Việt Nam

Apps & logistics

• Grab — the local Uber. Use it for taxis & bikes everywhere. grab.com/vn
• Tap water — don’t. Bottled or filtered. Avoid ice in cheap places, fresh fruit washed in tap water.
• Street food — eat at busy stalls, food cooked in front of you. Build up tolerance over the first few days.
• Bargaining is normal in markets & small shops; start at half the asking price, meet in the middle. Not done in malls or chain stores with marked prices.

Money

• Currency: Vietnamese đồng (VND). ~32,000 VND ≈ £1.
• Big bills are easy to confuse — the 20k and 500k notes look similar; double-check before paying.
• Cards work in cities; cash for markets, street food, small towns.
• USD is sometimes accepted but you’ll get a worse rate; keep VND.

Etiquette

• Take shoes off when entering homes & some temples.
• Cover shoulders & knees in temples and pagodas.
• Don’t point feet at people or images of Buddha.
• Avoid loud public displays of affection.
• Use both hands when giving/receiving something to/from elders — small gesture, big respect.

National & cultural

• National flower: the lotus — purity rising from the mud.
• Traditional dress: the áo dài — silk tunic with trousers, worn by women and men.
• Most common surname: Nguyễn — held by ~40 % of the population.
• Water puppetry — a 1,000-year-old traditional art form, performed knee-deep in water.
• The kitchen god — Vietnam is one of the only countries with a deity for the kitchen (Ông Táo); on the 23rd of the 12th lunar month, families send him to heaven on a carp.

Wild numbers

• 50M+ motorbikes — half the population, basically. Expect them on pavements, going the wrong way, carrying entire families.
• #2 coffee exporter in the world, behind only Brazil — 18–20 % of global supply.
• “King of cashews” — Vietnam is among the world’s largest cashew exporters.
• Hang Sơn Đoòng — the largest cave in the world, in Phong Nha. Has its own cloud, river and jungle inside.
• ~75 % of the population identifies as non-religious in surveys, though folk practices & ancestor veneration are nearly universal.

Things you might be offered

• Trứng vịt lộn — fertilised duck egg. Iconic; not for everyone.
• Snake wine (rượu thuốc) — preserved with a cobra inside the bottle.
• Dog meat — declining in popularity, especially among younger people, but still around.
• Fried chicken heads / feet — a beer-snack tradition.
• Durian — the king of fruits, banned from many hotels for the smell. Try it once.

The “Ma” trick

Ma is the most-meanings word in the Vietnamese language. The same syllable, depending on the tone, can mean:

• ma — ghost
• má — mother / cheek
• mà — but / which
• mả — tomb
• mã — horse / code
• mạ — rice seedling

Welcome to a tonal language.

The split

• The North was Soviet-aligned; the South was US-allied.
• The North won — Hồ Chí Minh’s government took Saigon in April 1975, renaming it after him.
• One legacy: more older Vietnamese speak Russian than English. The younger generations have flipped that.
• Vietnamese on average are short — among the shortest national average heights in the world. The chairs and tables in older cafes will tell you so.