We’ll always have Hanoi….

June 10, 2005

So girl in Vietnam thing - yes - well - you see - its complicated is what it is - messy cross culture Mcguffin with arranged marriages and having to make decisions too quickly that I'd like to have had more time to ponder on - and there's an army colonel and his dying parents to consider as well. Let me explain:

When I arrived in Nam back in May 2003, I had to set up an office from scratch to handle sourcing tea samples and all the admin that came with the contracts that hopefully followed. I was trying to develop sales of the black and green harsh tasting cack that Vietnam tea resembles - this involved lots of trial and error and more than a bit of traveling to grubby broken factories holed up in the back and beyond of Northern Vietnam. Once we arrived at these factories we set about seeing what potential could be wrung from them as far as making half drinkable cheap tea went. Then we had to offer out samples of what we found to buyers around the world, persuading them that it could be blended/hidden with better stuff from other countries to reduce the overall price of cuppas.

Now then, one such private tea producing company was high up on my initial list of places to check out as they had a fairly extensive factory and plantation area and upon first tasting their tea was mildly less poisonous than most of the others I'd been subjected to. Once I arrived I met a crazy old noisy director who broke wind mid-sentence and didn't acknowledge it several times during our first meeting.

As further meetings took place over the next couple of years, I understood that as well as regular flatulence, her other main features were: maintaining she is right at all times, saying yes to everything you propose even if she knows it is blatantly not possible and refusing to discuss realistic prices which she will always need 10cts more than you are actually prepared to pay (which doesn't sound a lot but that's per kilo and there's shabillions of kilos - well, thousands anyway). Basically during discussions she never lets you (via translation) get a word in edgeways and talks nonsense for hours. She was always covered in jewelry and reminded me of a Vietnamese Tina Turner out of Mad Max 3. I liked her immensely even though she often drove me insane and made my life much more difficult than it needed to be.

The Mad Bint also had a translator called Hanh, who was mighty fine in many ways and lived in Hanoi running the representative office for the factory based in the hills (Aha! hope you weren't thinking that I was going to tell you I was actually in love with the crazy old bint!!). The good thing about dealing with the crazy woman was that you got to go see Hanh I liked her in a very different way to the way I liked her Director, even though she also often drove me insane and made my life much more difficult than it needed to be.

The first time I was introduced to Hanh I blathered on in a typically English way that we should have lunch so we could get to know each other as we'd hopefully be doing a bit of business in the future. She looked shocked but in a good way and exclaimed that I "move very quickly" - something which I am famously useless for doing the exact opposite of when it comes to women - I immediately slipped into useless foppish gibberish and tried to dig myself out of the hole I was in - famously explaining that "no! no! sorry - I wasn't trying to... you know.. I mean not that I wouldn't .... well what I mean to say is that I was asking you out for a discussion about business..... not because I thought you were good looking.... not that I don't think that you are good looking.. which you are of course... but that's not what I meant .... so lunch then?" - I had said all this in a an embarrassed hectic fluster in front of a room of people during a meeting (although most of them couldn't understand me, I think they got the general gist that I was making a twat out of myself) and Hanh thought I was amusing enough if more than a little strange and agreed.

Hanh is fantastic – Spiky, opinionated, witty, devious and lusciously curvaceous in all the right places, she has a million bags and shoes and a million combinations for these. She says she can’t dance but she does when she thinks no one is watching - until she met me she had never had pizza and now loves it much more than she will ever admit - she never wants people to think she has not eaten all her food so she subtly hides on other peoples sitting around her - she loves monkeys - she talks absolute nonsense in her sleep - she teaches English after she finishes work -she drives her motorbike very, very, very fast and talks on her mobile phone while doing it - she picks up other peoples children and kisses them which I’ve told her she shouldn’t do if she doesn’t know them very well - she has a brown jumper which makes her look good enough to eat - she had never seen Pulp Fiction and after doing so thought it was genius and but admitted that she wanted to go and get a $5 shake as soon as possible before we could do anything else - she is very intuitive about folk and not often wrong - she can speak Chinese and Japanese and sounds very funny when she does - she cannot swim but would like to learn - she read the books of the God father series and then we watched the whole trilogy in one day and ordered nothing but take-away pizza - she loved reading the curious incident of the dog in the night time and that the boy says things like “make a wee” - she watches terrible Korean soap operas - she can really sing - she cheats at cards - she likes to listen to Jennifer Lopez and Metallica but not at the same time - she lets me watch the football - she gets drunk after one glass of wine - she bites – yes she’s a biter - she also does not know her own strength - she seams obsessed with her hair - she must bargain for everything - she has brown eyes you could happily drown in - she has a wicked sense of humor and once laughed at a noisy child who fell over - finally, she has a very, very good heart.

