During our third month, my team and I were in Da Nang, Vietnam, and we loved it! Because we were in Da Nang with just three other teams, our ministry looked a little different than that of the teams in Ho Chi Minh City, or Nha Trang. Also, Vietnam is a closed country, so this means you’ll have to be very careful about a few things, which I will mention in the first three points.
- You’ll have to make sure you don’t share the name of your ministry contact or ministry. The Vietnamese government watches these people and ministries very closely. It’s legal to be a Christian in Vietnam, but it is illegal to evangelize in Vietnam. Not being careful with this information can have serious consequences with your ministry and the government.
- You will have to be very careful about posting pictures. This means never posting pictures of you with your ministry contact. Never posting pictures of you with students with captions about Jesus, ministry, God, etc. You can post pictures with students though! Just be smart about it.
- The police really do follow you around. By the time we left Vietnam, we learned that our ministry contact was being followed by the police, that she had been to jail before for preaching the gospel, and that the police may have actually had our names and pictures of us. Luckily, by the time this was happening, we were on our way out of Da Nang. The worst that can happen to us is that we have to leave the country immediately, but your contacts can actually go to jail if they’re from Vietnam.
- Vietnamese coffee is great… but very sweet! I usually got milk coffee, which is espresso, milk, and lots of sugar on ice. Most of the girls on my team got White Coffee, which is espresso with condensed milk over ice, which is crazy sweet. By the end of our month there, I’d found a good plain latte to get instead… no sugar.
- Don’t be too picky about what you get at restaurants or coffee shops. You may think you communicated what you wanted very clearly, but you really never know what you’ll get. Oh, you said you wanted pho (soup) and bahn mi (bread)? You might end up getting some foreign soup that is not the “pho” that we think of, and a sandwich… because bahn mi means bread and sandwiches of all kinds. You just never really know, but it’s usually good!
- Most people speak little to no English. This was a contrast to India and Nepal where most people spoke at least a little bit of English, but in Vietnam, communication can be tricky. This is because…
- English is really really really difficult for the Vietnamese to learn. We spent the month teaching college students English in coffee shops, and we learned that there are SO many sounds in the English language that don’t exist in the Vietnamese language (“th”, “sh”, “ch”, “ck”, “st”, “ts”, “ar”). It became clearer to us why we encountered so many people who don’t speak English in such a touristy city in Vietnam: English is just way harder for them.
- The beach is nice and empty during the day. Most people in Asia don’t want to be out in the sun because they don’t want to get darker skin. They even drive around on their mopeds on hot days with long skirts, gloves, face masks and jackets so that the sun doesn’t touch their skin. Because of this, the beaches in Da Nang (and probably most beaches in Asia) are never really crowded. It is, however, very crowded in the early morning and at nighttime. If you go to watch the sun rise, like I did, expect a lot of asian tourists asking to take pictures with you during your “quiet time”.
- Along with #8, wear sunscreen. You think you want to get tan (especially if it’s been months since your legs have been touched by the sun from wearing pants all the time in India and Nepal), but my teammate, Caitlin, can tell you that it’s not worth it. You will burn. Take care of your skin! You don’t want to look like a lobster in all of your photos, especially because…
- The Vietnamese LOVE taking selfies. We encountered this in India a lot, but never quite like Vietnam. It’s typically younger, college-aged girls who like to take cutesy pictures with you. They love when you hold up the peace sign, and they’ll usually show you what kinds of poses to do… the Vietnamese girls are shameless when it comes to posing in pictures.
- Pho is surprisingly amazing at chain restaurants. The best bowl of pho (pronounced “fuh”) I had in Vietnam was at an airport at a restaurant called Big Bowl, which is a chain restaurant. I thought it was amazing, and figured “the street vendor pho must be even better!” Not so. In most countries, the best food is found at the street vendors, but Big Bowl was by far the best.
- Ask the locals or your students to take you to a place with food that you’ve never had. In Hoi An (an ancient town about 45 minutes outside of Da Nang) our students took us to a place with these amazing noodles called Cao lau (cow la-ow). After an English club at a coffee shop, our students treated me and two of my teammates to hu tieu (hoo ti-you). Both were amazing (and free). I liked these noodles that I had never heard of way more than the pho that I had eaten a million times.
- Riding motorbikes in Vietnam can be a little scary, but just hold on and have fun. The first time I rode a motorbike in Vietnam, I did not have fun. We were on our way to the Dragon Bridge, and our students were driving us there from our hostel… our students are sabout 17-18 years old, but they look so much younger. I spent the whole time worrying that my sweet, 80 lb student would get us killed. Then, when we got to the Dragon Bridge, I realized that everyone else had had fun except for me, and that my worrying wasn’t going to keep me from getting in a wreck… scary, but true. So, on the way back to the hostel, I had a blast. We all rode next to each other taking pictures and Boomerangs, and it was way more fun than worrying. This prepared me for our 40 minute motorbike ride to an from Hoi An. I had a blast on that ride too! So, if you’re afraid of motorbikes, just trust the driver and have fun!
