15 Things about Vietnam: Part 11 — Vietnamese Men

Vietnamese women’s second biggest complaint about Vietnamese men is, as a female friend once put it, that they “spend a lot of time drinking beer with their buddies and talking loudly about random topics all day long”.

(Vietnamese women’s biggest complaint is that Vietnamese men are blatantly unfaithful, but that’s something most Vietnamese women don’t talk to me about quite so freely.)

As far as drinking beer goes, we are not talking here about regular Friday nights at the pub or the occasional weekend-long heave-ho. We are talking about large numbers of Vietnamese men whose entire lives consist of sitting round with their mates flipping stubby lids and chicken bones on to the floor, confident in the knowledge that some graceful abject female (the waitress) will clean up the mess.

We are also talking about dark warm nights throughout the week when Vietnamese men pack into private karaoke studios in order to chug Heinekens, howl along to various slow, sad tunes and dare each other to grope the waitress.

From a Western point of view, Vietnamese men can seem pretty awful at such points.

They seem to have a magic power to make women submit to their debauchery.

And submit is exactly what a lot of Vietnamese women do. At quán bình dân (“people’s restaurants”), bia hơi (informal, curbside bars) and karaoke joints the length and breadth of Vietnam, girls do exactly what they’re told — they bring more beer, they display an amount of cleavage appropriate to the exact service industry they’re working in and they clean up the snacks and cigarette ash once the boys have gone home for the night. In doing so, they are models of dignified self-control. (Only a born SNAG would fail to see something sexy in the dignity Vietnamese women show in such trying conditions, though that’s a slippery slope, I guess.)

See this kind of service industry scene repeat itself a few times in the wider public arena and you will find yourself thinking that women exist in Vietnam to watch men enjoy themselves, to be the paid (or unpaid) objects of their sexual attention, and to clean up their mess. See the basic dynamics of the scene repeat itself within the family home and you might find there’s an enlightened feminist side to your personality that you never knew existed.

However, try to see the other side of the scene as well.

Note that a lot of Vietnamese women, when they’re not cleaning up after their men, expect to be looked after by them.

Note also that a Vietnamese woman’s nightmare (beer-fuelled male sordidness) is a Vietnamese man’s practical social obligation: if you want to get business done in Vietnam, then big slosh-ups are pretty much compulsory. They are also one of the few forms in which male friendship is expressed.

In the context of a slosh-up, Vietnamese men don’t always let themselves be dragged into the gutter either.

In the context of a slosh-up, and well beyond too, Vietnamese men can be generous to a fault.

Generous in fact to the point of bankrupting themselves.

To your average male Saigoner, for example, his riotous financial incompetence is a sign of what a big heart he has.

It is no exaggeration to say that he will want to cover for you at a slosh-up and in most other situations as well — even if it means going to beg his little brother for a tenner so he can buy petrol for the trip home at the end of the night.

Among groups of Vietnamese friends, splitting the bill is virtually unheard of. When they’re out on the town with their buddies, there is sometimes a joyous competition to pay the bill in which all the heroes of the scene take part. At more sober events (coffee and chain-smoking), the bill just gets paid. It gets handed quietly to whomever had the idea of convening the event. The convenor takes it, takes out his wallet and smiles inwardly to himself about the wholesome joys of mateship and the overall ok-ness of the world. Then he drives home, smiling all the way.

Moreover the same sort of gather-round approach applies to guests in general, especially in the warm-hearted south of Vietnam.

Vietnamese normally consider it an honour to play the host. And they consider it a special honour nowadays to host long-nosed Westerners who are genuinely interested in Vietnam. They will happily have you to stay — not for a few days or a week, but for six months, as long as you shoot them a bit of rent to cover expenses after a while.

In fact, they will seriously inconvenience themselves to help you stay with them, including going down to the local police station to bribe the local police chief (because officially foreigners are only allowed to stay in hotels).

Once you’re officially registered in the under-the-table register, they will take you out for breakfast, lunch and tea and invite you along to family outings — hundreds of them. They will make your travel arrangements for you and find you a motorbike taxi-driver who isn’t a conman. If you’re single, they or their wives will introduce you to their 12 cutest female relatives.

In fact, unless you quickly work out how to operate in the wider Vietnamese world by yourself, they will never leave you alone. One thing that is totally foreign to most Vietnamese men are the pleasures of solitude. Basically, they will assume that if a man spends more than an hour in a room by himself, then he’s probably contemplating suicide.

Male splurging and male gallantry are flipsides of the same coin in Vietnam. Most Vietnamese men want to pay (will offer to pay, will give themselves a hard time if they can’t pay, etc) for the girls they take on dates, or really just about any girl in the orbit of a girl they are taking on a date. And many Vietnamese girls, as you know already, expect to be paid for too.

Something like the same situation often continues after marriage. Even if they end up hating their wives’ guts or having little sympathy for their not very life-hardy children, the thought of their wives or children ever wanting for money is an impossible absurdity for most Vietnamese men.

Vietnamese men’s biggest complaint about Vietnamese women is that they’d prefer their wives to be a bit less perfect and a bit more upbeat.

Deep in their hearts, Vietnamese men acknowledge that their women are more virtuous and more self-sacrificing than they are themselves.

That of course doesn’t stop them looking down on them for being grouchy.

I’ll write up my notes another day about how to get on with Vietnamese men if you’re a Western woman. Getting on with Vietnamese men can be a tricky business for Western women, given the mildly chauvinist approach Vietnamese men tend to take to a variety of issues. As a Western guy though, there are various easy ways of getting on the good side of Vietnamese men. If you’re interested in running with the pack, you’ll pick them up pretty quickly.

At a slosh up, drinking heavily and screaming the word “Dzo!” (“Cheers!”) at the top of your voice should dampen any underlying suspicions a group of Vietnamese men might have about you.

