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I loved visiting Vietnam, I wonder how many of the people commenting on these threads got close with locals though. I did on two separate trips and let me tell

I loved visiting Vietnam, I wonder how many of the people commenting on these threads got close with locals though. I did on two separate trips and let me tell you the country is no utopia. Pollution and lack of freedoms are a big deal there. There is propaganda all over the country. There is an underbelly (potentially foreigner driven, idk) of sex work, drugs etc. CoL and friendly people are major plusses though.

MattGaiser 5y ago
> There is an underbelly (potentially foreigner driven, idk) of sex work, drugs etc. I can remember one woman being profiled in these "Americans are retiring abroad" stories. Usually it is a man and they are often married to a much younger local woman. They did not go there with a spouse.
- toyg 5y ago
  I ended up listening to a podcast for divorced men, and one guest was some sort of "seducer guru" who said literally "if you are a male westerner with a job, regardless of what you look like, you have value somewhere else in the world". Which is basically true, if slightly depressing when expressed in those terms.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    A friend of mine is an engineer in Ghana, but there aren't a lot of jobs, so he earns about $200 a month. He earns more money doing Mechanical Turk and surveys through a VPN. 30K a year is a fortune in many places.
- alisonatwork 5y ago
  I noticed this in China too. Older male expats with local wives or sex partners. Some of them were on their second or third local wife. There's a whole culture that develops around it of young women who make it a goal to try find a western husband, either for the money, or for the convenient foreign citizenship. Unfortunately this creates some resentment of expats amongst the local men, and gives expats in general a bit of a poor reputation.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Maybe a few decades ago? Today it is more like a rich old balding Shanghainese guy with a young Ukrainian model wife.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Maybe I'm jus non-traditional but I don't understand the poor reputation. Consensual relationship marriage, who cares why the parties consented so long as it wasn't done under force? It's hilarious going to a certain 3rd world country with my wife (where she was born). My wife is dual citizen (gained citizenship and good career before I met her) and makes more than I do. In this country impoverished women often marry rich westerners. When we go people assume I'm her sugar-daddy/visa-husband. The odd thing to me is I don't see our relationship as any more or less valid, who the fuck cares that we married for a different reason than someone else? Also in many nations marriage is as much about connections as it is anything else.
    - alisonatwork 5y ago
      In China there is already a gender imbalance in the favor of men thanks to the one child policy, which means straight young men can struggle to find a romantic partner. When older, richer foreigners come along and snap up local women - who are already in short supply - it definitely breeds resentment. Tangled up with that is the existing problem of human trafficking, where brides are shipped in from Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar etc. It's easy for an increasingly nationalistic culture to blame foreigners for exacerbating these issues.
      - 908B64B197 5y ago
        > It's easy for an increasingly nationalistic culture to blame foreigners for exacerbating these issues. But they are the ones who created the gender imbalance. It's completely self-imposed.
        DangitBobby 5y ago
        Really? The 30-something Chinese guy who's delivered packages his whole life and has no impact on policy created this scenario?
- jccalhoun 5y ago
  In the mornings I often watch a twitch streamer who goes to places in cities in Thailand and I'm always struck by all the old white men with young Thai women that she passes on the street.
hh3k0 5y ago
> Pollution and lack of freedoms are a big deal there. There is propaganda all over the country. There is an underbelly (potentially foreigner driven, idk) of sex work, drugs etc. So it is pretty much like the US but with healthcare.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  Comparing the US to a totalitarian dictatorship, how edgy.
  - BigRedDog1669 5y ago
    Calling complicated countries that are not the US a totalitarian dictatorship, how edgy.
    - ngokevin 5y ago
      And OP says the US doesn't have propaganda all over.
      - nsonha 5y ago
        is this a joke? What's created public support for invasion countries all over the world in the past decades, if not propaganda from the military industrial complex? Have you read any piece of international news recently that's not about how bad Russia or China is?
        avgcorrection 5y ago
        Does the US Government need to always have unanimous public support for their wars? Come on. The Reagan administration’s indirect war efforts in Latin America were forced underground (“clandestine”) due to public opposition.
        nsonha 5y ago
        unanimous support or not, we are talking about whether propaganda exists. Leading up to the Iraq war, pro war was the only narrative reported by mainstream media
rjsw 5y ago
Have heard some stories of men working on mine clearance in Vietnam, the women they met were local administrators or interpreters.
- chasd00 5y ago
  me and a friend were going to go clear landmines after college so we could put "know how to clear landmines" on our resume as a sort of eye-catcher / joke. Parents weren't all that in to it as you can imagine. Fortunately, our laziness took over, we got jobs, and we never actually did it.
  - rjsw 5y ago
    These were ex-military bomb disposal experts who already knew what they were doing.
antoniuschan99 5y ago
I find Vietnamese family to be extremely welcoming. It’s rapidly developing so lots of nice builings and projects going up but the older generation (who grew up with the war) seem to be the ones lost. The new generation isn’t affected by it (same as how new generation Chinese don’t know what poverty is - I mean the city folk cuz rural folk are still poor) This channel (Troy Vietnam) dives into the underbelly of it. So much poverty :( https://youtube.com/c/nguyenimproved14 https://youtube.com/c/nguyenimproved14
- maerF0x0 5y ago
  > rapidly developing so lots of nice [buildings] and projects going up This is also very true -- it's modernizing rapidly. For example, the first crypocurrency trader I ever met was in Vietnam, and there were many touristy but nice hotels with things like roof top bars/clubs, the younger people were very technically focused (social media, smart phones etc) where as the older people were very much paper (and some email) driven. There is a sharp contrast between generations compared to N.A. where most everyone of my friends' parents have a smart phone and use computers well enough to get by.

