Why I'll Never Return to Vietnam Explained

Vietnam Travel: Why I'll Never Return to Vietnam Explained

"No one ever wants to return to a place where they felt they were treated poorly. When I was backpacking around Vietnam, I was constantly hassled, overcharged, ripped off, and treated badly by the locals.

I constantly met street sellers who tried to openly overcharge me. There was the bread lady who refused to give me back the proper change, the food seller who charged me triple even though I saw how much the customer in front of me paid, or the cabbie who rigged his meter on the way to the bus station. While buying T-shirts in Hoi An, three women tried to keep me in their store until I bought something, even if that meant pulling on my shirt.

On a trip to Halong Bay, the tour operator didn’t have water on the boat and had overbooked the trip, so people who paid for single rooms suddenly found themselves with roommates…sometimes in the same bed!

One of the worst experiences came while in the Mekong Delta. I was catching a bus back to Ho Chi Minh City. I was thirsty, so I went to get a common drink in Vietnam — water, lemon, and some powdery, sugary substance in a plastic bag. The woman making this concoction looked at me, laughed at her friends, and then started laughing at me while clearly not putting in all the ingredients into this drink. I wasn’t born yesterday and knew I was being blatantly ripped off. She was cheating me right to my face.

“She’s telling her friends she’s going to overcharge and rip you off because you’re white,” said a Vietnamese-American who was also on my bus. “She doesn’t think you will notice.” “How much should this really cost?” I asked my new companion. I gave the vendor the correct change, told her she was a bad person, and walked away. It wasn’t the money I cared about — it was her utter disrespect.

I wondered if it was just me. Perhaps I simply had a bad experience and Vietnam travel was really amazing! Maybe I just had bad luck. Maybe I just caught people on an off day. But after talking to a number of other travelers, I realized that we all had the same stories. Hardly anyone had a good one, which might explain why 95% of tourists don’t return. They all had tales of being ripped off, cheated, or lied to. They never felt welcome in the country either.

I witnessed other people having problems in Vietnam... Two of my friends lived in Vietnam for six months, and even they said the Vietnamese were rude to them despite becoming “locals.” Their neighbors never warmed up to them. My friends were always outsiders — strangers even to those they saw every day. Wherever I went, it seemed my experience was the norm, not the exception.

I’ve encountered many travelers who thought the people in Vietnam were really nice and enjoyed visiting Vietnam. I’ve often wondered why there’s such a disparity in experiences. Well, there’s one common difference between the travelers who have liked it and those who have hated it. Most of the people who had a good experience traveled in luxury, while those who didn’t were backpackers and budget travelers...

The Vietnamese are taught that all their problems are caused by the West, especially France and the United States, and that Westerners “owe” the Vietnamese. They expect Westerners to spend money in Vietnam, so when they see travelers trying to penny-pinch, they get upset and thus look down on backpackers and treat them poorly. Those who are spending money, however, seem to be treated quite well...

I don’t care that they tried to overcharge me. It’s not about the money. I’m happy to pay more — a dollar goes a lot further for them than it does for me. But just because I’m a backpacker doesn’t mean I deserve any less respect than anyone else.

I wasn’t looking for the royal treatment, just basic respect. And I never felt respected in Vietnam. I felt like people there looked at me not as a human being but just as someone who could be ripped off. There are rude people everywhere, but it was so disproportionately bad that if I never went back to Vietnam, I wouldn’t feel too bad about it."


(Some) Comments:

"one of my worst experience was trying to take the local bus instead of the tourist bus. I found it didn’t really matter. My friend and I were treated pretty badly."

"That’s a really bad idea you took the local bus, they don’t even treat Vietnamese right."

"Travelers have to be on their guard for ripoffs throughout SE Asia, not just in Vietnam. Having traveled through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, I have experienced attempts at short changing, deception by tourist agents, aggressive begging and other annoyances in several countries."

"In Thailand you will get charged 3 times the price for a T-shirt then a local would , and in India the chai is double the price for westerners"

"An American in Vietnam complaining about being treated rudely? That’s a bit rich. Remember who you are and where you’re from and that the Vietnamese have every right to feel wronged and to not hold you in high regard."
"I don’t buy that. I didn’t bomb them. Should the Germans owe me because their grandfathers put Jews in camps? Germans today that they don’t bear that burden, it wasn’t them. They apologize and move on. Do young Australians have to bear the cross for what was done to the Aboriginals in the early 20th century when they had no control? I don’t believe that we bear the sins of our fathers."

"scams are everywhere in SE Asia. It’s a matter of rooting them out."

"The Vietnam War museums are great! Such great communist propaganda about how brothers and sisters beat back the imperial dogs of the french and the americans! Loved it!"

"My wife is from the Mekong Delta and we lived in Vung Tau for the last 6 months. Because Vung Tau is populated by mostly northerners, none of our neighbors would speak or even look at us. Whenever my wife went to the market I could not go, the prices increased dramatically. When we traveled to Hanoi because my wife had a southern accent and the words were different she was ridiculed and made to say things over again while the street vendors would snicker. The level of prejudice in some parts of the country is saddening. We are now back in Saigon(HCMC) now and I have been subjected to every scam so I am no longer a target but the tales of woe are abundant and I have seen people loose everything they owned."

"I don’t mind the scams- you find them all over the place. I just found the vietnamese a bit open and rude about it. Whereas in Thailand it’s a game, in Vietnam it was more like “HAHAHA I rip you off!”"

"The Vietnamese have every right to hate Americans. Who are you in your comfortable world to tell them how to behave now."

"Oh man, you described my experience to a T. I was there for 15 days (during Tet 2009, which made things about 10,000x worse) and I couldn’t WAIT to get out. I made my way from the Phu Quoc island, through Saigon, Nha Trang, Hoi An, and finally Hanoi.
Seriously, I have no idea why the people were so rude there. They constantly tried to rip me off, laughed at me while doing it and some bastard even tried jumping my cab meter... it’s not just the white man, I’m asian and I still got treated like crap."