Get The Lowdown on Living In Vietnam During Lockdown

I spoke to my friend Greg and his girlfriend Char recently about living in Vietnam during lockdown. Their story brings insight into how Vietnam dealt with the pandemic and answers all my questions about how they were being so social over there.

Both have a passion for travel and adventure. They enjoy photography, drone photography and video editing. Which means I got some amazing shots from their life in Vietnam to share with everyone. This is part two of their interview; check out this article for more on their travels in Vietnam during the pandemic as a couple.

Read on for the lowdown on exactly how Vietnam initially tackled Covid-19 and what this meant for those travelling.

Update: Vietnam went back into lockdown at the time of publishing this article.

What made you both decide to travel and move to Vietnam?

C: Originally we weren’t supposed to go to Vietnam. It was a trip to see Dan and Hayley for two weeks on the way to New Zealand as a holiday.

G: We went through Asia because going all the way to New Zealand past all these cool places on a long-haul flight doesn’t make sense. We were going to set up in NZ, so wanted to have some fun before we got there.

C: The plan was Singapore – Australia – then get to New Zealand.

How did the pandemic effect your original plan?

Greg: We’re still in Vietnam!

Charlotte: Our intention is we hope hope hope that we still get to New Zealand as that’s where we want to be, but whether their borders open anytime soon is a different matter. We’re currently in Da Nang and luckily Greg has friends here.

G: I had friends here. Dan was here, which was the reason we came, to see Dan and Hayley. But Dan went to Dubai and they shut the borders the day before he was meant to come back, so that was the end of him.

C: Hayley is still here! And there is a big expat community with loads of social events going on to meet new people.

Are there any big differences to being in Vietnam post-Covid to when you first arrived?

G: It was a weird experience going through it all. We tried to share it on social media, nothing bad or nasty. We wanted to share the experience which was heavily censored by both Facebook and Instagram. They kept removing our posts despite only trying to give an insight to our friends on what it was like over here. Everything we tried to share was deleted or censored. Which was strange, so we couldn’t share anything besides talking directly to people.

Over here there was a small first wave. That was handled. Then two Vietnamese people and an English backpacker brought it in again and caused a second wave before we went into lockdown. I think the Vietnamese media ran with the story that travellers were bringing it in.

C: Anyone who didn’t look like they were Vietnamese were treated like the virus.

G: Down to the point where if you drove past builders on construction sites, they would scurry and pick up their masks. The really poor people scrambled away from backpackers thinking they were going to catch something.

C: One day we were in the supermarket and Greg had gone down a different isle. You got your temperature checked when you entered and had to wear a mask the whole time. There were two young girls who had their video camera turned on and were running up towards me and running off, turning the camera on themselves and laughing.

Even now if you go to some areas there are people looking at you who are probably thinking ‘how the hell are you here’ and ‘hope they don’t have the coronavirus.’ It’s a weird feeling, I’ve never been in a situation where I’d be targeted for something.

G: It was quite enlightening being treated like that.

C: It was an eye opener.

G: Overall it was annoying at the time but a good experience to be on the other side of the coin. Even now the virus is gone and there’s no active cases, but it wasn’t long ago I was going down the escalator at the shopping mall. And the trolleys have a magnetic clip so they don’t roll down and I stood two metres from a couple in front of me. The woman turned, saw me and climbed over her trolley to run away from me. Her husband looked, shrugged and continued like normal. She scrambled like a scared animal to get away.

C: There’s a T-shirt made which was a plain t-shirt with print on it: I’m not a tourist, I live here. He was wearing the t-shirt. His wife was Vietnamese and he was very clearly not Vietnamese, but he was getting the same treatment as if he hadn’t lived here for the past 8 years. They shared it on expat groups. The Facebook Pages here are good for people as a community.

[Reference: Vietnam is back in lockdown at the time of this post on 6th August 2020, due to three infected people bringing the virus from abroad.]

Were there places you went which you could’ve spent more time?

G: Anywhere in the world to home. Torquay in Australia. I would have loved to spend more time on islands in Thailand. More time in the Philipines, I did that over six weeks but a lifetime would be too short.

C: I could spend so much time in Bali.

G: I could spend 50 years in the Maldives. Waking up to the colour of that water, going snorkelling and seeing so much. White sandy beaches, everything was paradise.

C: I could live in Dubai but that is more down to teacher wages rather than location. I love Dubai.

Tell me more about your future travel plans? What does living there look like during the pandemic?

G: The pandemic was really interesting for me because they dealt with it so well. Before they had any active cases, they shut all the schools after seeing what happened in China. This massively contained the spread. They closed the country when they hit 100 cases.

They tracked every case; whoever came on the first flight, tracked them down and quarantined them. And they don’t have data protection out here. If you have Coronavirus they put a photo of your passport and face, name and shame etc to track you more effectively.

Interestingly though the backpackers who saw that essentially went on the run. They knew they’d be in quarantine and despite it being for the benefit of the country they tried to evade it.

There was an American girl who fled the quarantine facility and they banged her door down in the morning, found her in her pyjamas, photographed and named and shamed her etc on Facebook to warn people they’ll be found.

