Vietnam in foreigners’ eyes

  

Mrs TJ Vargas is a foreigner having lived in Ho Chi Minh City for nearly five years. She shared her observation about Vietnamese’s lifestyle on her blog.

I have lived in Vietnam since 2007 and I want to share my knowledge of Vietnamese in general and Sai Gon people in particular. I can be right or wrong; you can agree or disagree with me, but I still want to share.

1. Iced tee is free in most restaurants. Some restaurants have hot tea, some have both.

2. When Vietnamese drink tea or water (or other beverage), they always leave from 5 percent to 10 percent that drink in their glass. They do not drink it to the dregs.

3. Vietnamese do not take a bath in the morning, they take a bath in the evening.

4. Teenagers here love everything coming from Korea – food, music, hairstyle, costumes. K-pop has a big affect on this country.

5. Vietnamese take a nap after lunch. Therefore, if you drive your car on the streets from 12 pm to 1 pm, you will travel easily and the streets are very quite.

6. “Happy New Year” of ABBA, “Hotel California” of The Eagles and “Papa” of Paul Anka are songs that are often chosen to sing karaoke.

7. Vietnamese wear helmets not because of their safety, they wear helmets in order not to be fined by policemen.

8. Nobody respects pedestrian crossing. We always have to pray when crossing the road or walking on the sidewalk.

9. Every family has at least two motorbikes and they put them on the ground floor. The living room is also a motorbike garage.

10. Mai Linh and Vinasun are taxi brands believed most. In the airport, everybody queue up for Mai Linh and Vinasun taxi.

11. People here will ask you about your age, your nationality and your marriage status in the first meeting.

12. Coffee here is wonderful. Everybody like drinking iced milk coffee.

13. “Nguyễn” (Nguyen) can be both first name and last name. about seven tenths of Vietnamese I met have this name.

14.  Vietnamese are basically  very friendly, genuine and helpful. Besides, they often smile.

15. The Vietnamese language is very difficult. Although you can distinguish the pronunciation, when you speak out, Vietnamese cannot understand what you are saying. An advice for you is to write down what you want to say in a paper. To me, the secret is body language.

Source: Internet

Women’s Day

When I encounter tourists in Hanoi, I often recommend a climb up the Flag Tower, a 200-year-old survivor of fraught history that now serves as a crown for the Vietnam Military History Museum – which is really what I want tourists to see.

The museum is shabby, sobering reminder of the bad old days, a repository of decrepit weaponry used by Vietnam and its enemies over the generations. A centerpiece is the rusting sculptural collage formed from the wreckage of downed aircraft. But during my first visit, two displays from “the American War” proved most riveting. One was an old, grainy news photo of a hulking, captured American pilot being held prisoner by a diminutive Vietnamese woman. Another was the bust depicting the sad, deeply lined face of a “Heroic Vietnamese Mother,” one of more than 44,000 women who had been accorded that recognition and a modest pension after losing children and husbands in the war.

To some, the Vietnamese Women’s Day, observed on October 20, is little more than “a Hallmark holiday” – a marketing gimmick to sell greeting cards, flowers, sweets and maybe a night on the town. But I find myself thinking it is more than that – perhaps, to use an American frame of reference, a blend of Mother’s Day and Memorial Day.

All in all, Vietnamese women have it tough. My Saigon-born, American-raised wife would tell you that in Vietnam’s patriarchal culture – in Vietnam or overseas – the stereotypical wife may suffer not only from a husband with a wandering eye and a thirst for bia hoi, but also a domineering mother-in-law who feels her boy can do no wrong. This is, I suspect, one reason that many Vietnamese women find foreign boyfriends.

My impression of Vietnamese womanhood is also shaped by what I see day after day on the streets of Hanoi in how so many women labor in ways that have existed for hundreds of years.

Most women, of course, are now riding their scooters in styles appropriate for office jobs. But much as rural women still labor under their conical hats in rice paddies, thousands of their sisters in Hanoi wear their conical hats while carrying their meager livelihood in two baskets that dangle from the yoke-like bamboo ganh over a shoulder. There are women who trundle carts or walk bicycles holding baskets that serve as portable florist shops, kitchens or miniscule general stores.

