I don't really complain a great deal about the city that I live in. This is a perfectly fine place to live. It is neither wonderful nor shite, it is just somewhere easy, something that lies in the middle and is a perfectly adequate. Vietnam lacks the allure that Thailand has in my opinion both in terms of excitement and nature but there is one thing that really pisses me off about Vietnam and more specifically, the part of Vietnam and even Da Nang that I have chosen to live in: It is almost never quiet.
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The main reason why the noise level of this city is damn near maddening is because of the never-ending construction. As soon as one building is finally finished someone is getting ready on another plot of land nearby. Once they've done that someone, somewhere is doing renovations or even worse, tearing a building down so that they can built what appears to be exactly the same building that was there before.
In other countries there would be some sort of noise pollution regulation or barring that, certain times of day where making huge amounts of noise would be allowed. We don't appear to have any such rules in this country and it is just a free for all, sometimes 24-hours a day, noise fest. I have heard that in other countries there are decibel meters at construction sites and the site is not allowed to exceed these numbers. What a glorious place that must be to live and we don't have anything like that here.
Another thing that is constantly disturbing the peace is the traffic noise.
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The the newbies in the country the traffic here seems chaotic but despite the fact that there don't appear to be a great many official rules here, there aren't a ton of accidents. I've only actually seen the aftermath of one or two since arriving here nearly 3 years ago and a big part of the reason why that is the case is the fact that basically everyone is constantly honking their horns. This goes on at every possible intersection, by every vehicle, at all times of day.
I would prefer if people would just slow down but jeebus the horns here do get a workout and once again this is all day, every day.
Now let's get to the thing that is the worst kind of noise pollution that I have encountered anywhere in the world in my life.
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The Vietnamese love karaoke and for some reason someone decided that in order to have a real karaoke party, it has to be outdoors and with speakers that would impress AC/DC on tour. That picture above is indeed cherry-picked with 3 people sitting around a relatively gigantic and powerful speaker, but it really isn't rare at all. These systems can be rented and it is very common to see 3-5 extremely drunk mostly men sitting around and with no shame singing as loud as they possibly can with no concern to the fact that they are completely destroying the peace of the entire neighborhood. I feel like I am going to completely lose my shit and go postal on people when this goes on for hours on end. As it turns out the Vietnamese people also hate this but not enough to actually do anything about it.
So why I am writing about how we get a little peace and quiet now ?
It is the Tet or New Year weekend right now and as is tradition everyone is supposed to return to their family home and spend a bunch of time with family. This is done in a quieter and normally karaoke-free environment for some reason. Also, very few people's family are actually from the part of Da Nang that I live in, since this side of the river didn't really have a purpose before tourism became viable. Building was difficult because of the proximity to the sea and for the same reason, it was useless as farmland.
Almost all businesses are completely shut and all of the construction sites have been shut down so that the workers can have some time off.
It is absolutely glorious because I never thought I would take peace and quiet for granted but I really have done so. I am loving this so much and am just trying to take in as much of it as I can because I know that next week that it is going to return to noise, every day, all day. I am going to try to take in as much of this as possible and truly enjoy it. I can actually hear the ocean from my balcony right now and this is something that is ONLY possible during this one week a year.
Vietnam! Why you so noisy?