15 Things about Vietnam: Part 3

North vs South

There are some small-to-medium-sized differences between Southern and Northern Vietnamese and a degree of underlying tension between them. Much of the tension arises from the War. Some Southerners believe that the Northerners have used the Northern victory in the War to enrich themselves and generally grind the noses of Southern Vietnamese; others hold that the Northerners are basically arrogant, uptight and no good at enjoying themselves. Some Northerners on the other hand suspect that Southern Vietnamese have never been fully signed up to the communist vision of the nation, or else think that Southerners ought to be more grateful for the sacrifices Northerners made in uniting the country; a small but significant number of Northerners find the free-wheeling party mentality of Southerners an offence to customary Vietnamese ways. 
  

As important as The War is though, the differences between North and South Vietnam go much further back in history. The key thing to remember here is that North Vietnam, centred on Hanoi and the Red River Delta, is the cultural and historical heartland of Vietnam. (It is also worth remembering that Central Vietnam makes up a region of its own.)

For a lot of Vietnamese history, there was no such thing as South Vietnam. Up until about 300 years ago, the lower reaches of the Mekong, which make up the core of the South, were a sparsely populated Cambodian marshland. 

Central Vietnam is not altogether different. Until the 15^thCentury most of it was an eccentric Indian-Malay kingdom called Champa, with a culture and a mentality all of its own. To get a rough idea, go and check out the huge stone penis statues and the ecstatic dancers, complete with square unVietnamese jaws and full unVietnamese breasts, on display in the museum in Đà Nẵng:

 
In short, what passes for the Vietnamese "national character" was formed over several thousand years under the conditions of village life in the North. A Northern Vietnamese village was a fiercely independent, fiercely parochial little locale that was self-supporting to a large degree. Its inhabitants didn’t take kindly to visitors and they weren’t inclined to take orders from high-up places hundreds of miles away.

The centerpiece of village life was a communal hall that doubled as a cultural centre and a place to worship the founding fathers of the village.

 

After the communal hall there were two other strategically important centres of village life. The first was the village river-landing, where women gathered to talk among themselves – after Vietnamese Confucians decided that they weren't going to give women a say in the communal hall any more. The second was the village banyan tree, where various spirits were supposed to lurk, where men and women on their way back from the rice fields took a breather and where most exchanges with the outside world took place:

Surrounding the village was a solid wall of bamboo that was tough to burn down or tunnel under. For villagers, it was something that was difficult to see out of or in through, both mentally and physically.

If you’re trying to imagine what I'm talking about in the comfort of your living room, think of a kind of commune crossed with an old boys’ club. Or, if you can get hold of it on Amazon, read the relevant chapters of Hữu Ngọc's book, Wandering through Vietnamese Culture, which explores all these issues in a sophisticated tourist-friendly way.

If you don’t like the whiff of patriarchal penis power that hangs over the traditional Vietnamese village, recall that the distinctive Vietnamese mode of existence that started up there had its strong points: a fierce sense of independence, a far-reaching ability to look after its own needs and some basic features of democracy (families represented in the communal hall regardless of wealth or social standing).

If you’re tempted, on the other hand, to think of village life as a pure, beautiful expression of community spirit that is sadly missing from the modern Western world, then keep reminding yourself what the fierce independence of Northern Vietnamese villages also brought with it: an informal village pecking order, a deep-seated fear of the foreign and the new, a stubborn self-satisfaction with local customs and traditions, as well as a kind of Vietnamese version of what Australians call tall poppy syndrome – the urge to “scratch everyone down to the same level” (thói cào bằng).

Now it was this kind of village mentality that changed when the Northern Vietnamese took over what is now Central and South Vietnam. And how the mentality changed tells you quite a lot about why the Southerners are, on average, a bit more easy-going, and a bit less ceremonious, than Northerners.

Southern Vietnamese villages didn't turn out to be as inward-looking as the villages of the north. Walls of bamboo existed down South, but they tended to be ornamental – they didn’t radically separate the inside from the outside. Part of all this came down to simple geography. The South of Vietnam is criss-crossed by waterways – swamps that eventually got drained or turned into canals - and it was along these that life proceeded to move rather freely.

Just as importantly though, the South of Vietnam was first settled by the Vietnamese at a time in history when business was becoming a much bigger factor in the life of South-East Asia and doing business doesn’t just mean wheeling and dealing with people from distant places, it means talking to them about stuff other than wheels and deals.

The fact that Southern Vietnam depended for its economic survival on trade meant that Southern Vietnamese were much less suspicious of outsiders than their Northern cousins who got by essentially by growing rice for themselves. Because the society created by trade in the South was more liquid in every sense of the word, the Southerners tended to be less attached to village hierarchies, and in general less moved by the idea that the present has to answer to the past.

Southern Vietnam was a kind of nation within a nation – a nation of settlers – and the Southern mentality reflects this down to today. However, settling the South didn’t mean giving up entirely on being Vietnamese. The new inhabitants of the Mekong Delta in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries set up new cults to new ancestors (the founders of new places, the victors of new battles), as well as taking with them some of the older gods of the North. But as geographical and spiritual wanderers, they were disinclined to take the rituals of village life as strictly as their Northern cousins. Hence the Northern Vietnamese complaint, voiced down to the present day, that Southerners don't take the rites of Vietnameseness seriously enough, or celebrate them in a slightly obscene spirit of irony.