Two books on my nightstand also shape my perspective. “The Girl in the Picture” tells the story of Kim Phuc, who was 10 years old when she ran naked and screaming from the pain of napalm into the view of photojournalist Nick Utt, whose iconic image helped cement opinion against the war. The other is “Last Night I Dreamed of Peace,” based on the diary of Dang Thuy Tram, a young Vietnamese woman who as a physician tended the wounded in medical tents in central Vietnam. She was 25 when she started her diary on April 8, 1965. On June 20, 1970 her diary ended. Tram was killed in action.

The diary was nearly tossed into a fire before the Vietnamese interpreter of an American intelligence officer realized it should be saved. Not until April 2005 did the diary find its way to Hanoi and Tram’s mother, Doan Ngoc Tram. The publication of the diary proved a sensation in Vietnam as readers connected it with the spirit of a young woman whose heroism hid her heartache over a past love.

Sacrifice, it seems, is the recurring theme – one that Vietnamese women share with so many others all over the world. Here’s hoping that the brave Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban for daring to demand education for girls makes a full recovery.

And to all the ladies out there, here’s hoping for a happy Women’s Day – here and elsewhere, now and forever.

Source: Tuoitrenews

Teachers’ Day

Most nations, I suspect, don't celebrate school teachers the way Vietnam does, with a National Teachers’ Day.

On the surface, it may seem like a good idea – a little extra recognition for a noble calling that is often under-appreciated and underpaid, the latter of which is very true in Vietnam.

But a Vietnamese friend doesn't like how Teachers’ Day creates expectations for families to provide gifts regardless of the quality of the relationship.

"In Vietnam, we have a saying "If you want your children to be well-educated, then you should love the teachers" to emphasize the role of teachers in their children's educational development," Vinh explained. A respectful attitude is appropriate. But, "when it becomes a national day like this, it ruins the fairness of the educational environment, and it becomes a chance for corruption."

Most parents, Vinh explained, "fear that if they do not bring gifts to their son or daughter's teachers, then their children would be treated badly by the teachers." The low pay afforded teachers in Vietnam prompts many to moonlight as tutors, as many earn extra pay by leading private classes after school hours.

"The relationship between students and teachers should be very personal," Vinh explained. "And it should not be celebrated nationwide like it's happening now."

He has a point. Not all teachers, or all teacher-student relationships, are created equal. All of us probably have only vague memories of mediocre teachers; the standouts were either terrific or terrible. Some of the unforgettable ones better off forgotten. Do they deserve a Teachers' Day too?

But there are also exceptional teachers who inspire students to new levels of achievement and self-discovery. Occasionally there are real-life exemplars whose careers resembles the pedagogic heroes of films like "Dead Poets Society" or "Mr. Holland's Opus." More common, I think, are the quietly heroic.

Once upon a time in America, for example, a middle-aged first grade teacher named Mrs. Schreiber welcomed into her classroom a new girl who was part of the wave of Vietnamese immigrants.

The girl arrived speaking no English but was fluent by the end of the first year. Mrs. Schreiber and her husband – they had no children of their own – took the girl under their wing, and invited her to an overnight church camp the following summer. At the breakfast table the girl was happily surprised to see a small bowl of ice cream – and when she spooned a mouthful she realized it was butter for the pancakes.

A few years later, the girl would have another special teacher, a man named Mr. Bingert. The girl’s parents – slower to adjust to American culture and busy with a family that would grow to eight children – couldn't give her the encouragement that Mr. Bingert could. To her he was a father figure who reveled in her academic success. When she was in high school, she would learn that Mr. Bingert was gay and, after he died from AIDS, she would read poem she wrote in his honor at his memorial service.

The girl would grow up to become my wife. An old school photo of Mr. Bingert has an honored place in our home among our family portraits. Mrs. Schreiber is now a widow in her 80s and still going strong. Last summer, Mrs. Schreiber joined us and our three children out for lunch. It was a nice visit, and we hope that Mrs. Schreiber's zest for travel may even take her to Hanoi.

So it's not hard to understand why, in a culture influenced by the great teacher Confucius, there would be a Teachers’ Day. For the best of teachers, the calling isn't just a livelihood but a life.

So I can see how, on Teachers’ Day, many parents and students might feel like they are only going through the motions. Some gifts are meaningful; some are mere tokens. A ritual to show respect is never as meaningful as respect itself.

Source:Tuoitrenews