Phung Thi Bich Ngoc is a young twenty two year-old energetic girl working in Bangkok for already one year for Procter & Gamble, an American FMCG company. She is the first Vietnamese student to have started working abroad right after she graduated from university. “Usually, Vietnamese staff is sent after two years experience”, Ngoc explains. “But for me, I started working in Bangkok one week after I took my final exams. It was amazing and quite a change! It was a first time ever for so many things: first time I worked in a company, first time I got in a foreign country, first time I was speaking English twenty four hours a day! I was overwhelmed!” She had quite a cultural shock and above all, an emotional shock. “The first four months were challenging”, she recalls. “The hardest thing on top of being in a totally foreign environment was loneliness. I never felt that before. After a long day at work, I did not have anything to do. The Thai staff is very kind with me… during working hours. After that, they all go back home with their family. So it was quite difficult. But I hung on, I tried to think positive, I told myself that I had nothing to lose and that I was lucky to live such an amazing experience at my age”. She took the challenge and she finally made it. After only four months of adaptation, she now feels great in the Bangkok’s hectic pace of life. “I try not to go out too much though”, she tempers. “I just go shopping on weekends with some friends on Chatu Chak market area and other places. I love Thai food, Tom Yum is so good! I do miss Vietnam somehow but with time, I can get over it more easily”.
On the contrary, Huong, 30 year-old, who studied in France for five years, kept a contact with the Vietnamese community when she was studying in Paris, France. “It was vital at some point to stay with Vietnamese”, she says. “I felt lonely, culturally speaking. French have an interesting culture but living there, I felt the need to look for a Vietnamese community for support. I joined the group of Vietnamese students of the Polytechnic School. There, I could share my experience and difficulties and I learned some useful tips from students who lived in Paris for some years already. It was very useful. You know, French is a different culture from Asian culture. The culture shock never finished, even when I left to come back to Vietnam”. After she finished her Phd in Marketing and Strategy, she looked for a job in Paris but she could not find anything stable and well-paid. “I was interested to work in Paris. But teaching jobs in universities are getting scarce in France so I decided to go back. Anyway, I needed to go back, I was a little tired of living far from my family and friends”, she concludes.
Vietnamese expats find it difficult to live abroad far from their loved ones. More and more, just like Western expats, they are now proposed interesting salary packages, including house allowance for the whole family, insurance for the spouse, and school allowance for the children. Tuan is 31 year-old manager living and working in Singapore since 2005, in an international logistics company. “I had a two-year experience before I joined the Singapore office. At first I was the one and only Vietnamese and I felt nostalgia I guess”, he explains. “But my integration was easy: I knew all my colleagues from previous business trips and preparatory visits before I started. And Singaporean culture is not too far form the Vietnamese one. Both are Asian culture. But then I got a little bored. Basically, everything was good but I was missing my girl friend so much!”. He decides to talk with his management about it. Six months and a wedding later, his wife is living his side in Singapore, in their newly-bought apartment. “It is wonderful to be able to live here with my wife”, Tuan comments. “That tranforms the whole experience! We are not too far from Vietnam so we can visit once or twice a week our families. I realised that it is a great change in my life now. Before, people would arrive overseas as refugees. Or they were students. Or they were coming back to Vietnam because they could not get a good life overseas. Now some people like me, live and work overseas as expat, that is quite an achievement I guess. I feel privileged. My wife and I, we definitely envisage our future here... or in another country in Asia. As expats, we are very flexible and mobile”, he smiles.
Ngoc has no plan to come back to Vietnam yet. Working as an assistant brand manager in an American FMCG company, she covers five countries including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam and therefore, she is travelling a lot. “I am just arriving from Jakarta. Next week I will be in Singapore, the week after in Malaysia, and so on. It’s great to have to chance to meet with so many managers from five different countries. I am in charge of briefing their sales team for the deployment of our marketing campaign. That is actually why I was called to join the team in Thailand. I am not working on the Thai market as such. I would not have any clue anyway! But in the company, we are trying to rationalise and standardise a product offer for the consumers of these five countries. There are similarities we can leverage. That makes our marketing strategy more efficient. So our marketing team reflects these markets we are targeting. My colleagues are from Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, but my boss is Vietnamese. She is the Marketing Director and I report directly to her, whereas other Assistant Brand Manager report to their Brand Manager”, she comments.
Her boss has played a major role in her coming to the Bangkok office. “At the beginning, I was not expecting to get a job overseas at all. I just filled a form at the company summer camp, not even knowing what it was for. After few months, they contacted me for interviews. I went there and I finally finished on the top 3 candidates out of 50. And the company proposes international position for their top 3 candidates. At first they proposed me Singapore. I said no. I was simply not mentally prepared. I did not know what to expect and I did not want to leave my friends, my comfortable routine in Saigon somehow. Then my (future) boss talked with me, we sat at a cafe for two hours and he explained to me the whole process I was going through. I am very grateful to him. Basically, he could see that my background and capabilities prepared me well for a major international experience, and that I could learn a lot from it.” Ngoc’s background was the key in her ability to adapt fast in her new environment. “I live far from my parents since I am eighteen year-old”, she explains. “They are still living in Dalat. I am also used to travelling and discovering new things: I travelled a lot in the Northern area, Hanoi, Halong, Sapa, I love these places. And finally, I was volunteering in an international NGO in Vietnam, taking care of street children. I contacted them when I arrived in Bangkok and now I am also working in this NGO there. That is really good. Most of my friends in Bangkok work in NGO. I guess everyone is afraid in front of new things but you never know until you try. I do not regret anything at all.”
Tuan could not agree more. “I would recommend everyone to try an international experience. It is very enriching and it opens your mind. Even when you come back to the country, you can bring back a lot of know-how and a new attitude toward things. And who knows, you may also end up living an expat life with your family!”, he laughs.
