Tchico, a French national, helps to distribute rice during the depths of the COVID pandemic - Photo courtesy of VUFO.org

Alex Reeves - @afreeves23

It’s tiresome. Another day, another bit of clickbait floating across my socials, painting foreigners here as nothing more than lazy grifters - here to pocket a wage, mooch about and offer nothing to the country we’ve chosen to call home. Migrants espousing how problematic other migrants are, deaf to the rattle of the irony, oblivious to their own hypocrisy.

There’s always some perma-offended yoghurt-weaving self-apologist, fresh off a ‘White Lotus’ binge, ready to slap the LBH (Loser Back Home) label on every foreign guy they’ve met. Everyone here longer than a year or two is a ‘passport bro’ now. We become Schrödinger’s migrants: simultaneously accused of appropriating and disrupting culture, somehow neocolonial and yet aimless.

Straight up - Vietnam has always been shaped from the outside in, everywhere is, only now, thankfully, it’s on their own terms. From the colonial legacies of bia, buildings and baguettes to the wave of globalisation that crashed through in the 90s, external influence is woven into the fabric of modern life. That’s not an endorsement of colonialism, just a fact of history—and a reminder that foreign presence has always left a mark.

Yes, some freeloaders are out there, exchanging minimum effort for maximum comfort. Yes, some wrong ’uns slip through the cracks, dragging baggage from wherever they came. But does that mean we should all pack up and disappear? Or could we take a breath and consider what contemporary foreigners actually contribute - beyond the tax on a payslip or helping kids speak the global lingo?

I am neither entirely comfortable with, nor in denial about the privileges I have, I’m not blind to arrogance wrapped into the word ‘expat’ - I rarely say it without a sarcastic wince. I won't even use the word without inverted commas. I’m a migrant, and proud of it, but this tired, one-note caricature of the lazy foreigner? It erases the people who’ve built a life here, who’ve learned the language, shown up, stayed, given something back—and done so knowing full well they’ll never be granted permanent residency.

There’s the classic migrant lane: food. Vietnam’s cities are now hotbeds of culinary creativity, and foreign-run spots have helped put them there. The F&B scene is thriving, locals have more choice, and nobody’s losing out to variety. Hanoi Events under Gary Devitt brings people together year-round. The lads behind Noise Hanoi/Saigon have given the live music scene actual structure and Loud Minority have brought major international artists to these lands.

Mark Pettit’s Game-Ơ is also bringing arcade culture back to life.

The Namduro lot have built an open and welcoming community for those into off-road motorcycling, from scratch. And it’s not just fun and games. People like Christopher Axe, dedicated to helping Hanoi’s homeless or Johnny Harris teaching young people real-world skills through Đại Việt Rugby. The girls at HopeBox focused on gender based violence.

Yes, not everyone is a trailblazer or saint, but for the most part, people are trying to live their lives for a brighter Vietnam and want to build a better version of the place they now call home, without being dragged into someone else’s culture war. For some, that’s why they left. VNS