popular tourist destination of Americans. I know a few people who went, and they said they had a good time.

The South were not above bad behaviour, some evidence of which is in the Museum of War Remnants in HCMC, but this is true of most wars ever.

I don’t think it’s useful to make a good/bad guys argument case for North vs South, but it is easy to make a case that the USA committed a lot of heinous atrocities in that whole region for little reason beyond the fact that the rich people in charge didn’t like the idea of communism becoming popular and their wealth being taken from them.

There are no shortage of stories of Viet Cong being sneaky or less than gracious hosts to captured POWs, but these often skim over the fact that they were the ones being invaded; it’s churlish to conduct a massively asymmetrical assault on a peasant village with helicopters, bombers and Agent Orange, and then complain that their prison facilities weren’t up to your standards…

It’s a great place to visit, capitalist like everywhere else but;

The US had the largest presence there of all involved. North Vietnam invaded Laos to provide better support to rebels in South Vietnam.

South Vietnam likely shouldn’t have existed because it only existed for the US. Though, the treaty did say it existed.

I recently visited Vietnam. As far as I could tell, young people are educated, I saw no homeless people, nobody asked me for cash. I felt safe at all times. Buildings seemed up to code. The insane inequality that you will see in places like India, Thailand or even some places in Europe (London cough cough) were nowhere to be seen.

I understand that Vietnam is still a developing economy, and that it's still a poor country. I understand that there might be issues with freedom of speech and political participation. But my conclusion is that they're doing a ton of things absolutely right, in ensuring that their people get access to basic necessities and industrializing in a controlled way.

There aren't good guys, at least not in this situation. A country unnecessarily torn apart by superpowers

I was in da nang recently.

The streets were REALLY dangerous.

The cobblestones weren't all even and I tripped a couple of times.

My impression as a Canadian was that, at least in da nang, a lot of people are throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. There was a sense of curiosity in all the Vietnamese people I met, Who all seemed happy at least superficially, and I left with the sense that things are really on the upswing there.

This is just my own experience as a foreigner that doesn't speak the language so take it with a grain of salt.