Joshua Zukas If you haven’t experienced it, you probably don’t get out enough. You arrive for a short break at one of Việt Nam’s quintessential countryside destinations. The views from your rustic lodge are sublime. Streams meander through lofty rice terraces. Pockets of cloud cling to jungle-topped karst mountains. The rice paddies emanate a green so fanciful that it’s bordering on nuclear. Singing in standard soundproof rooms is legal in Việt Nam. — Photo baogiaothong.vn But somebody, somewhere, is howling into a microphone, plunging the celestial landscape into an aural inferno with their brazen self-confidence. Maybe you accept it. It’s Vietnamese culture, you chuckle to yourself. It’s not that bad, you try and convince your travel buddies. You’re not going to let a distant but persistent racket wreck your holiday. The warbler – perhaps a fellow tourist in a nearby hotel – wants to enjoy their holiday just as much as you do, and that’s fine. The Vietnamese don’t seem to mind, so why should you? But do the Vietnamese mind? Recently I learned of a term for this kind of noise pollution that may reflect changing local attitudes: quốc nạn. It means “national disaster” and expresses all the playful melodrama and linguistic ingenuity I’ve come to expect from a Vietnamese coinage. My Vietnamese friends seem increasingly embarrassed about this national disaster. It’s not our culture, they assert. It is that bad, they retort. And it needs to stop. Some Vietnamese are starting to mobilise. Two years ago, a news video featuring cheerful tourists singing karaoke in coracles outside Hội An drew condemnation from Vietnamese netizens. “Why don’t they go to a nightclub?!” somebody commented in Vietnamese. “I am feeling sick,” wrote another in English. More recently, a parody Covid-19 poster depicting masked …
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