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Operating across history on the mentality of Vietnamese from the different regions is the weather.

Northern Vietnam has to cope with monsoons and floods, while Central Vietnam suffers monsoons and floods and droughts. Scraping together a living has always been a tiring and dicey business for the Northern and Central Vietnamese.

Contrast this with the situation in the Mekong Delta, where the Southern Vietnamese confidently expect helpful weather and bumper crops, year in year out. The Southerners, for as long as the South has been the South, have had to do less hard labour and put aside less of what they produced – far less – than Vietnamese from the other two regions.

The result is a kind of hedonism. The Southern imperative to live for the day is summed up neatly in the phrase “Làm bao nhiêu ăn bấy nhiêu” – to eat and drink as much as you make – and in a kind of complacency, which traditionally says: “If that’s as far as I got, then why think of going further?”

Weather-wise, Hanoi is truly beautiful in the autumn – and infernal at the start of summer when a hot, dry wind blows down from somewhere in the Laotian mountains adjacent to Hell.

The heat of Ho Chi Minh City is most bearable from November to February. Day to day, the city is at its best in the early morning and at night – before the heat starts setting off bombs behind your eyes (around 9am) and after the squalls of motorbikes have dried up (around 9pm).

As traditional guidebooks will tell you, Ho Chi Minh City has two seasons (wet and dry), while Hanoi has the standard four. This accounts largely for the different dress-sense, and also partly for the different sense of life, in the two places.

The shabby-chic outfits worn by the motorbike taxi-drivers of Hanoi are obviously what's most appropriate for autumn and winter in the North.

The uniform of the Ho Chi Minh City Hondaman, which he puts on to ferry Westerners to the airport, is t-shirt and board-shorts, worn with heavy gold jewelry if he thinks you want a driver who’s really got class:

 

In the women's department, the light, cotton leisureware (đồ bộ) worn in public and private by most women in South Vietnam is again what’s best suited to the all-year-round heat. (But is that a valid excuse?)
 

 

If Southern leisureware seems a bit dumpy, then watch out for the heavy northern version of the same costume, which looks like a full-on pair of pyjamas:

Weather also has some cultural side-effects. The entire language of older Vietnamese culture, plus the rhythm of Vietnamese festive days, is geared to the changing of the seasons – as they unfold in the North. How do you have a Mid Autumn Moon Festival (Tết Trung Thu) without an autumn, or a Vietnamese New Year – Tết, which celebrates the beginning of the end of winter – when it’s already balmy and 33 degrees? Like Australians or South Americans celebrating Christmas, the Southern Vietnamese in a sense celebrate Vietnamese New Year in metaphor only. Dressed in their finest cotton leisureware, they’re probably glad to be 1200km away from the chilly New Year gatherings in Hanoi, which are telecast right across the country and involve ancient revolutionary comrades celebrating the end of winter – wearing grey sackcloth from the 1945 – 1975 period.

And of course there’s the rain.

The heavy rain of the South is traditionally compared by the Vietnamese with the moods of Southern Vietnamese girls. When they’re miffed with their boyfriends they can become wildly sour and scornful – for about 20 minutes, after which the sun comes out again. By comparison, the bad moods of Hanoi girls, like the rain of Hanoi, last for days. So if, as a single Western male, you want to try living in the Vietnamese cultural heartland, then pack a heavy raincoat and try to build up some emotional stamina.

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By Western standards, doing business anywhere in Vietnam depends a lot on political connections and favours from well-placed friends. However in the North things get political even faster than in other places. If a Vietnamese from out of town presents a Hanoian with a business plan, the gist of his response will be – present your family’s revolutionary credentials and genealogical tree and I'll have a think about it. If a different guy – one who already has the right credentials – presents the same Hanoian with a business plan, the first question will be “How much can we get out of the local People’s Committee for this little number?”

In Ho Chi Minh City they are more pragmatic. The Southern attitude to business plans is basically “bring it over for a squizz and we’ll see if we can’t get rich together.” Business is the dream of half the folk of Ho Chi Minh City, and almost all the Vietnamese who migrate there. In Ho Chi Minh City, if you are in your 20’s and don’t have a plan to start your own business, you are obviously suffering from some sort of moral paralysis. Conversations between dynamic young people trying to make their way in the world often have a slightly fraught “here’s the deal” tone to them; down south, the Marxist word for worker (“công nhân”) gets out-mentioned by the word for company (“công ty”) by a ratio of roughly 100/1.

This doesn’t mean that Southerners are more preoccupied with money or the stuff money can buy. When it comes to things like money, Northerners have a regular cult of keeping up appearances. For instance, Northern men who have next to no money will spend what little they have on hotted-up bikes, wafer-thin phones and denim shirts which for some reason they always tuck into their pants. If they invite you out to dinner though, watch out – it’ll probably be your shout. 

