What a day! In the good way! We got up at 4.30 in order to be ready for pick-up at the hotel one hour later. We were going to The place where the bride was getting ready and where a lot of other funny rituals and ceremonies were gonna take place. It took about an hour for her to get her make-up done and in the end she looked absolutely divine. She is naturally very beautiful, and with the extra glitter and glam she looked like a fortune! The first ceremony of the day was that Wang, her husband to be, was gonna come to the house and try to get in to carry her out. However, Snow’s, the bride, friends and sister were in the room with her asking him a lot of questions that were translated to me later. The asked him who was gonna do the cooking when they got married, who would do the cleaning and who he would give his money to. If he didn’t give a satisfactory answer, the girls demanded money from him. When he finally made it to the room, he found Snow sitting on the bed in her wedding dress. If I remember correctly the now had to feed each other noodles and egg – which is not the easiest dish to feed someone with chopsticks.. When they were done with that Wang had to find Snow’s shoes that were hidden somewhere under her and under the bed. He now had to carry her down the stairs and into the car and this is where the first part ends.

For the wedding there were a lot of cars driving the many people from ceremony to ceremony. It was really nice as it was raining a bit and it was freezing as f***.

Next ceremony was for Wang to carry Snow into his bed in his parents’ house and they would now be married. We were many people following them from the first place and probably the same amount of people joined us at Wang’s parents’. The line of cars then took us to the hotel were some more ceremonies and lunch was gonna take place. In this tradition, they fire huge confetti bombs instead of throwing rice, which is actually quite ironic when you think about it. However, they did that outside the restaurant where I met a woman who spoke French – very convenient. A little while later, Snow had gotten her hair and dress changed and the next part of the wedding started. They had made up an aisle like in a church and they walked up the ‘aisle’ together in order to get to the stage. On stage the French/Chinese woman held a speech, which she actually repeated in French afterwards just for me!! Amazing! A lot of things were going on at this point and the MC was speaking Chinese, so I had no clue what was going on. But they lit some candles and poured some champagne. They both cried happy tears at one point where they were thanking their parents for bringing them up. All of it was beautiful!

Now there is a thing about Asian weddings that I don’t really like. The couple has to walk to each table while everyone eats and toast with them. This takes a long time with 180 guest (or even more at normal weddings) and they don’t get to sit down and eat with everyone else. Snow and Wang came to our room last (their closest friends had a separate room too) and they were exhausted. They hadn’t eaten for many hours. I guess that’s the way they do it, but I felt a bit sorry for them and I like the way we at Danish weddings all eat together and listen to toasts and speeches all through dinner.

When Snow and Wang had been in our room, we all left and Hong and I went back to our hotel. She fell into a deep sleep immediately and I managed to get some things done online that I really wanted to do! Later in the afternoon, they picked us up again and we went to a restaurant where Wang’s friends had prepared 10 games for him and Snow. Some of the games were really mean, but some of them were just fun. This is actually supposed to be part of the wedding and take place in the room where we had lunch, but the whole ceremony took longer than expected so they decided to do it later. The games included a lot of wasabi, eggs, flour and alcohol, so I guess you can do the maths.. 🙂 We left the restaurant at 22 already because everyone was really tired.

All in all it was a great day!

After a few days freezing my little behind off in very cold China we had a day of sun and slightly warmer weather today. It is amazing how a few degrees can make you so much more comfortable. When I left you last night I was going out for dinner with family and friends of the soon-to-be-married-again couple. They had gathered her mother, sister and niece, his parents, uncle, aunt, cousin + son and a few friends who have been hanging around with all of us the past few days. We all sat around the classic Chinese round table with the turning middle part. The dishes kept coming – it was amazing and ended up being an uneven fight with my stomach as to how much I was able to stuff in there. I am a true fan of Chinese food, I must admit…

After dinner we went to a HUGE karaoke bar. They had so many halls with small rooms where people sang Chinese songs all night long. They tried to make me sing a song, started out with some American rap song – never gonna happen, and then Ace of Base where I only know the chorus.. Finally Backstreet Boys get down.. They didn’t succeed.. It may be something in my culture, but I simply couldn’t make myself sing into that microphone. I would have felt so stupid and so in the spot-light.. The interesting part is that they do it to enjoy themselves. They wouldn’t care if the room was empty or full. One friend of Wang’s just sat there for a while singing to herself, but into the mike. I find that it crosses my limit of shy-ness whereas they find it perfectly normal..

