PROS and CONS of LIVING In Vietnam 🇻🇳

hey there and welcome to edges of Earth my name is Brock I spent about a year in two months in Vietnam I both taught English and did a bit of solo traveling in southern Vietnam today I want to share with you some of the pros and cons of living in Vietnam now if you're Vietnamese and you're watching this video don't get upset these are just things that I notice that are a little bit different than what we're used to in in for example I'm from America it doesn't mean that I hate Vietnam not at all I would love to come back but these are just some of the things that were a bit difficult for me so if you're from the West and you love experiencing different cultures like I did you're going to love Vietnam especially when you get out of the tourist areas in the tourist areas it's pretty wild pretty crazy compared to what we are used to but when you step out of that area it's like a different world and I loved it here are my basic pros and cons of living in Vietnam I'm going to start with the cons number one the language barrier now as I travel there's very very few people who speak English and if they do it's like a simple hello or hi or what is your name or where are you from and then after that it kind of it dies most of the younger generation know those phrases from school but above and beyond that not very much now there were people that did stop me even in the countryside and wanted to talk as a general rule of thumb in the country few people speak English this of course made it more interesting to me because I was able to use my phone and get close and talk and have a conversation with my phone so communication was still a bit slower if you're not into technology and you don't know how to use a smart phone to translate things then yeah it's going to be a little bit difficult to get around while I was living there I try to be as healthy as possible one thing that I always purchase a lot of in America are herbs different herbs at the store in the form of capsules now there's so many pharmacies everywhere and they have many different medications that you can buy without a prescription as well as different herbs that you can buy I'm an herb guy I stay away from the medication but there's different herbs and supplements and vitamins that I wanted to have while I was there and I will say it's particularly difficult not because the language barrier but because they just don't have them on their shelves it's not a thing some were simple and basic like amino acid and I remember translating amino acid acid amine right in Vietnamese they knew what I was talking about but they raised their eyebrow and they translated why do you amino-acids and I'm thinking to myself are you kidding the core of my existence in your existence from every hair to every cell to everything within every cell of your body is there because of an amino acid so why do I want them well I want to give my body what it wants in order to repair and reproduce proper cells but maybe this is not their way of thought in their medicine so therefore it's not a thing so things like that and I could go I could give you this huge list of things that they just didn't have from my perspective the medical system is crazy so I read online a while ago for every one hundred thousand people in Vietnam there's an incredibly small amount of doctors like Google this stuff blows your mind and I believe it because as you drive past a hospital you see lines going into the hospital all the way out people are waiting in this line that seems to never end starting at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. there waiting for the hospital to open so they can see a doctor my recommendation to you is don't get hurt otherwise you pay out of your pocket and you have to pay a lot of extra money to get to the front of the line apparently you can cut you can cheat if you have more money you can skip everybody else who has less money kind of weird luckily I never had any problems that I needed to visit the doctor for yay me but if you're unlucky and some problem does happen be prepared it can be a difficult thing and also some of the logic behind some of the treatment from my perspective is wild like there's some things I just can't wrap my mind around I've heard stories online and firsthand from the local people in certain scenarios about being treated for certain problems and I just can't believe some of these treatments were used for these type of problems so again you can do your own research on that type of thing just to me it was wild when you go to a hotel they take your passport end of story it is law so don't be offended that this hotel has taken your passport it just is and if you go out and are stopped by the police and they say where's your passport and you don't have it that could be a problem some countries they shun upon not carrying your passport and they can make it a big problem for you while in Vietnam I traveled everywhere I never once carried my passport with me both while they were staying in the hands of people in hotels or living in an apartment and I would just leave it in my bag in the apartment never had any problems you'd see police they'd smile sometimes they wouldn't even acknowledge your existence but when they did it was usually a casual smile or a head nod it was never an aggressive eye in the tourist areas again I've heard stories out of the tourist areas they were very kind very helpful very polite and I was never once asked for my passport roads are dangerous like when I say dangerous I mean dangerous basically all rules in all laws that exist on the road nobody follows them just burn that into your head forever just assume that they are going to break that law assume that the stop sign is there and someone is going to go through it assume that they're not going to use their blinker assume assume assume the bad thing will happen chances are they're not going to follow the rules and in some cases the rules that we are used to don't even exist in Vietnam all I can say is the general concept of crossing a road is just go and don't stop as you start to inch your way across the road you look in the direction that the cars are coming only look at that direction don't care about the other direction you just focus on that direction and time it so you go you're walking in between motorbikes and they zip past you zip around you they will see you and they will not hit you but if you stop or you hesitate they now miss calculate what you're doing and they will think oh I got to go around him this way or maybe they'll think I got to go around them that way and that causes confusion into the last second and then you get ran over so once you start walking just keep walking and you should be good to go you get to the middle of the road you then look over here and time it for the other side and you keep going and if you need to hang out in the middle of the road as you wait for the next wave of cars awesome stand in the middle of the road cars are flying past you it doesn't matter this is normal so it's a different way of life it's a different system that they use just be aware it's different lack of safety laws this is pretty much everywhere I can give you just a couple examples when you're driving through construction there could be huge huge pieces of equipment carrying big bricks and loads of dirt over your head as you are going under it and there's no rules against it it's just as I carry these this one ton of blocks and bricks I have to twist this way and then cars are in cars and trucks are going under my bucket full of stuff and if they hit a bumper if it shakes and it falls and hits you in the head or kills someone I don't maybe there's punishment behind it but the reality is is there's no safety involve and obviously in our countries there's cones you have