I was recently asked by some Vietnamese person that I had just met to tell her one thing that I really don't like about living in Vietnam and 1 thing that I really did like about it. This was actually a very easy question for me to answer because I have quite a lot of international experience living in many places in SE Asia.
The thing I didn't like, which I will not focus on too much here, is the noise. Vietnam is an exceptionally noisy country and there doesn't seem to be much in the way of effort to curtail that in any way. Quiet is at a premium here and I really don't know where to get it. Invest in some sound cancelling headphones I guess.
As for the the 1 thing I really do like about this country it would be that of all the places I have lived and visited, Vietnam is the cheapest SAFE place to live in the world. I truly believe this to be the case.
I have never felt as though I was ever in any danger and the only crime I have been a victim of was when my bicycle was stolen from outside of my apartment building. I think that this would be a problem almost anywhere else in the world as well because I left a vehicle essentially, sitting outside in kind of plain view and well, when opportunity knocks, someone is going to answer. It pissed me off at the time but when I saw the state of the person that took it on the CCTV footage, this was definitely a desperately poor person. I wish I could have just given the guy some money because it wasn't a good bike anyway and the black market value of it couldn't have been more than $10 or so.
That is the only crime I have ever been victim to and I know a ton of people and almost all of them have never been victim of any sort of crime either. I can't say this is the case for all the other places I have lived where you kind of have to be on your toes at all times to stay safe.
Perhaps I'll get more into detail about that at a later time but for now I want to talk about my local "everything" restaurant that charges next to nothing and most of the food on there is quite nice.
We'll start with my drink. I only ordered it because I didn't know what it was but it was near the coffees so I just asked the guy who owns the place, "is this coffee" and when he said yes I ordered it. It's kind of like a latte but seems to have a lot of condensed milk in it. It also packs a punch as far as the caffeine is concerned but since this is not my first time with Vietnamese coffee, this was expected.
So this is what that is called apparently and I am quite certain I am going to immediately forget that. This is ok with me because I tend to not order super-sugary coffees anyway. It was good though and would you believe at just over $1, this is actually considered expensive by Vietnamese standards. I am getting charged extra because of the shop's location in an area that is high-priced and has almost entirely foreign residents. Whatever!
Next up is something that you definitely should try if you are here and almost certainly will be offered it at some point. It is called Bo Ne and I initially ordered it not because it was recommended to me but because the sign looked like it said BONE. This is just some beef, a bit of gravy, some onion and a fried egg served on an extremely hot plate right at your table. It comes with a fresh mini-baguette and that was just delightful.
Don't worry, Nadi was with me and yes, she got some of it.
So the price of the Bo Ne was 50,000 VND, which is a deal and a half when you consider what you are getting.
Grand total of the entire meal was 80k and that is just over $3. I think that in most of the world you would struggle to get anything for that price. It certainly is the case everywhere I have ever lived including and especially my home country of USA where the last time I was there and tried to just buy a Coke in a minimart, it was more than $3 for that one thing.
So if you are in Vietnam you can basically just order with reckless abandon because if you are wrong and you don't like it, chances are you are only losing a couple of dollars. This encourages me to try new things because since I learned to speak exactly zero Vietnamese, I normally have no idea what is on offer at a restaurant. A good rule of thumb is to order what everyone else is having.