When I Get Married I Want... A Moving Platform Stage.

Being back in Viet Nam has been an absolute blast. For those of you who didn't know, I studied here four years ago in a city called Can Tho, which is the largest city in the Mekong Delta in southern Viet Nam. Out of our two short weeks visiting Viet Nam, one was spent in Can Tho visiting friends and my host family and we were fortunate enough to be invited to my host sister's wedding which was last weekend.

The week leading up to the wedding was spent doing what is best to do in Can Tho: Sitting by the river, eating delicious food, drinking coffee with friends, and going to karaoke at 10 in the morning (yes, complete with beer). This final activity was a little unexpected as we were helping out with my host mother's english class at 8 am and her students wanted to take us around. To karaoke. At 10 in the morning. When in Viet Nam?

Can Tho seems a lot bigger than it did four years ago, but many of my favorite places are still there, which is nice to know. Had my pho from my favorite restaurant, found my old apartment, ate com tam with my friend Thao, it was awesome.

Phil is taking over here and talk about the wedding...

I love weddings. I've only been to a few in my life but this one was something I've been waiting to see ever since I saw The Wedding Singer and experienced those '80s weddings on film. Start with the 1980's, throw in a fashion show, an Irish drinking team, and just a pinch of figure skating and you have yourself a Vietnamese wedding. It's amazing. The three to five days-long celebration starts with the real ceremony, which Julia's family did in their church because the bride is Catholic with mainly just family, so we didn't see that. We saw the bride in about six different dresses during the course of ceremonies. Hopefully some of them were rentals, but they were all very bright and original. The ao yai dresses are the traditional ones with a combination of dress and pants, each designed individually and accompanied with a circular hat. Very nice looking. Julia can explain more about these if she likes.

The rehearsal dinner at their house the night before the first "wedding party" was the bride's family and friends taking pictures, people talking on a microphone and making us drink. The bride has something like 8 uncles on her mother's side, 5 or 6 on her father's side and when I introduced myself as Phil they heard "Beer" so my name was Beer for the rest of the weekend. They took that to mean I liked beer and every one of them would fill my glass and say "100 percent", one of the few things I learned to say in Vietnamese. After a few glasses of culturally ceremonial drink, which I couldn't turn down without appearing culturally insensitive of course, we prepared ourselves for the next morning.

The following morning was surprisingly more of the same as the previous night. As the three hundred plus people herded inside we experienced the rushed and frenetic course of a wedding ceremony. I have no idea what happened in what order it all happened so quickly. Around 10 AM we were sitting then we were drinking beer and shouting "YO!" and then there was an MC on a bright stage leading the music to which six hotel dancers/servers dressed up in faux wedding dresses and tuxes cut like back up dancers to a Brittney Spears concert danced as an intro for the bride and groom. Here comes the fashion show side. The stage starts moving. Out of the stage comes a moving platform with a red carpet and it extends to the middle of the room and the parents of the bride and groom come through the giant, veiled heart adorned with flowers and confetti to the cheers of the crowd. Then the parents of the groom do the same. The bride's father says some words on the mic and people cheer more. The bride and groom come out after and everyone goes wild like they were at a Snoop Dogg show, except no one danced except for the hired dancers. The bride and groom stepped onto the moving platform and it carried them to the stage while The Final Countdown (American 80's song) played. Confetti guns were shooting over them. Pink and white balloon columns were rising into the ceiling and popping like fireworks. Smoke machines filled the stage with mist. The bride and groom poured some wine in a tower of glasses, said some more words, and cut their fake cake before moving around to the hundred different tables to receive the toasts of each table. Uproars of "Mo, hai, ba, YO!" (one, two, three, CHEERS!) were all I really heard the rest of the time over the music and piles of food cooking at the centerpiece hot pot. The uncles found me and Julia and shoved the glasses of Tiger beer in my face with "Beer, drink beer, one hundred percent.."

Julia and the bride, her host sister, Tu

After the wedding, Julia's host mom's English students, whom we taught once, took us out to Karaoke again. Another American showed up with opera-like skills singing a popular Vietnamese song that got the English class hootin and hollerin quite a bit. The students ordered fruit (pomellos, green mango eated with salt and pepper for the ying yang effect), french fries (served with chili sauce and sugar), noodles, and Heineken. They never once let us pay for something when we hung out with them. We ate more ban xeo that night, the pancake dish with minced pork and veggies inside, eaten with fish sauce and peppers. It's addictive.

