The Vietnamese: The World’s Worst People Find Their Ancient Hero in a Thai!
Who could resist…?
I review and analyze articles, some very interesting, on Vietnam for an embassy in Hanoi. One (of the interesting ones) was Julia Ross’ “Six Degrees of Vietnam”.
She visited Hanoi, and had no use for the Vietnamese’s rapaciousness, cheating… And with her obviously being a superb writer, she could well articulate her feelings. Ms Ross was not in those goody-goody and newbie (do not know their
butts from a hole in the ground) modes so many so-called professional travel writers are in.
Not surprising, following her article was the usual feedback ranging from (i) travelers who also could never recommend Vietnam to (ii) those who were defensive about both Ms Ross’ honesty in reporting and those readers who had experienced
similar to her.
You had a Vietnamese travel company person, for example, grasping at straws, informing us about those smiles of the Vietnamese and SE Asians and then, of course, there was the usual mantra of the Vietnamese who see themselves as victims,
when actual history supports the opposite. This person or persons, obviously posting under various Vietnam travel company-oriented names, was kept busy from the negative feedback, and mine seems to have made him give up!
The Vietnamese and a foreigner or two would inform us that those (non-sycophants reporting honestly their experiences on Vietnam) were the problem, not Vietnam.
I thought about saying something good about the Vietnamese. I could. However, read on to where you see that amazing statistic I witnessed during my 10.5 years here. This finding says it all about the Vietnamese, so much so that I’m
not saying anything good about them.
Yes, who could resist? What follows is my response, with my adding to it to make it an article for the esteemed Stickman website, what with my not constrained by a word count. So here it went, my response to it all:
Ms Julia Ross’ travel story was a delectable morsel found within a comprehensive range of articles I daily examine for an embassy in Hanoi. I would pay for such writing as hers.
She related that her Hanoi journey was going bad within five minutes because of (an uncooperative and cheating) airport taxi driver, no surprise, for that is often standard here. It could have been worse, Ms Ross.
An embassy employee just arrives at the same airport, sees a sign with his name on it, gets in the taxi, is taken to an isolated area, and is robbed. How did the taxi driver know such details? It was probably an inside job between the hotel
the embassy worker was to stay and the taxi driver.
The Vietnamese and most expats are not aware of such happening. It might sound unbelievable to some of you but among more than 600 news broadcasters and newspapers in circulation in Vietnam, none are privately owned. And almost all of them
are under scrutiny of governmental censorship.
On about the same day as I come across “Six Degrees of Vietnam” in the embassy readings, I read where authorities burned down a Hmong Christian church in the Central Highlands, thinking no one would know because of the remoteness.
And I read where authorities want four members of the Catholic hierarchy thrown out of Hanoi, for these church leaders had protested the taking of their church property. The communist authorities were surprised that people were supporting
the Catholics, and authorities were mad. The point is that although I know this, the Vietnamese will never see a shred of it in their media.
Readers are noting that the Vietnamese are the worst of the SE Asians. I see a like conclusion in reports from time to time. The following speaks volumes in this regard.
Little more than within hours of arriving in Phnom Penh, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok, Osaka, Honolulu, and my home country, I was the recipient of random acts of kindness on the streets by drivers; and I clearly remember each example.
How long did it take me to, finally, see an example for such polite civility in Vietnam, in Hanoi? You would not believe it: 9 years, 8 months; yes almost 10 years!
I had the beast (Minsk) loaded down from shopping, was unable to cross over to the correct lane for turning, and a man in a car braked to let me change lanes. He could have been Singaporean or someone appearing similar to a Vietnamese, but
I have given the Vietnamese credit, and it took them almost 10 years.
There is an old lady with a couple of little kids wanting to cross the street? It does not matter – some Vietnamese will come flying up at her in a car, honking for them to get out of their way and fast.
A couple of conclusions result from this deplorable phenomenon. Those examples of Vietnamese one thinks are nice really are not. When the Vietnamese are around someone they know and have to appear to be nice, they will be. However, once they
are out in the population and can be who they really are, they are the worst. And that is my second conclusion: Anytime 10 years elapse before you witness a random act of kindness on the streets, you’re not talking of the worst people in
SE Asia; rather, the Vietnamese, objectively, are the worst in the world.
