Their habit of canceling appointments at the shortest of notices

It has to do with the wanting to please everyone, the strong family and friends units. Do not take offense just know it happens often. Plan accordingly and know you have the right to change plans as well. It’s there country play by there rules.

Hi Chris, I once asked a girl out for a date and she brought her gal friend with her uninvited as well. We really didn't talk the whole night and we ordered nothing for the night too. I guess it was an issue of trust and they probably don't know you. I never called her back again. Just move on and don't spend your time with those time wasters.

Yogi has found the “additional freeloader” has at least 3 purposes.

1.  Free food for their buddies

2.  The other party is an observer.  She will watch everything you do in detail.    How you greet people, how your dressed, how you eat, and how you read the menu.   They will even watch your eyes to see how often you look to the right of the page checking prices...( possible cheap skate) . If you quickly flick past the seafood pages & stop at the noodles,,,,your done.    It’s financial profiling , they want to know if your white collar, blue collar or poor white trash.

3.  The best one.    The other party is the “decoy”....just in case No 1s boyfriend or other interested parties ride past and see her dining out.  She can just say YOU were with the other party.   Convenient huh...

Enjoy the game, play the game ,but don’t buy the game.

or more likely:

4. Women here live in a culture in which they are not well protected.  All sorts of bad things can happen to a single woman. They have been taught not to take certain chances.
While you may not act like a Vietnam man, how do they know that?

And they have a much higher price to pay should they misjudge the situation.

yep...the like the strength in numbers . 

It’s a sad state when people can’t trust their own countrymen , and they know that most foreign men travelling alone in SE Asia are quite often low life sex tourists .   It doesn’t say much for the dating society here does it.   

However......For those individuals that have trouble coping with the “Eyes Left” drill ,,Yogi wears sunglasses & a low brim hat....Blues Brothers style.

Hey Yogi,

You can avoid that cheap shot "Left Eye" game by asking them upfront right from the start of the meeting why that person is there and only one person was invited.

Most of the fake ones will feel offended and leave. The geniune one will ask their friend to leave or leave with their buddy with a comment explaining why.

Just rat them out and don't waste your time....

Gday Tim ,  Yogi gets your drift.

However, Yogi being the generous individual he is , and has embraced communism , he has chosen to share the passion &  the food among the masses.

Who knows mate....two is company,     but three......???😍🤓

Hey Yogi,

considering how generous you are, you won't have the sheets in your pants left soon enough. After all, you're already topless....lol

It’s all fun.
I actually like playing the “game”.

A lot of people don’t like the BS that goes on here, but I’ve developed a liking for it.    I know that in 99.99% of cases when a local instigates a contact with you , they WANT something. 

So...I give the impression I’m a d******  and see what happens.  It’s free entertainment.

  Would you believe that in the first two years here I was asked for OVER $900,000 in stuff,,including houses, cars, debts owed, prosthetic limbs, cancer operations, funerals, ransoms , Business loans, jewellery, computers, school fees, phones,motorbikes..etc etc.   

I stopped counting 6 years ago,

A  woman in Cambodia actually wanted a helicopter.😳  I haven’t included the “chopper” in the $900k , but I can’t imagine they’d be cheap.

How often have you been asked “do you have a girlfriend “????

They don’t give a s*** about your relationship situation,,,,they only want to know if you’ve got someone to help you spend your money.😆

Even tonight ,,Yogi got asked that.
My classic response......

Girlfriends are for cheap , b**** clown  tourists that can’t afford hookers.    That usually gets rid of them .

For the record...Yogi does have a very nice ladyfriend & I consider myself lucky to have met her.

But for most of the others.....I wouldn’t give them the steam off my piss.

Bravo Yogi, this is sooooo hillarious !!! Encore.

Well...if you don't mind, that's your choice.  I'm not yet retired and there are many things to be done before I reach my golden age and slow down to observe society.

Kudos to you Yogi

Yogi007 wrote:

Would you believe that in the first two years here I was asked for OVER $900,000 in stuff,,including houses, cars, debts owed, prosthetic limbs, cancer operations, funerals, ransoms , Business loans, jewellery, computers, school fees, phones,motorbikes..etc etc.

Yes

Yeah, a few years ago I visited a "friend" of mine at her house, she was a receptionist at some hotel and well she was married and had a baby but I thought she was genuinely my friend. Her family invited me and we ate and drank food.