to be like so many feet away from this activity in there it's just you're in it you're part of it you're or you go through it and around it you must wear a helmet while you're driving a motorbike or riding a motorbike why because you're an adult but you can happily put your children in front of you and behind you on the motorbike and they are not required to wear a helmet whatsoever you can drive with two adults on a motorbike but you can stack as many children on that thing as you can put on and none of them need to our helmets so it's an interesting concept we and our countries usually protect the children first and make sure they are the most safe and this country it was a little bit different so imagine that type of logic everywhere and so everything is very different than than what we are used to dirty facilities this is the biggest con for me the concept of cleanliness in Vietnam is different from the concept of cleanliness in our country specifically you must take your shoes off when you enter but very rarely do people wear socks it's always bare feet so imagine coming in to tile floor with everyone's bare feet everywhere sounds relatively ok until you realize how dirty some people's feet get people sweat and the mud puddles are sometimes left over people go to the bathroom which is called a wet bathroom which the toilet is next to the shower and everything inside gets wet so if someone takes a shower wherever you are or uses that water ends up all over the floor you walk in with dusty feet all over mud is left everywhere inside and then you exit the wet bathroom in mud trails are left everywhere even though there's a towel on the floor to usually wipe your feet when you exit doesn't always work mud happens everywhere always and then your bare feet then walk over everybody else's mud and it's just this thing that happens and bacteria and the whole so from my perspective terrible right and literally disgusting I almost always wore socks just to avoid that it was just a it's just a different thing than what we're used to that's all and another con is you're surrounded by a lot of poverty it's like everywhere however surprisingly enough there was not a lot of begging that happened now I've been to some other Asian countries and begging was just like unreal it doesn't stop matter where you go but my experience in Vietnam was that it was extremely low compared to some of these other countries it does exist it does happen be aware you see the poverty around you more than people kind of bother you with their problems type of thing oftentimes when I was in the rural areas where there was no tourists the beggars would go to all of the local people but would avoid me maybe it was a courtesy thing maybe it was a language barrier I'm not sure the reason behind it but many times I was avoided during the begging process so these are my list of cons again doesn't mean I hate Vietnam not at all it's just these are the things that were very different kind of in a negative way compared to what I am used to now also there's things that are positive in a different way that I want to share about now my favorite part about Vietnam was the people now I'm a people person the reason why I travel in the first place is to experience culture which stems from people they were so friendly now when I landed in Hanoi for the first time I must say this I almost left after a week I almost got on a plane and went to a different country because many things that the Vietnamese people do are very different from the way that we do them in terms of friendliness and politeness and it took me a while to realize that they are really friendly people the way they show friendliness kindness and affection is different than we do and in the first week I was misinterpreting their kindness now some things that they do was very similar to us and you could immediately see that they were kind but other things we would almost think that it's a little bit offensive and so my interpretation of some situations were like why are they so rude I don't understand what I realized is that they're actually trying to show friendliness it's just different than what we would normally do if you feel that way in the beginning remember two things one get out of the tourist area because most likely they are being a little bit unkind because all they want is your money tourist areas suck in my opinion number two after you've got out of the tourist area people still might appear to be a little bit rude most likely they're not your interpretation of them is incorrect give it extra time because their culture is a little bit different than what we're used to and I can tell you that once I learned how they're different I realize that they're so friendly and they all tried to show kindness and politeness to me sometimes you're going to have people come up to you and want a selfie with you they're going to say hey you that's all they know but they come up to you and they point to their phone ah picture picture selfie selfie they all know the word selfie and you say yeah yeah then they swarm you and take like 25 photos and they always say one more one more and it turns out to be like one hundred more but it's all fun people will sometimes invite you for food and drinks you're walking and people are sitting drinking beer or drinking coffee or smoking or eating food and they're like oh my god you're a tourist you're a foreigner come sit with us and income now they don't say this it's all body language though they'll say hey come by the way this means come here not go away so they want to invite you to have lunch with them it's so kind it's so polite sometimes people will invite you on a mini adventure now this is something that happened from both children and adults they'll say hey you why don't you come with me tomorrow and we can do this thing you're like okay why not if you have time to do these things awesome more power to you obviously you're if you're on a time limit and you have to go back home very soon pick and choose who you want to hang out with or what you want to do but if you're a free bird like me awesome more power to you go have fun with anyone and on many occasions doesn't matter where I was if people were swimming they would invite you and this is normally children there were times where I went swimming with complete strangers and it was fun it sometimes draws a crowd especially if you're not in a tourist area and they don't see foreigners very often people kind of come and just watch you swim it's a little weird but all is good so that's pretty much it I hope if you are doing some research on the internet about Vietnam I hope this kind of helps a little bit now there's many more pros and there's a few more cons of course but these are I guess the biggest ones from my perspective if you're on the fence about going to Vietnam I totally encourage you to go hey you're not going to spend a lot of money and B you're going to get one of the richest cultures ever because few people travel to Vietnam it's not a popular destination around the world and so you have the chance to go to a country where the culture is still so rich and not influenced like people like you and me right tourists I absolutely encourage you to go I thank you for watching and remember your time is running out start living take care [Music]

Channel: Edges Of Earth

Views: 120,918

Rating: 4.2175274 out of 5

Keywords: pros and cons of living in vietnam, advantages and disadvantages of living in vietnam, is vietnam a good place to live, vietnam living conditions today, pros and cons vietnam, problems living in vietnam, best places for expats to live in vietnam, living and working in vietnam, vietnam expat pros cons, good and bad living in vietnam, living in vietnam vlog

Id: IWm9pEsysIo

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 08 2018