People seem to love it or hate it,
and many well-known travel bloggers talk about negative experiences
that they've had in the country.
In today's video, I'll be covering 10 things
that either frustrated me, left me feeling pretty uncomfortable,
or downright scared me on my first time in Vietnam.
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Vietnam is so different from Canada,
and I honestly just wasn't prepared
for the things that I would be seeing or experiencing.
The first major adjustment was getting used to walking around the city
and then also being comfortable inside of a car
or on the back of a motorbike taxi.
It looks like absolute chaos,
with bikes on the sidewalk, cars driving on both sides of the roads.
Honestly, it can be very scary if you didn't grow up with it.
I was also aware of the high number of accidents,
many of which were caused by foreigners
that are renting bikes without any riding experience,
or even on foot, crossing the streets and then hesitating.
The sidewalks were not very walkable, with people driving on them
or because of unfinished construction or even large potholes.
I saw many people that would be texting while they're driving
and then there was also a lot of drunk driving.
It's quite scary to see the state of some of the locals and other tourists
that would be getting on their bikes
and driving home after a night of drinking.
Which brings me right into my next point,
which is that there is a heavy drinking culture in Vietnam.
The drinking culture turned me off, not because of the driving
but also just in general.
Alcohol, more often than not, leads to poor decisions, rowdiness,
and saying things you maybe wouldn't say sober.
I try to avoid drinking culture regardless of where I am in the world,
and really enjoyed other parts of Southeast Asia, like Sri Lanka,
were drinking is so highly regulated.
Alcohol is just a big part of Vietnamese culture
and I ended up finding it hard to avoid, which made me feel very uncomfortable.
When I first moved to Vietnam,
I also struggled with getting settled in and then finding a place to live.
Many of the apartments I was viewing were low-quality,
there was a heck of a lot of paperwork involved in actually moving in,
and then there was a significant language barrier to overcome.
Quick disclaimer here:
I understand that the problem is not that the Vietnamese didn't speak English,
but that I went to Vietnam without speaking Vietnamese.
Regardless of this, there was a significant language barrier
that ended up impacting my experience there as a tourist.
This, along with pretty much everything on this list of 10 things,
is a "me" problem.
The same way that if someone from Vietnam came to Canada,
crossed the street, and then ended up getting fined for jaywalking
because they didn't cross the road at a designated crosswalk.
It's not a problem with Canada,
but it is something that would impact that tourist's experience.
So, if you find yourself at this point of the video
feeling frustrated by the points I've given so far,
you are not going to like the rest of this video.
So, please, save yourself some frustration and just click "Off" now.
The combination of the language barrier
and then the apartments I was viewing being quite low-quality,
or some of them still under construction...
There's a lot of construction,
that's something that has not changed in Da Nang.
But it all made it very difficult to find a place
and just move in and be settled in.
My biggest mistake when looking for an apartment in Da Nang
was comparing it back to how simple the process had been
when I was in Chiang Mai.
Here I now have this language barrier, I was faced with a lot of paperwork,
much of which I did not understand,
and then also had to put a full month of rent in a cash deposit to the landlord
prior to making any rental.
It all just felt unnecessarily complex.
If you've been to Da Nang recently,
you'll know that the language barrier is much less of a concern,
but I swear it was very different three years ago.
The next thing on my list that I struggled with
when I first moved to Da Nang
was something I was expecting and was warned about,
but didn't quite realize the extent of.
That would be the noise.
It's never a dull moment.
The bar and the karaoke scene is hoping all night,
and the motorbikes are also on the move 24/7.
Live music from restaurants as well as from residential homes,
constant honking, cheering, yelling in conversation.
I just felt like I was being constantly stimulated
and pulled in all these different directions
and it was overwhelming,
and also very difficult to actually get any sleep.
After a few weeks of being there,
the noise all just kind of blends together into this background hum,
and then, for sleeping,
ear plugs.
Next would be the lack of safety standards,
especially around the construction zones.
Construction sites are generally not blocked off
and you will walk right on to one if you aren't paying attention.