MattGaiser 5y ago

> There is an underbelly (potentially foreigner driven, idk) of sex work, drugs etc. I can remember one woman being profiled in these "Americans are retiring abroad" stories. Usually it is a man and they are often married to a much younger local woman. They did not go there with a spouse.

toyg 5y ago
I ended up listening to a podcast for divorced men, and one guest was some sort of "seducer guru" who said literally "if you are a male westerner with a job, regardless of what you look like, you have value somewhere else in the world". Which is basically true, if slightly depressing when expressed in those terms.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  A friend of mine is an engineer in Ghana, but there aren't a lot of jobs, so he earns about $200 a month. He earns more money doing Mechanical Turk and surveys through a VPN. 30K a year is a fortune in many places.
alisonatwork 5y ago
I noticed this in China too. Older male expats with local wives or sex partners. Some of them were on their second or third local wife. There's a whole culture that develops around it of young women who make it a goal to try find a western husband, either for the money, or for the convenient foreign citizenship. Unfortunately this creates some resentment of expats amongst the local men, and gives expats in general a bit of a poor reputation.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Maybe a few decades ago? Today it is more like a rich old balding Shanghainese guy with a young Ukrainian model wife.
- notch656a 5y ago
  Maybe I'm jus non-traditional but I don't understand the poor reputation. Consensual relationship marriage, who cares why the parties consented so long as it wasn't done under force? It's hilarious going to a certain 3rd world country with my wife (where she was born). My wife is dual citizen (gained citizenship and good career before I met her) and makes more than I do. In this country impoverished women often marry rich westerners. When we go people assume I'm her sugar-daddy/visa-husband. The odd thing to me is I don't see our relationship as any more or less valid, who the fuck cares that we married for a different reason than someone else? Also in many nations marriage is as much about connections as it is anything else.
  - alisonatwork 5y ago
    In China there is already a gender imbalance in the favor of men thanks to the one child policy, which means straight young men can struggle to find a romantic partner. When older, richer foreigners come along and snap up local women - who are already in short supply - it definitely breeds resentment. Tangled up with that is the existing problem of human trafficking, where brides are shipped in from Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar etc. It's easy for an increasingly nationalistic culture to blame foreigners for exacerbating these issues.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      > It's easy for an increasingly nationalistic culture to blame foreigners for exacerbating these issues. But they are the ones who created the gender imbalance. It's completely self-imposed.
      - DangitBobby 5y ago
        Really? The 30-something Chinese guy who's delivered packages his whole life and has no impact on policy created this scenario?
jccalhoun 5y ago
In the mornings I often watch a twitch streamer who goes to places in cities in Thailand and I'm always struck by all the old white men with young Thai women that she passes on the street.

hh3k0 5y ago

> Pollution and lack of freedoms are a big deal there. There is propaganda all over the country. There is an underbelly (potentially foreigner driven, idk) of sex work, drugs etc. So it is pretty much like the US but with healthcare.

kspacewalk2 5y ago
Comparing the US to a totalitarian dictatorship, how edgy.
- BigRedDog1669 5y ago
  Calling complicated countries that are not the US a totalitarian dictatorship, how edgy.
  - ngokevin 5y ago
    And OP says the US doesn't have propaganda all over.
    - nsonha 5y ago
      is this a joke? What's created public support for invasion countries all over the world in the past decades, if not propaganda from the military industrial complex? Have you read any piece of international news recently that's not about how bad Russia or China is?
      - avgcorrection 5y ago
        Does the US Government need to always have unanimous public support for their wars? Come on. The Reagan administration’s indirect war efforts in Latin America were forced underground (“clandestine”) due to public opposition.
        nsonha 5y ago
        unanimous support or not, we are talking about whether propaganda exists. Leading up to the Iraq war, pro war was the only narrative reported by mainstream media

rjsw 5y ago

Have heard some stories of men working on mine clearance in Vietnam, the women they met were local administrators or interpreters.

chasd00 5y ago
me and a friend were going to go clear landmines after college so we could put "know how to clear landmines" on our resume as a sort of eye-catcher / joke. Parents weren't all that in to it as you can imagine. Fortunately, our laziness took over, we got jobs, and we never actually did it.
- rjsw 5y ago
  These were ex-military bomb disposal experts who already knew what they were doing.

antoniuschan99 5y ago

I find Vietnamese family to be extremely welcoming. It’s rapidly developing so lots of nice builings and projects going up but the older generation (who grew up with the war) seem to be the ones lost. The new generation isn’t affected by it (same as how new generation Chinese don’t know what poverty is - I mean the city folk cuz rural folk are still poor) This channel (Troy Vietnam) dives into the underbelly of it. So much poverty :( https://youtube.com/c/nguyenimproved14 https://youtube.com/c/nguyenimproved14

maerF0x0 5y ago
> rapidly developing so lots of nice [buildings] and projects going up This is also very true -- it's modernizing rapidly. For example, the first crypocurrency trader I ever met was in Vietnam, and there were many touristy but nice hotels with things like roof top bars/clubs, the younger people were very technically focused (social media, smart phones etc) where as the older people were very much paper (and some email) driven. There is a sharp contrast between generations compared to N.A. where most everyone of my friends' parents have a smart phone and use computers well enough to get by.