In this report, I will share what I know about modern-day violence in the USA versus Vietnam.
I will not be sharing any historical violence. The Vietnamese people have never even mentioned the Vietnamese War to me. They are not living in the past nor do they seem to hold any anger about it.
They have no grudge against Americans as far as I can tell. If the Vietnamese mention the United States at all to me it is to tell me what part of the USA their relatives live in.
So I will limit this discussion to my own experiences of living in Vietnam and the experiences of other expats I meet as I travel around Vietnam. I will also share some objective statistics I found today about how Vietnam compares to other countries including the USA.
In the end, I will also share a link to a video I made about how I have remained safe traveling all over the world for the last 17 years to 67 different countries. The truth is, you can reduce the possibility of being a victim of crime by doing a few simple things I will share.
Like the rest of the world, you will often find the most crime in Vietnam in larger cities and in cities that are on the border with another country. We didn’t spend time in border cities in Vietnam so I can’t speak to that. But I have spent time in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh.
I first came to Hanoi Vietnam about 10 years ago, before I started this YouTube Channel. In one of my earlier visits to Hanoi, I was single. At the time, I was single and interested in finding love. So I went out one night to a dance club at about 10 pm in Hanoi.
I was wearing a bac suit coat, white button-down dress shirt, tan slacks, and black dress shoes. Yes, I used to travel in clothes like that before I retired and started this channel. I kept one set of clothes like that back then in case someone got married or I needed to visit a customer site.
I had just entered the dance club and was standing to one side waiting for a spot to open at the bar so I could order a drink. You need to know that modern Vietnamese women present themselves to the world in two different ways.
During the day, they dress fairly conservatively and cover most of their skin because lighter skin is considered higher class in Vietnam. So you will never really understand how beautiful Vietnamese women are until you see them all dressed up at night with full makeup and a little skin showing. At night, they don’t have to worry about the sun, so they don’t have to cover up.
As I waited to order a drink, I noticed 2 drop-dead gorgeous Vietnamese women at the bar talking and laughing together. I noticed one had a ring on her finger and the other did not. The single one was so strikingly beautiful and proportioned that she could be a model.
I was thinking of asking the single one to dance when I noticed the married woman turn around and chat with a mature white man on her other side. He was probably my age at the time, 52 years old, she was probably 25 years old. I figured it must be her husband because he had a wedding ring also.
At that moment, a space at the bar opened up next to the man, so I grabbed it and ordered a drink. It turns out he was an American working in Vietnam and he had married his beautiful Vietnamese wife 5 years ago and they had two kids.
So his wife was best friends with the single woman next to her. After chatting with the man for about 10 minutes, he mentioned that his wife had agreed to take her friend out dancing to get over her ex-boyfriend. She hadn’t been out of the house in a few months.
Before I could even ask her to dance, they had decided to go to another club that had better music and they asked me to join them. So, off I went with them to another club. So there I was in the back seat of his expensive car sitting next to this gorgeous 25-year-old Vietnamese woman who was an accountant in the day but drop-dead gorgeous at night.
Now this story does not end well. But in terms of safety and violence, it does end well and that is why I am telling you this. Most stories that don’t end well on the weekend involve alcohol and staying up too late. Well, that is what happened in Hanoi that night.
Sometime around 3 AM, after the four of us visited a third night club in Hanoi after everyone had too much to drink, the single woman’s ex-boyfriend showed up and she fell back in love with him. There was no fighting or violence or anything, but I had become the fifth wheel. We hadn’t even kissed yet. That is when I decided to take my leave.
So I said goodbye and said I would get a taxi home. There were no taxis out front and this was before you could call a taxi with an application on your smartphone. I was about 2 kilometers from home so I decided to walk back to my hotel. I was home by 3:30 AM.
As I walked home in the middle of the night, I saw people out walking around and it felt safe to me. When I arrived at my hotel, the guard was not there to open the door for me. It was a small 20-room hotel. The guard usually slept just inside the front door and you could wake him by tapping softly on the front door. But he was nowhere to be seen.
So I sat on a bench out front assuming he would return shortly and let me in. But I fell asleep on a bench in front of my hotel and didn’t wake up until about 6 AM. Nothing happened to me.
Despite walking home at 3:30 AM and then falling asleep on a bench on the street for a few hours until 6 AM, while wearing a suit coat and business attire, nothing was missing from my possessions. My shoes, my coat, the cash in my pockets, and the credit cards and smartphone in my suit coat were all still in my possession.
Try walking home at 3:30 AM and sleeping on the street for a few hours dressed like that in any other large city in the world and let me know how it goes. Now I am not saying things will go this well for you if you try this for yourself, so don’t do that. But I was still surprised at how safe it felt to me.
As you may know, I walk the streets at night and do nightlife reports as I slowly travel the world. In Vietnam, I have retire-cheap reports in almost every city, big and small, including Nha Trang, Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An, Mui Ne, Da Lat, Phu Quoc, Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh, and Da Nang.
As Americans, we grow up hearing how the world is a dangerous place so we need to be careful when we leave the USA. I would say you need to be as careful, or even more careful walking around the USA than you do in Vietnam.
I have been walking around nightlife areas all over the world. Do you know where I see violence perpetrated the most in the world? It is the USA and Brazil. In those two countries frightening has become an ego sport.
Over the last 10 years, people have increasingly shown a willingness to get drunk and then fight in those two countries. But I have never seen a fight in public in Vietnam. I am sure they are happening somewhere, but I don’t see them.
But the fact that I have not experienced any crime at all in Vietnam does not mean that there is no crime in Vietnam. What do statistics say about crime in Vietnam versus the USA?
According to Microtrends.net, the homicide rate in Vietnam for the last year on record was 1.54 murders per 100k citizens, whereas the homicide rate in the USA was 4.7 murders per 100k that same year. So maybe the USA is not so safe after all.
The only other statistics I could find comparing crime in the USA to Vietnam reported that the USA has 70% more “violent crimes including assault and armed robbery” than Vietnam. The USA has 90% more use of opiates, 52 times as much violent crime, and 300% more murder than Vietnam. Nation Master.
Now, I am not a statistician. And there is an old saying that there are “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” There also seems to be luck to life that seems to follow some people around more than others, but never is there any guarantee of no risk to life even for those who never travel.
So, all I am saying is to call BS on anyone who recommends staying home because they live in the safest place in the world. I have no recommendations for you. But for me, when I am not drinking too much while following some beautiful woman around some part of the world …
I will follow most of the safety rules I share in the video appearing on screen now. Also, make sure to grab a free copy of my eBook, where I share how I have been able to fire my boss and travel the world for the last 17 years.