Author: yogin

Wedding Photos Sneak Peek

So, wedding preparations, we are getting there !

In vietnamese tradition, a wedding album is made prior to the wedding day, so that guests can actually go through the album. So last weekend, we went for a photo shooting session in various locations in Hanoi. We started the day very early, by heading to the dress designer studios so that we could get changed, and get N ready (hair, makeup, …), then we set off for the Temple of Literature. I had already visited the place last year, so I knew it was really nice, and we spent most of the morning there. Although there were a few tourist bus pouring people in, we did manage to get a few scenes which were mostly empty.

I will restrain myself of publishing too many photos for now, as the album is not ready yet, but whenever we get the album, I’ll try to post it online also. (There are a couple more on Facebook, posted by N)

Anyway, we went to several places, and some cozy cafes. N and I really had fun, but it was exhausting! Oh, and did I mention it was a beautiful day, a bit too hot for my taste (30°C), especially when having to wear a suit, luckily my suit was tailored using a very light material!). We treated ourselves in the evening with a very nice Japanese dinner! (sushi, okonomiyaki, … no umeshu unfortunately).

Monday (Oct 24th), I was also able to pick up my Certificate of No Impediment from the British Embassy. This certificate is a ‘must have’ to be able to get married in vietnam. It basically says that there’s nothing preventing me from getting married. And then we got it certified by the vietnamese administration, which took a couple of days.

We only have 1 thing left to do (as far as we know at least), before we can apply for our wedding, we need to get a mental checkup! We are planning to go there tomorrow morning, so if you don’t see me coming back, I guess they’ll have had me locked up somewhere ^^

To be continued …

Starting the Wedding preparations

Well, let’s start writing again, see if I’ll finish this article, it’s been a while since my last one.

Quite a few things have happened recently. I have applied for my certificate of no impediment (CNI) at the british consulate in Hanoi. This is a document I need to get married in Vietnam. It’s a certificate saying that I’m not already married etc.. It takes 3 weeks to get, so I should be getting it by October 24. It was surprisingly easy to apply for it, considering I’m not living in The Netherlands anymore, and I haven’t registered myself back in France, that I’m in Vietnam on a 3 months tourist visa, however N’s father did register me at the local police (after some bribing, because the guy was too lazy to do his job, yes, that’s how it works here), so it’s kind of a strange situation. However, all I needed to apply for the CNI was my passport with my visa, the local police registration and N’s family book. I filled in 3 forms which all asked the same questions, but it in a different format (yeah, administration …) and of course pay the fee. We were in and out in 30 mins.

N also got a similar document, which only took a day to get. Once we get mine, we’ll be able to apply for the marriage documents. Ha and almost forgot, we will also have to have a medical checkup … but not a physical exam … a mental one, see if we are not crazy (hum, yeah no comment!), and if we actually know each other. We need to show them pictures of us, and answer questions about each other’s family. We might try to do this next week, not sure yet.

For vietnamese weddings, the couple needs to get some photo albums made, that will then be available during the wedding day for the guests to see. This is something quite different from french/UK weddings, where the photos would be taken in the afternoon after the official ceremony and the signing of the papers. So, we’ve been looking into photographers, and we picked one which seems quite good. We’ve discussed quite a bit with him, and worked on ideas for the shootings and the album decoration.

We are planning to shoot the photos on October 22nd, if the weather is good. It’s the raining season here, so rains are quite frequent and quite heavy. But we are getting some very nice days too, so we are hoping it’ll be a nice one (and not too hot if possible) !

Ok, so we got someone to take pictures, but I need a costume and N needs a few dresses! So you can imagine how the last couple of weeks have been occupied with. After looking at a few suit shops, it seemed no suit would fit me here, so I’m getting a suit tailored. I went in to try it on today, so the tailor can adjust and finish it, I should have it ready a day or two before the shooting day. N however has been looking into wedding dresses, trying on quite a few, from different places. She like the top of one, the lower part of another, the trail of yet another, etc.. so a designer is making one for her too! You might have seen some of these dresses on Facebook. For the shooting she’ll have a few dresses, different styles, different colors. She’s going to look amazing!

Last weekend, we did a tour of hotels near the reception place in the center, to get an idea of the rooms and prices for my family and friends who will be making the trip here. (yes mom, the “report” is coming!). I think we visited a total of 10 hotels. Not something I want to do every day!

We’ve also been thinking of the engagement day, with the lacquered boxes, and the wedding day. Things to organize and plan.

For the engagement day, there will be a procession, lead by my father, followed by myself, and then 7 friends of mine carrying gifts for N’s family. The people carrying the gifts should be (non-married) friends of mine. However I’m not sure how many friends are going to make it yet, so not sure what to do about this yet. Any volunteers ?

The procession ends in front of N’s parent house, where the gifts are given to 7 women, friends of N. The rest of the engagement ceremony includes praying at the family altar to get the blessing from the ancients, getting our parents blessings, and exchanging rings. It will then be followed by a reception.

The wedding day will take place a few days later in the center of Hanoi, in the Government Guest House near Hoan Kiem lake. It will be a big reception. The unusual part for me here is that this reception takes place over lunch time, and during the week, so a lot of the guests will be coming during their lunch break. I find this a little strange, but well, that’s how they do it here, so I’ll go with it.

Well, I think I’m going to stop here for now!

To Be Continued …

Enjoying life in Hanoi

Hey there !

Well, I think it’s been a week, maybe 2 since my last post. I’ve been quite busy with work, and lazy about writing, so nothing new here!

