If you believe it or not, but I got invited to a Vietnamese wedding this weekend in Haiphong. One of the translators, Trang that I worked with during my CSC Assignment from IBM got married in her hometown. There are so many impressions; it is so hard to know where to start. We took a bus from Hanoi to Haiphong Saturday morning at 8am and we finally arrived at Trangs house at 11.30am. Well it sounds so straight forward, but it actually wasn’t. You need to take a Motorbike to the bus station, 2 different busses and then we got a private Motorbike ride from some of Trang’s friends :)
When we arrived we had some lunch with Trangs family and most of the people from the village. It was in the garden of Trangs grandmother’s house where they built a big tent to get some protection against the sun. In the afternoon we sang karaoke and went to a beach nearby. The groom had to leave the bride’s family as the tradition is that he is coming the next morning with his whole family to pick the bride up with some of the guest to celebrate in his village/town.
So we were singing some karaoke on Saturday night and went to bed pretty early. I was so fortunate to get an own room with my own bed in Trang’s uncles house. That was the first time I slept in a real Vietnamese House incl. bed. The Vietnamese don’t sleep with a mattress. They just sleep on the plain wood,; pretty hard you can imagine, but it was so quiet, I really enjoyed this! We had to get up at 6.20am and to be at the bridges house by 6.45am. The groom arrived with his family and a lot of presents at 7am. After a lot of pictures were taken we all got on a bus to go to the grooms place. Around 40 Vietnamese and myself ;)
We drove for almost 3 hours until we had to go on a small little car ferry to go over to the other side of the river. The grooms place is in the middle of rice fields, which have amazing colours from green to orange to yellow to red! Breathtaking beautiful :)
We had lunch again with the entire guests and some people from his village and the couple changed the rings in front of all the guests.
After that, the brides guests were leaving again in the bus to Haiphong. I stayed a bit longer and was able to get a lift from the groom’s boss who actually owns a Car Company in Hanoi. He is also involved in the government somehow as they were driving a government car – Toyota Land cruiser with 9 seats and leather interior! Some people in Vietnam are rich!!! That’s for sure. However they were so nice to drive past a lovely beach, so I had my first swim in the sea since I arrived. Yippie!
An amazing 2 days I have to say! Thanks to Trang who invited me to her wedding. So appreciated!
No comments:
Post a Comment