Southern Vietnamese men with sizeable fortunes, by contrast, will keep on driving beaten up Hondas from the mid-90’s and are happy to buy chunky $75 Nokias. Whether a Southern Vietnamese guy is rich or not, if you ask him for a loan, he’ll ask you how much you need. Depending on the situation, he’ll put his hand in his pocket, drive you to an ATM or go borrow some money to lend to you from a more solvent mate.

Northern Vietnamese bogans tend to flash their accessories like weapons. While the bogans of South Vietnam are more laid-back – give them the option and they'll come to the wedding wearing the casuals they were wearing on the farm in the morning morning:

Manners and formalities, as this suggests, are worried over more in the North than in the South, but what’s expected among family and friends differs widely from what’s expected when dealing with strangers. Northerners are more elaborately deferential towards older people, more conscientious in observing feast days and more lavish in displays of conformity around bosses. There's no denying they have a more polished sense of politeness towards guests they invite into their homes. But they can be grossly offensive to tourists and to their fellow citizens in the course of daily life. If you say thank you (“Cảm ơn”) to a Hanoi shopkeeper, she will probably think you’re trying to put one over her. And she won’t hesitate to utter obscenities if you walk out of her shop without buying anything.

Contrast this with the situation in the South, where the receptionist at your hotel will greet you with a cute little nod, will be moved (or ring her friends and start OMG’ing) if you successfully say one sentence in Vietnamese and where the shopgirls will ask you in a hot, soppy tone to drop by again, whether or not you make a purchase.

In Hanoi, if you take too long over your food in a café then you will get the hairy eyeball. In the South you can literally order one coffee and stay the whole day.

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Most visible in dress-sense, most palpable in the weather, the difference between North and South is at its most audible in the different regional accents. If you end up trying to learn Vietnamese, which as a culturally sophisticated expat you should, then being able to comprehend the Vietnamese spoken in both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi is as basic to the task as being able to understand both Brits and Americans is to the task of learning English. 

After 6 months of hard work you should get the hang of it. The Northern Vietnamese accent has lots of sharp consonants and guttural rasps, but they're pronounced in relatively soft, suave tone. Southern Vietnamese speech is higher on decibels but sounds less like the speaker is getting ready to clear his throat.

Among Vietnamese, Northerners are renowned for being eloquent, wordy and difficult to understand, Southerners for being blunt, a bit screechy and hard to misunderstand.

Adding to the pain of regional accents, there are also the differences between regional vocabularies. Vietnamese from the three different regions have different words for many different things, including family relationships, the intimate parts of the human anatomy and the things that people do with them.

As in most countries around the world, they also have a nice little palate of psycho-issues relating to language and accent.

The standard Southern Vietnamese accent sounds to the trained North Vietnamese ear like a careless blend of slurs and screeches, roughly, I guess, the way broad Australian English sounds to educated British and American ears. Only where Australians turn vowels into diphthongs, the Southern Vietnamese turn consonants into vowels and yowls. In the South of Vietnam, they don’t speak “Vietnamese” (tiếng Việt), they speak “tiếng Yiệt”, “Yietnamese”. And they don’t eat “roast duck” (“vịt nướng”) they eat "roast" yuck (“yịt nướng”).

Northern Vietnamese is classical Vietnamese, proper Vietnamese. Like High German, it’s the language of high culture and officialdom. Like American English, it’s also the language of pop culture.

Southern Vietnamese accept that all this is true by the way.

But that doesn’t remotely make them want to change their way of speaking or learn the “proper” Northern Vietnamese way of pronouncing consonants. That is because, in the mind of many Southerners, with the Southern attitude to consonant formation comes certain powers of straight-talking which a Northerner can never possess, no matter how clearly or eloquently he speaks Vietnamese.

In the minds of Southern Vietnamese, the linguistic prowess of the Northerners is the sign of a mildly deceptive attitude to life. The North, from the point of view of Ho Chi Minh City, is most of the way to China. That is, most of the way to the home of boring, staid, double-talking, imperialistic viciousness.

From the point of view of Southern Vietnamese, the best thing that can be said about Northerners is that they stick to their guns. And turn up on time more often than they do themselves. Sometimes.

But the Southerner attributes to himself a warmth of character which is a whole lot better than that – a power of direct, sincere speech that makes his inability to speak “proper” Vietnamese just another upside-down sign of a virtue.

(The trump card in the whole pack by the way is the accent of South-Western Vietnamese girls, which is praised as silky sweet throughout Vietnam. The singsong powers of girls from the provinces around HCMC are said to make Northern Vietnamese men go to water.)

Of course, as a foreigner, you don’t have to buy into the various value judgments relating to regional linguistic usage.

But you should spare a thought in all this for the Central Vietnamese.

Southern Vietnamese people can understand and sometimes do a pretty good impersonation of a “proper” Northern accent.

A few Northerners fence off the Southern accent with their prejudices, but most just accept it for what it is. And a certain percentage of Northern men dream permanently of having a girl from near the Cambodian border pour warm treacle in their ears.

In the meantime, no one “gets” the Central Vietnamese.

