Vietnam invokes curiosity.

For many western people Vietnam triggers ideas about soul-searching, sun, fun, friendly people, beautiful beaches, amazing food, lifestyle, culture and many more positive things. It’s quite heavily marketed as an amazing country full of amazing people. Word of mouth, social media, and internet content often promotes Vietnam as some sort of heavenly utopia that bestows unto visiters a new lease on life.

With everything I had seen and heard regarding Vietnam I decided to go travelling there myself, and for me personally, my experience did not really live up to the hype.

In writing this article I don’t seek to tarnish the reputation of Vietnam or its people, but I do feel its fair to share some very real truths about Vietnam and the kind of experience one might encounter if they choose to travel there, particularly as a western visitor. Some things are different in Vietnam. Some standards are different, and I think it’s fair to express such observations.

The way taxis work could be referred to as a culture shock. In Ireland for example, people flag down a taxi when they want a ride, and then they politely tell the taxi driver where they want to go. However in Vietnam flagging down a taxi sometimes works with the following caveat:

In Vietnam you don’t flag taxi down, taxi flag you down and In Vietnam you don’t tell taxi where you want to go, taxi tell you where he’s taking you

The taxi caveat first presents itself upon landing at the airport. Hoi Chi Minh, Da Nang, Hanoi, everywhere. It doesn’t matter what airport you go to, as soon as you walk out at the arrival gates the sound of hustlers hits you quicker than the 39 degree heat, “taaaxxiiiii TAAAAXXXXIIIIIII TAAAAXIIIIII Hey you. Hey you. Hey hey taxxii taxiii,” they yell, smile, wave at you and try to beckon you over to get you into their “taxi.” Some of them will walk right up to you, invading your personal space. They stand beside you as you check your phone and verbally invite you to take a ride with them. In true Vietnam fashion some of them are dressed in Grab outfits impersonating real Grab drivers.

To clarify; Grab is an app for booking taxis in Vietnam. It works in the same way as Freenow or Uber. It’s one of the most legitimate ways of booking a taxi in Vietnam.

As aforementioned some of the guys that hang around the airport offering rides are dressed in Grab outfits, and they stand around the official Grab pickup spots, but they are in fact scammers. They’re wearing the garb and offering rides but they are not employees of Grab. Seasoned travellers might identify rip-off taxi drivers at the airport, but vulnerable people are easily walked into taking a ride with dodgy taxi drivers where they are usually ripped-off, overcharged and in a worst case scenario subjected to a very uncomfortable journey. Also people are generally more vulnerable after stepping off a 15 hour flight, in a different timezone, exhausted with no sleep, scrambled brains, and with a desperate need to check-in and sleep.

There are numerous examples of scam taxi rides published on Reddit, detailing uncivilised actions, shouting, groping and inflated fares ( https://www.reddit.com/r/VietNam/s/7gKEUR4Wza ).

In keeping with the tradition of the taxi culture shock, the madness does not stay behind at the airport, but rather it follows you around for the duration of your stay. It’s one of the many gifts that keeps giving in Vietnam.

The day after I arrived in Hoi Chi Minh I stepped out into the blistering heat and followed Google Maps to a nearby point of interest. Being unaccustomed to the streets of Vietnam I’m sure I looked like a vulnerable target. I had barely made it 200 metres up the road before some guy on a scooter pulls up beside me aggressively asking “where are you going? Where are you going?” I didn’t really want to tell him where I was going so I politely told him I was just crossing the street. He was a taxi driver, or rather a “motorbike taxi driver,” trying to get a taxi fare out of me.

Right after that some really friendly guy with coconut water approached me. He was smiling, happy, so very nice. I thought, “ahhh finally, this is the Vietnam they were talking about. This guy here is one of the amazing nice kind people that I heard so much about. Now I see it.” This charming guy handed me a coconut with a straw in it, a friendly gesture I thought, but no, he wanted money. I was flustered, it happened so quick and his smile and warmth and charm really got me, but oh well, it was only coconut water, no big deal is what I thought. I asked how much, I had some cash on me, I still hadn’t fully well come to grips with the value of the Vietnamese Dong – approximately 30,000 Dong = €1.

I ended up giving him 50,000₫ (appx €1.70). While it’s not a lot of money, I soon after realised “ahh, he scammed me, the bastard.” The correct price for that coconut water should have been less than half that, and while that wasn’t the worst crime in the world, it did set the precedent for how every turn in Vietnam has someone or something looking to take advantage of you. Through my travels there I came to feel as if scamming – big and small – is just part of the culture there. To me Vietnam just seems to have a deeply ingrained culture of scamming and ripping people off.