C: I had a doctor’s appointment since being in Vietnam at the local international hospital to see a doctor. A desk of people in PPE were taking temperatures. We live a ten-minute ride from hospital. I had a shirt and helmet on.

I had said to Greg I was absolutely boiling. Mid 30s, I was so hot and she took the temperature- the thermometer started beeping like crazy. The guy got a book and started writing personal details. I looked at Greg, scared shitless as they were about to take me to quarantine even though I knew I was just hot from getting off the bike with a helmet. I knew there was nothing wrong and I just needed to cool down in my long sleeve shirt, not being used to the heat. Thankfully Greg managed to persuade her to take the temperature again.

G: I had to tell them to let her sit and cool down, take it again. They were laughing as if it wouldn’t come down and it did come down point 3 degrees below the risk category and they scribbled out her name from this book and we were allowed to enter the hospital.

It was a touch-and-go situation. They took it seriously. Even in food shops, masks, hands sprayed with disinfectant, the handle on trolleys was disinfected and temperature taken. These are huge steps more than anywhere in the Western world I’ve heard of. We didn’t have any of the hoarding frenzy over here, like England. Everyone bought enough, not 16 chickens just in case.

Why did you decide to stay and not go back to the UK when borders were being shut?

C: Quite a lot of my family’s advice was ‘come home, you don’t know what’s going to happen’. I think we made the most sensible decision by staying here.

G: We immediately didn’t want to leave as we didn’t want to go home in general. When England was saying to come home, it was surpassing the number of cases. Why would we leave the place that has taken incredible steps and has it so well contained to somewhere where there are no steps being taken and you’re gaining hundreds of cases by the day.

In hindsight we made the right choice. We’re completely virus free and walking around happily and doing whatever we want. We’ve even been on a flight, a holiday within the country, whereas the UK is still completely screwed.

I think England out of all of the West were too bothered about the economy until it was too late.

C: If someone had said before we left to go travelling, ‘you’d be stuck in Vietnam because of Coronavirus’, I wouldn’t have hesitated to stay. But now I feel we are in one of the safest places in the world and like Greg said, we have been in an internal flight within the country, everything is [was] opened and working as usual.

G: We’ve been to huge capacity nightclub events with no masks, nothing, because they got the numbers down to 0 before they released the lockdown. They had every case contained. They didn’t get it down to 3000 cases a day and say right we’ve done it.

C: Can you tell Greg has a bee in his bonnet about how England has handled the coronavirus?

G: I just think especially in the West you’ve had time to see what’s happened, how it unfolds etc and still decide to do absolutely nothing. Then in the middle of your actual lockdown, still letting people fly into the country with no testing and mingle. Mental. Anywhere else in the world where the virus is contained they had any international flight go into two week quarantine. But England was just like ‘nah you’re alright mate’.

How was the hospitality scene impacted during lockdown?

G: Lockdown went by quickly. Only essential journeys were allowed, everyone here followed it. Wearing facemasks isn’t alien to them. It took backpackers the longest to shape up and do their bit. If you’re an expat or backpacker with no mask, you’d get videoed and ridiculed about it. A Vietnamese girl explained it as being interpreted as a ‘fuck you; and said hey guys most of these people can’t afford health care, so the face mask is the first and last line of defence. Not wearing one is almost disrespectful and it’s making them scared and upset you’re not doing your bit.

C: The quality of the health care here isn’t good. If we got the virus I would be scared. Luckily we bought really good travel insurance which I’m so glad about. Meerkat travel insurance. International hospitals are great but as a local if you can’t afford it, I can see where you’re coming from.

G: Grab service got stopped during lockdown and all takeaway was meant to stop, but I found a site that decided to go underground and didn’t stop for my takeaways.

C: It was like he was doing a secret drug deal.

G: Bit shady, had to meet the driver in the dark etc. But Grab drivers couldn’t afford to go without wages, so they were out there in work uniforms and you hailed them like a normal taxi.

C: The beef noodle place I ordered from were open morning to evening but their client base was mainly Korean. Since the virus their customers have gone down so now they only open part of the day till 3pm. Heavily reduced opening hours. A lot of places have introduced offers and discounts just to get people to go in.

What’s a specific trip in Vietnam that you would recommend?

C: Don’t go to Nha Trang! We had a nice time but it’s really similar to Da Nang and the weather wasn’t great. We didn’t enjoy the beach but did a boat trip to different islands and their Skylight bar which was really nice.

In Da Nang my favourite thing to do is the Hai Van Pass.

G: Vietnam is an amazing place to see via motorbike. If you’re going to do it as a trip there’s so much to do. You’ll meet people going north to south, south to north and you’ll see many familiar places along the way.

C: Hoi An is another favourite. Lanterns everywhere, cute boat rides. In Thailand we got so much footage using the drone but when we came to Vietnam there was so much information about not using your drone.

G: They said you needed permission from the Ministry of Defence and a thousand dollar day pass to fly your drone. We didn’t use the drone then I read more into it. They hire photo bloggers, even if they try to get the pass, no one picks up emails – it’s an unenforced law and the only airport with confiscations was in Da Nang and only because they had a world leader event here in 2008. Nobody told airport security they don’t have to do it anymore. They’ll most likely confiscate, then sell it off privately. As it’s corrupt as hell anywhere in Asia.