If you knew me in real life you would know that I am actually a pretty laid-back dude. I do complain about things that get under my skin though and I think that this isn't necessarily a good thing. As it turns out though a lot of the things that annoy me about Vietnam don't just also annoy other expats, but they also annoy most of the Vietnamese people that I speak to as well.
Here are some thing that are just going to be part of your day-to-day life that would probably annoy you as well if you lived here. For anyone out there that cares, I am going to do a follow up post about "4 things that I seriously love about Vietnam" because I like to achieve balance. If everything annoyed me about being here I wouldn't be here after all.
number 1: Everything is under construction
This is the view from my bedroom window. I was really worried when some guys came by and started digging holes because that means they are going to build yet another building in my neighborhood and of course with this comes huge amounts of noise from dawn till dusk every day. For now it isn't that much of an issue because of the fact that my condo has double paned windows and it is the hot season so the windows would be closed and the air con on anyway.
It isn't just this one site though. Less than a block away this monstrosity has been being built for a year now. This building ruins the ambiance at the rooftop pool at my building and the one on the ground ruins all silence that would be experienced at ground level. It is relentless and I am quite certain that as soon as they finish these ones another one will already be in the works. You cannot escape construction noise in this country and especially not in the beach areas of Da Nang where almost everything is being built all the time.
number 2: Garbage is everywhere
I don't know if the city just doesn't care of the people just don't care or a combination of both. I do know that I frequently see people including children simply tossing their bags or empty snack containers on the ground without any concern about others.
Everywhere you go there is trash. We are in a tourist area too so this has to be extra disappointing to anyone that paid a lot of money to go on vacation here. The city will sometimes try to beautify the area by putting in plants somewhere or building a garden / park somewhere but it doesn't take long before the mulch is a nice mixture of plastic bags and bottles
it wasn't long ago that the city tried to beautify the side of a road nearby where I live and walk. They put in these plants that looked nice enough but then I don't know if they just felt like their job was done but I have seen no one come by to clean them up or even do so much as water the plants. You can see Nadi there navigating the plants and garbage looking for a place to pee.
Number 3: Excessive use of crosswalks / zebra crossings
This probably wouldn't annoy me so much if it weren't for the fact that crosswalks mean absolutely nothing in this country. A fantastic way to get hit by a vehicle in Vietnam is to approach one of these crossings with western notions of what they mean. In Vietnam, nobody is going to stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk anyway, so it's a waste of paint to begin with.
This plot of land here and the street, which very few cars actually travel down anyway and is only 2 lanes of traffic to begin with, has 17 crosswalks in a less than 300 meter section of road. Nobody pays them any mind and they really do not need to be there at all. I would be surprised if motorists even know what they are. People just cross the road anywhere they want anyway and no car is going to stop for you if you are walking in it so why bother?
This crosswalk is right outside the entrance of my condo and once again, it is on a road that almost no one drives on and nobody would stop for you if you were in it anyway. It also leads to an unusable sidewalk on the other side. It's just nonsensical that they would have any of these since nobody observes what they mean anyway.
number 4: All sidewalks get turned into parking lots
I quite enjoy being able to walk down a footpath and not need to worry about getting hit by a car, especially if my dog Nadi is with me. Well you can't do that in Vietnam because all sidewalks get turned into parking lots anywhere in this country.
Just like it probably is in your country, the sidewalk does not belong to the business owner next to it. It belongs to the city. That doesn't seem to matter to really anyone though because these areas get taken over and turned into parking lots anywhere that they exist. This is technically against the law as well but nobody does anything about it. So now if you wanted to access those useless crosswalks you can't do it anyway because there are a million motorbikes parked in every available spot.
There's this one coffee shop near my house that when I took this photo had 2 staff and 4 customers. So what the hell are the other 22 motorbikes for? Urgh! I've heard stories about how not long ago they banned people from parking on sidewalks in Saigon and the result was the motorbikes started using the footpaths as a road and hurt and even killed a bunch of people that were walking on them. So I guess that isn't better.
Overall I still like life in Vietnam and I wouldn't continue to stay here if I didn't. I certainly prefer it to my home country. This doesn't mean that I have to like everything about it though and many of these annoyances are much much worse in larger cities like Saigon and Hanoi. I was in Hanoi for 10 days when I first moved here and I couldn't get out of the fast enough.
Like I said I will be doing a post about things I love about living here soon. I'm not trying to tell the Vietnamese how to run their country but just because I am visiting and not a citizen, doesn't mean I have to agree with how everything is done here.