So after a little over six months of living in Vietnam, I've gotten to know the culture and people pretty well. Here are a few thoughts and personal stories about interactions with Vietnamese people and Vietnamese culture.
I genuinely love the people of Vietnam. There are so many amazing smiling faces, kind acts of generosity, a deep curiosity about those who are different from them and an overall laid-back attitude emitted from the Vietnamese (despite the extremely wealthy Saigonese who can be a bit uptight and love to flaunt their money).
They can go from being very serious to having the greatest and most genuine smiles in less than ten seconds, which can be confusing at times with the added language barrier. For example our landlord, (who I refer to as the most beautiful woman in Vietnam--a seriously stunning 50+ year old woman who looks about 30), will have a serious and intimidating look on her face which makes me think she hates us, but then will give us the biggest smile which is lovely and confusing all at once. This happens all the time with Vietnamese people when you have trouble communicating with one another. Sometimes at first glance you will look at someone and they will have an extremely stern look on their face, but the second you flash a smile they give you an ear-to-ear grin in return. I smile at everyone on the street...well everyone I make eye contact with, and I would say about 80% of the time, I get a big smile back.
There are some cultural barriers to be aware of. A lot of things they do seem very rude and aggressive to us and it can be hard to get over. For instance: the Vietnamese have absolutely no sense of the que. They will push, shove, cut you off, honk their horn 1,000 times over, push onto the elevator before people get off (which is both inefficient and physically painful) and it just comes off as very "me, me, me." But, from their perspective it's just the norm. In the U.S., when someone beeps their horn at you, it's basically an act of aggressive. To me, getting beeped at either means "fuck you" or "what the hell are you doing." I still take it so personally when people honk their horns at me...and here it's seriously out of control. People will lay on their horn for hours. It is impossible to drive and not constantly hear at least 5 people having a field day on the horn button. Yet, the Vietnamese people don't see it that way. This lady literally shoved me at the hospital (yes this still happens at the hospital) and then when I dropped something, she picked it up for me and gave me the biggest smile. Earlier, I thought wow you're self-righteous bitch for shoving someone at a hospital, but then I remembered it's just how it goes here.
Apart from some of the frustrating cultural differences, The Vietnamese are really easy-going and genuine people. They love to try and practice English with Westerners. They think nearly every Westerner is beautiful...but then there's this weird sense of a superior beauty in being white that is uncomfortable and untrue because there are some gorgeous Vietnamese people, as in every culture. The woman are genuinely terrified of the sun and will completely cover their bodies in the blazing heat to avoid getting a tan...while the Westerners are doing everything possible to maximize their tans here. It's mental. And even products at the stores are all about it. It's actually a challenge for me to find regular body lotion (and even deodorant) without whitening chemicals in it. It's crazy how at home we have tanning salons and self-tanner and they just have the complete opposite.
I love talking to strangers and so I always get roped into random conversations with people here, which is so much fun. Sometimes they can be really nice and other times they can be really odd:
One time a girl followed me around the supermarket and kept asking me odd questions. Then she asked me if I drank Perrier, to which I said yes I used to more often but I haven't in a while. She then wanted my advice about which flavor to drink and asked if it would be good for weight loss. I didn't know how to communicate that expensive water wasn't necessary for weight loss, but I couldn't communicate that effectively with our language barrier. I told her she didn't need to lose weight at all and mentioned that Perrier which is $4.00/ bottle here is hardly different from the 30 cent soda water that is plentiful and much more cost-effective.
Another time, some 50+ year old man was pedaling a bicycle along my street and asked me to get on. Any normal person would have thought stranger danger, but I of course asked where he was going and hopped on because I was in the mood for something odd. I ended up being the one pedaling the bicycle ( by the way this was not a tandem...Vietnamese people always just fit two on the bike...one sitting on the metal bit where you would tie a bag or something on and the other on the proper seat). I pedaled him all the way downtown and back. It was quite the workout but it was lovely. He told me all about his family living in America and attempted to teach me some Vietnamese. I made sure to get off a few blocks away from where I actually live in case he decided to become creepy...but he genuinely was just a sweet old man who wanted to practice his English. He even told me to stop on Nguyen Hue at a Circle K ( a popular convenience store) and bought me water.
And yet another time, I lost my motorbike keys in a bookstore...and got oddly frustrated because I had no idea what to do...thank god I was renting at the time and the business I rented from had a spare key .Eventually, I got a hold of them and they came and tested out 100 keys on the sidewalk where my bike was parked (you would think they would know which one was the spare..but it's Vietnam and they are completely unorganized and lackadaisical when it comes to simple things like this...which is just comical at this point and I love them for it). Anyway, before the man came to help me out I was getting really worked up and crying (not hard but not quite subtly) and some police officer came up to me and helped me out. He asked if I was okay and walked all over the bookstore with me to help me look for my key. He said, "Don't cry, drink water" and bought me water...apparently people like to buy me water here? I'm not complaining. Anyway, he was lovely and we chatted about Vietnam and he really did put me at ease about the situation while I waited for the rental place to come help me. I was also thinking how it's funny I don't even have a license to legally drive this bike--something I wouldn't dare to do in my own country but somehow find it perfectly acceptable here. However, it is on my list of things to do and I definitely will get around to doing so in the near future...mostly for the cool aspect of it because it would just be unique to have a Vietnamese license as a foreigner.
Speaking of motorbikes, the men who I go to to get my motorbike serviced are absolutely lovely. I try very badly to speak Vietnamese with them and they laugh at me, but through gestures and google translate, we really get along and they often don't charge me for simple things which is unbelievably generous considering how cheap labor is already. I usually try to give them a bit extra because they are such hard-working and well-intended people.
I will speak more about my tailor and the lady I get my nails done with on another post because I''ve developed a nice relationship with them and I would like to say more without making this blog post a novel!
Xx.
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