A 24-year-old German settling in the midst of Vietnamese chaos.
“Backpacking, fine. But live here? You crazy!” That’s what people say when I tell them I live here. And with all respect to the Vietnamese – those people are right! At the same time it’s an absolutely enjoyable life. So what’s life in Vietnam really like? Go through your own ordinary day in Hanoi Smogcity and judge yourself!
The first challenge of your day will be to safely guide your rusty motorbike to the workplace – at the same time as 7 million other hurried Vietnamese. The apparent non-existence of traffic rules and sanity of the drivers will require you to ignore all rational thinking and switch to maniac autopilot. Road signs are suggestions, traffic lights commonly ignored street illumination. Approach the intersection with medium speed, honk more than the other motorists and find your way. Against all odds, accidents only seem to occur to those that allow sanity to prevail (namely foreigners). Thus, be smart, act insane.
You made it to the office – congratulations. Now it’s on you to devote yourself to the squeaking chitchat of your colleagues. If you have the ambition to integrate yourself into the culture to the point of language, you will have a hard time. The Vietnamese language consists of 6 tones, making each word sound slightly (!) different, but carry a totally different meaning. So, for instance, what the foreigner would consider the same-sounding word ‘nam’, the Vietnamese might be referring to ‘south’,’year’,’manliness’, ‘chest’, ‘lie down’, ‘hold’ or ‘mushroom’. And if you think the meaning comes with the context, then you haven’t seen people’s puzzled faces when (for them) you’re ordering a manly jet engine at a food stand.
It’s lunchtime – one of the highlights of your day. Once you get to your “restaurant” of choice and have taken seat on your 30cm-high stool, you can start shouting your order through the room (which, of course, you will have to repeat at least three times). If you sit close to the street you can observe your food in the making: a duck being torn apart, guts ripped out, indefinable meat being twisted on a ventilator-enhanced log-fire on the pavement – it’s entertainment enough to just watch. The numerous little plates, decorated with different kinds of meat and vegetables, are then distributed over the table, for everyone to share.
During the process people will engage you into discussion as if it were a political debate, interrupted only by smacking and slurping noises they make while eating - but who could blame them, trying to eat noodle soup with two sticks.
After work one of your colleagues will ask you to have a drink with him and his friends, which you gladly accept (because anything else would be rude). Don’t even bring money because him calling you up implies that it’s his treat to pay for everything you eat or drink that night. It’s self-evident.
And what seems so natural to them is something that really impresses me. Vietnamese share everything and insist on doing good things to one-another. In the two months that I’ve lived here and that I’ve been going out for dinner with my colleagues, I’ve not once had an empty drink, not once an empty plate and have not once been allowed to pay for anything I consumed. My boss once said “Vietnamese are not just, they are caring” and the longer I live here the more I understand what he meant by that. Happiness is a matter of perspective.
Is the glass half full or half empty? Vietnamese perspective has its own answer: it doesn’t matter - you have a full glass standing right next to it.