To the brides and grooms
(To be made into a film: Four weddings and a few red bulls)


Teddy de Burca Jnr. doesn’t always have the time or the energy for a wedding, but that’s no problem, in Vietnam they only last an hour

At times during wedding season you might be forgiven for thinking the whole country was getting married.

Driving around the city you can see scores of blue tarpaulin-teepees set up in front of houses, loquacious relatives clambering off buses, with the old ladies in their best ao dai, running inside. On the steps of the Opera House or by West Lake wedding parties battle for space for photo shoots. Outside hotels and restaurants, groups of dolled up young lasses and boys with shiny shoes flirt with each other and tease each other over who’ll be next.

Odd though that, when I was a teacher, a young student once told me that seeing a wedding, or passing one, is bad luck. Which, if you couple that belief with the fact that weddings have a whole “lucky” season of their own, seems a trifle unfair. What could be as unavoidable in Vietnam as a wedding during wedding season, with the exception of traffic, my front door or maybe people with conical hats?

Perhaps, as the weddings themselves are so common and in such abundance is the reason they are wrapped up in half-an-afternoon or less. Which suits me fine – I like my leisurely Saturdays with no pressing engagements, slow coffees, large lunches, unfinished crosswords and falling asleep on the couch high on the agenda. Who doesn’t?

Now, back in western cultures you couldn’t do that – weddings last a whole day, from the sober-morning sermon at the church to the drunken-dancing competition around about midnight. There is no escape. If you’re directly involved as a best man or bridesmaid the build up will seem like a short lifetime.

But Vietnamese weddings, I must admit, have their advantages. You come, you sit, you eat a bit (that’s optional), you stand up, you clink a few glasses (that’s obligatory), shake hands with the recently made in-laws, slip an envelope in the heart-shaped box and head off back into the traffic, a little bit woozy, but happy that a day is still there for the taking, unless you have another wedding to go to, that is.

Though the swiftness is, understandably, disarming for some. One Australian friend got hitched to a Vietnamese woman. His mother made the trip out and all was going swimmingly. She was dining in a smaller room adjacent to the large hall where a horde of hundreds was feasting on the sticky rice-yellow chicken- set menu. When she finished she whispered to me that as the mother of the groom she felt she should go and say thanks to all the people who had come to see her son on his big day. But when she stepped into the larger hall she was mortified to see just a few waiters clearing up. Everyone had gone. Of course, she was convinced it was something she’d said, or done, or not done, or not said.

A fair few westerners have got married here in my time, and to be honest that’s where people start getting confused. The old when east-meets-west compromised rules-weddings. Vietnamese bride demands the photo-shoot tour, groom says fine but no Bia Ha Noi. They all work it out in the end but often resulting in four weddings (and a few Red Bulls!) with a wedding back in the westerner’s country, an engagement ceremony in the countryside here, a wedding for the extended Vietnamese relatives at lunchtime and a party for all the friends in the evening. So forget the “for better, for worse, in sickness and in health”, surviving multiple weddings is a real test of faith, commitment and patience. If you’re still together after all of the above, you should be pretty confident of staying the distance.

A smile for your troubles

Fraught and frazzled, but happy others aren’t complaining, or overreacting, Teddy de Burca Jnr. wonders how long people can keep smiling on the increasingly chaotic roads of Vietnam

At the end of the one-way street of Son Tay I pull around the corner, keeping an eye on the traffic coming from Kim Ma on my right. Both are one-way streets, so I shouldn’t have to suddenly be screeching to halt as a young boy (or perhaps he is a small youthful looking man) is coming the wrong way round the corner. We are lucky. Both of us manage to skid just to the side of each others’ handlebars. We end up nearly face to face – a little tete-a-tete on the side of the road – but our bikes aren’t even touching. My first instinct is to hurl abuse. I am a Westerner of the modern world and we don’t take kindly to being (nearly) run into though we would be equally outraged if it were the other way round and someone started abusing us. But as I open my mouth, ready to vent my vitriol, his face cracks into the biggest smile I have seen since the Cheshire cat made his stage debut.

