3 Things I Didn’t Like About Vietnam

Let’s be hon­est — no mat­ter how per­fect a trip may be there are always also neg­a­tive parts to it. And as much as I loved Viet­nam, I also want to talk about the few things that I didn’t like. While I nor­mal­ly don’t dwell much on those things, I found it much hard­er to ignore the frus­tra­tion I felt dur­ing my recent trip to Viet­nam.

I expe­ri­enced these three things through­out the whole coun­try. I have also heard from many trav­el­ers that they had the same expe­ri­ences which even caused some of them to say they would nev­er vis­it Viet­nam again. Nonethe­less I still very much enjoyed my time in the coun­try and would def­i­nite­ly come back, if not just for the amaz­ing nature.

Impor­tant Note: I only want to address these mat­ter that I per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced on my recent trip. I want to empha­size that I am cer­tain­ly in no posi­tion to judge the locals on their behav­ior. I just think it is impor­tant to be pre­pared before you vis­it, so these things don’t catch you by sur­prise. But by all means — don’t sweat it and quick­ly can­cel your flight, but try to embrace the unfa­mil­iar­i­ty of it.

So here they are: 3 things that real­ly both­ered me in Viet­nam.

1. Constantly being ripped off

Dur­ing our month in Viet­nam we prob­a­bly encoun­tered it all: the cheap tricks, ruth­less scams and annoy­ing rip-offs.

The longer we stayed the worse it got, so far that I was frus­trat­ed to the point of leav­ing the coun­try ear­li­er. I nev­er knew whether peo­ple were sin­cere­ly nice or just want­ed my mon­ey, which caused me to become almost para­noid about people’s inten­tions.

I had so many nice ladies chat me up only to be dragged to their store after­wards and urged to buy some­thing. When I refused (because no, I sim­ply didn’t need nor could I afford a sparkling, tai­lored evening gown) they kept on push­ing me to “just look at this” or “buy this for a real­ly good price”. Refusal was met with annoy­ance at best and emo­tion­al manip­u­la­tion or aggres­sive behav­ior at worst.

Now I know that it is com­mon in Asia to hag­gle and some­times be over­charged because of it, and I usu­al­ly like to prac­tice my nego­ti­a­tion skills — but while in oth­er coun­tries in South East Asia like Thai­land or Malaysia you can always find a good com­pro­mise for both par­ties or sim­ply say no if you don’t come to an agree­ment, the Viet­namese sell­ers were out­right hos­tile.

They spare no efforts to get you to buy some­thing and will unashamed­ly take advan­tage of your ten­ta­tive­ness.

I was once almost pulled down from my bike at the beach in Hoi An by a women who want­ed us to leave our bikes in her “park­ing place” and told us that it was for­bid­den to dri­ve any fur­ther.

Under­stand­ably enough I didn’t want to take any risks and dis­mount­ed the bike, but Ben didn’t believe her and con­tin­ued on — and what do I have to say, of course it wasn’t for­bid­den. On the con­trary there were plen­ty of restau­rants fur­ther down the road who had bike park­ing for free.

Anoth­er time we were manip­u­lat­ed into chang­ing our booking.com review (an hon­est 6.5/10 rat­ing) of a home­s­tay by a cry­ing young girl that told us in elab­o­rate sen­tences how she would lose her job if her boss saw the “bad” review and begged us to change it to a 10/10.

That was noth­ing though com­pared to the one time we got pulled over by the police:

We were dri­ving down a rel­a­tive­ly emp­ty street in Mui Ne and won­dered why the oncom­ing cars were honk­ing or flash­ing their lights at us. It soon became clear when we saw the group of uni­formed peo­ple at the side of the road. They sig­ni­fied that we had to stop and asked us for our licens­es. When we could only pro­duce a pho­to­copy of our inter­na­tion­al driver’s license, which you only need in addi­tion to your reg­u­lar license, they want­ed to con­fis­cate our bike, have us take a cap back to our hotel (we were in the mid­dle of nowhere), come back with the license and pay a ridicu­lous fine on top of that.

We start­ed argu­ing with them, that it was not with­in their right to con­fis­cate the bike and that no, under no cir­cum­stances would we leave the bike with them here, it was after all just rent­ed.

Ben even­tu­al­ly took out his phone to snap a pho­to of their name tags and that was when they freaked: they took his phone and delet­ed the pho­to, but not before scrolling through his whole per­son­al pho­to library against our out­raged attempts to get the phone back.

This was also when we start­ed won­der­ing what was going on, it is after all our per­fect right to know the names of the offi­cers want­i­ng to con­fis­cate our bike. The argu­ment just got messier and messier from then on, to the point where they said they would bring us to the police sta­tion now (in hind­sight we know that this was prob­a­bly just a bluff and we should have agreed).

Even­tu­al­ly they let us go with a 500.000VND fine (that’s 22 US$) which is very pricey for Viet­namese stan­dards. We were just relieved to get away and quick­ly drove away.

Short­ly there­after we real­ized we were dri­ving in the wrong direc­tion and turned around. It had only been a cou­ple of min­utes, but the police offi­cers (com­plete with their set­up of chairs and tables) had van­ished.

When we lat­er told the own­er of our home­s­tay he explained that they were actu­al police offi­cers doing a rather ille­gal busi­ness.

We also heard from many oth­ers that got ripped off by the police or peo­ple pre­tend­ing to be police for ridicu­lous rea­sons and had to pay insane fines.

