I am a pretty easygoing guy to the point where I just let people live their lives and get on with my own. This is an important aspect to have about yourself if you live where I do because people just seem to be really inconsiderate when it comes to a lot of things, especially noise and invading personal space. The Vietnamese don't have anything wrong with them, it is just culturally different here. In the west we would view making a crap-ton of noise without letting your neighbors know that yo are going to do it to be extremely rude and perhaps even criminal, but here, that is just the way things are.
I have learned to look the other way as far as this is concerned but there is one aspect of Vietnamese society, and I experienced this in Thailand as well, that really gets under my skin. This is the people that have a tiny bit of power and authority and they seem to get real pleasure out of using it as often as possible.
I don't know the guy in the picture and he is not the one in question here. That's just a stock image from a copyright-free image site. The point is that all over SE Asia, there is an rather alarming lack of actual police and therefore, security guards are the norm. I have one at my own condo and basically every business has one.
The guys at the beach don't have any real authority and are there mostly to enforce parking rules and trust me, this is very necessary since it is the norm in Vietnam to just park your scooter wherever it will fit without any regard to whether or not it inconveniences anyone else. I think that these people get a bit "high on power" because they blow their whistles and for the most part the people comply with what they are asking them to do. Again, they don't have any real authority to FORCE you to do anything but this is just the way things are here.
In my situation I went out really early this morning to take my dog, Nadi, to her favorite place: The beach. I purposely go to the far south end of the beach because I don't want to disturb people by having my dog around. While I find it strange, not everyone likes dogs and while I do think they are wrong about this, I don't go out of my way to make other people uncomfortable, so I enter the beach at the far end where very few people ever go.
Down there Nadi can gallivant around and for the most part at 8 AM there really isn't anyone else around at all. We only encountered bout a dozen people for the 1 hour or so that we were out there walking our 3km or so. Everything was going find but instead of leaving the beach from the same path that we entered, I decided to walk the rest of the way on the sand to an area that dumps us out near my condo, which is basically dead center of a high traffic area where tourists flock to. At this point in the day it was still only 9am so it's not like it was packed. Also, Nadi is extremely well-behaved and doesn't approach people unless beckoned. Even then she loses interest very quickly and runs back to me because, and I kind of like this, I am really the only human that she truly likes. The rest of them need food in order to get her affection.
Well, as we were nearly off the beach entirely, this uniform-clad security guard comes running up on his motorbike, all frantic and blowing his whistle, pointing the Nadi and making an "X" sign with his arms. I didn't go to pantomime school, but I know that he is attempting to indicate that she is not allowed there and he aggressively pointed at the nearby sign that specifically says that dogs ARE allowed there as long as they are leashed and muzzled.
Nadi has no muzzle, Nadi will not ever have a muzzle. She needs no muzzle and the only people she has ever bitten in her entire 11 years on this planet, deserved it for mucking about too much with a dog that was clearly agitated by their touching her too much. She is very patient, but every creature has their breaking point.
Getting back to the security guard though, he was over-the-top with his aggression towards me. Nadi was on a leash, she was only walking directly next to me and we were in the process of leaving the beach. This guy just wanted to flex his fake authority muscles on anyone that he could. I guess everyone was parking legally that morning and he hadn't yet had his dose of being unnecessarily rude to strangers.
I didn't pay him much mind but just gave him a "thumbs up" and then walked away and carried Nadi across the street to go home because she is not allowed to attempt to navigate these death traps on her own.
This encounter has left a bad feeling with me because that guy didn't need to do that and even if he did have a good point (he didn't, as my dog was leashed and not bothering anyone) the way that he went full Gestapo on me right away was unnerving. I am not a violent person but I will absolutely rage on someone if they ever threaten the livelihood and safety of my dog... and he was getting dangerously close to crossing that line.
I despise people like this and wonder if their lives are just incredibly unfulfilling and they feel the need to bully others for a feeling of self-worth. To me, I think that a security guard would have a much better existence if they were kind to people, even if they don't have to be.
I have no intention of complying with this idiots demands and the next time I want to take Nadi to the beach, I am going to do exactly that. If he calls someone that actually has authority such as the police, I know that they will not even respond and if he decides to get physical with me, that will end up being something both of us regret, but him more than me.
The good news in this story is that other than that incident, it was an absolutely glorious morning and Nadi was exhausted when we finally got back home and got her washed up with all the sand removed. That chair is where she is required to sit until she dries off because she is afraid of the hair dryer.
We are a good team I think.
