Silence isn’t golden in Vietnam — it’s worthless

There’s someone drilling above my head right now. Drilling into the concrete of my ceiling. Work being done to the apartment above I guess.

In Vietnam no one ever comes to say — we’re just going to be doing a bit of work, sorry if it’s a little noisy but it should be over by x.

Actually that’s not entirely true.

Once a neighbour suggested that we might want to go away for a couple of days because they were going to be doing “some work on the roof”.

Turned out they meant there were demolishing the whole house. It took 18 months to rebuild. I never quite understood why they bothered with that lie.

When I lived in Central America, time was considered to have no value. You could be asked to be somewhere hours in advance and be expected to sit there without sustenance or entertainment. Your time meant nothing.

In Vietnam, silence is considered worthless. There is no right to peace. Creating noise at any time, day or night, is neither rude nor an imposition. The idea that you need quiet for quality of life is never entertained.

So noise is not explained nor apologised for. There’s no planning to minimise it and no embarrassment for the noise maker. No pressure to speed up nor quieten down.