What can I do? How could I shout and roar if the other person is absolutely thrilled to have had the luck to almost run into a foreigner so early on a Monday morning? The answer is I can’t. His smile is itself a kind of apology. So I smile back and mumble, “can than, nhe!” (literally, “Hey! Be careful”), which he laughs at and repeats to his girlfriend on the pillion (as if she’s the one who should be careful). Then without further ado, he accelerates away, still going on the wrong side of a one-way street, leaving me in his wake. I’ve been here for six years, but I’m still impressed at this flippant attitude towards near serious accidents – but I suppose in a city of so many millions, you’d have to be.

Norman Lewis, the late British travel writer and author of Dragon Apparent, came to Vietnam in the 1950s and while walking down a road in Ho Chi Minh City, in the days when traffic was a novelty, he saw a bus career around a corner and smash into a cyclist. The bike was crushed and the cyclist hurled to the ground. The bus driver bounded out the door and shook the hand of the cyclist, as if congratulating him (on not being killed, Lewis presumes) and the two men beamed at each other and everyone around, as if posing for an invisible photographer. The bus driver clambered back into his vehicle and continued on his way while the cyclist picked up his bike and started the long walk home with his bicycle around his shoulder, still grinning, chuffed that he had a story to tell when he got home and a trophy to prove it.

Now I know this is a quaint and distant image and that these days the reality is the traffic is frenetic and aggressive. Young drivers are provocative and deliberately reckless. As one travel journalist for the Guardian described it: this is the land where people use the “horn not the brakes”.

Though not for Anthony Bourdain, whose love for Vietnam extends to even the motorbike horn, which he interpreted rather fondly as nothing more than a “coming through, coming through, keep doing what you’re doing”. Now this wistful description works for me on a good day, but it hardly works as an umbrella under which all beeps fall. What about the “hey, can’t you see the light just went green?” or the “Clear the path for I am a truck and you shall know me by the trail of the dead”?

If you come from a culture where beeping can result in your nose being broken, this is hard for many to accept. You can try and turn around and complain, but of course, there’s that smile again! (Or perhaps even a hearty chuckle).

But I have seen foreigners lose it, plenty of times, most recently on Christmas Eve in Ho Chi Minh City, when everyone and everyone’s mother were out on the streets. The traffic was a flood of engines and wheels pouring down Hai Ba Trung street. But it wasn’t the season to be jolly for one western chap on his Honda@, who took great exception to the taxi that was also moving for the same chink of space and started kicking the bonnet and hurling abuse at the poor driver who, like everyone else, was just doing the best he could in a dire situation. The driver managed to get away and we both laughed at the overreaction on the stressed out foreigner’s part and agreed “Ong Tay dien”.

But as the traffic breeds like a rash in Vietnam’s major cities and more and more cars, motorbikes, trucks, SUVs hit the roads, how long can people in Vietnam keep smiling at the traffic lights?

Head, shoulders, knees and toes - sing it!

Yorkie Pittstop first discovered the joy of healing hands the morning after a late night and he’s been bouncing out of bed ever since

If a man says he’s off to get a “goi dau” (literally shampoo head) or even a “mat xa chan” (foot massage), it’s often met with a seedy chuckle due to a sordid connotation, which I’ll leave to your respective imaginations to conjure up.

But getting a facial or a foot massage – two things I never did before coming to Vietnam – are routine habits of mine, and for good reason. When you’re down and out. Frazzled. Hung over. Hot. Flustered. Stressed. If you’re sick of the traffic and you need to escape the streets. Or just in the mood to spoil yourself. You are in a city – whether it’s Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City – surrounded by foot massage parlours and hair salons offering cheap and cheerful services.

From the hole in the wall, head in a half a plastic bucket to the fancy AC salons downtown, places to get a hair wash are everywhere. You can spend as little as VND20,000 or as much as $20. You can even go for a double whammy – sing it with me “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” – a head massage followed by a foot massage.

The first time I did so it was after a particularly savage night on the town for a gentlemen friend’s stag night (please no seedy chuckles if I say we went to karaoke). The next morning I felt someone had hacked into my brain with a blunt instrument. After showering I struggled around to a reasonably swanky downtown establishment on the edge of the Old Quarter.

