2.Cultural complexity: Like many other Asian countries, Vietnam has a high context culture, which makes it difficult for most Westerners, who live in low context cultures, to communicate with Vietnamese people. The high context culture in Vietnam not only raises the difficulty of understanding but also sometime leads to misunderstanding and the failure of a project or even of a business. However, the positive thing is that the primary purpose of communication in Vietnam is to build relationships, so if a Vietnamese person approaches and starts a small conversation with you, It is usually a good sign.

Vietnamese people are modest and they want to maintain good relations with others. Vietnamese people always want to avoid conflicts, and when it comes to sensitive subjects, they use a lot of metaphors and become very considerate with their word choice. Speaking of Vietnamese people’s attitude toward communicating with Westerners, we can see that they are very interested in having conversations, but at the same time they are very shy. Normally, Vietnamese people love communicating casually with each other. Strangers don’t hesitate to have small conversations in elevators or on streets while have iced tea. However, Vietnamese people find it difficult to talk to Westerners or to foreigners, in general, partially because of the language burden and partially because of the perceived differences in culture.
Another thing is that Vietnamese people often like to evaluate and judge other people through their appearances, so to dress appropriately when having an important conversation is very important. Because the culture of Vietnam is highly collectivistic, Vietnamese people often want to know more about your family background, marriage, finanacial situation, etc, so Westerners have to prepare themselves to feel comfortable talking about these topics. Vietnamese people also highly value honor and respect, and honor and respect are often expressed by nonverbal behavior. For example, a Vietnamese student who sits quietly and listens attentively to the teacher wants to express respect to his teacher. This behavior has often been misinterpreted by foreign teachers as passivity and non-responsiveness. To show respect and honor to the people with higher social status, Vietnamese people often avoid eye contact because in Vietnam looking directly into somebody's eyes usually means a challenge or an expression of deep passion.  In contrast, according to many Western cultures a person who avoids eye contact would appear untruthful and unreliable.

According to David Pickus, Professor at Arizona State University, who has spent a considerable period of time to experience and to think about the Vietnamese way of communication, it will take quite a long time to understand about the Vietnamese people. David Pickus found out that the Vietnamese smiles carry many more messages than just an expression of happiness. For example, some smiles mean, “Yes, you can do that,” while some other smiles mean, “No, you can’t do that!” Some smiles say, “Nice to meet you,” whereas some smiles say, “I’m angry!”, “Get lost!”, or “I’m very disappointed.” David also shared that Vietnamese people sometimes are very indirect in communicating and try to find ways to go around the main topic. Vietnamese people also often say ‘yes’ when that don’t really mean it or don’t really want to, and this will result in misunderstanding and conflict in the long run.