In this week’s Savage Take, Charles shares a few moments from Vietnam that stayed with him. A goodbye, some time to think, and a shift in how he sees money, time, and what really compounds.
The Savage Take is where our CEO Charles Savage shares what he’s seeing and thinking each week, in markets and beyond.
Vietnam deserves the tailor touch. No shortcuts.
So forgive the length of this edition. Every stitch is deliberate.
What is it about goodbyes that sadden more as the years go by?
It is not grief for loss. That would be a different thing entirely. It is something quieter and, in some ways, harder.
The more I sit with it, the more I am convinced: goodbye carves its own path. And that path is not mine for now.
Paths cross. Paths diverge. And in that divergence there is a particular kind of ache for someone like me, someone who loves nothing more than his people alongside him on the road.
Goodbye, Kirra, is just hard.
Not because it is permanent. But because it isn't.
Not forever. Just for now. But still.
The sea arrived before the city did.
The beach outside our hotel, Awaken, was alive before sunrise. Young and old, locals and visitors, all drawn to the water. I joined a long swim out past the break, looking back at the city waking up.
There is something very particular about the Vietnamese relationship with water. It is not recreational. It is elemental.
The red flag with the gold star is everywhere. Not aggressively. Just present. A quiet, unselfconscious national pride that does not need your approval.
Da Nang is a real city. Not a resort town wearing a city's clothes. Old and high-rise in equal measure. Local boutique and global brand side by side. Trees and plants woven into the urban landscape as if the architects simply worked around them.
And the traffic. Bikes and cars co-existing in what looks, from a distance, like chaos. Up close it is something else entirely. A Zen flow of unwritten rules.
Traffic lights the exception. Respect the instinct, not the rules.
That line stayed with me all week.
Vietnam keeps returning to it in different forms.
On the first night, Mika was struggling with a cough that turned out to be bronchitis. We kept it light. But the city still delivered.
A bar called Cheers, modelled on the sitcom. The menu: “Where everybody knows your name.”
On stage a Russian opera singer. Beside her, a Russian concert pianist. The song: Hotel California.
Outside, a couple sat on a bench laughing. A cat slept on the pool table. The Vietnamese flag hung in the doorway. Lovers passed on the street.
How did we all find ourselves in this place?
Everyone has a story. It is just a shame we do not stop to ask more often.
Da Nang saved its best for last.
On the way out, a detour to Ba Na Hills. I did not know what to expect. Four hours later I still could not fully process what I had seen.
A cable car that holds world records. The rainforest canopy dropping away below. Architecture assembled piece by piece on a mountain top 1,400 metres above sea level.
A French village. A giant Buddha. A fantasy kingdom built not in spite of the geography but because of it.
The audacity of the engineering. The scale of the ambition.
America, hold my beer.
Vietnam fought off the most powerful military in the world. Then it built this.
That is not an accident. That is a statement.
We arrived having seen nothing to give away what would greet us after 6pm.
Within 100 metres of the old town, I could tell Sarah and Mika were in heaven. A beautifully lit fantasy land for shoppers who want quality at prices that make no sense to a visitor.
Everything your heart desires.
Three hours of shop-till-you-drop and we had covered only a fraction of it.
We finished with a Vietnamese dinner overlooking the river.
Temu. Shein. Amazon. Delivered by hand on the silky lantern-lit streets of Hoi An.
Two days in Hoi An meant two days in the hands of tailors.
A dance dress for Mika. Leather boots for Sarah and for me. Various odds and ends measured, cut, and made to fit.
Tailoring is almost a forgotten art in a machine-led world.
But there is something very particular about a garment made just for you.
The perfect length of the foot. The width and height of the arch. The ankle. The heel.
One person. One pair of hands. One pair of boots made for one person.
It got me thinking about AI.
About what we have already lost in the shift to digital. And what we are about to lose next.
Scale removes friction. But it also removes intimacy.
The world gets faster. Cheaper. Smarter.
But not always better.
At EasyEquities, we live this tension every day.
We are building for millions. Automating. Scaling. Removing friction wherever we can.
But five-star client experience does not come from scale alone.
It comes from knowing when to slow things down. When to personalise. When to meet a client exactly where they are.
The platform must scale.
But the experience must still feel tailored.
Because trust is not built in bulk. It is built one client at a time.