All of Julia's host sistersKaraoke with the students

The following morning was the groom's ceremony. We were told to get to the bride's family's house at 5:30 AM to await the groom's family arrival, but they were late. So at 7:00 they came in the flowered bus and car and commenced the traditional giving of gifts to the bride's family in return for, well, their daughter. The picture shows the gift receiving by the bride's side (Julia was included in the receiving line), who eventually gave back half of them as a further way of thanking them - perhaps for driving to their house. Everyone jumped in the tour bus and we made our way an hour and a half outside the city to the groom's family's house in a rural area with a path far too narrow for a bus or car, only motorbikes. So the party jumped into two boats which took us down the serene creek to their house. One of my most memorable moments will be the groom's father, probably about sixty or so, standing on the bow of the boat in his nicest gray suit guiding the boat through trees and bushes and docking the long boat perfectly on the shore of their house without getting dirty or wet.

The gift giving by the groom's family to the bride's family

This party was much more laid back without moving stages and dancers. Just a quick Buddhist ceremony, a few pictures, and binge eating/drinking for an hour and a half. Everyone in the family made a certain dish for the party and it was all incredible, including fried venison, which I hadn't had since the US. The eating and frequent visits from the uncles with more 100% chants went by so fast I really didn't even touch the final course of the meal before being guided back into the boat, but not before another uncle jumped in the boat with more rice wine just to make the boat ride go more smoothly. The tour bus back was rowdy to say the least. I just wish I knew what the uncles were saying while they were rolling on the floor laughing (rofl in AIM lingo).

On the way to the grooms house. Notice the groom's father standing in the front. The grandmother behind me was my favorite by far. She downed a 100% like a college student.

The groom's aunt cooking venison over a hot pot. Not enough time to cook even half the plate of venison, which in my family is a sin.

Julia's host mother.

About Can Tho: Our guest house had a dog named Cool Beans, or at least it sounded like Cool Beans, and I came to like him a lot. He came into our room often and always played when we got home. We tried to go rollerskating once with one of Julia's friends and found ourselves in the middle of a punk rocker skater club where people just run into other people at full speed on purpose. The also didn't have bigger than a size 9 skate so I didn't last long. Walking around Can Tho and Soc Trang was interesting considering the lack of foreigners so we were often looked at frequently. Actually, it was just Julia who was gawked at constantly with her blond hair. I got the best hair cut I've ever had and a straight razor shave for the first time. I never knew how many places on my head I could grow hair that someone could see.. I went back for a second shave before the wedding and a different person shaved me against the grain. PAIN!

Cool Beans

I'm going to stop there and Julia will talk more about the rest of Vietnam from here on.

So, after Can Tho, we headed to Soc Trang to visit my friend Dao who has moved there with her husband and they showed us around this little, awesome city where we didn't see another foreigner. It was awesome. She took us to visit both her husbands family and her family and then took us to one of my most favorite restaurants that I remember from studying abroad. I couldn't remember where the restaurant was and given the difficulty in finding it, I thought that I would never see it again, but Dao remembered how much I liked it and led us back there again through the alleys and over little bridges. It was an awesome restaurant where you cook your own beef on a pot of coals at the table and then make mini spring rolls out of them. It was so awesome to be there again.

Dao and her husband in Soc Trang eating coal-pan-fried beef rolled into a spring role. HOT DANG it was good!

After Soc Trang, we headed to Vung Tao, which is a beach city about 60 km south of Ho Chi Minh City. There, we stayed with my friend Diu (pronounced 'you') who is also recently married and her and her husband have an awesome house on top of a hill. We only met the husband for a minute before he was off on a business trip, but Diu showed us the most wonderful time cooking us delicious meals, showing us the way to the beach, and lending us bicycles so we could have a look around town. It was a great intro beach vacation and a good way to work on our base tans before heading to the beaches of Thailand.

Vung Tao beach at sunset. You might be able to see a gigantic Jesus tower on the hill in the distance.

Julia's friend Diu was a great host, along with her aunt

Then from Vung Tao to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) where we met up for an awesome buffet dinner with my old program director and the current abroad students from my old program. Then we -amazingly- met up with two of my really good friends from CC, Nancy and Maura, who were heading down Viet Nam and were in the same city for the same two days we were. Spent the day with them going to the war remnants museum and the market and some other sights. Also coinciding with our trip to HCM, the Asia Indoor Games were being hosted by Viet Nam so that night we were able to find out where a Futsal (essentially a mini version of indoor soccer) game was being played. Japan played Tajikistan and gave them a whoopin. We also ate some M&Ms, it being Halloween after all, and went out to enjoy some of the festivities. A great way to wrap up our fantastic time in Viet Nam.

Now, it's back to Chiang Mai for a week to enjoy Loi Krathong (the river/lantern festival) and visit friends before heading south. We hope to be able to post a few more times in the three short weeks left!

Mot, hai, ba, YO!