They're huge trade partners. That matters a lot more than liking each other.
Meanwhile in America everyone is convinced that Vietnam must be a totalitarian hellhole because they handled Covid responsibly.
I get the impression most places like Americans but hate America. Idk.
Cultural hegemony is still very strong. People still love Hollywood and associate that with America.
Americans who travel are mostly polite easygoing folk. Does not apply to most baby boomers, no matter where they are from.
They're not used to being told "no" by service workers and it makes them mad
I got the opportunity to travel a bit when I was in my mid 20s, been to turkey, azerbaijan, germany, the netherlands, the uk, mexico, and the bahamas and people in those places were all pretty hospitable to us.
Although my partner and I are super cognizant of the "ugly american" trope so we really try to be respectful and polite in other countries. (Especially bc my parents would do fun stuff like ask me "how much is that in real money?" smh)
I'm a big language nerd as well, so I always like trying to learn a bit of the local language if I can, especially when we were in turkey.
I never felt discriminated against anywhere but I've also not been to asia or like... iraq where maybe they have a reason to have a more hostile view of the usa.
Same in London, every story I have about Americans in London who weren't students is just them being weirdly obnoxious and without fail announcing what city and state they're from, as if anyone is supposed to care, completely unprompted
American tourists aren't as bad as Brits and Australians (by far the worst) but they're not very good either. People mock asian tourists but they and northern europeans generally tend to mind their business and not be super obnoxious.
You're loud as fuck it's pretty obnoxious, at least here in London. Why is every American tourist's normal speaking volume everyone else's raised-voice volume?
Brits saying that about Americans is extremely throwing stones in glass houses lol. When an area becomes very popular for brits or aussies it basically stops being accessible to everyone else because of how gross and drunk they are all the time. I had a friend who had the misfortune to encounter a bunch of drunk as fuck british girls while she was trying to park her car behind a night club in Ios and they climbed on top of her car and started pissing on it while she was inside. They're always running around drunk and naked for some reason.
Want more? Some guy was just fucking some random chick in the sea (it was night but there were other people around) but not even somewhere where it wasn't visible, it was right next to the shore, they were just splashing around very shallow water. Then when he finished he got up, looked straight into me and some friends who were just trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, and he started celebrating and swinging his dick around like a helicopter while pissing.
Also the islands most full of aussies and brits are basically incel heaven (also soft rape heaven), because anyone can get laid with just completely random people, because everyone is just way too drunk and high to figure out who they're having sex with. Mykonos, Ios and certain regions of Zakynthos are completely fucking wild and pretty gross imo and it's mostly because of these kinds of tourists.
Oh yeah you're definitely right that when Brits drink we turn into loud football hooligans...
But the American tourists are that loud when SOBER. Being in a train car with them is more annoying than when someone is on the phone in a train car and that drives us all up the wall.
Yeah but when brits come to Greece they're permanently drunk so, same difference. Aussies too which confuses me, why would someone travel so far just to get pissed? Do they not have alcohol in Australia? Is it because it gets spilled due to being upside down and all?
I got revenge by getting extremely drunk when I visited Leeds. Unfortunately apparently everyone else was also drunk in that god forsaken city so no one really noticed. Also I didn't run around naked and pissing on people's cars.
Honestly what surprises me is that the local population of Greece does not feel the need to be drunk 100% of the time when in Greece.
Jokes aside, the British binge drink as a national pasttime, everyone feeling the need to get absolutely fucking wrecked as often as possible is probably a sign of some sort of material condition that they're self medicating for...
everyone feeling the need to get absolutely fucking wrecked as often as possible is probably a sign of some sort of material condition that they’re self medicating for…
That's what I figured. The reason I went to Leeds is to visit a friend who studies there. She was really shocked when she realized just how much the people there binge drink. Her first shock came when she first walked the streets Sunday morning, and she just saw vomit all over the place. She thinks it's because of the way of life, people are very isolated and stressed constantly. The only time they have enough time for themselves is during the weekends, and the best thing they can do is to just get wrecked and use Sunday to recover, so that they can go back to work on Monday.
I had fun while I was there but from what I saw I wouldn't really want to live or study there. Everyone wants to study abroad if they can because there's this idea that everything here sucks (which is partially true) and everything abroad is better, and foreign universities are more "serious" and better. And yeah, alright, in many ways they are, but studying here is dope, it's completely free, you got lots of time, not a lot of assignments, not as much anxiety and competition, and even introverts and shy people can socialize easily. What I hear from my friend (as well as some other people who study in England) sounds very alienating and unpleasant so I can see why everyone ends up getting hammered on booze and drugs during the weekend. I imagine work there is similar.
Who'd have thought, the reason is capitalism...
Forgot to say, when in Leeds I met some random guy in a pub who was telling me he had visited Greece a couple years ago. I asked him where he went and he told me "some island, I don't remember, I think it was Mythos or something...".
Mythos is the name of a Greek beer.
It sound even worse when compare with their attitude toward China in the same survey , with only 16% having a favorable view of China and 74% feel that China is their greatest threat (also 30% consider US their greatest ally)
I mean in support of fucking Pol Pot and the Khmer Rogue, the People's Liberation Army marched on Hanoi in 1979, continuously launched invasions into and occupied Vietnamese territory from 1981-84 and even after they stopped putting boots on the ground they fired over 2 million artillery shells into Vietnam between 1982-89, only stopping in the wake of the collapse of the USSR.
Why the fuck would they have a positive opinion of the PRC after that's living memory for the vast majority of the Vietnamese population?
Yeah I just wanted to point those numbers out to give a sense of how much China has fucked up in regards to their relation with Vietnam. Although I would attribute a large part of that unfavorable opinion is because of the South China Sea dispute rather than the 80s
Ok fair but, by that logic why would they have a positive opinion of us?
they bombed your country to shit, massacred millions, and... you like them?
It makes sense for raison d'état. Idealogical divisions aside, Vietnam sees China as the local bully and the US as a counterweight to Chinese dominance. (At the same time Laos and Cambodia see China as an ally to curb Vietnamese dominance in Southeast Asia).
