Drinking beer with cold ice
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The first item on the list of 5 weird things you'll only see in Vietnam is drinking beer with cold ice. Drinking beer with cold ice cubes seems strange to many foreigners when they first come to Vietnam. Because in their country, it is considered appropriate to chill beer cans or bottles in ice buckets or ice containers, before taking them out to enjoy along with dishes. They never add ice cubes into beer glasses to make it chill. Especially, when the ice melts, they can make the taste fade and become worse.
They believe that if they do so, beer taste will become diluted and pale, losing the inherent attractiveness of beer. So they find this Vietnamese beer drinking style strange. However, for many Vietnamese people, adding ice cubes into beer glasses is the best way to keep their beer cool. When enjoying beers with friends, they chat a lot, then the way that chilling beer in ice in advance becomes ineffective in this case. Adding ice can reduces the strength of beer; However, it can keep the beer chill successfully. Furthermore, when the alcohol concentration in beer decreases thanks to the water melted from ice, the beer will take longer to make drinkers drunk. So they can talk more, talk longer and enjoy the meal better.
Anyway, many foreign people may find this strange because it is different from the normal way they often drink beer in their countries. Many famous youtubers shared their surprise when they saw this in Vietnam, including Dan Hauer, an American living and working in vietnam, with more than 1.4 million subscribers on Youtube. But you can get familiar and not too shocked when you see and even try drinking beer with cold ice. And if you want to try Vietnamese beer with cold ice one time in life, you can refer to the best Vietnamese beers to choose a favorite brand.
2. Wearing pajamas on the street as normal clothes
Wearing pajamas on the street as normal clothes is the next one mentioned in the list of 5 weird things you'll only see in Vietnam. Vietnamese people, especially Vietnamese women, have a habit of wearing pajamas on the street, and this is a great surprise to foreigners when they first come to Vietnam. Since pajamas are clothes designed to be worn to sleep, many foreigners cannot believe that it is worn as a casual garment in Vietnam. However, because Vietnam's climate is quite hot, and the fabric for making pajamas is extremely soft and cool, they love to wear this type of clothing at home, even when going out to go out or sell goods.
The second reason why Vietnamese consider it normal to wear pajamas outside on the street is that, although pajamas are designed to be worn at bedtime, it takes the form of a long-sleeve shirt (collar or not), and a pair of pants. Logically speaking, wearing pajamas outside is not revealing or offensive in the slightest. So in addition to not wearing the right way, people can still wear pajamas outside. So the next time you see a lot of female street vendors wearing this type of clothing on the roadside, don't be too surprised, except for when someone wears pajamas to work or to a wedding, then it would be another story.
3. Dipping or shaking fruits with spicy salt
Fruit often has a sweet taste and then in many countries, people just need to peel, remove the seeds and divide into bite-sized pieces to enjoy. However, for a country located in a humid tropical area like Vietnam, the fruit is extremely diverse, and so is the taste. Therefore, in addition to eating immediately, Vietnamese people also have many different ways of preparing fruits to enjoy, including dipping fruit or shaking fruit with spicy, salty, and sweet spices.
In particular, this method of processing is often found in sour fruits such as mango, toad, pineapple, plum, ... to reduce the sour taste as well as enhance the flavor of this snack. The fruits after being washed, peeled, seeded and divided into bite-sized pieces will be arranged on a plate, laid with a bowl containing an ordinary salt, which will casually be shrimp salt. Shrimp salt is a seasoning often used to dip or shake with pieces of fruit. If not dipping, the Vietnamese also put the pieces of fruit in a bag or bowl with a lid along with shrimp salt and shake well.