I got back to the hotel alright – which we, btw, had to change yesterday morning because of some big conference at the other hotel. It wasn’t exactly a good deal for me and Hong. The beds are harder, the room s colder, the shower is older and leaves water all over the bathroom floor, there is no comfortable armchair. So, Hong and I are moving back as soon as the conference ends. 🙂 I had a good night’s sleep obviously, cos I didn’t wake up to have breakfast before 10. This left me with traditional Chinese breakfast which was actually really nice. I had a soup with some soft dumplings inside and it heated me up from the inside – very needed indeed! I was nearly frozen when I woke up.. I found a heat function on the wall now and I hope it will make it bearable tonight..

After having eaten traditional Chinese breakfast, we went for a long walk around the king’s palace – specially invited – or something… It always amazes me how people in the old days lived. The house or chamber og palace or whatever the called, which the king had used as his residence had stone floors and solid wooden furniture. I find it difficult to imagine spending a day there and enjoying myself. Similar to our hotel room, the furniture looks really nice with carvings and everything, but when it comes to usability and comfort, it really doesn’t do the trick for me.. However, we made it through the palace and went shopping. Or at least we did the best we could. I think sports clothes is fashion in Shenyang. I seriously didn’t see many shops that weren’t Nike, Kappa, Fila, Adidas or some Korean or Chinese sports brand, which makes it a bit difficult when you are looking for a plain shirt or blouse. I didn’t succeed, but Hong got some leggings and I got some socks – don’t know how I will ever get those socks around my shoulder, so maybe I will just have to do with the blouse I already have.

Right now, I am trying out the range of ‘chocolate’ bars and cookies I just bought in a small grocery store around the corner. None of it tastes like chocolate. I just finished the chocolate chip cookie and I am a bit afraid that the chocolate milk I bought for breakfast tomorrow (have to be ready for the wedding at 5.30 am) has the same odd wannabe chocolate vague taste to it. At least I will have my wannabe chocolate chip cookies to go with it..

Time has past so fast. I don’t know where it went and now I’m sitting in a great hotel in the Chinese city Shenyang in the North East part of China. Outside is around 6 degrees (or at least it was last night – hope that it’s slightly warmer during the day). I left my house Wednesday evening to catch a flight in the domestic airport in Ho Chi Minh City reaching Hanoi with the absolute last flight possible as I foresaw a horrible night sleeping like a homeless in the deserted airport.. My flight to China left Thursday morning before they even managed to open the breakfast stalls in the airport. However, airport food has never been the tastiest on earth. Had my dinner in Ho Chi Minh airport and it was probably the worst Singapore noodles I have ever had!

While I was sitting in the airport in Vietnam looking at all the things that were going on, I noticed something that certainly proves the Vietnamese inefficiency in some areas. There were two cleaning ladies emptying dustbins. One of them held the wagon where the big plastic bag was attached – very important job. The other one help an instrument in her hand that she put into the dustbin to catch the garbage. She literally spent hours catching garbage in stead of just changing the plastic bag in the dustbin when it was full. Oh well… If the important women holding the wagon can get paid and not sit in the streets, I guess being inefficient does support some cause.. 🙂

I got to Hanoi fine and walked to the area where my check-in counter for the next morning was. I arranged myself on the comfortable steel benches, laid down, closed my eyes and fell asleep… but not for long. A few minutes later a man was standing beside me trying to force me to wake up. It worked.. he said that they were closing the floor and sent me to the first floor. Thoughts ran through my head, were they gonna close this floor too during the night? I was lucky that they didn’t and I actually got quite a good night’s sleep. My hands holding on to the baggage were eaten by mosquitoes, but besides from that, the steel ended up being quite comfortable.. 😛

After 3 stops and a h*** of a lot of walking around airports trying to find check-in counters I managed to find my fiend Hong in Beijing. It was so nice to see a familiar face and just sit down for a coffee while waiting for the last flight to Shenyang. We were picked up in the airport, had a great dinner and at this very moment, I am sitting covered in a quilt in an armchair… Is there anything better in life? 🙂 Well, time for me to get up and go shopping for some warmer clothes.

