Vietnamese people not warm, friendly, smiling, nice, unpleasant? Disappointed by Vietnam?
I often hear on travel sites or travel forums that Vietnamese people are less nice/healty/friendly/smiling/honey/kind/welcoming than Cambodian/Thai/laotian people (cross out the useless mention)…
OK, everyone has their own feelings.
But let them then say that it hurts them, disappoints them… because yes, they expect the Vietnamese to welcome them with a smile up to their ears and shout “thank you for being here, thank you thank you thank you!”
Then there…
It makes me laugh… yellow.
As a Vietnamese woman, I want to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
Imagine a second. For more than 1000 years, your country has been invaded by China and by a miracle, your people manage, in spite of everything, to keep their language, their writing, their literature and this thirst for freedom… Until the day your people manage to get out of the Chinese grip. There follow a few periods of happiness without too many major incidents, until a civil war breaks out and white people from a faraway country (clue: the country with the Eiffel Tower) take the opportunity to come and colonize your country, supposedly “for your own good”. Courageous, your people fight to the end to free the French, but the Americans come with their toxic bombs. Ohhh should we also talk about the Japanese and South Korean massacres? 2/3 of your large family died because of war or famine, as you wish. Your grandparents lived with the fear in their stomachs of being shot in the head at any moment. Your parents lived as children in fear of receiving a bomb on their head at any time. You find yourself with a heavy family history that deserves 100 years of psychotherapy.
Now, as your generation finally enjoys freedom, you have the chance to finally find a stable job. But the salary is so low that you have to work 2-3 jobs to survive. Your parents and in-laws receive almost no pension and as a child you have to provide for them, it’s your duty. You live in a 30m2 house with your parents, wife and children, without any privacy. When your parents are sick, you stay glued to their bed to take care of them until the end of their (and your) days.
Why do you only think about money? Because your 19 hours of work a day isn’t enough to feed your whole family. Because in this country, if you don’t have connections, you need at least money to buy a place in a daycare center for your child, to pay them private lessons in the evening, so that they will succeed one day, instead of accumulating 3 jobs like you. Because you know that when you’re sick, the insurance won’t cover much, you’re the one who’s self-financing your retirement, your health insurance, your unemployment insurance and your benefits.
And those c*nards of tourists who have been negotiating for 30 minutes to lower the price by 0.2€ don’t find you nice/hot/friendly/sourian/pleasant enough (cross out the useless mention).
They are so tired, you know, of having travelled by backpack from Cambodia to Vietnam via Laos for months. They would like you to comfort them by lowering the price and, if possible, with your little smile.
Would you smile? or would you cry?