- When crossing the street, don’t hesitate. Just walk. This was the advice that I was given when we first got to Vietnam. Their traffic is pretty heavy, but it’s nowhere near as bad as India, so I took this advice. When we walked to the beach, we would just walk straight into traffic like all of the locals, and, well… I never got hit. Score
- Sleeper busses aren’t the most pleasant. They’re not the worst thing in the world, but my team and I didn’t have a great experience to or from Ho Chi Minh City. We had a 22 hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang, and our drivers weren’t the nicest. They would yell at us in Vietnamese for some reason that we could never understand. They would make us move from chair to chair, and when anyone got sick, they would refuse to pull over for them to throw up. It wasn’t the best introduction to the Vietnamese people, and we got a little worried that everyone would be like this. Luckily, no. All of the people that we met in Da Nang were extremely nice. For our bus ride back, we were so sure that the drivers couldn’t be any worse, but we were wrong. I was yelled at before I even got to my seat, and the driver slapped my teammate, Saraya, on the arm (hard) a bunch of times to get her to move. They also drove so fast that, in the middle of the night, they hit a bump and I hit my head on the ceiling three feet above me… I may have had a minor concussion. Regardless of all of this, our bus ride was an adventure, and we had a fun story to tell!
- Get creative while teaching English! I believe almost all of the teams on my squad ended up teaching English. That’s what our ministry was, teaching English to college aged students, and leading them to Christ. For some classes, we taught in themes like rooms in the house, or clothing, or meal times and food. But I think our students liked pronunciation classes the best. We would have them give an introduction, and as they speak, write down words and sounds that they struggle with and go over them. Our favorite phrase to have them practice is “I like to ride my motobike to the beach .” It has a lot of sounds that they struggle with. Or, once they got the word “beach” down (simetimes they say “ee” sounds like “i” sounds, so it sounds they they’re saying a bad word when they say “”beach”) I have them say “I like to ride my motorbike to the mall.” We switched it up a lot, depending on the class and what they were struggling with.
- Don’t be afraid to correct your students. The crazy thing about the Vietnamese students, is that they really really want to learn. I know, weird right? Unlike many American students, the Vietnamese students don’t want to slack off, even every now and then. They always want to learn, and even while hanging out, they’ll want you to teach them a phrase or show them how to pronounce something. They’re always wanting to learn. Because of this, I’ve learned they they actually want you to correct them during conversation. I know, it seems super ananoying to have someone correct your English in the middle of a conversation, but they really appreciate it.
- Buy your bahn mi for 10,000 dong or less. Some restaurants or coffee shops will try to sell you bahn mi for 30,000 dong, but you can get i for 10,0000, and it’s probably better anyway. If you don’t know what bahn mi is, neither do any of us either. Bahn mi (“bon-me”) means “bread” in Vietnamese, but they also use the word for sandwiches of all kinds. We still don’t know how they know the difference between bahn mi bread, and bahn mi sandwich. If you want a sandwich, you can get one for 10,000 on the street. That’s less than 50 cents. I once got two for 20,000, which is two good sized sandwiches for less than a dollar!
- Vietnam has an alcohol problem. This was one of the things we were told by our host before coming to Vietnam. Alcoholism is a very real problem in Vietnam. My team was lucky enough not to experience this is any way, but we did have to be sure that our host never saw any of us drink. Of course, most of Asia is very different from the U.S. in that in the U.S. many Christians drink, and are able to see the difference between healthy drinking, and unhealthy, harmful drinking. In Asia, and especially Vietnam, Christians never drink. They would assume you weren’t a Christian if they saw you drinking. This was never really an issue for us, but we did end up doing a little bit of bar ministry with some tourists we met, so we had to make sure no students would see us at the bar, and no one from our Christian-owned hostel would know that we were going to a bar.
- The Vietnamese people are so sweet, but can be misunderstood. The Vietnamese people are some of my favorite people so far. The ones we can in contact with were so incredibly sweet. Our students we amazing and so helpful, and our host was too. But, vendors, bus drivers, taxi drivers, etc. tended to get frustrated at us for the most random things… maybe this is true about most of Asia, because just the other day, here in Cambodia, I was yelled at for putting a hanger back on a rack incorrectly at a clothing store (they wanted me to hang it from the bottom part of the hanger… rather than the metal curved part where it’s actually supposed to be hung from). My teammate, Saraya, got yelled at for taking a picture of a snack in a store. The security guard yelled at her and made her delete the picture. On the bus from Da Nang back to Ho Chi Mihn, I got yelled at for a few things, like not putting my shoes in the plastic bags quickly enough (they make you take off your shoes in sleeper busses, and keep them in plastic bags… not a bad idea). My teammate got yelled at for putting on a hat on the bus. And we all got yelled at when we didn’t get off the bus quickly enough. Silly things like that may catch you off guard. It can be easy to get mad, especially when you’ve been in Asia for a few months, and you’re just over it. Just laugh it off, smille, and walk away. The majority of the people we met were just the sweetest!
If you have any more questions about Vietnam, or the World Race, feel free to leave a comment or email me!
