7 Interesting and Surprising Things ONLY IN VIETNAM! 🇻🇳

What's up guys and welcome back to the series where I take a look at a place that I've been and dive a little bit deeper to try and uncover what was surprising or interesting about that place. And this video is all about Vietnam. Now to start things off I'm going to let you guys know that I've actually lived in Vietnam for about one year. So everything I'm about to talk about is based on my experiences during that time. And the first thing that really surprised me about Vietnam was the food. Now I was expecting the food in Vietnam to be really good. You know their emphasis on fresh ingredients, the really interesting French influence. I was really excited. And what surprised me most about the food was the different levels of quality and creativity across their dishes. You know because Vietnam has been such a historically war-torn country, the availability of certain ingredients and the freshness has varied wildly throughout their history. And this is really where their food punches above its weight class because they have so many unique and flavorful dishes that are produced with a very small number of ingredients. You know you have the incredibly complex pho broth and the meat pho bo tai, the bean sprouts, the spices. It really takes soup which is a basic dish and it puts it on another level. Then the flip side of that you have the banh mi which is heavily influenced by French activity there. You know it's just a simple baguette with like cucumber, maybe some meat, maybe an egg. It's kind of a quick on-the-go. Quality isn't amazing but that's not really the intended purpose of it. And it's that kind of interesting contrast between those types of dishes that make Vietnamese cuisine really interesting. Now I actually didn't know that Vietnamese actually have a whole philosophy when it comes to cooking. And they associate different foods with different temperatures. For example, duck is considered a cool meat so it's served more often in summer. Whereas chicken and pork is considered a warm meat so they serve it in winter. Not to mention their emphasis on colors, the way they arrange the different dishes. There's a lot more thought that goes into it than you first would have thought. And sort of tied into the food is the coffee. Coffee was introduced to Vietnam by a French Catholic priest in 1854. No, 57. And Vietnam didn't actually start producing coffee themselves until the Doi Muoi economic reforms in 1986. And today they're the second largest producer of coffee in the world. And man it kicks your ass. Now I actually don't drink that much coffee myself. Though I take this with a grain of salt. But when I was in Vietnam and I would have a cup of coffee, I like wouldn't be able to drive afterwards. I was so wired it felt like I was on drugs. And probably part of that is the way that they drink the coffee which is very very slowly. You know you order a cup of coffee, iced coffee, and you sit down for like an hour and a half, two hours finishing it. And then in America you get it into go cup and down it within the first five seconds. And interestingly because of the low availability of fresh milk, they actually substitute that with sweetened condensed milk which changes the taste a lot. And moving on to the second thing that was really surprising about Vietnam and that was the traffic. Now there are over 50 million motorbikes registered in Vietnam which doesn't even include the unregistered ones. So the traffic in the big cities is absolutely insane. The reason there's so many motorbikes there is because there's actually a 200% tax on cars. So in order to own a car you kind of have to have some extra money lying around. Not to mention the fact that you get almost nowhere because it takes you about an hour to go a mile and a half. The way that traffic works can be pretty overwhelming at first especially when you're doing stuff like crossing the street where usually you stop and wait. Vietnam that's not what happened. You kind of just enter the traffic stream and it's everyone else's job to move around you and accommodate you. So you kind of pick a path and you just walk forward regardless of what's happening to your left or right for the most part. Kind of like a school of fish mentality. Now one of my favorite quotes of people who have been to Vietnam and have seen this traffic and love Vietnam say oh you know there's a method to the madness. Right even though it's so crazy and there's so much going on it kind of all works and that's totally true. But what you may not know is that Vietnam is actually in the top 10 countries for traffic accidents in the entire world. So maybe there's not a method to the madness. But I will say that because of the density of the traffic you're moving pretty slowly so when there are accidents usually you're only going like five miles an hour. So it ends up being maybe a fender bender at best. Usually there's not a lot of hospital trips involved. Man I love driving in Vietnam though. There's something about it where every single thing that you do ends up being an adventure just because of how crazy it is to get from point A to point B. It's like your own Finding Nemo adventure packed into like a 10 minute ride if that makes sense. Right now trying out the uber moto option for Saigon which I have to say is both the fastest the cheapest and the most fun way to get around the city. And that leads me into the third thing that was really surprising about Vietnam and that is how big the country is. So Vietnam covers an area of about 330,000 square meters and for contrast Japan is about 377,000 square meters. But only about 20 percent of that is actual flat land. The rest of it is made up of very dense tropical jungle, huge jagged mountains and so on and so forth. And depending on the route that you go and how many places you stop it can actually take up to four weeks to get from top to bottom on a motorbike. You know you drive six hours in California and you're in from San Francisco to LA no problem. And the geographical layout of Vietnam is very narrow so it's very long and narrow and because of that there are extreme differences in stuff like weather but even food, language, culture. There's so much different stuff happening in the different parts of the country and it makes it kind of hard to group them all together. You It's funny when I went north and visited Hanoi for the first time I was talking to this Vietnamese guy and he said something along the lines of like oh South Vietnamese are you know they're city boys they don't really know how to do stuff with their hands. Women find North Vietnamese men more attractive. And then I went back to Saigon and I asked someone living there what he thought of that and he said oh it's just the opposite. The girls want you know someone in finance and business. They want someone in a big city. Kind of funny. And despite these differences this is actually going to be my fourth surprising thing and that is their intense sense of community. You know it's the kind of place where you know all of your neighbors all of your