Normally I just went to a local cat toc (hairdresser) where a hair wash and face massage is perfunctory but pleasant. But in the swanky salon the process was positively Biblical. It was a near out of body experience. The price (not including tip) a mere VND50,000.

Then for the feet, on Le Duan, just off Dien Bien Phu street, a long time expat favourite is the enormous foot massage parlour, opposite Cao Ba Quat street.

Most places seem to follow the same formula.Your feet are dunked as they go over the shoulders, before taking on your knees, calves and of course your dinky little toes.

Your only problem might be a couple of lads come in and start puffing away on cigarettes, ask for the TV to be turned on and start shouting and roaring down their mobile phones. So ask for “mot cho yen tinh” (a quiet spot). And the price? Once again a positively paltry VND50,000. (Though, again, an extra tip is the norm).

The masseuse may not have studied for seven years on a mountaintop in Tibet, but my experiences have all been of a good, consistent standard, and as long as it helps my liver, or at least alleviates my hangover, I’ll keep going back.

So the next time you roll out of the wrong side of bed, be aware that this city is full of answers more healthy than a Codeine tablet or a hair of the dog. You’ll be singing “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” all the way home.

Online Fiction by Connla Stokes

The Lover's Nest

While listening to the sound of the recently-nested birds twittering on the balcony, the girlfriend lay in her bed – her hands behind her pretty head – and pictured the child she and her boyfriend would make together, soon. Ten little fingers. Ten little toes. The gurgle of pleasure when she tickled its nose, which, she was sure, would be like hers, for her boyfriend’s nose – large and hooked – would look rather out of place on a child.

Click here to read the rest.

I show you my country...

Teddy de Burca Jnr. tries to come to terms with the fact that from an Asian perspective certain countries, including Ireland, don’t get a mention

When I first came to Vietnam to work as a teacher none of my students knew where I came from. I would keep pronouncing “Ireland” over and over again, with the emphasis on the “r” sounding first syllable, in the hope they’d recognise it.

“Yes, I know,” one would reply, “I know Holland.”
“No, Ireland, not Holland,” I would correct them happily.
“Ah, yes – Iceland!” someone else would chime in.
“No, Arrrrland!” I’d say, writing it on the board to clarify the ‘r’-ness of the word.

This would provoke a mini-discussion, a wee conferral in Vietnamese of which I could pick out “I know, isn’t that the country where men wear dresses?”

“No, Scottish men wear kilts, but in Ireland we prefer trousers, as you can see,” I’d tell them, curtseying in my chinos. Then the penny would only drop for one savvy man who would jump up and shout, “Zoy (Roy) Keane!” the then captain of Irish football team and, far more importantly, Manchester United.

Was that it? Was Roy Keane our sole cultural ambassador? A man who is known in his home country as the Dark Destroyer and famous for his short fuse and ability to strike the fear of God into anyone looking at him, even his own teammates.

Not quite. I also discovered that the (seemingly nameless) members of Westlife, and previously Boyzone, were the only Irish people famous amongst the teenagers in Vietnam, which was nothing much to sing about either.

How funny it was to see the disappointment on student’s faces when I introduced myself as something other than Australian, American or English. But, in another way, it how refreshing it seemed as well. I had travelled a lot before and all across Europe and America I’d met people with plenty of opinions or notions on what it is to be Irish: We are usually drunk, we live on potatoes, we talk too much, most of the time incomprehensibly, we come from a land where it rains everyday, have close relations with sheep and it takes more than one of us to change a light bulb.

But the Vietnamese don’t know anyone of these clichés (truths). There is no “top of the morning” nonsense, no “craic”, no “shamrocks and shenanigans”, nothing but a blank stare of wonder. I could see them thinking: “how could an European country be so small and insignificant that Vietnam hasn’t even heard
of it?”

Briefly, I thought it was my chance for Year Zero. I had before me a blank canvas on which to construct history. I could have told them anything. I could have said: “Irish people speak better English than the English: fact!” and they would have scribbled this down studiously. I could have told them an Irish monk discovered America 800 years before Columbus but having taken a vow of silence he modestly kept it to himself.

