My top cultural challenges in marrying a Vietnamese wife

They say it can be like a spell. You come to Vietnam, meet someone, fall in love, and before you know it, you are married and wondering how fast you got here. But, while some experience eternal bliss, for others the challenges of marrying a Vietnamese woman can be intense.

And with 19,000 recorded marriages involving Vietnamese and foreigners in 2023, the experiences, I am sure, are growing across the country.

As one of only 2,000 marriages in 2021, most likely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, I have four years of experience being married to and living with a Vietnamese woman. And, can I admit, it has been interesting.

Culture comes to the fore when this topic is raised. Essentially, you are entering another world full of new things that you need to relearn and adjust to in order to bring comfort to a totally new lifestyle.

Thankfully, in my case, I had already spent some six or seven years in Vietnam before taking the plunge so some of the changes were a little easier than I had planne. But there were many.

And as I reach the half-decade milestone, there is time to reflect on some of those changes that I accepted and critically assess if they are a bonus to my life or a headache causing stress that I just didn’t expect.

Top cultural challenges in marriage with a Vietnamese wife

When you marry a Vietnamese girl, you marry the whole family. And when I say family I don’t just mean mum, dad, and siblings. Entering into marriage brings on cousins, nieces, nephews, and a host of other family members that all come into the scene in many different ways.

While visits and parties are fine, the practice of 18 people sleeping in a two-bedroom apartment over the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday is one that I have never been able to grow accustomed to. Having to step over your sister-in-law to get to the bathroom at 3:00 am still haunts me to this day.

Similarly, having a good-sized double bed brings a little comfort to my life, except when the nieces and nephews sleep over. My humble queen-sized bed that nicely fits two adults becomes the sleeping location for four, five or six people.

And this is where my spirit of cultural tolerance starts to wane. Like a Taylor Swift concert, arms and legs fly everywhere and you are openly attacked by the involuntary reactions of a two-year-old or find the smelly foot of a four-year-old pressing against your mouth in the darkness of the middle of the night.

But marrying a Vietnamese woman is more than family. Food is another cultural challenge that needs some adjustments and tolerance as a Westerner entering this Asian nation.

I found myself in a situation where I unexpectedly gained a significant amount of weight. I was very aware of the reasons for it. The main reason was the consumption of alcohol and snack food but the other reason was that my new wife kept feeding me more and more rice.

After being told by the doctor to stop drinking and reduce my food intake, I sheepishly went home to give some stern but loving advice to my wife. “Darling, I need to stop eating rice. The doctor said I have to reduce my carbohydrates by 90 percent and part of that is removing all carbohydrates from my dinner. So, no more rice, ok?” I calmly explained to her.

The following night I got home from work for a lovely meal. As I looked down, I could see half the plate was full of this slightly brown seed-looking substance. BROWN RICE!!!!!!

Trying not to be angry I asked my wife if she understood what the doctor had told me. And with a loving smile on her face, she looked at me and said, “Yes, but this is brown rice and not normal rice so it's different.”

Clearly, rice is not just food or a carbohydrate; it is the center of sustenance in Vietnamese culture and even though the doctor was clear with his directions, the thought of having a meal without rice was too much for my caring wife to comprehend. So I ate the brown rice.

Pho is another cultural icon that is famous all over the world as something uniquely Vietnamese. However, in reality, if you live with a Vietnamese wife it is actually the number-one medicinal cure for almost every ailment known to man.

Every time I get sick—maybe a stomach upset, fever, flu or cold—I would be laying in my bed (hopefully not with four nephews) and a bowl of pho would appear under my nose.

And there is no use trying to refuse it. You may have just finished lunch and not be hungry; it doesn’t matter because pho will fix anything.

Force-feeding a bowl of chicken or beef pho burns the tongue and with the chili ignites the entire food tract of your body. But ask any Vietnamese wife and they will swear that it is the number-one cure for almost any illness known to humanity.

My last amazing tale of cultural adjustment is that of money. There is no better keeper of money than your Vietnamese wife. And that means my spending is investigated more than a passport at the border gate.

After every shopping visit, I place the receipt in the shopping bag and take it home. Like radar, my wife has this ability to hunt down that receipt and assess if I paid the right amount or too much.

In later years I have gone as far as hiding it in my drawer or other hideous schemes in order not to receive the wrath of my dear wife because I paid VND40,000 too much for a T-shirt at the market. But nothing seems to work. She always seems to know where that receipt is hidden.

I am sure there is an equal story of how Vietnamese women have to make massive changes to accommodate our cultural differences as foreign men because I know I am not the easiest person to live with. And there is no doubt that she does amazing things to support me in this foreign land where there are so many challenges for expats living in this country.

Sure, we can all complain about stuff in our life and look at things as bad. But when you look at the big picture, there is no doubt that I made a great choice in life to share my world with such a caring and wonderful person.

If you are considering a change in your life and marriage in Vietnam is considered—like any marriage—find the right person; don’t rush it; and be aware that there are many changes you need to make over and above just getting married. When you marry a Vietnamese woman, you marry a whole community.