The day after, I wanted to invite her at some restaurant to thank her and a few hours before she asked me if she could bring her sister, I said OK, then a few minutes before the restaurant, she texted me saying if she could bring 12 of her family members, because "they liked me a lot". I told her "Hmm what? No way". She said "They invited you in their home and now you disrespect them by refusing to invite them at the restaurant?". I answered that I knew enough about Vietnamese culture to know she was full of ***, then she started calling me names.

I felt kind of sad because her family was very nice and I'm sure she was the one trying to abuse the situation (and not them) but oh well, I filtered that parasite out.

Hey Willy....she does have a point...even though she's more on the side of taking advantage of you. However, the end game is you would want to stay away from those people.

TimHortonMuffin wrote:

Hey Willy....she does have a point...even though she's more on the side of taking advantage of you. However, the end game is you would want to stay away from those people.

The thing is, you can't compare inviting someone at home to inviting someone at the restaurant. It's totally different, especially price-wise. If she'd had asked maybe for her sister and both parents, it would have been more reasonable... but 12 people is total extortion.

Yogi007 wrote:

My classic response......

Girlfriends are for cheap , b**** clown  tourists that can’t afford hookers.    That usually gets rid of them .
.

I've been here all of three weeks and have started to go with, "không mật ong, không tiền," except I can't pronounce it correctly. Still, it gives me a few seconds to make my exit while they are wondering why I am babbling about having no shirt and no electricity.

Which now that I think about it, also works.

Brick23 wrote:

I've been here all of three weeks and have started to go with, "không mật ong, không tiền," except I can't pronounce it correctly.

What does "không mật ong, không tiền" mean?

Ciambella wrote:

What does "không mật ong, không tiền" mean?

In this context I meant it as a reversal of, "no money, no honey," which is a phrase meaning that as a man without money, you aren't getting any sex.

Bet you wish you'd never asked. 

Brick23 wrote:

Ciambella wrote:

What does "không mật ong, không tiền" mean?

In this context I meant it as a reversal of, "no money, no honey," which is a phrase meaning that as a man without money, you aren't getting any sex.

Bet you wish you'd never asked. 

Got a feeling Ciambella know, she is Vietnamese.

Just wondering why you reversed it, makes no sense.

colinoscapee wrote:

Just wondering why you reversed it, makes no sense.

Wanting something upfront myself when someone I've known for exactly 45 minutes asks me with a straight face for $7000 to pay off their loan makes sense to me.

I should just have a T Shirt printed with a detailed explanation on the back.     Apologies for thread derail...

Hello everyone,

Some posts have been removed from this topic.

Please refrain from posting generalized comments.

Thank you.

Diksha
Team Expat.com

Diksha wrote:

Hello everyone,

Some posts have been removed from this topic.

Please refrain from posting generalized comments.

Thank you.

Diksha
Team Expat.com

This is the reason that post numbers are in decline. The mods are too sensitive. Heading the same way as other expat forums, out the back door due to over governing.

Diksha wrote:

Hello everyone,

Some posts have been removed from this topic.

Please refrain from posting generalized comments.

Thank you.

Diksha
Team Expat.com

Half of all the posts on this forum are generalized comments.
With a question like this one, how can any of the answers be anything but generalized comments?

If it's not clear what you are objecting to, this forum just becomes a waste of time fora all of us.

Maybe she did not like the comment about sex and cheap booze. 

Brick23 wrote:

I've been here all of three weeks and have started to go with, "không mật ong, không tiền," except I can't pronounce it correctly. Still, it gives me a few seconds to make my exit while they are wondering why I am babbling about having no shirt and no electricity.

Ciambella wrote:

What does "không mật ong, không tiền" mean?

Brick23 wrote:

In this context I meant it as a reversal of, "no money, no honey," which is a phrase meaning that as a man without money, you aren't getting any sex.

I should just have a T Shirt printed with a detailed explanation on the back.

Even if it made sense in your mind, your reversal of translation took a widely and wildly veered off course when you translated "honey" as "mật ong".  "Mật ong" is something one eats or uses in skin care and health care treatment, not an allusion to sex in Vietnamese language, nor has it ever been used as a term of endearment the way it's used in English. 

Even if you have a detailed explanation printed on the back of your T-shirt, or if you could pronounce correctly to avoid making honey sound like shirt ("mật ong" sounds like "áo"? How did you manage that?), you would've received strange looks from the locals as no one would ever see the logic in what you tried to say.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring" --  Alexander Pope

I agree - way too much censorship with a dose of personal liberal bias from this mod. If my soap box is removed I will stop my speeches.