Manners in Vietnam: what actually matters

Search for Vietnam etiquette and you will find a list of forty rules. Most were written by somebody who has never once been corrected on any of them. The real number is much smaller.

Six things are genuinely noticed. Everything else is politeness invented for an audience of nervous foreigners, and you can put it down.

How many rules are there really?

Six that get noticed, against the 40 most etiquette lists carry. Vietnam is around 85 percent Kinh with 53 recognised ethnic minorities, so a rule that travels across all of them has to be a broad one.

The six below are the ones a visitor will actually be judged on, and none of them is hard.

What do Vietnamese hosts actually notice?

Six things, and none of them take effort. How you dress at a temple, whether you read the threshold before walking in with shoes on, and where your chopsticks end up. Then how you treat the oldest person in the room, whether you raise your voice, and whether you photograph a stranger's face uninvited.

Nothing on that list requires study. The rest of this page is what each line means when you are standing there.

What should you wear to a temple or pagoda in Vietnam?

Shoulders and knees covered, in every one of them. That is the single rule enforced at the gate, and at the bigger sites a guard will turn you away for it.

Shoulders covered and knees covered — one rule, applied equally to men and women. Tank tops, shorts above the knee and see-through fabric are the three that get you turned away at the gate. Loose trousers, a long skirt and a maxi dress all pass, and none of them are punishing in the heat.

Big tourist temples often keep loaner robes or sarongs by the entrance. Attendants at the Perfume Pagoda outside Hanoi hand oversized tunics to visitors who turn up underdressed.

Which pagodas repay the trip, and what the three words on the gate mean, is in the pagodas guide.

Small neighbourhood pagodas keep nothing, and those are exactly the working, everyday ones where arriving underdressed lands worst. A light scarf folded into the day bag covers both situations.

Incense has its own arithmetic. An offering uses an odd number of sticks — one, three or five — and three is the usual choice, since even numbers belong to funerals. Hold them in both hands, bow, then stand them in the sand-filled urn.

How much Vietnamese do you need for this?

Almost none, and 2 words carry most of it. Xin chao is hello and cam on is thank you, and using them to open and close an exchange does more work than any rule on this page.

Age shapes the grammar rather than the vocabulary. Vietnamese pronouns change with relative age, so the word for you differs depending on whether the person is older or younger — a normal foreigner mistake that carries no offence.

When do you take your shoes off?

When you can see other people's shoes at the door. Homes, the inner halls of temples, plenty of small shops and most guesthouses all expect bare feet or socks. Nobody will explain this to you out loud, because a row of sandals outside the doorway is the explanation.

Slip-ons are the practical answer, since you will do this several times a day. Socks are perfectly acceptable inside a sanctuary, and so are bare feet.

Two smaller habits travel with the shoes. Hats come off in the main hall, and statues, altars and offerings are looked at rather than touched.

Which chopstick rules actually matter?

One rule, and it is not about your grip. Chopsticks left standing upright in a bowl of rice mirror the incense burning at a funeral. The gesture drops a funeral image onto a lunch table, which is why it is the one that draws a reaction. Lay them flat across the bowl instead.

Passing with both hands is the other habit worth building, and it takes a day to become automatic. A bowl passed or received with two hands reads as respect, and it costs you nothing at all.

At a table with several generations, wait for the oldest person to start eating. Beyond that, eat the way everyone around you is eating — see what to eat in Vietnam for what lands on the table.

How should you greet someone older than you?

A nod, a hello, and both hands for anything you hand over. Age carries real weight in a Vietnamese room, more than job title or nationality does. Nobody expects a foreigner to perform a bow, and an improvised one reads as theatre rather than respect.

A hello in Vietnamese, even badly pronounced, does more work than any gesture. People consistently warm to the attempt rather than grading the tone.

Passing a card, a banknote or a bowl to an older person with two hands finishes the job. Small, quiet, noticed.

What does "losing face" mean in practice?

Keeping your voice level when something goes wrong. Raising it, arguing loudly or visibly losing your temper costs face for both sides at once — the person in front of you, and you. Bargaining is included in that. Loud public confrontation is uncommon in daily life here.

A Vietnamese person may smile, or even laugh, while you are angry. The smile is discomfort rather than mockery, and an attempt to bring the temperature down for everyone.

Reading that smile as provocation is the mistake that turns a wrong bill into a scene. A quiet complaint gets further, and it gets there faster.

Do you need permission to photograph people in Vietnam?

For a close portrait, yes — and asking takes about two seconds. Lift the camera slightly, raise your eyebrows, and wait. Most people answer with a nod or a shake straight away, and a decline is a decline. Elderly people, children and anyone in a rural or ethnic-minority village get the question first.

Wide street scenes are a different matter, and nobody objects to being part of one. The line most people care about is a face, close up, taken without being asked. The photography guide covers the rest, including drones, which are a legal question rather than a polite one.

A law sits behind the courtesy as well. Article 32 of Vietnam's 2015 Civil Code makes the use of a person's image subject to their consent, with exceptions for public activities. Nobody is calling a lawyer over a holiday snap, but the courtesy has a floor under it.

Markets and old-quarter streets are where the temptation is strongest — see things to do in Hanoi for where that plays out. A gesture and a smile still cost less than an argument.

Which of these rules actually matter?

Vietnam etiquette is forgiving, and this is a good country in which to get something slightly wrong. Visitors are corrected gently, when they are corrected at all, and the six rules above cover nearly everything that would prompt a correction.

Carry a scarf, watch the threshold, keep chopsticks flat, and defer to the oldest person. Keep your voice down, and ask before you photograph a face. That is the whole of Vietnam etiquette a visitor needs. Do those and the other thirty-four rules on the internet's list can go. So can most of the worry stacked on top of whether Vietnam is safe in the first place.