Before arriving to this point of the feedback for Ms Ross’ travelogue, you might have noticed that the Vietnamese cannot handle criticism. They are like their communist government in that regard: “You chose us, meaning you should
not complain – and forever not complain.”
I even hear it from my Vietnamese wife when I note it is time to get the kids out of here: “You chose to come to Vietnam (x) years ago (and you can’t change your mind).” She, along with her mother and father, do not like
the communists, but little does she know, the communists have her thinking just like them – the communists!
To listen to the Vietnamese, they are poor little innocent helpless things, always invaded, always for peace…, deserving serving as the world champs at not being shy about having their hands out begging. The opposite is true. At this time
and for some time, they have been stealing the ancestral lands of the Montagnards in the Central Highlands, and in at least one area, the Montagnards will shoot with a blowgun any Vietnamese entering their land.
The Vietnamese obliterated the huge empire of the Cham in what is now Vietnam, not surprising, for the Cham put their resources into religion, the Vietnamese into war. Any subjugation by the Chinese (or southern empire of what is now China)
of the Vietnamese was not a negative to the Cham: Another reason the Cham lost out is just randomness of history – that the Vietnamese didn't have to worry much about China during the era they destroyed the Cham.
Cham dance
In Central Vietnam, from the train that runs from Saigon-Hanoi, one can see some of the magnificent Cham temples, empty. Dr Nguyen Dang Liem, Professor of Vietnamese at the University of Hawaii, would, during the war, inform his students the US’
savaging Vietnam was payback for what the Vietnamese had done to the Cham.
My Son Cham Temple Complex
Some say that the Vietnamese slaughtered more than a million of these South Asian influenced peoples who have mostly fled to Cambodia and elsewhere (China and Indonesia) just to survive the onslaught. The Vietnamese copied the skills of the people they
destroyed and now retain their temples as world heritage treasures on their land, and their citadels underneath their own.
(When I perform translation editing for the Vietnamese and see them calling these temples (such as the mini-Angkor-like complex (My Son), not far from DaNang in the Central) “their” “holy lands,” leaving out the
Cham, I delete the “holy lands,” insert the “Cham” word…, thereby accurately describing these UNESCO-recognized world heritage treasures!)
This is another sign of Vietnam's inferiority complex and inability to tell the truth: They are afraid to refer to any important ruins as Angkorian.
Look at the history of Nan Ning, China (the first city north of Hanoi), by web search, and you will learn that part of their history was their having to fight off Vietnamese invaders. Vietnamese intellectuals respond that it is true, but
they had their reason for invading.
Vietnamese history includes obliterating or otherwise subduing or absorbing about 30 empires and states. Some of the vestiges of them one can find today, shoved back into the rugged mountains where the Vietnamese had no interest in living.
An example is the Thai of Vietnam in their various forms – for example, the White Thai and Black Thai, with the colors referring to the colors of their ethnic clothes.
The Vietnamese always had large families; hence, they thought it necessary for continual war to gain land needed for their increasing population. What distinguishes them from other groups that have also chosen paths of empire, violence, or
violent defence?
With the Vietnamese seeing themselves as poor little innocent, helpless, always invaded, always for peace little things, how do foreigners see them:
– They are slaves – willing or unwilling, depending on the connection one wants to have with its public through trade or military alliance – to a puppet regime of the failed Soviet Union that now carries on the legacy of Stalinism.
They have been created as a brainwashed and militaristic populace who accept labor camps, one-Party censorship and propagandistic control with a militaristic order;
– They are a backward and corrupt feudal empire of dictatorial, repressive traditions;
– They are a noisy, chaotic, individualistic, people with no sense of unity or cultural integrity, fighting over blood ties with no allegiance or philosophy, ready to follow just the latest philosophy;
– All of the above traits make them perfect for a transformation into an “economic tiger” performing as factory laborers and markets for more powerful countries and willing to adapt and follow anything that has economic benefit;
– They are a historical anomaly – a tribe and breakaway part of China that is lucky to have been far enough south to win independence and become a miniature version of China; perhaps something that also might be said of Korea or Japan.
The Vietnamese have nothing to show in measures of contribution to civilization, no examples of scientific creativity and cultural riches, for example. They can only copy.