What happened to time???? My God! I have already been in Vietnam for two months now. I have learned to ride a motorbike, still trying to master the amount of patience needed to live here, but on the whole, I actually think I am managing quite well! Having fruit for breakfast every morning and trying to make it to the gym for yoga or running every day keeps me feeling a little bit fresh and healthy, but as me and Nanna talked about yesterday, the heat is horrible. People talk about wanting to go to the hot countries – but you know what? I wouldn’t recommend this latitude.. The past three days, I have been sweating more or less constantly – even when I don’t move. So yesterday Nanna and I decided to find a café with air conditioning, simply to make our brains function properly. We chose one, but realised that the aircon was off. It actually resulted in both of us feeling as if we had a fever. Horrible… So we went to a different café and yet another. Nice way to spend an entire Saturday, huh? 🙂 Well, at least we were productive and both managed to complete the task we aimed for!

Yeah, as you can see Nanna is mentioned a few times above… She flew in on Wednesday and went directly to a very posh party in a huge mansion with all the delicious food you can dream of and lots of drinks and nice people. Not exactly the worst way of starting 3 months in Vietnam.

On Friday I went to a wedding, one of my dearest colleagues was getting married. It was amazing. They had rented the top floor of the Rex Hotel in the centre of the city, such a nice location, and again, lovely food – except for the unsalted butter…….! And as always, everything is lucky in Vietnam, luckily, as the first rain dropped like a bomb from the blue sky only a few minutes after the ceremony. It rained for about 10 minutes, stopped and started again for a short while. Since then, it has rained for a few minutes every day and the flooding is already starting in some areas of the city. I am dreading the floods as the water can affect the start cable on the bike and it can be hard to start it sometimes.. I just got that problem fixed, so I hope that I can avoid too many puddles and little lakes around in the streets!

I think that will be all for now. The heat is starting to catch on and my brain will stop functioning in just a few seconds 🙂 Take care and have fun!

Sitting here on our rooftop terasse looking out on our new neighbourhood. Right now, I can’t imagine anything more fulfilling. It has been a month-long struggle to find this place and finally, I’m here.. We had a small housewarming yesterday which was great… apart from a broken armchair, the house is now back to normal and I really feel at home now. It is a wonderful feeling! Just wonderful!

A lot has happened since I wrote my journal last, I have been very busy and haven’t had time to sit down and reflect about all the things I have experienced. The past few weeks have been mainly job-hunting, house-hunting – and WORK… I have the pleasure of helping our IT boss moving all the content on the old website to the new platform. It takes forever, but I think I am very close to the finish line by now. But when work is all about staring at a computer screen, it makes updating a blog very cumbersome.. I will try to keep it more steady going forward, but my days are turning into a routine and the things I see and experience are not as unfamiliar to me anymore..

Friday was a crazy day… I went for a photo shoot with ‘ Elite Models Management Vietnam’ who had headhunted me outside a fancy bar the weekend before. I was rather sceptic and I think I need to keep the healthy scepticism until I actually get a job.. I got there at 10am, they let me wait for about 10-15 minutes before showing up and taking me to a small, very messy room with pictures of ‘models’ on the walls and a small sofa. They had piles of clothes lying around and it seemed pretty unprofessional to be honest..

Well, they styled me with the most hideous makeup ever. I was a yellowish brown in my face, had drawn-up eyebrows, rouge, eye shadow and lipstick in a thick layer all over my face. I almost couldn’t recognise myself when he took me to the mirror. I felt ridiculous! Oh well, they took me to this dump, where they wanted me to stand on a pile of old bricks and plastic bags and POSE in a model-like fashion (his exact words). He kept trying to put my hands in different positions and making me bend and stretch in the most awkward ways. Clearly not a professional photographer or stylist or photographer assistant hidden in him! We moved on to the next style where they tried to make me pose against a wall. Not exactly the easiest thing to do.. They kept telling me to relax my face and put feelings into it.. If my face is relaxed, where does the feelings show, then?

