Ashley's in Asia: Vietnamese Wedding

I woke up early and went out to explore Hanoi. Everyone else from work, Joann, Joao, Charif, Armin, and Duong were all doing work, so I wandered around the old quarter of Hanoi alone.

The "Ritz" really had the best location in the whole city, right across from the ancient lake that is said to have holy giant turtles in it (last sighted in 2006). There is a temple on the lake, and willows all around it, and a second temple in the middle of the lake, where no one goes anymore.

I'd heard the legend of Vietnamese silk from many people and decided to explore the city to find this amazing craftsmanship, and I wasn't disappointed. After walking past stores selling everything from paper lanterns to original paintings, I came across a store that may have well been called "Silk dresses made for Ashley." I was hooked ;)

After trying on everything in the store, I settled on quite a few items, all of them absurdly cheap, and all of them fitting perfectly. Vietnam has so many people with great tailoring skills that a lot of the designers have their clothes made there, and the leftovers end up in tailor shops. They are modified with the particular tailor's own taste, the tailor's label is sewn in (they aren't "fakes" because they don't claim to be by any famous designer), and they find their way to Hanoi silk shops, waiting for me to buy them.

After my shopping extravaganza, I rushed back to the hotel to change for the wedding, which was at 5 o'clock. Joann and I both hurried and then sprinted for a taxi to get us to the Fortuna hotel. I practiced some Vietnamese phrases that Spring, the girl who worked in the hotel and who kindly sat with me during my breakfast of omlette and baguette, had coached me on.

Vietnamese has more tones than Chinese, and she was impressed that I was able to parrot the phrases back to her. When we arrived at the wedding, there were 2 weddings going on because it was such an auspicious day for weddings, and Linh, the bride actually knew the other bride! Joann and I took pictures with the happy couple, wrote them wishes on a paper that was hung on a little tree, and then waited for the rest of our colleages from work to arrive (Charif and his fiancee, Tomoko, got stuck in traffic for over an hour because of the rain).

The wedding itself was very nice, but very short! The whole thing was over in less than 2 hours! Rings, procession, cake, champagne (for the bride and groom) were all done in less than 10 min! There were about 350 people (a moderate size, we were told), set up at big round tables. Apparently the really important ceremony is actually tomorrow and only immediate family are
invited- we went to the big western-style reception for everyone.

Jellyfish was the craziest thing on the menu, and my favorite item was a little buddha in the middle of the appetizer sampler (not for consumption, we discovered through trial and error...). There are also some yummy french pastries (all of the french pastries in Hanoi were superb), but we never actually saw any wedding cake - I wondered if it was a fake cake there just for the occassion of cutting the cake. Duong and one of Linh's friends from college in England translated all of the announcements for us. Linh floated the room and sat at our table for a while, and eventually her parents and her groom's parents did the same, thanking each person for coming.

Linh changed dresses halfway through the 2 hour wedding because in Vietnamese folklore, girls born her birth year are said to have 2 weddings. In order to prevent a divorce, this means that everyone who's born her year must have 2 weddings at once, and 2 of everything! So Linh had 2 dresses. If I were a wedding planner in Vietnam, I would certainly raid the records to find everyone born that year!

After the wedding, a group went out and chilled at a rooftop bar with a view of the ancient lake and drank Hanoi beer (and OK beer, but not something I would proactively seek out outside of Hanoi). At first Joann and I went to the hotel to change out of our wedding formals, and the boys went to a bar that Duong had heard was popular but had never actually been to. When Joann and I got there it was so sketchy that we joked that the guys had sold us into a brothel, and we all went to find somewhere that wasn't up 2 dirty flights of stairs with "bar" written on a metal door (see pic below...).

It rained off and on- mostly sprinkling, which was a welcome relief to the locals after the previous weeks of excessive rain. It was quite refreshing walking back to the hotel in the light rain, and the temperature was much more pleasant than Singapore, at about 71 degrees and only 70% humidity instead of 100%.

I went to sleep early so that I could be ready for our next adventure to the Silk Village - my silk adventures had just begun ;)