onethousandknives wrote: ↑January 22nd, 2018, 11:12 pm
I have a relationship that is about to fail, or rather, I'd like it to fail as it's put me basically through almost hell, with a Vietnamese girl in Vietnam.
I had a very very long post written up and deleted it after posting it here. This one is just as long, but maybe more informative? Maybe not. If you got any questions, feel free to PM.
Anyway, one thing I read on I believe reddit, and it makes 100% sense thinking of it. The idea was that Vietnamese girls tie their self worth/the society says their worth revolves around getting and keeping a man. So Vietnamese girls basically try to do this by either being extremely subservient and nice, or by super controlling and manipulative and extremely clingy and jealous and paranoid, to extremely illogical and irrational ends, being suspicious of every time you don't respond in 5 minutes or less, and accusing you of cheating because you have a 60 year old aunt of yours on your Facebook or something. So you'll more or less get one or the other.
Personally, I think Vietnam is absolutely f***ed as a country, from a societal standpoint. I didn't like it a lot. One of the biggest problems I think with Vietnam, and maybe some of the other more closed off developing countries will experience this in time, is the Americanization/Westernization is hitting really fast and very hard. I thought it was actually more Americanized than Taiwan, in that a lot of basically first world nations are getting disillusioned with USA since their own countries are getting better, and USA is getting worse, and USA often doesn't even make logical sense to emigrate to. So I think compared to Taiwan, there was a lot more Americanized fashion, more American pop music playing, etc. TV, too. The big problem is, most first world nations had their first tastes of American culture in the 60s-80s, when our culture wasn't totally utterly degenerate. And now, it exists, but it's not exotic and new anymore. With these developing countries, it's very exotic and new, but they're getting our culture at its worst time in history, with Miley Cyrus compared to say, The Carpenters. The other problem too, specifically with Vietnam is it's taking the enemy of my enemy approach with USA now. They're even letting US ships either dock or refuel in their ports again, etc. Lots of US based NGOs are working in the country now as well, and these NGOs are helping and doing some good obviously, but they're also sometimes agents for Americanization in the realms of feminism, etc. With this Westernization, it's good now for Westerners, as it's very easy to find employment and women to be interested in you as you're so new/exotic/etc, but the future, who knows?
As far as problems with Vietnam inherent to Vietnam, I mean, it is dirty and polluted. Dirty is relative to a point, as lots of places in USA similarly look like bombed out warzones compared to VN. I'd still would probably feel safer walking at night in a Vietnamese bad neighborhood, but it wasn't ultra safe like Taiwan. Pollution for me was really bad, it aggravated my allergies (which I have almost no problems with in USA and take medicine for only a couple times a year max...) and no amount of medicine could make me feel comfortable allergy wise, with pollution and also the mold being almost everywhere (which they can't help much...) The pollution is just awful, though, I'm talking if you touch a guard rail on the street in VN, your hand will turn brown from soot. Food I found hard to deal with as well, in that Northern Vietnamese food is nothing like American Vietnamese food. Everything was pretty heavily fried and meaty. My girlfriend didn't care enough and didn't take my request seriously that I needed 2-3L of water daily there with no AC (almost no place in Vietnam has air conditioning except your hotel room, and even malls/etc if they got it, keep it at 80 degrees or so...) and she basically wouldn't let me out of her sight the whole time I was there, and I had to spend the entire time meeting relatives/etc and had no time to myself almost.
The other thing too, is Vietnamese culture is very very loud, and very outgoing/extroverted. I wasn't quite prepared for that. I found that hard to deal with, as I'm a pretty introverted and quiet person. Nobody has an inside voice, and it sounds like everyone is yelling at each other. People blare the horns 10 times at 2AM even if they're the only car on the road. The government blasts propaganda/Vietnamese NPR in the afternoon/evening over megaphones all throughout the city. People would litter everywhere and not care, light fires on the sidewalk with their old papers, etc. There is some fairly blatant safety hazard shit compared to the West as well, as in, propane tanks directly under the stove, so if you have a fire, your whole house goes kaboom, etc. Also, scams are VERY common in Vietnam, and as a foreigner, don't feel special, Vietnamese scam the hell out of each other as well. I only got scammed for about $10 worth of things thanks to my girlfriend helping me out, and I got pretty close to local pricing on everything, too. But do watch out for scams/misrepresentations.
Lastly, too, in my case, there just wasn't enough cultural understanding/ability to communicate well. Both on her end and mine. Firstly, communicate with her speaking as soon as possible, Google Translate does well nowadays, but in person you may not be able to communicate at all speaking, and it will suck. Culturally, on her end, I found her to be more blue pilled and lacking any skepticism of any government action/law, and basically more of a mindless sheep in these regards than most American girls, as control is conditioned early on in schools/etc, there. Just really accepting of those sort of things. Also there is some lack of understanding of even basic science, and things like germ theory of disease, etc. The cultural divide is just really high. I think if she was Christian, it could be overcame, and the relationship could have turned out OK. But a Communist consumerist mindset vs yours might take a lot to overcome. The other thing too in Vietnam, that they can't fathom about the West, and this again, messes with perception I think. The ideas of growth and collapse. Vietnam, my girlfriend got to witness her town go from a podunk little farming village to a giant city with malls and skyscrapers. Meanwhile in my town in USA all the stores are closing, malls are abandoned ghost towns, the buildings are getting more run down, etc. It's a very big difference in growing up, actually. In USA, I think a lot of people see that modern society is in fact bullshit, and actually do not lust after all having the newest toys, etc, simply as we're old and tired of it now, and you can sometimes find "alternative" people like that easily. But Vietnam just got started in this, and people will spend a half year's salary on the newest iPhone and be happy with it. To this end, I think consumerism is a lot bigger problem there, and they're so concerned about what their neighbors think, what their work friends think, etc, to a much bigger degree than a lot of people in USA.
Anyway, I again posted way too much. For your particular girl, the rule still stands, every girl is an individual. Culture is culture, but a girl can still be a bitch. Mostly the whole pure virginal Vietnamese girl thing is a giant scam/act and the extent of the problem is basically the same as in the West, from my understanding, anyway. Abortion rates are extremely high there. 59 per 100 live births, most Vietnamese women have had 2-3 abortions in their lives. As you've shown with the Chinese girl, you were willing to put your better judgment ahead of yourself when red flags were thrown up. I did this with said Vietnamese girl, simply as I was lonely at the time. Obviously it's easy to logically analyze this all in the third person, but in the first person with love, and someone being the first person that ever showed you any time of day, it gets hard.
Anyway, good luck. I'm choosing on this one (hopefully I don't get sucked back in) to sit this one out. For learning from other's mistakes, I know a man in his 40s that brought over a Vietnamese girl to here, had a bareback adventure with her here, and is now stuck miserable in Vietnam with her with a kid. So I don't want to be in his position.