In the end, we had done about 6 or 7 different styles, one of them turned out pretty nice, I think.. Don’t know about the others. I will definitely post the pictures if I get them!! Well, it was now about 3 pm and I still had a long day ahead of me.. I went home, packed all my things into bags and called a taxi, went to Naoise’s hotel and picked her up to go to our new home. When we arrived, we went looking for an HSBC ATM so that I could take out the money for deposit for both me and Nanna. I finally found one and went back in time to meet up with Scott, my lovely colleague who was helping me check the motorbike that I was gonnna buy… Oh yes, I am the proud owner of a 50 cc Honda cup!!!! I went on my virgin ride to our new house and it went perfectly fine. I am SO Vietnamese…. 🙂

All I need now is a pyjamas that I can wear all day both inside and outside the house – that will complete my current nationality..

I will let you relax your eyes now and go out to find some dinner.. Our neighbourhood has a lot of little restaurants with all types of different dishes.. Absolutely fantastic!

Oops, it’s been a while since I gave you an update, huh.. Well, I guess it may be because I haven’t done much. The past few days I have been sleeping in, spending time dreaming about the future, drinking coffee and just hanging around. Tuesday I went to Bien Hoa, which is the first city where people settled in the south of Vietnam. Today the city is quite industrial, but the island where the first people settled is still there, probably almost looking like it did back then. In the island you can also find the oldest pagoda in South Vietnam, called the man’s pagoda.

When we visited the pagoda, Chinh, Yin and I, we went to shake our lucky number out of a box. My number was 57. Obviously 57 means that my travels will go well, that I will hear good news from far away and – hold on to your chairs – that I will get married in 2010… We all know that it will not happen, so I hope the rest is true at least.. haha.. However, I will definitely go back to Bien Hoa to see Chinh’s fantastic family, her sweet grandmother with her black teeth.. That was a thing that answered one of my questions after being here for a while. Many old people have completely black teeth. I always thought that it was because they didn’t brush them or something, but now I know that back in the days people were told to dye their teeth black. This black colour was supposed to keep the teeth healthy. Chinh’s grandmother still has her teeth, so it must have done something good. But I must say, it looks strange.

Thursday I went with Chinh to her aunt’s house in HCMC district 1. The whole family were visiting her grandmother on her dad’s side. Her dad is sick and it is difficult for him to travel far, so this time it had been about 2 months since he had seen his mother (who btw is 98 years old). So the biggest challenge was to get her from 2nd floor to ground floor to see him. It was great to meet her, even though I couldn’t talk to her at all. She hears very poorly and of course doesn’t speak a word of English, so it was interesting.. 🙂

In the evening we gathered a lot of the volunteers from SCC and went to my friend Thao’s house in District 2. District 2 is a fairly new district and it is known to have quite big houses and a lot of expat families live in the area. We only saw the ground floor of the house, so I can only imagine how big the rest of the house must be. Maybe I will get to see it some other time when I come to visit her alone. When visiting people here, you almost always stay in the front room and never get to see the whole house. Well, I was very impressed with the whole evening. The family had been cooking all day for us and they had made plenty….! We were supposed to go for karaoke afterwards, but I guess we were all so tired from the dinner that we decided to go home in stead. This was the start of my lazy few days.. All I have been doing is going to the gym, shopping a bit and washing clothes.. 🙂

Today’s journal will be a story about my trip to the Mekong Delta where the family I am staying with comes from. I went there during the weekend to celebrate Têt (Chinese New Year) and to visit the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. First stop Saturday morning was the flower street in HCMC. This is a street dedicated to huge flower decorations and it is a tradition for Thao and her cousin to go there every year and take pictures with the flowers. This year was special because we are entering the year of the tiger – and Thao’s cousin is born in the year of the tiger. In Vietnam this means that she needs to be very careful this year and especially this particular day, because a lot of bad luck can happen. Nothing bad has happened yet, so let’s hope it stays that way. Thao’s aunt who is also born in the year of the tiger decided to stay home for Têt this year because she was afraid to leave the house.

Next challenge was an almost 2 hour motorbike ride from HCMC to the province in the Mekong Delta. After about 30 minutes I started not to able to feel my butt, it started hurting a few minutes later and I could barely get off the bike when we finally got there.. Oh well, life goes on, I can still walk – what doesn’t kill me, only makes my stronger, right? Do I have a stronger butt now, then?