I’m still following yoga classes, twice a week (1.5h each), and despite the fact that my legs are definitely not souple enough, I quite enjoy it. But yeah, I need to practice my legs so I can bend them in that lotus sitting position. Can’t do that yet. And that’s like the only thing I can’t do in the class so far, so still quite happy with myself ! About yoga itself, I feel really good after my classes. Everything seems easy and smooth afterwards.

I’m also looking for some more things to do. One thing that’s quite popular here is martial arts. I’ve done a few years of judo when I was a kid, and contact sports is not really my favorite. Nhung’s father mentioned some special vietnamese martial art called Vũ Gia Thân Pháp, and made me a little demonstration. It seems interesting, and as many other martial arts, it’s defense oriented and based on avoidance and speed. He also seems to know the local Masters, so that could be an option. However, it is very very local, and there is very little information about it. Not to mention it’s all in vietnamese, except for one of the Masters who apparently would be able to teach me in english.

So I’ve been thinking of something else, like tai chi chuan, which is very popular world wide, and probably less agressive, although I believe there is a combat style. I’ve had an introduction class when I was at university, and I remember enjoying it, but never got round to picking it up. So now might be a good time. It is also very popular in Vietnam, as everyone gathers around the various lakes and parks in the city, at any time of the day to practice together. So I’m currently looking for some classes to get myself started. I think that might be a good combination with yoga, especially in terms of balance and relaxation.

I’m just back from a Salsa night, and those evenings are filled with bachata. We really need some classes for this, they are playing so much of it here. We tried going to some salsa class too, but they were doing Advanced On2, which I tried to follow but couldn’t really keep up, since we’ve only learned On1 so far, so we are back to looking for some Advanced On1 classes.

We also started the paperwork for the wedding, but I’ll write more on that later on. I have a little more to say regarding ‘administration’ in Vietnam that will need a separate post.

For now, I’m exhausted, so that’ll be all for today.

Cheers from Hanoi!

Living in Vietnam

I arrived in Vietnam 2 weeks ago. So far I’ve been spending most of my time working, and trying to find a rhythm, that would leave me with enough time to enjoy being here. I haven’t yet reached a balance but still working on it.

The main problem comes from my job shared hours. I’m working remotely, for an US company (based in San Francisco), and I’m part of a SCRUM team which is mostly in european timezone. That means, I’m respectively, 14 hours and 5 hours ahead of them. To be able to work remotely, SCRUM teams have some shared hours when all team members need to be online, so we can do our stand up meeting, and then get some things done together. There are usually 3 shared hours a day, and then I still have to put in at least 5 more hours, that I can arrange during the day as I please.

Fitting those 5 hours is quite easy, some in the morning, more in the afternoon, or I can also plan to work through the afternoon. This freedom in arranging these hours is quite nice.

However my shared hours are set between 9 PM and midnight. So I’m working every evening, which leaves little time to go out during those times. Luckily, people tend to eat quite early here so we can easily go out for dinner and be back on time to start working again. It’s definitely not ideal as a couple though, as I can’t spend my evenings with my other half.

Anyway, this is only supposed to be for a few months, until my VISA (H1B) for the US is ready.

In the mean time, I’ve been looking to get some vietnamese language lessons, and I just a missed a new session which started the day after I landed. That’s a shame, the next session is in November, which is quite far away. I found some other classes but heard mixed feedbacks about it.

Yesterday I started a yoga class too, from what I understood the teacher is at the terminal stage for a cancer, so she started yoga 14 years ago, and she’s fighting it back. This class is definitely not for foreigners, it takes place in a tiny room in a back alley somewhere in Hanoi. There’s no air conditioning that westerners would probably expect when doing indoor exercise, just a couple of ceiling fans, turning slowly.

The place was full of vietnamese women from all ages, even a very young kid, who was probably with his mother, we were 2 guys, and I was of course the only foreigner. It was quite an experience. Having been avoiding any kind of exercise for the last .. 15 years or so, and sitting down behind a computer all day, I knew I was definitely not in shape, and especially when it comes to stretching, or sitting in that lotus position. One of the exercise was about sitting cross legged and then leaning forward until the head touched the ground in front of you. No need to say I didn’t go very far down on that one ! I was told I’ll get better at it, so we’ll see about that ^^

In the evening, after a delicious korean diner, we went to a bar that had a special salsa night, where we met one of Nhung’s friends. The dancing level was quite high, but after a couple of mojitos, I took Nhung out on the dance floor! As I expected, most people were looking at “the foreigner” but I think I did ok ! Our salsa classes in Amsterdam ended at the end of July, and I have to admit we didn’t practice since, so I was a bit rusty, trying to remember some moves. I remembered most of them, so I wasn’t completely lost. Anyway, we are going to try to pick up some salsa classes here also, and maybe also some bachata classes which seems to be very popular here. For each salsa song played, there were 2 bachata songs.

I think Nhung wants to go dancing salsa again tonight, we’ll see how that goes.

That’s it for now, cheers!

Anthony

Importing photos from trip to India

Hey readers,

This is a very quick message to say that I’ve started importing my trips photos into this blog. I’ve just finished importing the photos from my 3 month trip to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka back in 2003.

I’ve created a page with all the albums and included them into the posts too.

Check out this page to see all the photos from that trip !

Whenever I find some time and some motivation I will continue importing photos. Next trip to be imported will be my first trip to Vietnam !

Happy traveling ! :)