It has been a while since I did a "Thailand vs. Vietnam" post and I just came to the realization of this very important aspect of expat life over here in South East Asia that perhaps I touched base on in the past but have become quite aware of recently.
This post isn't exactly a Thailand vs. Vietnam comparison, but just pointing out that Vietnam, or specifically Da Nang, Vietnam, has a real problem with the quality of their expat population. The drunks that this country and especially the city of Da Nang seem to attract are a massive downside of living here.
I'm no saint when it comes to booze and I drink at least a little bit on most days of the week. I get drunk on probably two of them. I don't ever get out-of-control drunk though, and when I was on a bit of a dog walk just a little while ago I was privy to a bunch of people that are like this now and are also like this on a regular basis and if they were to live almost anywhere else in the world they would not be able to exist like this.
The above image was taken from a quite humorous article that I can't tell is serious or not. It is called How to get drunk, fast! and it is filled with obvious information as if someone out there really need a how-to on this topic. I think it is a pisstake but since it is a Wiki-how it is hard to tell.
My exposure in Vietnam to problematic drunk people starts with almost the same day that I moved here. A lot of this has to do with the fact that in Vietnam much more than Thailand or anywhere else I have lived, the expat community tends to live all in one singular part of town. It is "Chinatown" in reverse. When I encounter someone that lives outside of this area I am genuinely surprised because people just don't really do that. English is not widely spoken anywhere outside of this area and since Vietnamese is seriously difficult to learn people opt to stay in the tourist part of town where English is spoken by just about everyone. Vietnam has far less tourism than Thailand so the locals do not feel inclined to learn it outside of a rudimentary level whereas in Thailand, almost everyone speaks at least some level of English due to it being one of the hottest tourism spots in the world. Now that was a lot more long-winded than I wanted it to be but the point is that in Thailand, the problematic drunks live all over the place and are less noticeable outside of Bangkok. Here, basically 90% of the expat population lives in one area called An Thuong and here it is to give you an idea of how compressed this area actually is.
In that tiny little area is where almost all of the expats live. This area caters almost exclusively to us and one of those things that they do is have a wide variety of bars featuring almost anything booze-related that you can imagine. Many of the bars never close and there are no laws dictating that they have to. Also, although it is technically illegal to be horrendously drunk in public that is rarely enforced in this city and basically NEVER enforced in My An, An Thuong. So if someone wants to stagger down the street harassing strangers all day and night there is nothing stopping them from doing that other than the fists of someone else who has had enough of their shit.
I don't know the entire expat community but I reckon we number somewhere in the range of 10,000 here. If you walk around this area or even better if you know where to look, it is easy to spot the round-the-clock drunks because they are always around the 24-hour bars. They also wander to other places not realizing or not caring about how wasted they are. When I was taking Nadi on her normal 3pm "poopy walk" I unfortunately ran into one of these people in the elevator of my own building. Thankfully, he knows that I do not care for him and I am 5 inches taller than him and about 40 lbs heavier. He doesn't harass me the way that he would other people but he was still annoying as shit. As I was walking away from him being as nice as I could be he realized I wasn't really talking to him and then turned and decided to bang on the door of the hair salon that is on the ground floor of my building. These poor girls in there are too friendly to tell him to fuck off so I did it for them. I just turned around and say "Mark, leave those girls alone... go home." He mumbled something at me and then got on his motorbike and drove off at an unnecessarily fast and loud speed. I hate to say this but i hope he is in a crash that doesn't involve other people so he gets injured but doesn't die. This is the sort of wake up call people like this need.
I almost never run into Mark but when I do there are too versions of him: The one that is completely wrecked, loud, annoying, and stinking of booze and then there is the totally silent Mark that is apparently doing some sort of penance for what is bound to be a bender that annoyed the hell out of the entire community.
Unfortunately for anyone that thinks of living here, Mark is not a rarity. There are a lot of people in this area that are always drunk and also appear to have mental issues of one sort or another. I often go out for a few with friends only to have some absolutely wasted person come and join us without invitation until at least one of us has to tell the person to get the hell out of there. Thankfully, they almost always comply and there is no reason for physicality but again, this has a lot to do with the fact that I am quite large and one of the guys I regularly hang out with is 6 foot 7 and close to 300 lbs. Nobody is going to mess with that guy once he stands up unless they have a death wish.
Every now and then I see one of these drunk lunatics start trouble with the wrong person such as someone that trains in MMA or is just athletic all around and of course they get battered. Later on they have no idea what happened to them all they know is that they are lying on the ground now. I have seen a guy like Mark get KO'd, stay on the ground for a while, then wake up and stagger back into the same bar he was just kicked out of moments ago. It really blows my mind that someone can be so oblivious or uncaring about how much of a problem they are for everyone around them.
Vietnam lets you get away with almost anything. I don't think they would even look for you unless you caused a tremendous amount of property damage or seriously injured someone. So the people like Mark are able to get away with this sort of behavior that would almost certainly have them seeing the inside of a prison cell in western countries. The Vietnamese men tend to be significantly smaller than westerners and they are also normally quite polite in hostile situations. Therefore people like Mark don't get a beatdown nearly as often as they should.
This is one side of life in Vietnam that I would definitely say is not good, not good at all. It isn't hard to find either and it would be nice if they would do something about it because unfortunately, there are people out there that are not going to do the polite or even sensible thing unless they are forced to do so.
In Thailand this was something that would happen every now and then, but due to the spread out nature of the expat community, it wasn't omnipresent.
I really don't know how this could be improved because the 24-hour bars know they are over-serving customers and honestly, this is how they make their money. These are NOT nice places but they are the only game in town for hardcore alcoholics. This town is absolutely chockablock with seriously problematic drunks and the inexpensive nature of everything, especially drinking, keeps them here. They would be broke even in a country as expensive as Thailand - which isn't expensive at all.
So if you are ever considering relocating to Vietnam you need to keep this in mind. These people aren't dangerous per se, but in all the places I have lived I have never had wasted people be so much a part of my day-to-day life as they are here and I worked in a nightclub with bouncers in college.