We got there at 11am and already then, the women in the family were chopping everything from meat to vegetables, sitting on little chairs on the ground. The old-fashioned charcoal stove was pumping and in every corner, something was going on. This was only the preparations for a big lunch the next day where relatives from all over came to the house to wish them a happy new year. The preparations went on for hours and after dinner we went to Thao’s other cousin’s house where we were going to spend the night. While we were having homemade jelly – yes, Shal and Sherms I HAD JELLY – a third cousin called to ask us to come over and help with another preparation for the preceding day’s lunch.. When we got there there wasn’t much for us to do, though, so while Thao and some of her cousins where watching a special new year show on TV, I was trying to have a small conversation with her other cousins.. Confused? Me too! There were so many cousins and the next day there were even nephews as well.. However, I learned to say house, which sounds a bit like NJA in Danish and door, which I actually already forgot.. They taught me some other words too, but it is really difficult to remember words that sound strange and which hardly would have any meaning or resemblance to anything in any language I know.. I am trying, though and will remember house..

We went back to the first cousin’s house, though probably not the first cousin in the row of cousins, but the cousin I mentioned before. In Vietnam it is important to know the number and rang of the cousins and aunts and you call them aunt number 3 or 2 in order to show respect to them. I found it very confusing! Well, we spent the night in a NJA. I went to bed a little early, but it didn’t do me any good. It is very normal to have the TV on the loudest mode all day from 5 to 22 and on this holiday, even until 1 am.. So I spent approx. 2-3 hours awake in bed and woke up when they turned it on the next morning.. I tried to go back to sleep, but it didn’t really work..

We went straight to the grandparents’ NJA in the morning and I had my beloved coffee søøø daaa (ice coffee with milk) and some bananas.. This was the day of the big lunch and at one point there were so many (haum) people that Thao couldn’t even tell who everyone was. The lunch was duck, pickled papaya, ginger/lime/sugar/soya dipping, herbs and a lot of other things. I guess it can be compared to our Christmas dinner where everything has to be there for it to be complete. After lunch was a very special part of Têt for Thao. One of the things she doesn’t want to miss. This was the day where they made these funny roles of rice, corn and pork rolled into banana leaves. It is like a ceremony where everyone sits on the ground making sure that the roles are made properly.. I had the honour of tying one of them.

When the roles were tied the activities of the day were over and we could relax. We went to see an orchard which belongs to the grandfather and had crispy rice paper with ginger marmalade. I slept like a baby until the PUBLIC radio was turned on at 5 am. Public means that a load speaker somewhere turns on and the whole neighbourhood has to listen to it. 5 AM everyone.. What do you say? I am glad DR is not that public!! I managed to fall asleep again trying to forget that we had a long motorbike ride in front of us.. Luckily, my butt wasn’t AS sore this time!

What is more exhausting that house-hunting? Lydia, my Irish friend, and I have spent the last few days travelling from one apartment or house to the other, trying to find a suitable place near the office and the center, but still affordable as non of us have jobs yet. My god! We definitely chose the wrong week to start searching as Têt holiday is coming up and everything for some reason is more expensive and has to be done RIGHT now…

We have fallen in love with a townhouse close to centre and went there to view it a few days ago. The agent wasn’t there so we couldn’t get any information about the place that day. We arranged a meeting the next day and as she took us around, she was very friendly and nice, but the moment we started talking about the contract, rent and all these things, she suddenly became pushy. She wanted 300 dollars for registration – in Vietnam foreigners need to be registered by the police in the house they live in – which normally costs around 50 dollars. She was insisting to get the payment later the same day, which wasn’t possible and generally wanted the deal signed NOW..

After having the contract read through by a Vietnamese friend, we realised that it will take a while longer. She made a new contract and we will have to go back to negotiations again after têt.. At least non of us are on the street with no home before after têt.. I can stay here as long as I need to which is a great comfort! But it is really exhausting mentally and physically to hunt for housing. You fall in love with a house, have to leave it, find a new house, fall in love, have to leave it.. and on it goes!! Fingers crossed!

Tomorrow I will be going to the Mekong Delta with the family I am staying with. We are visiting their grandparents there. It is going to be such a good experience, I think.. 🙂 I will give an update when I get back to HCMC on Monday..