Five signs you’ve been in Vietnam too long

#1.  Muscular atrophy is not something to be concerned about (aka: my fat-o-meter has shifted)  

The only fat people in Vietnam are the foreigners. Ok, that’s not entirely true...there’s a small yet noticeable chubby pumba cohort amongst the 5 -10 year old over here, but let’s just say that the obesity phenomenon which is taking the developed world by storm has not yet arrived in Vietnam. The general slenderness of the Vietnamese was particularly noticeable to me when I first arrived in Saigon directly from a country where over 75 percent of the population is overweight or obese.

Vietnamese women, in particularly, are uniformly waif-like. I’m always afraid that if I brush past them at the supermarket checkout their arms (which closely resemble toothpicks) will snap off, sending their shopping baskets of diet tea tumbling into the aisle. The other day, I was preparing to cross the road on Pham Ngoc Thach when a Vietnamese lady in front of me turned sideways and disappeared.

The average Vietnamese woman is so skinny, the average sized shorts here don't fit on average sized mannequins (Photo: stolen from somewhere on the web)

It was only during a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, whilst chowing down on delicious, delicious laksa and roti canai surrounded by corpulent local diners that it dawned on me: I now consider unnaturally rake-thin, skeletal women as completely normal. Why else would I be distracted by a few overweight Malaysians? I come from Australia, dammit!! AUSTRALIA! Clearly, having been surrounded by a freakishly thin population for the past 6 months, the settings on my fat-o-meter have shifted.       

#2.  The act of walking is a thing of the past

All the locals I know in Saigon actively detest walking. And it’s easy to see why; the footpaths of Saigon are like an assault course for pedestrians. Street food vendors, uneven pavements, protruding tree-roots, massive pot holes, xe oms waiting for their next customer, people barbequing their meat over open flames, people riding their motorbikes up onto the footpath, and an assortment of abandoned furniture all serve to make the walking experience in Saigon less like a stroll along the Yarra and more like a game of Super Mario. And we've not even begun to discuss the agility and skill required when crossing the roads.    

 

As a consequence, after about a month or so living in Vietnam, you find yourself riding your motorbike everywhere. It makes no difference if the trip is supposed to take 30 minutes of 2 minutes. You'll always choose to go by bike. And, most importantly, you ride like a local. This means you ride up onto the footpath to escape gridlock, or simply because you can. You ride through knee-high flood waters with your feet raised towards the handlebars. You ride against oncoming traffic on a one-way street. You’ve ridden three to a bike.

You’ve also ridden side-saddle. You’ve ridden side-saddle, three to a bike, no helmet, through unsealed Mekong roads. You ride your motorbike through the front door of your house and into your living room. You would ride it to the bathroom if it weren’t for those 4 flights of stairs. The only way I could ride more like a local is if I rode while smoking a cigarette, eating a bánh mì while answering my mobile with an infant balanced precariously on my lap.

#3.  Soup and juice should be served in and consumed from a plastic bag.

Any other way is just weird.

Refreshing watermelon juice, straight from the plastic bag. This particular bag even has a handy string for holding.

#4.  Geckos are no longer cute

These little critters are everywhere in Saigon. A home is just not complete without at least two geckos hanging out by the florescent light blub in each room. They are cute at first, with their big bug-eyes, knowing smiles and funny toes, so you are more than happy to have them for company. Until you find out that one has pooped in your toaster.

  

#5.  You’ve acquired an unshakeable “don’t ask” attitude

Why was the wait-staff at KFC walking around in their socks and no shoes? Why is that man taking a dump on the side of a busy road? Where has the balcony of our hotel gone? 

(Photo courtesy of Chloe.)

Where has the neighbour’s fat pomeranian disappeared to? Where does the office rat (last seen scampering across the filing cabinet) usually live? Why is the black-bra-and-sheer-top look so popular around here? And, are those very tiny shorts, or is she just wearing underpants with a belt? Why can’t someone fill the massive pot-hole outside our house with asphalt, rather than just sticking a broken chair into it? And, why the hell did they stick this in the middle of the main thoroughfare near our house?!?!

This photo does not quite capture how infuriating this obstruction was. At one point there were TWO of these towers erected side-by-side in the middle of our road. The Tower of Sauron effectively doubled my commute time to work and trebled my daily inhalation of carbon monoxide as I sat waiting in traffic that would bottle-neck around the towers. We still don't know why the local authorities thought it was a good idea to do this.

These are all good questions. Unfortunately, these sorts of questions crop up all the time in Vietnam; so frequently, that if you were to follow all of them through to their logical conclusion you’d simply have no time to think of anything else or get anything done. Furthermore, none of the locals look twice or appear even the tiniest bit phased by any of these things. After six months living in Vietnam, you find that you have also adopted a strident 'don't ask' attitude. You don't ask questions anymore, even when you encounter something like this...

Scooby Doo giving you the finger atop Ham Rong mountain, Sapa. Don't ask.

(Photo courtesy of Matty)