2. Vietnamese People can’t (or won’t) queue

This might not sound like such a big deal and unless you’re from the UK where queu­ing is a nation­al sport, you’re prob­a­bly used to this from your home coun­try any­way, but the Viet­namese real­ly over­step the mark.

You espe­cial­ly have to watch out for the tiny ladies that bare­ly reach your chest but boy are they strong — they will push you mer­ci­less­ly and when you turn around to look at them furi­ous­ly, they just stare back at you and con­tin­ue push­ing.

You need to be par­tic­u­lar­ly care­ful when board­ing a bus. While you usu­al­ly stow your lug­gage in the com­part­ments under the bus and then wait to show your tick­et and find your seat, this can become fatal in Viet­nam!

In rur­al areas local peo­ple often times don’t buy a tick­et but just show up and pay the dri­ver, whom will glad­ly let them in before all the oth­ers wait­ing patient­ly in line.

That is how it came that our bus from Sapa to Hanoi was so full with locals that all the tourists who had bought a tick­et in advance were told to wait for anoth­er bus due in a cou­ple of min­utes. This wouldn’t have been a big deal hadn’t we already stored our lug­gage in the now closed com­part­ments.

When we told this to the dri­ver he just repeat­ed that we need­ed to take the oth­er bus and wouldn’t lis­ten. There was no oth­er choice than to do it the like the locals: push­ing through and not accept­ing no for an answer.

There was an unfor­tu­nate group of young girls how­ev­er that wasn’t as bold and lucky and was left stand­ing at the side of the road, their lug­gage leav­ing with­out them.

3. The Environmental Pollution

A garbage dump in the midst of nature is sad­ly noth­ing unusu­al in the rur­al areas of Viet­nam.

If you trav­el to Viet­nam you bet­ter leave your inner envi­ron­men­tal activist at home — he will just be lost for words.

Lack­ing prop­er inform­ing and a work­ing waste dis­pos­al in a lot of rur­al areas the locals lit­er­al­ly live on top of a garbage dump.

Worst of all was the Mekong Delta, a stun­ning eco­log­i­cal sys­tem prac­ti­cal­ly ruined by the trash in some places.

Sail­ing by on the riv­er we saw plen­ty of peo­ple com­ing out of their hous­es and dump­ing their lit­ter Right. In. Front. Of. Their. Door.

Our ship’s pro­peller became entan­gled in plas­tic waste every oth­er kilo­me­ter and once our boater had it cut off — he just threw it right back into the water. It was insane.

On our trip to a rice noo­dle fac­to­ry they explained to us that they burn scrapped clothes because it’s cheap­er than wood or coals — result­ing in dead black bil­lows of smoke dark­en­ing the sky above the fac­to­ry.

In oth­er places, most­ly on the coun­try­side, there were blaz­ing fires high as a house and numer­ous small­er fires on the side of the road burn­ing the trash every night, fog­ging the whole area (like­ly with tox­ic gas­es).

It was a sad spec­ta­cle — and an unex­pect­ed one.

Viet­nam is con­sid­ered to be the high­est devel­oped coun­try in South­east Asia, but appar­ent­ly they haven’t caught up with the waste dis­pos­al stan­dards. It is not so much a mat­ter of dirty cities or lit­ter­ing, but rather fun­da­men­tal pol­lu­tion of the envi­ron­ment on a large scale.

I was always per­plex when I read about the esti­mat­ed amount of plas­tic in our oceans but after my trip to Viet­nam I won­der no more.

While these three things per­son­al­ly both­ered me the most, there are some oth­er things that I found irri­tat­ing or was told by oth­er trav­el­ers, includ­ing

• the way they treat ani­mals (liv­ing pigs strapped on the back of a motor­bike, par­a­lyzed goose hung by their necks or stuffed into plas­tic bags) which can be hard to look at if you are a sen­si­tive ani­mal lover

• the con­stant honk­ing of motor­bikes

• the insane and at time life-threat­en­ing traf­fic (although I have to admit I kind of enjoyed this one — I would some­times cross a busy street just for the thrill. Don’t do it!)

• the fre­quent pow­er out­ages espe­cial­ly in the North of the coun­try that left the towns in dark­ness for hours

• the way that locals would always give you an answer even if they knew they were giv­ing wrong infor­ma­tion because they would nev­er admit that they didn’t know

How­ev­er, I can’t stress enough what a beau­ti­ful coun­try Viet­nam is. It offers an incred­i­bly mul­ti­fac­eted cul­ture (and the “neg­a­tive” aspects are just as much part of it as all the good ones) to its vis­i­tors and is def­i­nite­ly worth a vis­it — so don’t be dis­cour­aged.

Just be pre­pared and attuned to these mat­ters before you go, so you know what you have to pay atten­tion to and how to react if things don’t turn out the way you expect­ed some­times.

Most impor­tant­ly though: ALWAYS be respect­ful towards the peo­ple and their cul­ture, no mat­ter how much you might dis­agree with some things. With an open mind, an opti­mistic atti­tude and a warm heart you will sure­ly see all the great things this coun­try has to offer.

Have you strug­gled with some of these mat­ters or heard about it from some­one who has? Share your opin­ion in the com­ments below or tell me on Face­book or Twit­ter. I’m always curi­ous to hear about oth­er people’s expe­ri­ences.