It’s been 11 days
since my last post…what can I say? Let’s just chalk my lackadaisical blogging
up to a busy schedule trying to plan lessons, speaking clubs and movies nights
and DTCC is fixing it’s internet and power situation last week. Thus my Internet
was rather touch and go. Excuses aside this post is about last week (this week
was not a good week by any measure – and I right now I can’t blog about it or I
will just start raging).
Last week I went
to two weddings that couldn’t have been more antithetical. To start I attended
my director’s younger brother’s wedding in a neighboring province. When I write
attend a wedding I didn’t attend the actual wedding were the two singletons
‘lose their freedom’ and become bonded in matrimony. Rather I attended, what we
in the US would call the reception. In Vietnam only very close family attends
the wedding ceremony where the two are legally united, everybody else goes to the
reception, except that it’s called the wedding. Thus in a Vietnamese wedding
there’s only a reception and no wedding – does that make sense?
Cultural
vocabulary aside this wedding was rather small. It was held in front of the
bridegroom’s familial home under tents. It was very nice. You sat at large
tables and they served you a large meal with as much alcohol as you could keep
down. The bride and bridegroom spend their wedding going table to table making
toasts and looking absurdly happy.
Another major cultural
difference is the bride’s attire. Rather then wearing a white dress this bride
wore 3 different dresses throughout her wedding. First a hot pink dress,
followed by a tangerine orange and then a canary yellow. These dresses – like
most formal gowns here in the provinces and less so in Hanoi in HCMC are about
10 – 20 years behind the fashion curve. I don’t know much about woman’s fashion
but these 3 dresses left me with only one thought. “PROM DRESS ALERT PROM DRESS
ALERT”. The cuts and styles are exactly what you see 16 and 17 year olds
wearing to proms – overly sequined and glittered bodices, fluffy tulle skirts
with some hot glue gun action and absurdly saturated hues. Sensory overload –
Yikes!
A few days later I
attended the wedding of one of my adult students from the college. Like the
previous wedding nearly the entire teaching faculty of DTCC vacated campus at
11:00 am in the afternoon and in this case we all drove to the center of town
to the 3-star hotel. I had just seen a Vietnamese wedding and I thought I knew
what to expect – wrong!
Upon parking the
bike I joined a huge greeting line snaking its way toward the balloon-draped
door. When I reached the couple I didn’t even recognize my student – I only
knew it was her from her white dress. Without her glasses and with (lots of)
make-up, jewels, an up-do and white dress she was a completely different woman.
After congratulating her Mr. Hung and I went to the ballroom and passed under a
heart shaped arbor and into a massive ballroom packed with 400 people. There
was a stage, laser light show and miles of tables.
After sitting down
I just watched as more and more people kept coming in. At one point I could
have sworn that there was a clown car parked outside the door with wedding
guests instead of clowns. Finally the wedding started and the ballroom (which
had AC!) went dark and on stage a dance number commenced with huge silk fans
and slowly made its way down the center aisle. Then in the traditional
step-pause-step-pause cadence the bride's family, groom’s family and finally the
wedded couple themselves were all escorted down the aisle to the sounds of
Yanni’s “Santorini” – yes Yanni – and nearly 15 minutes later the parents and
the couple were at the front on stage. Being a foreigner I was in the back so I
couldn’t see very well but on either side of the stage there were what I
thought were ice sculptures. Well imagine my surprise after some mumbo-jumbo
Vietnamese somethings to see champagne come squirting out and run down the
tiers of stacked champagne flutes. It was like one of those Ferrero Rocher
commercials that they play around Christmastime but instead of gold wrapped
chocolate hazelnut truffles it’s French bubbly. Then the couple started to spin
on the stage. Yep it was a rotating stage (Les Mis style) and the spotlights beamed from above
as they were twirled around and around like a new Lexus whilst surrounded by
the champagne orgy. Then tons of balloons fell from the ceiling and confetti
cannons lining the entire room were fired. Just to finish it off fireworks came
flying up from the stage masking the entire front of the ballroom in a wall of
blinding white light. Upon the pyrotechnics I let out a yelp and jumped from my
seat. I was also looking for the nearest exit as the combination of falling
confetti and flamers didn’t seem like the safest idea.
I was so
flabbergasted and stunned I couldn’t even make sense of it – especially coming
from the homespun wedding a few days earlier. It was beautiful and massive. But
between the silk fan show, laser lights, political convention-style balloon
drop, confetti cannons, sparklers and champagne fountains with the rotating
stage I felt like I was living some Vegas-style Liberachi fantasy or nightmare
depending on your sense of style. For all its obvious bravado the hedonic
garishness of excess overshadowed the event and the couple. Like the other
wedding the couple spent the entire time going table to table and with 400
guests that took them nearly three hours.
Coming off the
wedding highs I attended a birthday party of one of my adult students. This
dinner party at a local restaurant – like most parties – drifted into all the
Vietnamese speaking Vietnamese. When this happens I just turn inward and allow
myself to drift off until I am spoken to. In this state of la-la-land the
ambient music of the restaurant caught my attention. It was a techno song, but
it was really familiar. I am not a techno fan so I just ignored it, but it kept
growing on me and gnawing at me. So I tried to figure out what it was. YMCA?
No. It’s Raining Men? No. ABBA? No. I Will Survive? No. Last Dance? No. For the
life of me I couldn’t put my finger on it. And then it struck me like a
lightening bolt. Itsy Bitsy Teeny Wheeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. Yep. In the
middle of the jungle I was clobbered with a 1960’s hit, WTF?!
I have written
here about how Vietnam can sneak up on you and throw you off your saddle. Well
it turns out American can as well. Nothing quite like being thunderstruck by
your own culture. I would have thought that 24 years of practice would have
enabled to handle situations like these better. Apparently not – what is
Vietnam doing to me?
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