Vegetarian in Vietnam: Vocabulary and Notes

Cha Gio Chay - Vegan spring rolls

Strap in - I'm about to start a series of my favorite veg restaurants in Saigon, according to area!

But first, a little background information...

It's absurdly easy to be a vegetarian here in Vietnam, and I've been upping my vegan intake in 2020 - a lot. At this point I'm probably about 60-70% vegetarian, and I feel great. I've also noticed that, even though I still sweat like a waterfall, I've got less BO! It's the little things, people.

Buddhists in Vietnam traditionally eat vegan two to four times a month, the day before and after the full moon, and before and after the new moon. For this reason, there's almost always a few veg places around, and even meat-centric places will often offer a vegan version of their most popular dishes on those days. It's very popular to gather in groups on these days and go out to restaurants, but many people also choose to cook at home.

So without further ado, here are some things to look out for, to understand, and some words that will help you navigate menus and street food signs across the city and through Vietnam. They'll also help you understand what you're drooling over when I post lists of my favorite locations.

Onward, to learning!

The Musicality of Vietnamese Tones

Daily conversation in Vietnam "resembles the singing of birds", wrote Alexandre de Rhodes.

Vietnamese tones are one of the most complicated aspects of Vietnamese language to understand, hear, and speak for foreigners, especially those not used to singing.

Take it from me! I've actually quit Vietnamese lessons twice before I got to this current point - tones and weird vowels plus a very relaxed dialect in the South have made it exasperating at times to speak and, especially, hear. Fortunately, I've been able to grasp a little more this time around, which I attribute entirely to simply living around and among Vietnamese for almost 4 years.

One of the keys to my (limited) success in the language is that I've changed how I think about tones.

In my mind, there are two components to nailing tones: mental and physical. You need to think in them and feel them (hey, here are my acting class lessons coming back again!).

Country as Kin: Personal Pronouns in Vietnamese Society

"tweet tweet bitches, bow down!"

In American English, we use a set of pronouns to talk about people and animals, generally regardless of age, position, experience, whatever.

Vietnamese is... a little different.

One seriously unusual highlight of this country is that, even over the course of a 1,000+ years of occupation and struggle (the Chinese, the French, the Americans and Australians), Vietnamese are STILL quite recognizably Vietnamese. Their food is not Chinese food, their language is not French (although, thanks to Alexander de Rhodes, Vietnamese written language uses the Roman alphabet and is vastly improved from the original Sino-influenced script). And, while some in the South might act more cosmopolitan than their Northern brethren, the country remains solidly Vietnamese in many, many aspects.

One possible factor in this cultural longevity and tenacity could be the important functions provided by personal pronouns in the Vietnamese language. In them, we find the basic foundations of Vietnamese society.

Read on for my meditation on that most unlikely of subjects, the humble Personal Pronoun...

New Year's Resolutions 2015: Foundational and Incremental

Well hello again! What's that you say - February already??  Man, I guess I'd better put all those vaguely anxious feelings and thoughts into a brand spankin' new set of New Year's Resolutions!

In America it is traditional to make promises to yourself on the occasion of the New Year. To me, this symbolizes the endless, circular nature of time, encouraging us to renew our commitments to ourselves and our world as we celebrate another year of not being drowned, electrocuted (well, not to death, at any rate), crushed, stabbed, dismembered, or plowed down by a bus.

(If, perchance, you find yourself in one of the aforementioned situations, my condolences. I hope you're reading this post in a hospital somewhere.)

Where I come from, resolutions can also act as a mental defense against the soul-ravaging bleakness of January and February, giving us some kind of vision or goal to strive for and negating, as much as possible, how truly shitty those months are (especially in those northern states, it's just gawdawful. Stay strong, friends).

And so, keeping in mind the massive scale of the goals I have for my future (however far that might be) here I am once again. The goal this year is to take small, constant steps toward a future I create for myself without letting myself lie fallow. My dreams are much to big to take in one year, or even two. But five years? That suddenly sounds sorta, kinda doable!

Vietnam's 'English 2020' Program in Perspective

This is a caption from the GRADE 7
government textbook, Tieng Anh.

There are many critics of one of Vietnam's most ambitious (I use that word a lot... but this example might be the most appropriate example yet) projects to date: the National Foreign Language 2020 (NFL2020) project. But to what are they objecting?

This project is a 10-year plan to modernize and build teaching and learning capacity (mainly English) and implement Government’s Decision 14001 (2008) “to renovate the teaching and learning of foreign languages within the national education system” (Article 1.1, Decision 1400).

Here's a quick summary of the project (see full English translation of decree at the end of this post):

These new policies include many aspects of teaching, assessment, and professional development, including:

• Introducing English at grade 3 or earlier
• Mapping outcomes to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) benchmarks
• Establishing proficiency and professional standards for English-language teachers

The NFL2020 desires to address these policies through: 

• Teacher assessment
• Teacher development
• Curriculum revision
• Textbook innovation (overhauling and digitalization)
• Testing and assessment improvement
• Establishment of Regional Teacher Development Centers

The decree came down from the Government in 2008, and by 2010 it resulted in the NFL2020 Project. It was immediately clear that the teaching capacity of Vietnamese teachers of English was broadly limited. While more and more teachers failed the basic English competency test (where they are required to achieve the equivalent of a 5.0/6.0 in the IELTS test), it was particularly scary that the teachers who scored the lowest were the older and most educated instructors, responsible for teaching at highly specialized and regarded schools and preparing students who went on to win national awards.

