Vietnamese life in the countryside

Vietnam is still a highly agrarian society with eighty percent of the population living in rural villages scattered throughout the lowlands, mountainous areas and the coastal line. The countryside in the lowlands of Vietnam is filled with bamboo-hedged villages, beautiful patchworks of green paddies, hard-working farmers in their conical hats, and water buffaloes.

With the habit of working in teams and being helpful to one another, villagers usually earn their living from farming, raising livestock and making handicrafts. They live in a small community with a temple or a communal cultural house where great events, such as festivals worshiping the village god and traditional games are organized. Villagers in the Southern usually live in houses lined up along central road and built on stilts to keep above flood waters. Along the coastal lines, fishermen depend on the sea as a means of livelihood. In the Central of Vietnam, a place suffering lots of natural disasters all the year round, citizens tend to be more studious and hard-working than those in regions with favorable conditions. People in the central highlands and the northern mountains lived by growing rice, rubber trees, coffee and tea as well as hunting. However, industrialization has created new types of work and different lifestyles in a country that used to depend mainly on agriculture. Instead of working in farms, many people choose to work in industrial zones or move to cities in search of a good job.