The Vietnamese Deadpan

Vietnamese people are officially awarded the Best Sense of Humour prize for my trip. I've already mentioned how cheery they are, and how accepting of Americans...but added to that is the sharpest ability to joke with such a deadpan that sometimes it takes a moment to realise they're kidding.

So many times you might try to kid around with someone in India, or especially China, and they wouldn't quite know how to take it. You then have to smile, wave your hands and just say "nevermind". The difference between the Vietnamese and other people I've come across is that they can not only make a canned joke and deliver it well, but they can joke with you.

I started working this out when I took a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels out of Ho Chi Minh City, where our tour guide "John Wayne" ("but people say I look like Jackie Chan") was introducing the tour. His real name is something I can't remember, of course, and calling yourself John Wayne sounds as though it might be the type of joke that would fail miserably and, at best, elicit a few groans from the audience. Then he talked about how we needed to wear stickers to identify us as part of his group "because you Westerners all look the same to me". It was said with such a straight face yet a twinkle in the eye that I couldn't help but bust out laughing.

When I moved up north to Hoi An and met friends Megan & Viron from Adelaide, we went to a day-long cooking class. Phi, our chef for the day, sussed out the crowd for the first hour or so until he worked out what he could get away with. From then on out he was ripping into fellow cooking school patron Jonah - questioning Jonah's sexual appeal, capabilities and/or opportunities, such as by saying spring onions help virility and then putting about 20 of them into Jonah's pho. From then on it was trading barbs back in forth - the entire class was in stitches for the whole day, it was fantastic.

The next day, the three of us went on a tour of the My Son ruins - "Vietnam's answer to Angkor Wat" it is called, though that might be overstating it just a fraction. Our tour guide for that one made a few cracks on the way up that suggested his comedic timing struggled. Until, that is, he got into character as a Crocodile-Hunter-cum-Tomb-Raider in a VC hat taking us through the ruins...if he had yelled out 'crikey' I would not have been surprised. After taking us through many of the statues which had been defaced by the French ("where are the faces now?" "France") we went into a dark temple where a 2 foot tall/ 1 foot circumference Shiva lingum (male symbol) once stood.

"Where is the Shiva lingum do you think?"

"France!" we chime.

"Nooooo...the local women, they come and take it!" before he busts up laughing.

(Of course the lingum is actually in France)

The best though was the woman on the street in Hoi An - you can't walk 5 meters in the place without having "Motorbike? Bicycle?" offered at you. The three of us walked down the street and a woman shouted, "Motorbike!?". No, no thank you we say.

Motorbike vendor: "Where you going??"
Viron: "Japan"
Motorbike vendor:
"Ahhhh...In that case, you need 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 motorbike!"