Whenever you move to another country to begin a new life; it is inevitable that you will encounter culture shock in one form or another; Vietnam is no exception. It could be argued that the perceived cultural distance has been reduced some what in my case due to not moving directly from my home nation; the United Kingdom.
These are probably for the best part, simply minor irritants that I may later come to understand or accept; rather than being something that is actually bad about the place. After all, I am only a foreign guest and I probably have no right to tell local people how things should be done. Yet I will probably still try.
The lack of a 24 hour culture:
In many parts of the world, there is always somewhere where you could go in the middle of the night to get some more beers if your drinking session goes on longer than expected; you work odd hours or you just don’t sleep well. There is always something out there that will remain available to you; even if you have pay a slightly inflated price for it.
In Vietnam, this is not the case; or at least not in Da Nang. Thailand’s economy may practically run on 7-11s but here your local VinMart is probably closed at around 10pm. Late night barbecue stalls aren’t really a thing at 3 in the morning. 24 hour fast food chains? They’re still getting the hang of operating during the daytime. This means that scheduled shopping trips are more vital as you can’t just go out in the middle of night if you need some bottled water or other random things you may urgently require at an awkward moment.
Scooters parked everywhere:
It would be idiotic not to accept that this as like Taiwan, this is a place where every man and his dog probably owns a scooter. However, understanding that any sidewalk can double up as a parking space will take some time to get used to; as you precariously step onto the road for a brief moment and hope that you don’t get hit by any traffic. I’m sure that it will all seem normal one day.
People offering you motorbike rides or taxis:
Actually, I feel that I do have a right to moan about this. Do they ever offer such services to locals? I doubt it. Are they really so rapey or retarded that they can’t sign up as a driver for Grab? Guys with regular office jobs do that as a side gig to boost their income, there’s no reason why these scammers shouldn’t get themselves signed up and start doing things in a regulated manner. They’d even increase their business as the app interface would do all the passenger solicitation work for them. There’s no excuses for this lot.
Rubbish everywhere:
In somewhere like Switzerland, you’re probably going to get publicly hung if you even dare to place that non-recyclable in the wrong bin. Here, they take a much more relaxed approach as rubbish is often left at the side of the street waiting for collection. Hopefully, one day better refuse collection services and systems will be implemented.
Until then, festering garbage is sweltering heat will just be a part of everyday life. Still, it could actually be far worse, trash does tend to get collected in a rather timely manner from what I’ve seen. However, in this climate; anything longer than 5 minutes is probably still excessive.
Rats. Lots of rats.
Yet surprisingly very few cockroaches. I personally struggle to understand why these may be the case. Maybe the people who do the cleaning at my accommodation are just amazing and I couldn’t even expect better from a good 5 star hotel.
When get outside, this changes. It is quite normal to see rats running around from time to time. According to what I’ve been told, cat ownership is not such a popular thing in this country. The feline approach may be exactly what is needed to eradicate rat related issues. I hope that one day, every Vietnamese household can own at least one cat. Hell, I actually wish that for every country as I’m definitely a cat person.
Other Western tourists:
Quite honestly, I had expected cultural differences between myself and local Vietnamese people to bring out the anger in me. This has proved to not be the case. In most cases, Vietnamese people have appeared to be very friendly, polite and helpful to me. There has only been a few examples of older, less educated people poking fun at my beer belly or something relatively insignificant; yet no real hostility that really ever made me feel threatened in any way.
Another article would be needed to discuss my grievances towards fellow Westerners. They come in all shapes, sizes and colours. You’ve got the self-righteous fempats that will despise you for even daring to look at a local woman. Those stupid idiots can’t (or won’t) read those signs that politely request that you don’t flush paper down the toilet. Those that smoke weed far too openly. Many different kinds of foreign nuisance that I could rant about for hours on end.
Of course, it would be better to try to be tolerant and understanding of everybody, but it would be a lie if I was to say that they never irritate me at all. As things stand, I am effectively just a tourist like them. I’m probably irritating to them too. That’s just life, isn’t it?
Đà Nẵng Diaries 