I've seen parts of buildings under construction just completely collapse,
throwing debris onto the road and the sidewalks.
Telephone pole wires are also a tangled mess
and often just hanging down onto the sidewalks,
so they could completely closeline you if you aren't paying attention.
And then, if you aren't looking where you are walking,
the sidewalks have big holes in them that you could just walk right into,
especially at night, and seriously enjoy yourself.
I don't want to be offensive with this next point,
so I'm going to tread lightly here.
I struggled with adjusting to different mannerisms around cleanliness in Vietnam.
So, there are things in Canada that would be considered unacceptable,
or even rude, that were completely normal in Vietnam.
For example, putting bare feet up on the table
or spitting in public.
I was seeing these stuff all around me, and I just wasn't used to it.
On a similar note was adjusting to the cleanliness of the city in general.
There's a lot of pollution and a lot of garbage just on the streets,
and a lot of strong smells that really turned me off,
especially around the local markets.
One thing is that, while there was a lot of garbage on the street sides,
if you go down by the beach and the boardwalk lining the beach,
it is completely spotless.
This is one of my favorite beaches in the world,
I can't believe it's an urban beach.
It stretches on for miles and there was no garbage.
Something else I wasn't prepared for and found difficult to see
was the treatment of animals.
It's not uncommon to see many live animals,
from chickens to dogs,
in tiny little cages thrown on the back of a motorbike.
Also, cutting and gutting of animals in preparation to eat them
was just publicly out on the street.
Now, I spent a summer in Canada working on a chicken farm out West,
so I know that we do the same thing
and our treatment of animals is not much better than this,
but the difference is that it's out of sight.
In Vietnam it's happening so publicly.
I also felt quite unwelcome.
Again, I was comparing to other countries
that I had recently traveled in in Southeast Asia.
In Sri Lanka, in Myanmar, in Thailand,
I was always greeted with a smile and everyone was so friendly;
whether it was genuine or not, I felt very welcome.
This was not the case in Vietnam.
During my first week, I was upcharged, made fun of,
outright ignored or, alternatively, being grabbed and yelled at.
Queuing in a lineup, whether you were waiting to pay at the local market
or you were waiting for the bus was not a thing;
you're essentially pushed to the front.
I definitely had a victim mentality at the beginning,
with this, like, "Oh, why always me!? Why do they hate me!?
Why are they all treating me this way?"
It really wasn't about me at all.
And, if I went into every negotiation or every lineup with my Canadian mentality
where, if I'm within two feet of someone's vicinity, I'm apologizing to them,
"Oh, excuse me," "Oh, pardon," "Sorry,"
I'm just not going to get anywhere.
I also felt like I had to be constantly on guard for petty crime,
theft, and then even harassment.
Vietnam is not somewhere where you walk down the sidewalk texting on your phone.
I've had several friends
that have had their phones grabbed right out of their hand,
or even women that have had their purses cut
and then stolen by a drive-by motorbike.
Pickpocketing is also a problem,
and then I also experienced harassment from a drive-by motorbiker
on multiple occasions.
For all I know, it could've been another foreigner that was on the motorbike.
Either way, it still added a negative
to what I was considering to be a rough start to my trip.
And then, beyond petty theft,
there are some pretty big tourist scams to look out for.
Any destination, especially a tourist destination,
is going to have scams.
I did a whole video about common scams to look out for,
many of them I either experienced myself or knew people that experienced them.
One week in, I was ready to pack my bags and leave;
three weeks in, I was absolutely loving it.
And here I am, three years later, still going back there
and having made some of the best local connections
out of anywhere that I have ever traveled to.
I'd love to know in the comments below
if you have ever had a bad first impression of a new destination,
whether it was from your own lack of planning
or maybe your personality just not really jiving
with the culture of that location, which is totally fine.
Thank you so much for watching.
Don't forget to give this video a thumbs-up,
and I hope to catch you down in the comments section
as well as back here again for another video next week.
Have a good one. Bye.