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Few days ago, i read an article 15 interesting things about Vietnam tourism of blogger Tara Vargas. She said:
“I traveled to Vietnam in 2024 and wanted to share with you the knowledge that I have been to Vietnam, especially the Saigon Tourist. My thoughts may be right, may be wrong but that’s the experience I want to share with you!”
The most of info that she shared are right, but few are not totally and I want to add few things. This’s not a rejection to her experiences, but I just want to add few things and explain them for more complete.
1. Iced tea is served free of charge in most restaurants. Some places serve hot tea, the other where both hot and cold.
Me: It’s right because Iced tea is the most popular and cheap drink in Vietnam.
2. When the Vietnam tea or water, they always leave 5 to 10% of water in the cup while standing up. They never drank.
Me: Right, we consider that thing is the politeness in eating culture.
3. The Vietnam are friendly and smiles.
Dat Hoang: Yeah, most of Vietnam are like that when meeting foreign tourists.
4. The Vietnam often bath in the morning, but they usually shower at night.
Me: Not totally right, it’s not often, we almost don’t bath in the morning, just late afternoon or evening.
5. These young teens love food, music, hairstyle, clothing style Korea.
Me: Totally right, the Korean famous singers and actors are idols of Vietnam youth. We see they have a perfect beauty of the Easterner (although we also know that beauty is almost from cosmetic surgery).
6. Vietnamese people usually have a nap after lunch, at around 12-13h, then very quiet street and very little traffic jam occurs.
Me: Too right, 12-13h is quietest period on the streets in daytime.
7. The songs of Abba Happy New Year, Hotel California by the Eagles and Papa Paul Anka is popular karaoke songs.
Dat Hoang: I think it’s not right, 2 these songs are in default list but we rarely sing them. Really, i and my friends have never sung them when karaoke.
8. The Vietnam helmet is not so safe when traveling, which is to avoid the traffic police fines.
Me: This’s really a complex problem that agencies have been trying to remove. However for now, there’re many people have strictly observing this rule when travelling (me too :P).
9. Few people in Vietnam respects lanes for pedestrians. We often pray when crossing the street or walking on the sidewalk.
Me: That’s right, because there’re too many vehicles but the roads are narrow so too difficult to respect lanes for pedestrians (although we want to do it). If you worry about this, let’s visit the article: How to cross the streets in Vietnam?!
10. Every family here has 2 motorbikes and they leave them on the ground floor. Living room is also room for parking.
Me: It’s right, the leaving motorbikes in living room maybe from 2 reasons: Narrowness of the houses in big cities while cost of parking in outside is too expensive and the architecture of our traditional house doesn’t have garage.
11. Mai Linh taxi and Vinasun is the most reliable. At the airport, people queued to take this two taxi firms. They waited a long time rather than jump to a random taxi area.
Me: Agree with these names, i usually use Mai Linh taxi to travel in Hanoi. Addition, you can try Huong Lua taxi (in Hanoi), my favorite firm.
12. Coffee is a paradise right here. People usually prefer ice cappuccino, black coffee for more milk and ice.
Me: The Vietnam like drinking coffee, we have many kinds of coffee: Brown coffee, black coffee or egg coffee – a famous specialty of Hanoi. However, each region has different ways of enjoying. To have an overview about coffee cultrure of in Vietnam, let’s visit the article: The big differences of coffee culture in Vietnam’ 3 regions.
13. “Nguyen” (Nguyễn) is the most common surname in Vietnam. As many as 7 of 10 people who I met have this surname.
Me: Totally right, Nguyen is most popular surname in Vietnam, next Hoang (Hoàng), Phan,…
14. The Vietnam are often very honest, friendly and helpful, they are very or laugh again.
Me: Yes, most of Vietnamese people are honest and friendly. But few aren’t, just few people so if you meet 1 of them, please don’t think Vietnamese are bad.
15. Vietnamese is a difficult language to learn. You can learn some words, but as you said, no one will understand. If you want easy to understand, please write down on paper. For me, using body language, gestures are the best way.