To anyone from the North or the South, a strong Central Vietnamese accent is literally impossible to understand. If a Southerner heads too far north on a holiday, or a northerner too far south, then he will start to flounder. If either of them goes to Huế, the old royal capital right in the middle of Central Vietnam, he will flounder completely.

The Cosmo Kramer theory of Italian culture – that Italian life is like an opera in which everyone sings instead of speaking – has a direct analogue in the minds of Southern and Northern Vietnamese. The speech-patterns of Vietnamese from Huế are like music to the ear; but only real buffs have any idea what Huế people are actually going on about. . .

Vietnamese stage comedies produced in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, especially if they’re set in the past, often have a character from Huế who’s basically there to do a funny accent: to sound vastly poetic or vastly poofy – ultra-sophisticated, but totally incomprehensible.

15 Things about Vietnam: Part 2

Dating Vietnamese Women

If you take a Vietnamese girl out on a date, she will probably expect to be paid for. If you actually start going out with her, she might expect you to express your affection in the form of anything from roses to Iphones. Vietnamese women expect a degree of gallantry from (Vietnamese and) Western men which, from a Western point of view, can feel like you're being taken for a bit of a ride. Meeting a gorgeous Vietnamese girl means learning to differentiate between situations where cultural differences are in play and when you're being taken for a ride (and when you're taking yourself for a ride).

The thing you need to understand which will stop you falling into various clichéd, vaguely racist patterns of thought about Vietnamese girls taking Western men for a ride is how the life-story of a good, traditional Vietnamese girl reads.

Most traditional Vietnamese girls are raised by their parents in a close-knit family environment. They live with their parents until marriage. Many of them, insofar as they do any sort of dating before marriage, date one guy for a relatively short period of time - often a guy who is already known to their parents. During this dating phase, the guy pays for everything and buys presents for the girl's family - large or small ones, depending on his means. After the wedding, he will be expected to earn 100% of the money, which he will proceed to hand over all of to her. She will be expected to keep house, look after the kids and keep tight control of the purse strings. While husband and wife will enter into discussion when it comes to big-ticket items like houses and motorbikes, she'll be the main administrator of the family finances. If he's lucky, she'll give him back 10% of his earnings as pocket money.

Now here's the thing. However limiting this picture of female roles may seem from a Western point of view, this is the way many, many Vietnamese girls like it. On top of major expressions of serious romantic intent, presents and payments are essential to what they expect from any interested male party to a long-term relationship.

And here's another thing, still more interesting. Many Vietnamese men are equally as comfortable with the traditional system of presents and payments, firstly because it gives them the reassurance of set romantic roles, secondly because it gives them the opportunity to show generosity and care (and power), as well as hopefully leaving a little lee-way to hide the debts they rack up during their initial romantic campaigns.

Which is not to say that all Vietnamese girls fit the traditional picture. In big Vietnamese cities, you'll come across plenty of girls who are not living at home, who are financially independent of their families and who are willing to pay for themselves on dates. Younger generations of Vietnamese women tend to be comfortable with the idea of going out with several different men before actually choosing one to marry, and less keen on leaving the workforce or being financially dependent on their husbands. The most forward-looking among them clearly have serious doubts about the standard Vietnamese ideal of love and marriage (gifts and payments) which often for a woman means marrying the first decent, caring, financially solvent guy who comes along and sticks competently to conventional romantic roles.

However, life is not exactly easy for a modern, independent Vietnamese girl who wants to make her own way in the world. A girl who takes her economic or romantic fate into her own hands is seen, at best, as going against tradition, and at worst as deeply bad by the traditionalists in her own family, or indeed by the traditional part of herself.

And this is also where things get confusing for Western men in Vietnam. Because, truth be told, there are a lot of Vietnamese girls out there who are operating somewhere between the poles of Vietnamese tradition and Western-style modernity.

Most confusing of all, there are a lot of girls out there who are operating on rather traditional assumptions, even though they live in the loud, brash environment of Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi and have all the accoutrements of independence and modernity (smartphones, Vespas, short shorts short enough to kill men on the spot).

Put simply, there's a rather large culture gap that you need to mind if you want to meet, date or even marry a Vietnamese girl. At the dating stage, if a Vietnamese girl expects you to pay, asks you for gifts and waits for you to call, it doesn't necessarily mean she's a sharp operator who's after your money or playing strategically on your heartstrings. All it might mean is that she's sticking to traditional Vietnamese rules about dating, romance and male/female relations generally.

There's no doubt, however, that a traditionalistic Vietnamese girl is a tough romantic proposition for a Western male with modern Western expectations about romance and money and modern Western views about sexual equality. Unless you yourself are an out-and-out traditionalist, a woman who shows little interest in being anything other than a gently (or fiercely) passive object of male desire and care is probably not the best person for you to start chasing round after.

The main problem here being that some rather traditional Vietnamese girls are so drop-dead gorgeous that Western men end up chasing round after them. And marrying them. And driving themselves insane in the process.

