Miss-ed Saigon

I know a lot of people have ranted about expats behaving badly in Vietnam, not taking local customs and cultures into consideration, but it’s good to have finally had a lighthearted spin put on the matter. Last night I watched a local amateur acting troupe, the Saigon Players, perform a charity show called “Miss-ed Saigon”. The comedy show highlighted (sometimes painfully when you realise, “Hey, wait, I’ve done that!”), the inapt musings and behaviour of the expatriate community in Vietnam. Although it focused mainly on the “real expats”, those with real “hardship posts” at established multinational companies, villas in An Phu (District 2), drivers, and spouses who spend their time getting massages and manicures (basically, the type of expat life I can’t afford or wouldn’t indulge in even if I could), it still hit the spot quite accurately and had even the most jaded and cynical of audience members cracking up in recognition of some antics they too have dabbled in.

For example, they spoofed how difficult it was for some expats to pronounce Vietnamese names: Here’s a watered down version of the dialogue.

“Nguyen’s coming to the meeting.”
“When?”
“No, Nguyen.”
“The meeting’s at two.”
“Yes, the meeting with Thu is at one”
“No, the meeting with Oanh is only at three, what about Nguyen?”
“Huh? What about when? I told you, two!”
“But the meeting with Thu is only at one!”
“Oanh? At three, not two!”
“Nguyen?”

Shamed by “our” behaviour, a few of us decided to go have drinks at a bia hoi – local style (Actually Chi is Vietnamese, but she spent five years in London so she semi-qualifies with her posh Brit accent).