Job Discussion Forums

flyingmonkey · Joined: 13 Sep 2009 Posts: 24

1) I asked why I see people running red lights, cutting in line, and riding their motorbikes down the sidewalk while honking at pedestrians to get out of the way. A Vietnamese person explained, �It�s because they don�t want to wait. They want to be first.�

2) I asked how Vietnamese women feel about their husbands and boyfriends having other girlfriends and visiting such places as the bia oms (huggy bars). I was told, �They�re very jealous. That�s why you have to lie to them.�

3) I asked where a trash can was and someone pointed to the street.

Insubordination · Joined: 07 Nov 2007 Posts: 394 Location: Sydney

hahaha awesome. I guess they were saying 'duh' to you.

CThomas · Joined: 21 Oct 2009 Posts: 380 Location: HCMC, Vietnam

Sounds a lot like Mexico. Trash in the street, girlfriends on the side, cutting in line. But I know Vietnam is different. I'm excited about witnessing it all... see you in 3 weeks.

jb0072009 · Joined: 26 Feb 2009 Posts: 127 Location: Saigon

Hell all that stuff is true of most of SE Asia. If the cahn sat actually enforced the traffic laws maybe not so many people would die everyday in motorbike accidents. The women here cheat on their husbands and boyfriends as well. The Viet government does not put much value on a human life here. In a train accident near Hanoi 8 people were killed in a bus when the train crashed into it because the train crossing warning signals were out of order. The government gave 3,000,000 VND to each of the dead people family although the accident was clearly the fault of the railroad (a government company)

CThomas · Joined: 21 Oct 2009 Posts: 380 Location: HCMC, Vietnam

We're all food for worms. Just put my body in a small boat tethered with an old rope to a tree deep in a soggy mangrove forest... and put a broken pocket watch on my breast so I can look at it and laugh now and again. I hope your family is happy lucky.

kh1311 · Joined: 29 Mar 2007 Posts: 16

I was asked by one of my students if I liked the Vietnamese people to which I answered "yes". She then said, "That's because you don't understand them."

mark_in_saigon · Joined: 20 Sep 2009 Posts: 837

blateson · Joined: 12 Mar 2006 Posts: 144

Good thread topic. Question: if you are going to hold an International Beauty Contest in Vietnam, why would you use international languages?
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Where is our Vietnamese language?
09:19' 09/12/2009 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge � Is the Vietnamese language inferior to foreign languages in Vietnam itself? This has become a burning topic of discussion in Tuoi Tre Daily after a reader sent his complaint about this phenomenon to the newspaper.

The reader, named Minh Long, complained about this fact when he read a story about the construction of a tourist centre to serve the Miss World 2010 pageant in Thoi Son islent in the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang on Tuoi Tre in October.

This article went accompanied with some photos about the site. In the photos were banners with English words: �Welcome to the home of Miss World 2010� and �Sorry for any inconvenience caused�.

�Looking these words, I thought I was living in an English-speaking country like America, Britain or India and Singapore, but these banners are hung in Thoi Son islet in Tien Giang province in Vietnam�s Mekong Delta,� Long wrote.

He questioned who can understand that language when beauties and guests will go to this small islet next year, not now, and the local people are poor farmers who don�t know English.

Based on his experience, Long said that not many places in the world that he has traveled to use English rampantly like in Vietnam.
....

Xuan Uyen wrote, �Most (Vietnamese) people prefer to add English words to their conversations and I don�t like it... I have to use English in my job everyday but I feel angry whenever I talk or chat with my friends who use English�.

This takes the cake! Reader Cao Thi said: �I work for a foreign company but I only speak English when it is really necessary. My colleagues often speak English at work. When I asked them why, they said sometimes they couldn�t find out the suitable Vietnamese words to explain to others and speaking English has become their habit�.

Vietnam's hysteria and protectionism

jb0072009 · Joined: 26 Feb 2009 Posts: 127 Location: Saigon

Green Acres · Joined: 06 May 2009 Posts: 260

I don't know how much longer the divide will persist. If one looks at the sociological development of another homogenous/xenophobic country -- Korea -- one could see the trend lasting another half century at the very least. It takes generations to overcome such sentiments.

Westerners are taught to be individualistic and to respect others' individuality. Not so in the East, and so the idea that one of us would not conform with them may be met with trepidation or disgust.

I don't think it helps matters much when government television programs are aired daily with anti-foreigner messages and overtones. Newspapers, as even the translated English ones on display in this forum indicate, also run rife with anti-foreign contentions. For many Vietnamese, every foreigner is here to take money away from the Vietnamese -- lets not even look at the logic of such ideas. In many ways, they would perceive us as no different than the colonizing French.

It's also no accident that women, more than men, wish to leave this country and society and not come back; while men are truly proud of what they have accomplished and usually return after completing studies overseas. I give it about 10 years, and then the notion that a Vietnamese woman is with a foreign man will be frowned upon even more, but for the reason that she was unable to get a good Vietnamese man. That is to say, that no Vietnamese man wanted her for marriage, so she must be a bar maid or unfit for Vietnamese society. By comparing sociological developments in other Asian countries with those in Vietnam, it is easy to see this progression in the near future.