Chapter 14 of 14
Four things worth knowing before you come
The short version, from someone who has watched people arrive for years.
Bring less
Bring far less than you think you need. You can buy clothes here, and shoes, and towels, and a hairdryer, and whatever else is sitting in your suitcase taking up half of it. It is all here and most of it is cheaper than at home.
People turn up with two enormous bags of things they were sure they would need, and then spend a year moving those bags between apartments. Come light. Buy what you actually miss once you know you miss it.
Things work differently, and that is the deal
Some things here will not work the way you are used to. Not worse, just different. The way you pay for things. The way a landlord does business. How long something takes. What happens when you complain.
The people who are happy here are the ones who accept that early. The people who are miserable are the ones who keep expecting Vietnam to behave like home and getting annoyed every time it does not. You came to a different country. That is the whole point of coming.
The traffic takes real time
Nobody gets used to the traffic in a week. It looks like chaos when you arrive. It is not chaos, it has its own rules, but you cannot read them yet, and learning them takes months rather than days.
Go slowly at the start. Walk more than you ride in your first weeks. Do not let anyone tell you it is easy, and do not feel stupid for finding it hard. Everybody found it hard.
Most people here do not speak English
Where English is fine: banks, exchange shops, hotels, the cafes and bars foreigners use, and most places on the tourist streets. You will not struggle in any of those.
Where it is not: almost everywhere else. Your landlord. The woman at the market. The mechanic. The pharmacy. The hospital reception. The person next door.
This is normal and it is not a complaint about anyone. You are in Vietnam, and Vietnamese people speak Vietnamese.
- Get Google Translate and learn to use the camera on it. It reads menus, signs, contracts and labels.
- Learn the words in the language chapter. They matter more than you think.
- Write things down instead of saying them when it is important. People read English far better than they hear it.
- Be patient in both directions. They are working harder to understand you than you are to understand them.