So why am I not living with her now? Well I realise I probably should be, especially after writing that last monster of a paragraph (rule of ones own writing – thou shalt write however one bloody well likes). We were together for 18 months pretty much from when I arrived until I left in December last year - out of the blue I was offered the a job Indonesia last September and up until then we had been seeing each other every weekend and a few times during the week. We also did business together (which caused a few arguments as we are both stubborn mules at times) as she worked for a producer and I was the buyer. However her family and friends did not know about the relationship and she is a very traditional girl, so dating a foreigner is still mildly controversial stuff although not so much that it could never be accepted – it just had to be going somewhere – and that place was marriage.

Long story short of it is this – up until September last year I was expecting to be in Vietnam for a year or two longer, during which time I figured this would sort itself out and I could happily drift along as I had been so far and one day soon, make some sort of commitment. This does make me sound like the typical kind of guy that infuriates women across the planet in every culture, I know. However there are reasons behind this – an 18 month relationship it may have been, but how serious can you take it when neither of you know your future plans, I don’t exist as far as anyone else in her life goes and as she looks after her 73 year old aunt in Hanoi she has never stayed over at my house – seeing each other on average twice a week usually at weekends. Casual was how I looked at it – Work meant I was always likely to move on at some point and up until maybe March 2004 things hadn’t been very serious.

I sound like I’m trying to justify myself in court actually – I’ll try and be a bit more honest – I chose not to think about making any serious commitment and then when the bolt from the blue came in September I basically said that I’d leave, get settled in Jakarta, she’d come visit a few times in the first 6 months and then if she was happy here and things were still strong, she’d come and live with me – and yes, I knew that was the whole shebang of marriage, kids & commitment forever more.

Fairly reasonable I thought – it would be a huge thing for her - she would have to give up everything that made up her day to day life and jump into a new country and culture and hopefully swim – sometimes without me as I have to do the same thing as well as getting my head round the work side of things (hence the suggested 6 month settling in period) – although granted I am a bit more used to pitching up and getting on with things as best I can as that is part of the job I do.

So what happened? Secretive culture clash arranged marriage nonsense! That’s what happened!

Yes that’s right - Secretive culture clash arranged marriage nonsense! – that old pebble in the shoe!

So apparently it is very unlucky to be married during your 25th year and under the Lunar calendar (absolute McGuffin) that is what Hanh would of entered once Tet kicked off in Feb 2005 (same as Chinese new year) so ergo (ergo - sounds like a word that means ”therefore” but shorter – don’t know what it means other than that though) so, yes, ergo her family in the coastal city of Haiphong and the close family friends who have always looked after Hanh in Hanoi, decided that she would marry their son – a 37 year old Vietnamese army colonel who she has always been friends with. But importantly – not in love with.

I got told all this within the month that I was about to leave – turning things upside down somewhat – make or break time – "do or do not there is no try" – "that’s no moon it’s a space station" – etc etc – The whole me getting settled and then her visiting and seeing how we felt thing was not going to work – it was get married now or she has to go down a different path and that was that – and in the end I was not confident that it would work, it could of very easily been a nightmare – she could have been desperately unhappy and unable to settle, living together had never been tested and I didn’t think I could handle this and the new job/country – plus getting married is a fairly huge decision and I had to be sure I was really in love with the girl rather than just feeling she was fantastic company and great in bed. I wasn't sure. (I read that last sentence back incredulously – slapping my head in a Homer Simpson tribute of “doh!” – fantastic company and great in bed and I didn’t bring her with me! more evidence that I am an idiot!)

And yes there was the girl in the UK thing and also many other girls that I felt understood me better than Hanh did – you share the same wavelength when you are from similar backgrounds/cultures/lingo – but what do you expect right? She’s Vietnamese and I’m English – of course you aren’t going to totally get it each other all the time – part of the attraction is the difference. Never the less – I let it go – I spoke to a lot of close friends about it and in the end the decision rested with me, but by and large everyone told me I had to be 100% about this – if it went wrong it wasn’t easily fixed – far more so than in the western world.

So there it is – I’m here and kinda wishing I chose to go for it and did a Mrs.Robinson banging on the church windows thing – she’s there and having to work her socks off looking after her new husbands infirm parents, while he is never home – we’d be better off together I can see that now – but hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it?

We are still talking all the time and I’m helping her out with money to pay for a house keeper to look after the old folks as her husband isn’t doing anything and she can’t do it all on her own. If she can get away for a while I’ll go there in July or August – but we’ll see how things go. There is a chance that we could just fly off together after she talks to her family and gets a divorce – but it’s more likely we stay in touch where ever life takes us and just look back on a really good 18 months and that we were lucky to have that if nothing else.

A harsh lesson in life and if such an opportunity comes up elsewhere upon my travels I'll not let it slip by like I have this.

Spo | June 10, 2005