On the other hand, being able to sing one or two sloppy karaoke numbers will make you a whole lot of friends.

If you ever get really good at speaking Vietnamese, praising the gropeable waitress’s breasts in an authentic Saigon or Hanoi accent is a great party-trick, though it might be considered several bridges too far by some people.

Alternatively, should your Vietnamese ever get quite decent, try sitting around making large, ballsy pronouncements and sawing the air with your hands while you drink coffee and chain smoke in the soft, feminine breeze of a tropical morning.

Hot tip: Among Vietnamese city-dwellers, being tech-savvy is considered just about as impressive as it is in the West. Bring your Ipad to morning coffee. And give it a really good fiddle every now and then.

Or, if your male Vietnamese friends are of a more rural disposition, ask if you can go fishing with them.

Now the technical definition of an amateur fisherman in Vietnam is a “suicidal romantic of the littoral”. The sight of any body of water, no matter how toxic, is normally enough to make an amateur fisherman want to try his luck, dozing in the afternoon sun with his favourite bamboo rod.

What your friend the amateur fisherman pulls out of the local canal on such occasions will be deep-fried by his wife. Death sets in at some stage between 12 hours and 20 years later.

Dinner, as the Vietnamese proverb has it, is no further away than an afternoon snooze by the canal. Remember, realistically, so is lead poisoning.

Be prepared to answer a range of questions from Vietnamese men. First and foremost is the question “Do you think Vietnamese girls are beautiful?” Just say “Yes” in English and you will be considered a complete legend. (Technical note: The Vietnamese question which most Vietnamese men will be translating into English when they ask you this is “Anh thấy cô gái Việt Nam như thế nào?” the literal meaning of which is “How do Vietnamese girls make you feel?” As the English language skills of Vietnamese men are pretty useless, most of them will end up asking you this latter question. In which case, the correct answer is “Very good indeed”.)

At a heavy drinking session in Vietnam you will almost certainly be asked what your “limit” is — that is, how many beers you can down before you get drunk. Feel free to lie here. Most Vietnamese men are short and skinny, which means you will probably, at the very least, be able to drink with them if you’re of roughly normal Western build.

Also, Vietnamese men will regularly ask you what your income is, how much rent you pay, how much any property you own is worth, etc. In Vietnam, this is just part of the way people take an interest in other people, rather than the special sign of a truly vulgar soul that it is among the wreckage of middle class life in the US and Australia.

Vietnamese men will not ask you — though the question might seem to belong in the same bracket — how long your penis is. Instead, they will stare at your penis in the toilets of cafés and bars. Vietnamese men tend to assume that all Western men are hung like horses. If you’re standing at a urinal using equipment that is closer to the average Western length than the average Vietnamese length, then don’t be surprised if the guy next to you lets out a little hoot of admiration.

Take an interest in soccer (the English Premier League, not the Vietnamese league). When you arrive for Saturday morning coffee with the boys, open any newspaper that comes to hand to the sport section and stare at it meaningfully. Find out which open-air café the boys gather to watch soccer on Saturday nights and turn up unexpectedly during a match. Laugh at the poor standards of Vietnamese sports commentary. (When Vietnamese soccer commentators say the word “Arsenal” they manage to sound like they’re saying “asinine” and “arsehole” at the same time. Genius!)

And if you can actually play soccer or basketball or swim (or just float and move your arms in the water at the same time) make a great display of these skills.

Exercise regularly in public — it doesn’t have to be anything heavy, because normal Vietnamese men will think any sport-related activity you can do is a nigh-on superhuman display of strength and skill.

The efforts of most Vietnamese men at exercise are genuinely pathetic. In the mornings, the brightest and best can be seen displaying their prowess on public exercise equipment in local parks:

While a regular scene around sundown is to see Vietnamese men in their mid-30’s trundling around the block at slightly accelerated walking pace behaving as if they’re killing themselves.

Often the men who aren’t heroically pacing at 6km an hour will be doing something that is even more aesthetically challenging. They will be standing around with their hands on their hips and their t-shirts pulled up over their bellies — cooling their lower torsos. And, in some cases, deliberately displaying their blubber: a beer gut in Vietnam signifying to the rest of the world that you have, in some sense, made it.

Another reason Vietnam is the sort of place where Western men have it pretty good, apart from all the positive attention you’ll get for being tallish and long in the nose, is this: Vietnamese men will admire you for walking more than 1km and doing swimming strokes other than dog paddle.

Enjoy their hospitality, don’t take sides in their domestic arguments or get the hots for their wives and you’ll have a whole lot of good average fun.

Romantic Footnote: Men and Dating

In Vietnam, towards the end of a night of heavy drinking, the phrase “It’s time to go home” means, as it once did in Australia, “do you want to piss on for another 45 minutes and then maybe think about going home?” The phrase “We should go home” means “We should go home, but we’re not going to.” In certain situations it might even mean “Whoever takes literally what I’m saying about going home is a bad friend and I’m going to personally pinch his titties for him.”

Foreigners are allowed some leeway here — they won’t automatically be considered bad blokes if they go off to another appointment before getting blind drunk. But then — you don’t want to get your titties pinched too often, do you?

Remember: having a date with a Vietnamese girl is the ultimate excuse for opting out of a heavy drinking session in Vietnam. It is the universal get out of jail free card. Beer and cigarettes with buddies are nothing in comparison to a date with a Vietnamese girl. However much they love their beer and cigarettes, Vietnamese men understand that.

Vietnamese men will never pinch your titties if you announce that you have to opt out of the slosh-up because you have a date with a Vietnamese girl.

Instead, they’ll shake your hand and start squealing. And probably offer to drive you to the date too.