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Of course, there are some sharp operators on the Vietnamese romantic scene - some women whose exclusive interest in the contents of Western men's wallets makes an interesting complement to Western men's interest in the contents of their pants. Specifically, there are Vietnamese girls who will pursue Western men, either for short-term or long-term relationships, for reasons that have nothing much to do with love, romance or the general joy of human interaction (such as it is).

Some Vietnamese girls are interested in finding Western boyfriends because they imagine that all Western guys are fantastically rich.

Some Vietnamese girls are interested in finding Western boyfriends just because having a Western boyfriend is considered glamorous - or because having Eurasian babies is considered even more glamorous.

Others might see having a Western boyfriend as a ticket out of Vietnam.

Here's the tricky thing, though. Often, the instrumental attitude to relationships of these kinds of sharp operators is far from purely selfish. Thinking of themselves as dutiful members of a wider family unit, a lot of sharp operators see having a Western boyfriend, ready to shoot them money and buy them presents, as a way of helping out their families. Most of the presents and payments made by the Western boyfriend get shot out to relatives in the provinces. Which can make said Western boyfriend feel as if his generosity is being seriously abused. But which for his girlfriend is a pure expression of economic necessity and filial piety.

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Because of the mixed motives that some Vietnamese girls have for entering into relationships with Western men, sharp operators are not always easy to pick. And taking evasive action is not always easy; being in a relationship with a woman (or man) whose motives are largely instrumental doesn't of course mean that there can't be affection, or even a kind of love.

The easiest sharp operators to pick are the ones who make wild requests for money straight up and stop returning your calls if you show any signs of refusing them.

The fact that a girl asks you to buy her an Iphone after two dates is probably also a bad sign.

Further down the track, a pretty reliable sign that a Vietnamese girl may be an unsuitable object of desire is that she won't discuss her expectations (and how they might differ from yours) in a sensible, adult way - assuming, again, that you're willing to discuss your expectations (and how they might differ from hers) in a sensible adult way.

My Vietnamese muses, Tâm and Nguyệt, tell me that the best way to cope with the differences between standard Western and Vietnamese expectations on dates is for the guy to just pay for everything. That is, you pay for all the drinks and food consumed by everyone, including yourself, your date and any other girlfriends she decides to bring along to the date for moral support.

Further down the track, it seems advisable to have an open chat about money-issues and how you're going to handle them as a couple. If your girlfriend is educated, urban and financially independent, then she will probably be fine about splitting bills. In fact, she might insist that bills be split - not for strictly feminist reasons, but on the practical ground that you both turned up, both sipped the smoothies, and so both ought to cover the cost. If she is not so modern in her ways and expects you to keep paying for everything the two of you do together, then that's when you have to decide how much of the cultural gap you are willing to manfully bestride.

I would say it is a little neurotic to think your relationship with her is in serious trouble just because she expects you to pay for most things most of the time. Let's face it, oh Western man, your dollars (Euros, kronas, etc.) go a long long way in Vietnam. So don't tie yourself in knots over the money situation, if we're just talking about $20 or $30 here and there.

If you go traveling out of town without your Vietnamese girlfriend, you should remember to do the culturally appropriate thing and buy her presents (small ones). When you first meet her family, have presents ready for them too.

Even if, on the basis of mature, adult discussion, you establish that she is willing to cover half of any bills you incur together, then be certain she's still willing to do this when you go out with a larger group of Vietnamese friends. You can guarantee that most of the Vietnamese men in the group will be covering for their girlfriends and you don't want your girlfriend copping any nonsense from her more conventional friends as she takes out her purse at the end of the night. In these sorts of situations, she could always pay you back later.

Last of all (say the Muses), if at some stage in your burgeoning relationship, she starts demanding gold ingots or whitegoods, don't just swallow your pride. Speak up before break up, men. The cultural gap that you thought didn't exist when you first started going out with her has opened up again.

Don't stare into the abyss. Look across the abyss and talk, explain, negotiate. Say no to Her, if you have to, but make sure you say why too.

For a Western guy, the trickiest issue about getting into a relationship with a Vietnamese girl is the issue of overcoming your culturally over-determined anxieties about being taken for a ride. But that's not the only big issue in play. The other main issue is that, in getting into a relationship with a Western guy, your girlfriend will have to overcome her anxieties about being seen as a moral monster. 

If you can mutually handle both those sets of issues, then being in a relationship with a Vietnamese girl can be a beautiful, fun and happy-making thing. Across the board, Vietnamese women, especially the ones who have had some contact with the world outside of Vietnam, are curious, low-key and tenaciously loyal human beings with a politeness of heart and emotional consistency that you might have found lacking in other romantic climates. So if the pair of you can just get over your various issues, then you might be looking at a serious stint in . . . what's the name of the place you go when human relationships are pretty damn good most of the time? Not paradise . . . Ah, that's right, normality. 

15 Things about Vietnam: Part 1

Speaking English

Large numbers of younger Vietnamese aspire to speak English and will see associating with a native speaker as a significant token of achievement. Many of them have a vastly unrealistic picture of what it takes to learn a language. And some will have had their innate ability to learn English ruined by the Vietnamese school system before they arrive in your class. 

