Living in Vietnam

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Not just a salaried 1-2 year company-appointed-tourist, you are Really LIVING in Vietnam when you understand Why...

. . . you walk on the roadway with the traffic because it is safer and there are simply too many obstacles on the sidewalks! People ride their scooters along the sidewalks in a vain effort to try to beat the build-up at the traffic lights or others are vending their wares with carts or stalls or children's-toy plastic tables and stools selling anything from a quick snack to coffee and cigarettes or small, personal-item stolen goods (calculators, cameras, mobile phones, sunglasses, etc.). The evenings are even worse. Every vendor will string their own lights, with electricity either stolen from the grid or 'on-sold' by the business they set up in front of. These are garroting/decapitation dangers for anybody over 5'5"!

. . . the Cops are the LAST people you notify when a crime has been committed! The reality is getting better, but local perceptions, here in Saigon at least, are that you should never draw any 'official' attention to yourself. This holds even more true for foreigners with ANYTHING even remotely 'dubious' about their time in Vietnam. To involve oneself in an "investigation" is to open up one's entire life to intimate scrutiny - which I suggest could 'hurt' most people - in ways that even the much feared IRS in the U.S. has not even imagined!

"Shakedowns", petty bribery and street-level 'improprieties' on the part of individual police persons or whole units are another very common complaint here in and around Saigon - but that is another story.

. . . the poorest of the poor show amazing generosity, and are wonderfully open, frank and honest (well, out in the countryside at least). Hospitality from dirt-poor people barely 'making do' as day-laborers in the rice paddies or other itinerate, menial and low-paying jobs is astounding. If you can speak the language and strike up any conversation lasting more than 3 minutes, you will invariably be invited into their home. No matter that it is a wooden-slatted, one room hut on the edge of the village with a clay and cow shit floor, you will be treated with the very best that their humble circumstances have to offer.

Unlike many cultures from the 'developed' countries of the world, the thought counts in rural Vietnam! The value of a gift, like an invite home for tea in a humble family's home, is immaterial. The fact that it was offered and accepted at all is far, far more significant.

. . . you have to repeat an instruction 3,468,172 times before a Vietnamese person understands how important the instruction or information is to you or to the achievement of the goal. Direct and 'to-the-point' instructions or commands are often not very well understood here. This will frustrate everybody at some time during their stay in Vietnam.

Whereas a language like English has many 'strong' or 'weak' synonyms which can be used to imply a level of significance for a situation, the Vietnamese language does not work in the same way. While there are synonyms, and lots of them, most do not indicate any implied sense of importance or urgency. You have to state what you want, then re-iterate the re-iteration of the re-iterated statement that you re-phrased and re-iterated just after you originally made it. If you say it just once, its probably inconsequential, if you repeat it ad nauseum ad infinitum, then it must be important.

. . . a single instance is extrapolated to mean "always" is the "Yang" for the "Ying" of having to repeat instructions ad nauseum! If something happens or occurs just once, then that is perceived to be how it should, and will, always happen or occur. Say you negotiate a price with a vendor once. The first time you buy something from them. Don't ever expect that price to come down, even after you learn that you've been paying way, way over the odds! That price will "stick", regardless of market fluctuations.

In my personal experience, I once forget to padlock the front door of the house before I went to bed. I'd double-locked the doors earlier in the night, but just didn't padlock them. In the morning my Grandma-in-law, visiting from the home village at the time, offers to 'resolve' this blatant lapse in home security by foregoing her home in the village to stay with us in Saigon and to sleep downstairs on the Welcome mat as the "security guard" - on the assumption that I did that all the time! Interestingly, I have never left the house unsecured ever since ...

. . . your limbs are always bruised on account of the fact that Vietnamese houses and the way they are laid out and how the furniture is arranged are suitable only for people raised in confined spaces. Sailors, or anybody else used to living their lives in compact spaces, will feel totally at home living in a Vietnamese house.

Living space is tight and it is used as efficiently as possible. Kitchens do double or triple duty as dining rooms and/or bedrooms as well. Beds almost invariably accommodate more than one sleeping occupant. Mine only has 3 at the moment: wife, me, 3 1/2 y.o. toddler, but this will change when the new baby arrives.

The very close arrangements of adjacent furniture and non-existent 'head clearance' in homes or Vietnamese public places can also be very annoying or downright dangerous for even modestly sized Westerners who are more accustomed to "a bit of space". The next time something is broken in the bathroom of this household by an 'errant arm' of mine will not be the first! Elbows can do serious damage to Aussie Rules football players and Vietnamese bathrooms too!

. . . your limbs bruise others because the cultural concepts of "personal space" are so different. If you have grown up in a place where each individual person has a larger "personal space" than they do here in Vietnam, and Vietnamese people do not recognize/understand this, you make accidental contact with others. A lot!

Making a 180° U-turn with my body in an English class of 20+ Grade One Vietnamese 7 y.o. students invariably means I send one of them sprawling to the floor or plant a foot squarely on one of theirs. There's no malice or intent or anything else in any of this. It's a totally cultural 'thing': the students usually have almost no experience or knowledge of the actual physical space that Westerners "occupy". Unless they have one as a parent, how could they? To this day, after almost 10 years here, I'm still never expecting anybody to be THAT close behind me!

. . . you know that self-centered does not = selfish or inconsiderate when you witness the bedlam on the roads of a city like Saigon. Anybody from a country where courtesy on the roads is practiced might, quite rightly, think that the traffic here should breed thousands of 'road rage' deaths each year because of the seemingly selfish and inconsiderate behaviors on display ... but it doesn't.

This is extremely tough to explain, but I'll try. On the roads, Vietnamese people are self-centered. This means they have a very, very narrow 'tunnel-vision' awareness of what is happening around them. Anything NOT in the immediate field of vision in FRONT of them may as well not exist! This is why they will cut across 15 other people behind them when making a turn at an intersection. This is why they will "cut" in front of you, causing you to take evasive action.

The tough part comes in explaining that for Vietnamese drivers, there is absolutely no AWARENESS that one's actions are inconveniencing others. It isn't selfishness or rudeness or inconsideration, it is just an honest ignorance that YOU should be aggrieved at their actions when YOU were behind them, and they could not see YOU, but YOU could see them. "Why didn't YOU take evasive action?" Must be the most common questions after any traffic accident in Vietnam!

On the roads of Vietnam, if it is within your vision at that moment in time, then it is important. If you cannot see it, it simply does not exist! There is NO malice in this perception. It is just that "I can't see you, so I cannot be accountable for you".

. . . your age is brazenly asked 'up front' when you meet people. This is easily explained. The Vietnamese language has a complex system of pronouns that seeks to place ALL individuals into a relationship matrix. This matrix is centered on the extended family unit first, but extends outward in all the directions of blood or marriage, business or professional relationships, acquaintances, age, and social status or political position. It is this socio-linguistic matrix which allows all Vietnamese people to correctly address each other with respect and dignity.

. . . Vietnam is the land of condiments. It is all about the hospitality of the host/chef and the status of the guest/consumer of the meal. Vietnamese cuisine exemplifies the politeness of the people. Many Vietnamese dishes are SO polite that they do not offer you a distinguishing flavor. Rather, you are presented with a 'base' dish and a sometimes bewildering array of condiments with which to flavor your choice to the unique satisfaction of your palate!

. . . Vietnam is a country full of wonderful contradictions!