Less than 2 minutes after the coconut water incident, the motorbike taxi driver guy resurfaced on his scooter. This time he drove right up onto the sidewalk, boxing me in. Again an example of how they sometimes tend to invade your personal space in Vietnam. He jumped off the scooter and just kept asking “where are you going? I take you there.” I told him I was walking and he had the cheek to ask “WHY? NO! I take you there. You come now. I take you there.” This all happened within 5 minutes of leaving my hotel on my first day in Hoi Chi Minh City.

As a Western solo traveller it doesn’t take long to learn that you can’t look too vulnerable in Vietnam. It’s one of those countries where you just need to make sure you look like you know exactly where you’re going at all times, and you need to be able to dismiss taxi drivers and hagglers with easy confidence.

Travelling solo as a young man might be different to travelling as a woman, or with a group of friends because I’m not sure if the massage ladies or prostitutes are so eager to invite women into their parlours, but they were certainly eager to solicit me.

Ladies offering massages are in every city in Vietnam. While most of them aren’t offensive, they are very consistent. They never seem to tire of smiling, waving, beckoning you in and saying “hello massaaaage, massaage.” I thought it was kind of funny when I first encountered the massage culture in Hoi Chi Minh, but by the time I left via Hanoi after 16 days in Vietnam, it was just another non-stop aspect of the society that I found tiring.

I personally did not avail of any massages during my stay in Vietnam, and it would be wrong of me to state that all massage ladies in Vietnam provide handjobs or sexual services, but some certainly do. I know this for sure because on the night that I arrived in Vietnam I went out to a laundromat to wash my clothes. On my way home a woman pulled up on a scooter offering to take me for a massage. It was actually a rather hilarious interaction. It was a friendly encounter. She ended up dropping me back to my hotel on the back of her scooter. She felt me up in a very seductive way, suggesting that she would certainly provide sexual services with this “massage” she was offering. I did not avail of her offer, but as a single man I could see how her efforts were very very tempting. I had to wonder, if that massage lady was offering sexual services, how many other massage parlours in Vietnam are doubled-up as brothels?

Of all the seedy encounters on offer in Vietnam the place that took the biscuit for me was Bùi Viện Street in Hoi Chi Minh. I entered the Bùi Viện Street neighbourhood unaware of its character. I wound up there on my search for a late night beer as there are surprisingly quiet areas of Hoi Chi Minh at night time, where you can walk around in circles without finding any bars or restaraunts.

Bùi Viện Street was where I saw the worst examples of child exploitation in Vietnam – not the only examples – but the worst.

Bùi Viện Street and the surrounding neighbourhood is an area of late night bars, nightclubs, “massage parlours,” ladyboys, strippers, beggars and all sorts of other seedy things you can imagine. It’s wedged with partygoers, mostly young people, tourists, backpackers and people of that calibre. The clubs blare loud music all night long. Drugs are surely available. Scantily clad women dance on podiums and prostitutes line the streets.

I could deal with the prostitutes that tried to grab at me and pull me towards brothels, but I was deeply dismayed at the sight of a baby rolling around on the dirty streets as hordes of drunk tourists sidestepped him. Then there was the child street performers; one girl of about 8 – 10 years visibly gagging in pain as she sucked flammable liquids from a plastic bottle during her very sore looking fire breathing performance. She winced in pain every time she spat fire, then dusted herself off, took another gulp of flammable liquids and off she’d go again. It was such a sad thing to witness. Children and babies performing like this at 02:00 on a Monday night, against the backdrop of all the loud intoxication, prostitution and debauchery. What kind of a country allows this stuff to happen?

All of the major cities in Vietnam had some recurring downsides. The disregard for animal welfare is everywhere from north to south. Miserable looking stray cats and dogs roam the streets in every city. Live fish in seafood restaraunts in Da Nang are just piled into tiny uncomfortable looking fish tanks. I discovered content online describing Vietnamese zoos as appalling places of animal abuse. One Reddit comment described Vietnamese zoos as “a crime against earth.” There just seems to be no understanding, or care for animal welfare in Vietnam.

For all the high praise that Da Nang gets from influencers and Youtubers it didn’t blow me away. Just like every city in Vietnam there was rats hopping all over the streets in Da Nang. Middle-aged western men went about the town courting prostitutes half their age. People burned their trash on the footpaths and questionable hygiene standards were visible at many food stalls and cheap restaraunts.

The worst city for harassment from drug dealers and pimps was Hue. In the busiest streets of Hue I couldn’t go for 3 minutes without someone trying to sell me drugs or a ride in their bicycle cart. The guys on the augmented bikes in Hue felt like The Wheelers from Return To Oz; awful creatures that just circle around you and harrass you everywhere you go, they gesture to you with their hands hovering around their lips, imitating a person smoking, and they say “marijuana marijuana,” then they say “cocaine cocaine.” Or they approach you and say “massage boom boom,” meaning “do you want to see a prostitute?” Some of them show you videos or photographs of women having sex, and ask you if you’d like to go see that woman.