As you're probably aware, teaching English is the job of choice for most native English speakers heading off for a stint in South East Asia. In Vietnam it's the same story. Large numbers of younger Vietnamese aspire to speak English, and many of them leave high school with years of English classes behind them, but no practical speaking or listening skills whatsoever, so the demand for English teachers is high and probably set to remain so for several decades to come. And while teaching English to Vietnamese students can be a slog for various reasons, there's no doubt it pays well; the better-qualified English teachers in Vietnam, whose salaries are calculated in US dollars and whose activities fan out into neat little range of speaking engagements and managerial activities, live high on the hog indeed.

As far as finding a place to work goes, there are a smattering of universities that hire ESL teachers, and an even smaller number which teach college-level literature and culture in English. Most jobs teaching English in Vietnam, however, are in English language centres and high schools, so let's start with them.

English language centres in Vietnam come in two basic types: the foreign-run and the Vietnamese-run. Foreign-run centres are normally organized along solid, professional lines. Some cater, in their dull, professional way, to an elite middle class customer base (ILA, The British Council), while others cater to more of a mass audience, charging lower fees and packing more students into classes (VUS, VAC). Then there are the Vietamese-run centres which are often fairly shambolic in their levels of organization and professionalism. Many have funny names that are meant to suggest a certain hi-tech sleekness and a definite connection with the West; "Space-Age English" (Trung Tâm Không Gian) and "Apollo English".

Beneath the lunar surface of the language-centre landscape, there are also various mini and micro-centres - hole-in-the-wall type schools set up by Vietnamese English majors or solo-run by some guy who learned English in the Philippines and is now trying to make his fortune assaulting the kids with his thick English accent and his vigorous personal methodology.

You can work out where you'd be best off working for. The top-tier foreign-run centres will expect you to have a uni degree and a formal ESL teaching qualification (either CELTA or TESOL), while the lower-tier Vietnamese centres will employ you on the basis of the fact that you are a native speaker and can tie your own shoe-laces.

The atmosphere in class in the best Vietnamese language centres tends to be moderately serious. Students turn up to class, diligently do their homework and do serious swotting for tests. This is because fees in good Vietnamese language centres are pretty steep (most of an average month's wages for a 10-week course, sometimes more), so parents expect results. It's also because many of the kids are learning English because they want to get into American or Australian universities; basically, they need certain scores in internationally standardized English tests (IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC) before they're going to get a look in.

This latter fact leads to some moderately stupid ideas about learning English that do the rounds of the Vietnamese student mind. The worst of them is that to get a 6.0 in an IELTS exam - 6.0 being the basic score you need to get into a normal Western university - the main thing you have to do is to train yourself to take an IELTS test. The rigour (i.e. pain) of learning English over a couple of years, on this picture, is somehow going to be removed by doing practice tests and memorizing set responses, which is pretty much how most Vietnamese students get through high school. Unsurprisingly, when it comes to international English exams administered by Cambridge University, the swotting approach tends to end in tears.

If you already have a background in school teaching, or if teaching teenagers sounds appealing, you could also consider working in a Vietnamese high school. Again there are different types of schools, with different underlying rules and expectations. There are top-notch international schools, where student fees (and teachers' salaries) are similar to the priciest private schools in the West. There are Vietnamese public schools for the gifted and Vietnamese public schools for the normal. Probably the biggest division is between Vietnamese public schools in the city and Vietnamese public schools in the country. Vietnamese students from the country tend to be MUCH less well-off than their compatriots from the city; in the classroom they tend to be earnest and vastly passive. Urban middle class students are the opposite. They're basically at school to have a good time and to give their teachers the run around - to indemnify themselves against the boredom of long school days, anodyne lessons, masses of homework and the ever-present spectre of exams.

Of course, the atmosphere in the classroom depends a lot on the age of the kids and their particular take on study and life. No matter what type of Vietnamese school you teach in, there are always a small core of kids who consider it a privilege to be taught by a native speaker and a relief not to spend half the class memorizing lists and regurgitating them in front of the class, they way they do in regular Vietnamese class. These are the really switched on kids. And they're usually switched on, not just because they're learning something they need to learn to get ahead, but because they like the way foreign teachers encourage them to develop the sort of autonomous powers of thought and imagination that the standard Vietnamese curriculum doesn't allow for.

Something you might like to try with adult students, or even with kids, once you've built up a bit of a network in Vietnam, is organizing private classes at home for small groups. If you stay in Vietnam for more than three months, you will almost certainly be approached by friends asking you to open an English class for them and a select bunch of associates. Being somehow ON THE WAY TO LEARNING ENGLISH, if not actually learning English, seems to be more or less essential to the self-respect of young urban professionals in the Vietnam of 2015.

Take this enthusiasm with a grain of salt though. Vaguely aspiring to speak English is something that only gets Vietnamese students so far. And it's not enough to build a viable career in Vietnam around as an English teacher. Most small private classes tend to fall apart after 2 - 3 months, for one simple reason: adult Vietnamese life is massively over-burdened with work and a wide range of compulsory social commitments. Add to that the pressures of having a family and you have a recipe for absenteeism and general flakiness. As much as young Vietnamese adults love the IDEA of learning English, most of them just don't have the time.

