Portable speakers on the beach: A lesson in how to be a massive asshole

One of the things that people who live here in Da Nang constantly complain about... and I think with good reason... is the fact that it is almost impossible to get any peace and quiet. Vietnam is a very noisy country and the area that I live in seems to be one of the worst in the country that I have seen. For one thing, virtually everything is under construction so no matter where you go or live you are probably going to be dealing with drills, hand tools cutting metal, cement trucks backing up, and various other hand tools that are constantly banging on something.

Next you have the traffic that relies very heavily on beeping their horns. Outside of extremely busy metropolitan areas like Chicago or NYC I don't think I really ever heard horn honking happen in my home country. We kind of reserved that exclusively for giving someone an auditory middle finger, not as a method of approaching every single intersection to alert other drivers to your presence.

In my own life the only way I can achieve peace and quiet is to close all my windows and doors and switch on the air conditioning and even then, if you listen for it you can still hear people banging away on whatever in the distance. If it isn't construction or traffic noise, you are only an hour or so away from people firing up their absurdly loud karaoke machines. Basically, you have to work pretty hard to ever have any peace anywhere in this city or this country at large.

This is what makes the portable speaker crowd on the beach so maddeningly annoying as it is one of the ONLY places a person can go to get away from the noise for just a little while.

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If you are the kind of person that thinks that everyone around, including people you do not know, should be subjected to your choice of music in a nature environment like the beach, you are not chic, you are not cool, you are not admirable... you are a selfish asshole.

Technically in Da Nang these things are banned, but the security and lifeguards unfortunately don't do anything about it for the most part.

This is more frustrating in Da Nang because of how the city is

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Everything to the left of this picture is absurdly loud for 18 hours a day. The place on the right is one of the ONLY places that you can go and get a little bit of quiet. So when I see people dragging their speakers down to the beach or even if it is just one of those little bluetooth ones, I want to tackle them before they have a chance to turn them on.

The other day I was at a beach-front bar / restaurant with friends and the establishment already had their own music playing and it was at a very reasonable volume. A guy at the table next to ours, who was on his own, decided to fire up some hip hop music on his portable speaker even though he was sitting by himself. We tried to give him non auditory clues that we were not pleased with this but he didn't take it to heart. Later, one of the more aggressive people in my group went over to him and politely asked him to use his headphones instead. He refused. Why did he refuse? It was only once my friend picked up the speaker and turned it off and told the guy that he would throw it in the ocean if he heard it again that the selfish asshole decided to keep it switched off.

I don't like that it comes to this but I really don't understand the mind of a person that will sit down in a quiet and relaxing area and then immediately ruin all of that.

So if you are the kind of person that likes to indulge everyone around you with your Spotify playlist without their permission, I hope someone throws your speaker in the ocean because you are an asshole. Have some respect for your fellow humans you jerk.