neighbors know all your neighbors and you get the feeling that the attitude is like we're all in this together we're all just trying to get through this let's help each other out the best we can. For example I was driving my motorcycle down the street one time and like kind of clipped a little part of a wall or something and the mirror kind of popped off a little bit so it was hanging so I had to pull over stop you know I'm trying to jam it back in it's not really working and then you know I feel like back of my neck I turn around there's this Vietnamese guy sitting there watching me you know kind of intrigued trying to figure out what's going on and he looks at it for a while and then disappears and comes back with like some tape. Now of course scotch tape not going to really work in this situation but you know we sat there and I tried with him try to tape it didn't work you know give me the hold on one sec gesture disappears comes back with two more Vietnamese guys this time they have a hot glue gun you know it's like without even asking when someone sees that you're in trouble or need help they will try and help you and you know cut to the end of that story where at some point I was like five of us trying to put this stupid mirror back on you know they're not doing it for money or anything like that either they're just trying to help you out and that's something that I really find is lost in some of America you know a lot of these people especially in big cities you don't know who your neighbors are you don't have a ton of interactions with them and it's nice to see that that is still the case elsewhere in the world and the next thing that's surprising about Vietnam was their sense of entrepreneurship now this is interesting because Vietnam is a communist country you know their actual title is the socialist republic of Vietnam you know they have a one-party political system despite that Vietnam has kind of adopted a communist but not policy like a capitalist communist policy if that makes sense where they kind of let the free market do its thing at least in terms of business and that might be surprising but it was super cool to see that in action especially in a big city like Ho Chi Minh you know you see that everywhere it's impossible to miss you know from the hundreds of street food stalls that line the streets to motorcycle repair shops clothing stalls there's literally everything and it's not doesn't seem like it's very regulated you know a perfect example of this is on the street corner around from my apartment you know I walked past and suddenly it was paved one day and I was like ah interesting cool they paved that one sidewalk great you know and then on the wall against it uh it becomes black and white tile and then a chair appears the next day bolted into the sidewalk okay this is what's going on here four days in a mirror gets hung on the wall and there's a guy giving haircuts you just set up shop on a street corner it's that sense of uh go out there and do it that is really attractive and really fun to watch happen okay so this next one is going to be a bit more controversial but the thing that was surprising was their attitude towards Americans and this applies to me specifically because I am American I mean 1955 that was when the war began in Vietnam and for how recent that war was their attitude is very different than what you'd expect you know I felt no animosity in some cases they were actually overjoyed that I was American or excited that I was American you know and a lot of that is because we fought with South Vietnam you know these were people that were directly involved in the conflict either them or their kids or their kids kids so you're meeting people they're like we fought with you that's how some people see it and then on the flip side of that if you come from the north of Vietnam there's a huge sense of pride that they defeated at the time one of the most powerful if not the most powerful country in the world by themselves Ho Chi Minh actually had a lot of admiration for the United States you know he saw Vietnam's fight against French colonialism to be mirrored in that of the American war of independence when Vietnam declared independence the first line of their declaration of independence is almost copied word for word from ours you know we hold these truths to be self-evident all men are created equal certain unalienable rights and so forth we even supplied Ho Chi Minh with weapons and training during the Japanese occupation it was only after he pledged himself to communism that we started to withdraw our support one of my favorite quotes from Ho Chi Minh about this goes something like this everything depends on the American if they want to make war for 20 years we shall make war for 20 if they want to make peace we shall make peace and invite them for tea afterwards I mean doesn't that say at all I mean at the end of the day it was just interesting to see what their attitude towards me would be or knowing that I was American and it was much more positive than I would have expected let's leave it at that the last big thing that was really surprising about Vietnam was how happy the people are let me finish now when you're walking around you see people laughing and smiling a lot especially in situations that don't necessarily make sense like if you dropped a plate or you tripped and fell that's because I learned that there are different meanings behind their smiles whereas in America people smile as sort of a courtesy you're letting them know that you know that they're there and it always means good for the most part not the case in Vietnam that's because they really have two different types of smiles and that is the simple smile and the implied smile the simple smile is smiling to express different emotions like happiness or even hope like a farmer might smile at his empty field hoping that it will one day prove fruitful or you know have crops stuff like that that's the simple smile the implied smile is much more context based now Vietnamese person might smile when they're sad because they don't want other people to become sad and smiling helps them hold back tears I mean how awesome is that the implied smile could also be nervousness or if you don't have the answer to a question it could also be scornful like if you see someone make a mistake and it can also mean sorry so bottom line smiling has a ton of different meanings so just because you see someone smiling in the street it doesn't mean they're smiling at you for the reason that you might think that's because Vietnamese language and culture is pretty non-verbal a lot of their communication happens without actual words a lot of gestures you know picking up on social clues context like I said before and so smiling is just one of the ways that they can accomplish that so guys I hope you enjoyed that video let me know down below uh what you agreed with what you disagreed with and anything else that surprised you if you've been there I look forward to reading these comments I hope they're good anyway hope you guys have a great day and I'll see you later