*

One of the first things you'll notice when you arrive in Vietnam is that English is very much the GLAMOUR language. Ads and signs in Vietnam make use of various half-digested English-language memes. As in China, there are a range of poor translations - the effects of which range from the clunky to the comic-sublime:

 

Some Vietnamese who can speak English like to drop English names and words into the conversation and watch for the kudos that starts flowing their way. Younger generations of Vietnamese choose an English name for themselves that partly resembles their Vietnamese name ("Hello, Trang, um, Tiffany.") Young and old deck themselves out in cheap imported clothing decorated with meaningless semi-English slogans:

If you come across a 58 year old Vietnamese dame with "Babelicious" emblazoned across her chest, you're safe in assuming she's not a pole-dancer, just a normal Vietnamese retiree with average levels of respect for the English language (and absolutely no knowledge of its actual meaning).

English, be it noted, is not the ONLY language that symbolically represents the dynamism and modernity that Vietnamese people nowadays want Vietnam to be a part of. Korean and Japanese enjoy solid popularity for similar reasons. (Even Thai had a bit of a surge for a couple of years, possibly because Vietnamese kids suddenly started watching Thai ghost comedies.)

The language which gets paid a disproportionate LACK of attention is CHINESE. In cultural and linguistic terms, China and Vietnam are close neighbours and the economies of the two places are tightly intermeshed; masses of cheap imports flow across the border into Vietnam, which has serious trouble producing stuff cheaply enough to sell back. And yet the Vietnamese are so suspicious of their northern neighbours that only a tiny minority of Vietnamese learn the Chinese language, even though, for Vietnamese, it's not that difficult to learn.

Such is the general buzz surrounding English that older folk often come across as a little embarrassed that they don't speak it better. Younger generations have no such worries. Wherever you go in Vietnam, you'll come across teenagers who want to try out their English on you, 5 year olds who will holler "Hello" at you as you pass them in the street - and quite a few grown men who do exactly the same. (Often it's the only word of English they know.)

One of the basic situations you will find yourself getting into in Vietnam goes roughly like this: You walk into a Vietnamese government office to get your paperwork stamped; a pleasant, eager young Vietnamese man comes up to you and, for the sake of trying out his English, and because he wants to be polite to a foreigner, asks "Can I help you?" You answer with a simple sentence: "I have an appointment at 11 with a visa officer." At which point the eager young Vietnamese man stares at you as if you're speaking Zwahili, then wanders off looking manifestly disappointed with himself.

This guy's problem, and that of about 20 million of his compatriots, is that, through no fault of his own, he was taught English at high school by Vietnamese teachers who (again through no fault of their own) have never been outside of Vietnam to study English among native speakers and who might never have had meaningful contact with native speakers in the course of years (decades . . .) of English studies. Apart from speaking with thick Vietnamese accents, Vietnamese English teachers tend to concentrate on grammar and reading - for the simple reason that they themselves have poor speaking skills and so try to stick to what they know best.

The overall result is that the Vietnamese, across the board, are still pretty bad at English. Not because they lack the will to learn English. And absolutely not because they lack the ability or intelligence. But because learning English in Vietnam still tends to turn into an enormous exercise in list-making; the whole English-language curriculum is built up around memorizing set phrases which native speakers almost never use word for word, and operating grammatical rules, which native speakers often don't apply.

As eager as many Vietnamese are to learn and speak English, they're secretly bored out of their brains by the way they're taught it at school. But because they've been taught it (and most other subjects) in this way for so long, they're also secretly scared of being taught it in a different way. Therein lies the challenge of teaching English in Vietnam. Give your class of 15 year olds some basic structures to talk about the types of photos they like looking at on facebook, then ask them to freely express their opinions and - what happens? They mightn't jump at the chance to state their preferences, they might ignore you completely and start climbing the walls. . .  

The Great Stage in East Asia

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As some of you might have heard around the traps, The Great Stage has moved to South East Asia.

In fact, it has moved to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Some of you might be thinking this is a strange move for The Great Stage. A counter-intuitive move. A dangerous move even, given the tendency of the actors, and of management, to screech, snarl, sneer, snipe and generally heap Scheisse on various agents of constituted authority in the place we were previously operating (the Commonwealth of Australia).

One thing is generally acknowledged to be true about politics in today's world. In these parts of East Asia, heaping Scheisse on any of the major agents of constituted political authority is NOT PERMITTED, whereas heaping Scheisse on them in places like the Commonwealth of Australia is pretty much COMPULSORY.

Which of these states of affair is harder to stomach? Now there's a philosophical question!

Did the GS of old get caught up at all in this compulsory heaping of Scheisse?

The GS would readily admit there were problematic moments.

How it adapts to its new environment, in which the heaping of Scheisse isn't seen as valid relaxation or a critical duty, will only become clear over time.

But here, as a curtain-raiser over the next month, are fifteen entries of medium length introducing Vietnam to Great Stagers of old: the fifteen most basic things a Western visitor needs to know about Vietnam.

