Hey my wife and I just had a massage in HCMC and they were great. They charged $350,000VND!! No problem. Then before we paid they wanted us to rate the massage with a strongly suggested $300,000VND tip for each of us. Is this normal? We don’t mind tipping but that seems excessive. Can anyone explain? TIA
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A tip is very optional.But if you do tip 10% is sufficient. No more than that.
Tips are not recommended in vietnam. I am Viet and I never tip. But in this case, if I tip, I will do 50,000VND To make it square
The massage charge is just right I guess but the tip is quite high and also tip is not something to be forced to clients but is something you give willingly out of service satisfaction so for me 100,000vnd is good enough
Same thing happened to me in Hoi An, was shocked and thought it was excessive and kind of rude
Hello, it could be the same salon (chain) where I unfortunately took some manicure and gel polish. After the review the next part gave three options for the tip and all where ridiculous! I ended up giving 100k tip, although after that maybe I shouldn’t have given anything.
David Espenant you will receive different answers depending on the persons’ original culture and habits. Depends also on the quality of the spa. Professional and upscale spas dont ASK for tips in that vulgar way. It could be, in a more subtle way.
It’s amazing to me how much Westerners try and force their culture onto people here. It’s essentially shameless and self-absorbed virtue signaling…”Look at me. I’m the generous foreigner!!” Here’s a real tip…you can’t buy love or respect.
Just to tell everyone. I am Viet, born here and grew up here. I had an aunt who worked in the industry but she retired. And I have a lot of friends who work in the industry because it is a good one for non-educated people. They do get paid 60-40 or sometime 70-30 (if the service price is really high, like high-end place). So 40% or 30% belong to the masseur and rest go to the owner to upkeep the place. It is a total lie that they don’t get paid and they rely on tips totally. Don’t fall for that! It is a lie that some girls who work on Bui Vien started to tell foreigners to push them to tip more. Normally, for 350,000VND, you can only tip 50,000VND To make it square. There is no culture of tipping. Vietnam has never been a culture of tipping, don’t ruin it for the locals. People will try to call it cheap or compare the price to Western’s countries but you know vietnam’s minimum wage is not even 10,000VND for many industries right?
And how would I realize the massage person is not getting paid on my first 24 hours in country? We have always been told tipping is optional.
Tipping is a very personal thing no matter what country youre visiting..