Elegant Nothern European girl in traditional Vietnamese dress

Bạn có thể tìm đọc bài viết này bằng tiếng Việt tại đây. (this post in Vietnamese)
No photo due to privacy reason!

This summer 2014 Iris, currently a business-linguistics student in Northern Europe has her first chance to visit Vietnam with her boyfriend Phuong who is a graduate in Finland. She had an amazing trip with her boyfriend and his family members through 9 cities: Hanoi, Sapa, Lao Cao, Hai Phong, Halong bay, Thai Binh, Quang Ninh, Tam Dao and Bat Trang. Iris especially loves Vietnamese fruits, Vietnamese traditional dress and she thinks Vietnamese tourism will develop significantly in 5 to 10 years.

White Ao dai - Vietnamese traditional dresses

Her first impression when landing Hanoi was that the weather was extremely hot and sweaty, the traffic was completely chaotic and Vietnamese people are friendly and hospital. Among all the cities Iris has been to, she like the most Hanoi-‘’it is a big city full of life-full of little cafes and shops to stop by at nights’’. Especially she loved those little lakes here and there, which are peaceful elements. She supposed Hanoi and Halong Bay would be wonderful destinations for tourists after being under construction at the moment.

Regarding food, Iris loves fruits, especially dragon fruit, and she also said she had try 15 kinds that she had never seen before. In a Buddhist temple in Quang Ninh, she had chance some vegetarian food made by the monks, which according to her was the best food she had ever tasted in Vietnam. When being asked what she disliked, she immediately talked about her refusal to eat cat and dog meat when being offered. She was terrified back then!

Another thing that shocked Iris was seeing propaganda posters, TV shows about communist and discussing political issues with Vietnamese people with the whole new look. She has now deeper understanding about political situation and culture of Vietnam. It was an eye-opening experience for her.

Iris also mentioned the best thing about this trip tp Vietnam was to meet her boyfriend’s whole family and relatives, and to become ’a daughter’ and ’sister’ of the Vietnamese family. Which is completely different with her in Finland. After the trip Iris understands more about Phuong and where he comes from. Cultural differences between Asia and Europe, for example different concepts of man’s and woman’s role in a family which is more strict and old-fashion in Vietnam, waas not a challenge for their relationship because fortunately Phuong has adapted to Northen European’s mindset after 5 years of living here. Iris miss Vietnam a lot and she really wants to come back to eat vege food and see Phuong’s family.

Because she went with guides who are locals, Iris did not had many troubles arranging the trip, finding ways of contacting people, though language barrier was still a big challenge for tourists like her, Prices are also higher for foreigner and tourists need to learn how to bargain. The most terrible experiences she had was when visiting a zoo where people astonishingly stared at her like an alien because of her different look (blond hair, blue eyes), and there were not so many foreigner in Hanoi except for the Old Town area. ’’ Some of them stared at me with an evil eye and it made me feel very unwelcoming and bad.’’-she said.

Modern Ao Dai!

Hopefully Iris will get back to Vietnam soon and have even better experiences, and also recommend her friends to visit Hanoi and try on traditional dress: ! ''I love Ao Dai! I think it is very elegant and beautifully designed cloth. I also love how somewhere in the world traditional outfits are still used so widely.’’


Huong Nguyen (Honey)
Photo: Vietcharm Dancers