For the detail, drop by over the next month.

GS notes with sadness that in its new EASTERN INCARNATION it is going to have to talk less about politics than it did in the past, though it promises to continue keeping tabs on hackneyed positivity and overblown waffle in all ways that are compatible with retaining its Vietnamese visa.

Truly,

GS

Fifteen things worth knowing about Vietnam from a Western point of view

1. Large numbers of younger Vietnamese aspire to speak English and will see associating with a native speaker as a significant token of achievement. Many of them have a vastly unrealistic picture of what it takes to learn a language. And some will have had their innate ability to learn English ruined by the Vietnamese school system before they arrive in your class.

2. If you take a Vietnamese girl out on a date she will probably expect to be paid for. If you start actually going out with her, she might expect you to express your affection in the form of anything from roses to Iphones. Vietnamese women demand a degree of male gallantry from (Vietnamese and) Western men which, from a Western point of view, can feel like you’re being taken for a bit of a ride. Meeting a gorgeous Vietnamese girl means learning to differentiate between situations where cultural differences are in play and when you're being taken for a ride (and when you're taking yourself for a ride).

3. There are some small-to-medium-sized differences between Southern and Northern Vietnamese and a degree of underlying agro between them. Much of the tension arises from the War. Some Southerners believe that the Northerners used the Northern victory in the War to enrich themselves and generally grind the noses of Southern Vietnamese; some hold that the Northerners are basically arrogant, uptight and no good at enjoying themselves. Some Northerners on the other hand suspect that Southern Vietnamese have never been fully signed up to the communist vision of the nation or think that Southerners ought to be more grateful for the sacrifices Northerners made in uniting the country; a small but significant number of Northerners find the free-wheeling party mentality of Southerners an offence to customary Vietnamese ways.

4. Vietnamese food across the board is cheap, delicious and . . . not for the faint-hearted. Large Vietnamese cities have vast selections of foodstalls and curbside restaurants where Vietnamese people can be seen eating, drinking, yelling and turfing their chicken bones into the street until late into the night.

5. Traffic in Vietnam is a combination of the marvelous and the hairy. It is governed by unspoken conventions rather than written rules, which is why it looks to Westerners like unmitigated chaos. If you’re on foot, step slowly out into the riotous stream of Hondas and watch it part to make way for you. If you’re driving a bike yourself, be ready to make small adjustments to the bikes around you at all times.

6. A big fat Vietnamese wedding is something all Westerner visitors to Vietnam should try to get themselves invited to. A big fat Vietnamese wedding is generally composed of an intimate traditional ceremony in the family homes of the bride and groom in the morning and an ear-splitting semi-Western reception, for 500 guests or more, in the evening.

7. A night at a karaoke bar is one of the most dependable communal joys of contemporary Vietnamese life. Most Vietnamese men think they can sing, even when they are tone-deaf and arrhythmic. Heavy consumption of draught beer has a key role to play in this situation.

8. Haggling is a basic fact of everyday economic existence in Vietnam. All Vietnamese accept it and some actually enjoy it. Reacting to it with moral outrage or a special sense of victimhood is counter-productive and culturally naïve.

9. Vietnamese idealize Westerners in unpredictable ways. Many of them think that the height, fair skin and long noses of Westerners are vastly enviable. Many also fondly imagine that Western societies are comfortable, safe places to live and that Western institutions are efficiently run according to basic principles of Enlightenment and public benevolence.

10. Throughout Asia, and in Vietnam, cool has minor but essential variations. In descending order of popularity, what is cool among Vietnamese 20-somethings are singing, dancing, Korean music, Japanese manga, Western food, Western clothes and, for daring Vietnamese youngsters, tattoos. Sex, drugs and rock n roll, while on their way to becoming cool in some quarters, are still considered uncool by many.

11. “The War” is looked back on by most Vietnamese with vague patriotic pride. But 60% of the Vietnamese alive today are too young to have any first- experience of it. And the vast majority know little about its historical causes, its course or its wider consequences.

12. The Vietnamese worship ancestors. This goes for Vietnamese of all religious denominations, including Buddhists, Christians and . . . Communists.

13. The Vietnamese are deeply suspicious of the Chinese. Though no single country has influenced Vietnamese culture or the mentality of Vietnamese people more than China, to suggest that the Vietnamese and the Chinese are basically the same is one of the biggest faux pas you can make while in Vietnam.

14. By Western standards, Vietnamese men are quite blokey. This expresses itself in some obnoxious behaviour (ordering women around, being grossly offensive to waitresses when drunk). It also expresses itself in old-fashioned gallantry and in extravagant generosity to friends and foreign guests. If, as a bloke, you want to get on friendly terms with a Vietnamese bloke, then going drinking or fishing or watching soccer together are the best ways of breaking the ice. When socializing with Vietnamese men, be prepared to field a range of questions: How well do you hold your liquor? How much money do you make per month? And vitally "How do Vietnamese girls make you feel?" (Translation: Do you think Vietnamese girls are pretty?)

15. The Vietnamese like to live out of doors, within eyeshot of the rest of the world.