Bring the noise! Vietnam celebrating the 50 year anniversary of "Reunification Day"

I call it the American War because that is how it is referred to in Vietnam. It would be ridiculous to call it the "Vietnam War" since that would be the name of every war or battle that has ever happened in this country.

On April 30th, the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon will be celebrated, and here we are a long time before that celebration begins and it is already being set up as a huge celebration all over the country.

here in Vietnam the day is known in English as "reunification day" rather than "the end of the war" because it was the point in time that South and North Vietnam ceased to exist and there was just one Vietnam from that point forward. The south Vietnamese flags were taken down in the southern capital of Saigon and replaced with the flag that we all know today.

To this day, flying the South Vietnamese flag or even owning one can get you in a lot of trouble. In fact, simply wearing yellow and red together and certainly if you had stripes of that sort indicating that you were making some sort of political statement will get you in a lot of trouble. This isn't American where people can just fly Confederate flags and ISIS flags to stir up some internet points. You do this dumb shit and you are going to disappear. While this is a very fantastic country to live in, there are some things they take deadly serious and flying the flag of the attempted takeover of the country will land you in a lot of hot water, very quickly. All those people seeking TikTok fame? Go ahead and try it, you'll rapidly regret that decision, I can assure you.

There are probably some people out there that secretly probably wish that the South had won, just like I am sure there are some Americans that with the South had won in their civil war, but here... you better keep that very quiet if and when you talk about it.

All around my neighborhood and everyone else's neighborhood, there are Vietnam flags hanging everywhere. This incredible show of solidarity could be considered to be a show of pride by the people, but I'll be honest and say that it is kind of forced on the people. In my neighborhood, the neighborhood "boss" went around and drilled holes in the sidewalks to put up temporary flagpoles and he and his crew didn't ask for permission to do any of this. They don't need it. The sidewalk is public property anyway and I am sure that he was given the order to do this. If you leave this neighborhood and go to any other, you will see the same thing.

I'm all for the celebration and even though I am American I have zero animosity about my country losing that war. I'm just happy it ended just like all wars.

Go to just about any street in the country that has a bunch of people in it and this is what the streets look like right now and we are still 28 days away from the actual celebration date.

It's actually kind of awe-inspiring although I realize that there is a great deal of forced patriotism going on here.

Now for the bad side of all of this from a noise pollution perspective. Even though Da Nang was kind of neutral as far as whose side they were on during the war and most of those people are either really old or dead now, they too will have massive celebrations leading up to the actual April 30th official day, they already have stages set up every weekend to do some sort of "pre-game" for the official date.

This is a very loud country in every way that you can imagine but nothing I have been to can compare to what I experienced while walking along the beach the other day. I walk to listen to podcasts, get a bit of exercise, and just be outdoors every now and then. I wear sound-cancelling headphones while I am doing this but the stage area, that was probably about 100 meters away from where I was standing at the time, was so loud that it overpowered the sound-cancelling aspect of my over-ear headphones and also made it so that I could no longer hear the podcast even though my phone was turned up to maximum volume .

There was only about 40 people there because it was mid day, but the amplification this small parking lot had working for it was so incredibly huge that if Rammstein turned up for a surprise show, they would likely feel as though the setup would be adequate.

For me, I don't know how a person can hang out there in that level of noise. It would be impossible to hear anyone speaking and you are for sure suffering some sort of hearing damage if you were there for any sort of prolonged period of time. This was over the past weekend too, a full month before the actual celebration day so I have to imagine that it is only going to get louder as we get closer to the date.

I will not participate in the festivities although I would probably be welcome to if I wanted. The Vietnamese people are surprisingly NOT anti-foreigner or even Anti-American. They are a lovely and welcoming people and I love them for that. As far as their apparent love for completely overdoing it as far as amplification is concerned, I stay as far away from that as I possibly can and it is a true test of the double-glazed "soundproof" windows that my condo has on it.