The Vietnamese are needing a great historical figure, from back in time, they can look up to. Hence, although there are no remains of temples, citadels, and the like to support that the chosen site at Viet Tri, to the northwest of Hanoi,
was ever the home of any “Hung Kings,” they are taking care of that by building a vast complex, including a temple to them. Notice that “Hung” sounds like the Thai “Khun.”
Yes, the “Hung Kings,” the Vietnamese think are “theirs,” were probably Thai! The “Vietnamese” Hung “kings” really were weak and never created anything and may be little more than myth.
Thai of Vietnam
It was the Vietnamese who sought to destroy Tay/Thai culture on Vietnamese soil, one of the bases of their own. The Thai peoples in Vietnam actually had a written language up until the 10th century when they rose as a parallel empire to that of the Vietnamese,
next to the Red River empire. But the Thai were subjugated by the Vietnamese and forced to obliterate their culture. So ironically, the height of Vietnamese civilization is an era they have little connection to.
In Yunnan was Nan Zhao, a Buddhist Thai Empire that may have actually been the center of the Dong Son bronze culture that Vietnamese claim is "theirs." (Nan Zhao actually conquered Ha Noi in the 9th century and the Vietnamese WELCOMED
the Chinese to take over and kick out the Nan Zhao!)
That was when Hanoi was first built, under Cao Bien, the Chinese ruler who kicked out (the Thai) Nan Zhao. The Vietnamese still consider Cao Bien a hero! He really built Hanoi and may have
also built the "Vietnamese" One-Pillar Pagoda (an attraction in Hanoi).
Chinese records recognize the many Thai-Tay groups in southern China and the bronze era civilization in southern China and into Vietnam. This has been a problem for the Vietnamese, and has led to all kinds of justifications and creations
to try to establish an identity.
By the way, I often hear Vietnamese men describing very favorably the “dan toc” (ethnic minority) Thai women (residing in Vietnam), normally placing them as the most beautiful of the official 53 ethnic minorities of Vietnam.
And some Vietnamese place them at least the equal of their own Vietnamese women in beauty. Often the Vietnamese men will add that the Thai women have white skin and nice height.
There are actually more than 53 ethnic minorities in Vietnam, but the authorities and like of Vietnam do not take kindly to those finding there are more. They have their reason.
I had an ethnic Tay (related to the Thai) coed friend from Tuyen Quang, four hours northwest of Hanoi. Finally, she had a boyfriend, of the Cao Lan minority. The Cao Lan aren’t found within the Vietnamese’s set-forth 53 ethnic
minorities. I found that the Cao Lan had been classified as part of another ethnic minority. However, with the two speaking different languages, it is obvious we have an example of an additional ethnic group.
This is rather hilarious: The
Chinese referred to Vietnam as “Nan Yue,” meaning "Southern Barbarians." This is the name the Vietnamese now give themselves! They just changed the order of the two words.
Another myth you came across, in a response to Mr Ross’ article, was child sex tourism. As the lady head of the Vietnam’s Ministry of Social Evils volunteered: The exploitation of children for sex in Vietnam is by corrupt Vietnamese
officials.
A professor named Korski made the same finding in Cambodia. He painstakingly followed up on the reported data on the exploitation of children for sex, followed step-by-step the evidence trail, and finally had the two relevant Cambodian officials,
a lady and a man, face-to-face, and they had no choice but admit that all the cases, he’d found cited, were of Cambodian men.
And finally, you’ll hear the Vietnamese trotting out their having a 3,000-year culture. Do not believe it; what they actually have is 100 years of culture they have used over and over 30 times! Culture? Culture? You call this place
culture? What culture? I don’t see any culture.
The Vietnamese, at least the ones in Hanoi, in the north, live like animals as I was warned by the overseas’ Vietnamese (Viet Kieu) in my home country. “Don’t go to Hanoi – they live like animals, like Montagnards.”
Culture? Rather, I see a rat-hole, a cesspool, and that is not the worst of it.
The worst is the incredibly heinous air that has made the place unliveable. Yes, WHO and a doctor advised me to get my kids out of this place.
I will see a pair of Vietnamese lovers sitting by a black (sewage-fraught) stream or by a lake in Hanoi with the stench of a dead fish right there. Are they human? The point is that this is not culture.
Stickman's thoughts:
Comments to follow.