As for accomodation in Vietnam I would advise anyone that needs certain standards to book hotels that are at least 4 or 5 stars. 3 star hotels and budget friendly outlets can be gross and frustrating. Some of the things that I experienced in hotels include a lizard running up the walls, foul smells coming from a “restaraunt” below, cockroaches running around the floor, extremely loud construction work outside my room starting very early on a Saturday morning, loud refrigerator in the room, loud fans going off all night outside my window, curtains that do not block sunlight.

On one occasion I was also transferred to a hotel outside the Hue City Centre area after a hotel in the City Centre claimed that they never received my booking online. They apologised when they realised I had paid for two nights, and to make it up to me, they transferred me to a different hotel where I spent one night in a lower quality room and one night in a room that matched the quality of that which I had paid for. To compensate me for the inconvenience they offered me free rent on a scooter for one day. I thought about availing of the free scooter, but decided against it when I realised my health, safety and finances were more important than the joys of riding a scooter through the dangerous, chaotic, lawless roads of Vietnam. I did not bring my driving license with me. I do not have an international driving permit. Those that offered me the scooter did not care for those documents. The concept of insurance was also never mentioned. The helmet that came with the scooter did not cover the front or back of the head, it might as well have been a baseball cap for use on a children’s bouncy castle.

What would have happened if I was to take that scooter for a spin and have an accident? My travel insurance would probably be void and I’d then be in a world of trouble. Even if I was covered, the healthcare system in Vietnam is not as good as it is elsewhere. It’s not a country in which you want to be hospitalised. Then there’s the risk of someone claiming off me in the case of an accident. The risk of having a catastrophic injury on the dangerous roads. The risk of something malfunctioning on the scooter and then being held liable for it whether its my fault or not. These are all things that people should think about when considering riding scooters in Vietnam. I’m not saying that people should never ride a scooter in Vietnam, but I am suggesting that people should think carefully about the decisions they make. Tourists do have serious accidents riding scooters in Vietnam.

Nothing within this article is untrue. The roads are wild and at their worst they would fit comfortably into scenes of a Mad Max movie. Beehives of scooters cut in and out in front of honking horns and swerving cars. The standard motorbike helmets provide little to no protection. People in Hanoi piss in random places in broad daylight. Tap water is not clean in Vietnam. Food hygiene standards in some food outlets may not be as good as they are in western countries. There are lots of rats on the streets after dark. There’s not enough bins in Hanoi, but there is plenty of rubbish. Rubble, pollution and waste is within the substance of Vietnam.

After 16 days of travelling in Vietnam I was exhausted from the experience. Even while riding through the streets of the Old Quarter in Hanoi on the back of a motorbike taxi guys were jumping out beside the scooter and shouting “hey you, cocaine cocaine…marijuana..massage boom boom.” It couldn’t even be avoided while travelling on the back of a motorbike taxi.

On one of my last days in Hanoi while walking towards St Joseph’s Cathedral I noticed a mini art exhibition in a small park. There was 3 women sitting on a bench inside the park and just as I walked in to marvel at some art the 3 women waved at me, smiling, endearing, pleasant, and they said “hello.” I reciprocated and in response they jumped off their seats like hungry fleas that had just spotted Beethoven. These ladies ran, and I really mean ran, like, bolted towards me. Salivating, tongues wagging, excited. I rolled my eyes to heaven and thought to myself “Oh God, not more of this again.” They ran after me asking me where I was going but gave up when they realised I wasn’t going to engage with them. I walked away from the park and ditched my plan of looking at the art exhibition just so I could be far far away from those people.

To me the country seemed like a complete mess, but I suppose that’s part of the fun of it. Although I enjoyed some moments of my time there, it for the most part did not live up to the hype. When I returned home I read lots of content on the internet about other people’s experiences in Vietnam, and I found that I was not the only one that noticed some unflattering things about the place. I read a comment from someone that said something like, you’d have to become a worser version of yourself to survive in Vietnam. You’d have to become colder, more selfish, less trusting of people if you lived there. You could not be a totally open kind person over there, you would just be exploited.

There’s so many people and so much content online that praise Vietnam as an amazing heavenly resort, while totally overlooking all the widespread flaws. Looking back on it I sometimes think to myself “did I miss something there? Did I go to the same Vietnam that all the Pro-Vietnam guys went to? Was that really some sort of beautiful heavenly place back there or was it really just a crazy fucked up shit hole?”

While there is beauty within Vietnam, there is also a lot of menace. It’s a relatively poor yet rapidly developing country with a brutal history of war and colonisation. It might be helpful for some visitors to know in advance what they might encounter when they go there especially if they’re not used to travelling around crazy chaotic places like that. The Pro-Vietnam brigade never really showcase the full picture regarding life and travel in Vietnam.