So as we lean harder into AI, into automation, into efficiency, we need to be deliberate about what we do not lose.
We need to keep space for the tailors’ hands.
A coffee-making morning gave us something else to think about entirely.
Egg coffee. Salt coffee. Coconut coffee. Each brewed slowly through a phin.
At the next table, a full-time skipper who sails out of the Virgin Islands. At another, an Israeli doctor travelling for nine months with his wife, also a doctor, and their three children, schooling them along the way.
The last month here in Hoi An, at an international school he could not speak highly enough of.
An escape from the brutality since 2023.
A way to give their children a fresh perspective without the weight of war.
It is easy, as South Africans, to carry only the context of our own problems.
This was a reminder that the world is not a safe place for many.
That safety itself is the privilege we talk around, but rarely name directly.
The freedom that comes from safety is the greatest privilege of all.
The Heritage Train from Da Nang to Hue.
A slow meander over a high mountain coastal pass and down into rice paddy-lined railway tracks. Slow living on either side. Fishing villagers and farmers going about their daily work.
After the scale of Ba Na Hills and the sensory overload of Hoi An, Hue breathes differently.
It is a city where the old world seems to have further control over the future, without holding it back.
The Perfume River at dinner. Lanterns. History present but not suffocating.
Hue did not let Vietnam down.
First impression walking out into District 1: this is a major city.
Not a city that reminds you of one. Not a city punching above its weight.
A city on the scale of any other in the world. Full stop.
High-rises frame the skyline. An opera house sits at the end of a grand boulevard. The big banks and global brands are all present.
Walk a little further and you realise nothing has been replaced.
The banh mi cart is still on the corner. The tailor. The street vendor.
Vietnam, in all its colour and centuries-old simplicity, woven into the fabric of the city.
Two observations stayed with me.
Petrol at roughly R13.50 a litre. A one-hour taxi ride in a six-seater at around R300.
The infrastructure works. The city flows. The cost of living stays within reach of the people who live here.
C’mon, South Africa.
And then there is VinFast.
Vietnam’s own electric vehicle company. Built here. Engineered here. Scaling here. Competing globally.
A country that refuses to be left behind. But refuses to leave anyone or anything behind either
I was on market detox this week. Vietnam has that effect.
But the markets did not care.
The S&P 500 closed at record highs. The Nasdaq too. Fourth consecutive week of gains.
Intel reignited the AI trade. Nvidia crossed $5 trillion again. Iran peace talks showed just enough progress to lift sentiment.
The Dow slipped slightly for the week.
Gold gave back roughly 3%.
And then, quietly, South Africa.
The rand, up over 11% in the past twelve months. The JSE All Share, up over 30% in the same period.
A year that says more than the narrative allows.
It has been a good twelve months to be invested in South Africa.
Capitec delivered headline earnings up 23% to R16.8 billion. Twenty-six million active clients. ROE at 31%.
That congratulation stands.
Now, the number that has been following me around Vietnam all week.
EasyEquities assets on platform are within 1% of R100 billion.
We launched in 2014.
The first time assets crossed R1 billion was December 2016. I was in Mozambique. We celebrated. It felt enormous. It was enormous.
In 2020, the Covid year, assets hit R21.6 billion. By February 2022: R36.5 billion. August 2025: R80.7 billion. February 2026: R94.9 billion.
Today, within touching distance of R100 billion.
R1 billion to R100 billion in just over a decade.
First it goes slowly. Then very fast.
That is not a chart. That is trust compounding.
Millions of South Africans choosing to build rather than consume. To own rather than wait.
The flywheel does not ask permission.
It does not slow down.
It just turns.
Vietnam taught me things this week that no meeting room ever could.
That flow matters more than rules. That craft holds value the algorithm cannot replicate. That safety is a privilege most of us never stop to name. That goodbyes hurt most when you are old enough to know they are also countdowns. That a country can honour everything it has been while becoming everything it intends to be.
The cobbler measures your foot. The tailor your shoulders.
The city absorbs the high-rise without losing the street.
The river dinner happens every night regardless of what the markets did.
This is not an argument against progress.
It is an argument for not losing the memory in the pursuit of it.
Respect the memory.
Not just the momentum.
And keep space for the tailors’ hands.
More from home.
The world is not waiting. What you do next is the only thing that matters.
Stay Savage,
Charles.
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