Seriously? That can't be good...

But first, some background on the education system in Vietnam.

Resolution Check-in: How to Speak (Enough) Vietnamese

The major difference is that, in the game, you're almost perpetually physically alone - traveling, I'm only mentally isolated.

Let's check out our hero's #4 New Year's Resolution...

4. Be able to basically communicate what I need in Vietnamese 

My vietnamese is just terrible. Much of it is that I'm shy and hesitant to use it in the first place (and the fact that it's just a difficult language, period), but I've come to recognize that, to put it simply, I've got to either use it or stay in the English bubble forever. Since the latter is not acceptable, I will start making more of a lingual connection to my environment.

Ha. Learning Vietnamese. I'd forgotten that I'd even made this resolution. Let me tell you a story.

It's time to unpack that dusty box that has "VIETNAMESE - HOLY CRAP, LEARN ME ASAP" scrawled on the side in big, black marker...

My 2014 New Year's Resolutions

A funny reminder that no one's perfect. Resolution time!

[Edit: hey, check out how I did on these goals in my 2014 Post-Mortem!]

Hello, my friends. Again, welcome to 2014!

What a crazy, wild year it's been. Not just for me, either, it seems - I've seen many, many social media updates marking what an exciting year it's been for my family and friends.

In 2013 I completed a TEFL certificate, moved to Vietnam, started (and maintained, in possibly the biggest surprise of the year!) a personal travel blog, and started a new job in a new field. I've been medically stable and, besides a few speedbumps due to a new climate and environment, am in fairly good health. My 30's are kicking ass and taking names so far. Here's to keeping that momentum for next year!

With the new year comes the Western tradition of New Year's Resolutions. As I look to the next few years of my master plan, I've come up with the following list of things I want to work on this year. Some are already underway, and some will take more work, but all of them are goals that I have for 2014.

Go big or go home...!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

I've been here in Ho Chi Minh City now for 4 months, and, while that's not a very long time, it's long enough for me to develop some favorite things and some not so favorite things. Usually, it takes me a couple times before I decide, definitively, NO THANK YOU. And, ranked, here they are.

Have you been to Saigon? What are some of your favorites/not at all favorites? I'm curious if these are typical culture shock things or if I'm just developing personal tastes. Leave me notes in the comments!

Read on for a listicle (ugh, hate that word... but it's applicable):

Stoopin' It in Ho Chi Minh

My alley, 8:20pm. (Stoop: bottom left, all couple
inches of it.) Notice the florescent lights
strung above the alley - the wiring here is just crazy.

I was supposed to go out with my new roomies on Friday night for dinner, but because of a problem with my foot, I couldn't walk with them. Through a series of miscommunications I ended up waiting outside my front door for about an hour when the following interesting event took place.

I was sitting on my stoop (all 3 inches of it) waiting for my ride to come when the family in the house across the street came home. We exchanged Chaus ["hellos"] and Smiles (Vietnamese folk music band name?) and they went in. (Something you should know is that people's front bike areas are often converted to living space when there's no more room for family anywhere else. This house was one such place.)

So I was sitting there, trying to fiddle with my cheapo Nokia phone to look like I wasn't obviously curious and staring right into their living room (although I was), and one of the guys came out to smoke a cigarette. We proceeded to have a 30 minute conversation through his iPhone's translation app (Google Translate, I believe), and it was fascinating. As much pain as I was in, I was more curious about this man my age who had chosen to sit down next to me and try to communicate, difficult and slow as the process was.

The Language Diaries: The Vietnamese Alphabet

[Note: Heh. I remember when this was a thing. I've basically come to terms with the language now...]

They say the most effective way to learn something is to eventually teach it to someone else. In this series, I'm going to take you deep into my (no doubt painful to hear) attempts to learn the languages of my host countries. First up, obviously: Vietnamese.

Vietnamese is a complete asshole of a language for many Westerners. I do not use the profanity lightly - my brain honestly starts to cramp after my 1.5 hour lessons. The subtle, alien-to-my-ears tone inherent in each vowel, plus any additional tonal phrasing included in the form of up or down accents, tildes, hooks, and dots, brings a sing-song effect that is easily mocked by racists (seriously, I feel like I'm making fun when I try to read sentences), but very difficult to master, let alone speak accurately.

The Noiseless City

By Anh Dinh (http://www.flickr.com/photos/neovn/3146123732/)
[CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

My friend Erin used to say that there was really nowhere more noiseless than a city where you don't speak the language. I'm learning what that means now.

Obviously, she didn't mean "noiseless" as in, an absence of noise. Rather, she meant "comprehensible noise"-less. I didn't really understand that until yesterday afternoon.

Let's get one thing pretty clear: if I'm not in my room or a common area of the house, I'm basically constantly surrounded by people, and half of them are trying to sell me something in Vietnamese. As recently as last year, this would have FREAKED ME OUT. I'm a dude that needs his alone time, after all! I had always used that time to do much-needed Thinking. I like Thinking, and I need to be alone to do it. It seemed like a simple equation: being alone/quiet time = Thinking. That equation has become more flexible than I ever thought it could.