Meet the foreigners who love singing in Vietnamese

There are foreigners who fall in love with Vietnam for a variety of reasons, then delight in featuring the country’s language in their popular videos.

‘No Sugar’

Living in Vietnam for over two years, American Jeremy Ginsburg is planning to write more songs and make more videos, including songs he composes in Vietnamese.

His most popular video, “No Sugar,” about the Vietnamese sweet tooth, has attracted just over 46,400 views since being posted on his YouTube channel in January 2016.

In the video, Ginsburg wanders around the city with his guitar and sings “Living here in Vietnam isn’t so hard, but it can be if you’re counting carbs. Rice and noodles everywhere as you could have guessed, but the simple carbohydrate sugar; ‘Duong’ beats the rest.”

Jeremy Ginsburg in 'No Sugar'

His lyrics might be simple, but that is the way he has made a bunch of fans who love his singing about riding motorbikes or eating pho (beef noodle soup) in Vietnam.

Ginsburg remembers the time he first came here and tried to learn Vietnamese, and how he improved thanks to the friendliness of the local people who encouraged and taught him so enthusiastically.

The American realised that he wanted to understand local culture, to try Vietnamese cuisine and to intergrate, and language was the tool for him to achieve all that.

Ginsburg, who spent 10 months mastering the language’s tones, has so far written eight songs in Vietnamese.

He is also planning to make a music video for “The Pho Song” about the well-known Vietnamese dish.

“I wrote a song about pho as it’s known worldwide,” he told Tuoi Tre News. “When I came back to the U.S., I performed this song and everybody liked it.”

One of the reasons encouraging him to make videos is to show the world how great Vietnam is, he said.

“I want people to know about the food here. I think if I can make people laugh, show them a friendly Vietnam, I can make them come and be happy like me,” Ginsburg explained.

“Actually, some of my friends moved here after watching my videos, and some blamed me for making them nostalgic about the time they lived in Vietnam.”

Having gone from being curious about Vietnam after listening to his friends’ compliments about the country, the 25-year-old man now calls the Southeast Asian country his home.

Jeremy Ginsburg's song 'No Sugar'

‘Eating Papaya’

Australian Andrew Davey, whose Vietnamese nickname is Ăn Đu Đủ (Eating Papaya), calls himself a “Uc Kieu Viet” (Australian living in Vietnam – a comparison to the term Viet Kieu in Vietnamese).

Talking to the web designer, one could think that he has lived in Vietnam for a long time, given his fluent Vietnamese, however, he has never really settled in the country.

Each year, he spends one or two months in Vietnam, and according to his calculations, he has ‘lived’ in Vietnam for around nine months.

“When I first visited Vietnam, a man asked my name. I said ‘Andrew’, and he repeated ‘Ăn Đu Đủ?’ as the phrase sounded quite similar to Andrew. So that’s how I got the name and honestly, I also love papaya. Makes sense huh?” Davey recalled.

First visiting Vietnam in 2009, he had no idea about Vietnamese language, but after two weeks he was able to employ some simple sentences and bargain in Vietnamese.

In this photo provided by Andrew Davey, he is seen friendly talking to a street vendor in Vietnam.

Aside from learning the language for fun, Davey has put significant effort in mastering Vietnamese and has continued his practice for around seven years.

“I’m trying to become a Vietnamese,” he said.

Despite living away from Vietnam, the 31-year-old fan of the Vietnamese language has regularly posted videos about Vietnam on his YouTube channel which has more than 52,000 subscribers.

His channel features a wide variety of videos, from vlogs to Vietnamese cover songs, and songs he has written about the country in Vietnamese, or simple English lessons for Vietnamese.

In his videos, Ăn Đu Đủ always speaks Vietnamese.

Davey started singing in Vietnamese more than three years ago to practice the language, and during that time has increased the number of songs he has written in Vietnamese.

He even became an Internet sensation in April last year with his music video “Anh Yeu Em” (I Love You) in which he carries a tablet with the phrase in Vietnamese through seven countries with his girlfriend.

Ăn Đu Đủ's "Anh Yêu Em"

Using videos as a good way for him to improve his Vietnamese, Davey says it requires him to expand his vocabulary, learn more about the culture and improve after receiving people’s feedback, both positive and negative.

“Some foreigners who quit learning Vietnamese feel motivated after watching my videos,” Davey said. “I want to prove to people that they can definitely learn the language.”

Besides inspiring people through his videos, Davey has also spent time teaching Vietnamese to people in Melbourne every weekend, he told Tuoi Tre News during a video call.

Rafa RC loves V-Pop

Unlike Jeremy Ginsburg or Andrew Davey, who fell in love with Vietnam after visiting the country, Rafael Ribeiro from Brazil started loving the nation even when he had not stepped on its land.

Rafael Ribeiro in a photo taken in front of Ho Chi Minh City's signature Ben Thanh market. Photo provided by Rafa

Over two years ago, Ribeiro, whose nickname is Rafa RC, became fascinated after accidentally listening to “Em Cua Ngay Hom Qua," by Vietnamese pop star Son Tung M-TP, and immediately began writing a Portuguese version of it.

Although adapting foreign songs into his own language was not something new, it was the first time he had done it from a Vietnamese song, Rafa told Tuoi Tre News.

Although he does not know Vietnamese, Rafa’s method is finding English translations of the Vietnamese songs he wants to cover, then adapting them into Portuguese.

The Spanish and English teacher has so far created six videos covering Vietnamese pop (V-Pop), the genre he fell in love with at first sight.

His most-viewed video is his cover of Son Tung M-TP’s “Khong Phai Dang Vua Dau” with more than 577,400 views on YouTube.

Rafa said each video posted on his channel is a combination of three of his passions; singing, writing and V-Pop.

In early 2016, Rafa paid his first visit to Vietnam and, together with his friends, made a video music of the song “Chua Bao Gio” performed by Vietnamese singer Trung Quan, featuring multiple landscapes of Hanoi.

“That was not a trip that I can take every day, so I thought why not make a video featuring Vietnam’s landscapes,” Rafa recalled, explaining that he had to save money for a year and a half to make his trip to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

“Some people in Brazil started Googling Guom Lake and Hanoi after watching my video," he said proudly.

"Chua Bao Gio" performed by Rafa RC

Aside from being a regular listener of V-Pop, Rafa has also put his heart into practicing Vietnamese with his friends so that he could sing both in Portuguese and Vietnamese.

It often takes him a couple of weeks to learn one Vietnamese song.

“Some of my friends started to love V-Pop after listening to my songs," he said. “Some Brazilian guys even wrote on my Facebook page that they got to know V-Pop thanks to me and now cannot get enough of it.”

He also confirmed that his videos were not made for any commercial gain but rather purely as a hobby, despite the fact that he sometimes gets stressed because of the high expectations he has for his work.

“I always want to finish my works quickly, but want to make them comprehensive and want to sing Vietnamese perfectly, so sometimes it turns out to be a very stressful exercise.”

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