But I decided to stick to language training and like to think I left my mark. Out there, somewhere, today, perhaps there are a few graduates of the Teddy de Burca Jnr. school of English, saying “howya” instead of “hello”, saying “‘tis” rather than “it is” and who know that Ray Houghton stuck it in the English net in Stuttgart, 1988. (My finest hour as a teacher came when one student aced his test and his classmate beside him said, “Good man yourself, Tuan Anh.”)

And despite an influx of Irish expatriates in recent times, including the establishment of an embassy, Ireland still isn’t quite on the mental map for most Vietnamese. When I meet locals for the first time I still like to play “see if you can guess where I’m from.” There are only so many native English speaking countries but they never get it. My only consolation is they’d say Ireland before Wales, which in the words of Ali G, is “a country just 200 miles from London” after all.

I should also do well to remember when I first told my grandmother I was going to live and work in Vietnam she gasped with dismay, took my hand and whispered, as if someone might be listening in: “But isn’t there a war on there?”

It seems, across the board, we little countries have a lot to learn about each other. So how about it Vietnam – I’ll show you my country, if you show me yours?

Just 'cos it's Paddy's day tommorow:

A non-biased account of Ireland and the history of America and the world

Ireland populated a large part of America: There are 34 million US residents who claim Irish ancestry. This number is almost nine times the population of Ireland itself (3.9 million). About one in 50 New Yorkers of European origin carry the genetic signature linked with Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the fifth century AD.

An Irish saint discovered America before Columbus: The ancient annals of Ireland include a detailed account of St Brendan the Navigator, who in the 6th Century sailed across the sea to a new world with a group of acolytes in a leather boat! The new world is believed to be America. The boat was simply a frame of wood covered in animal skin and then tarred. Tim Severin, author and explorer, was inspired by the story and by the feats of Heyerdahl, and to prove the doubters he built a replica, called it The Brendan and in 1976 he sailed across the Atlantic in it with a crew of five, proving that it could be done. Severin’s boat is on display in the Craggaunowen Project, Quin, County Clare, Ireland.

The Irish saved civilisation as we know it: In a so-called hinge of history, Ireland played a crucial role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. St. Patrick did not only help preach Christianity across Ireland, but he also he instilled a sense of literacy and learning that would create the conditions that allowed Ireland to become “the isle of saints and scholars”, thus preserving Western culture while Europe was being overrun by barbarians. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization – copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost – they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task.

The Irish never bend the truth or exaggerate: that’s most certainly true.

Home thoughts from abroad

For those of ye in Ireland there's a Letter from Hanoi by Connla Stokes in the latest issue of Irish Homes magazine. So the next time you're in a newsagents to buy a pack of crisps or a Choc Ice saunter over to the mags and have a quick read while no one's looking. Alternatively, if you're also interested in houses, you could just buy the magazine.

Be wise and exercise (or not)

Never a man for gymnasiums, or working out much at all, Teddy de Burca Jnr. speculates on some alternative exercise routines to get healthy in the big smoke

Back in the old country, I used to stroll down to the park, but in Hanoi I just shoot past them on my motorbike, admiring the brief glimpse of greenery in the urban landscape.

Now I don’t climb mountains, I drive over them. I don’t walk around the corner to buy bread, because it cycles past my door. I never walk to work, or anywhere at all. In fact, I drive pretty much everywhere.

But all this time in the saddle, as wonderful as it is, makes me fear for the ticker that is my heart. I realise I should be trying to keep fit somehow. But being allergic to organised sport, I wonder what activities are out there for little old me and my knobbly knees.

One friend recommended when I went downtown to walk a bit more, do a bit of window-shopping and the like. But even if it were a good idea health wise, when I try it just seems too much trouble – the constant coos of the cyclo-drivers, the badgering postcard boys who won’t let up even when you tell them you’re not a tourist, the woman who sells green bananas stalking you down Hang Trong street. As much as you’d like to, it’s hard to switch off, put on the blinkers and aimlessly amble around.

In my mind, there’s only one thing worse than walking and that’s jogging. But hats off to the West Lake crowd. There seems to be a never-ending flow of determined joggers in that area – huffing and puffing up and down the road. So much so, if I were running for mayor of Tay-town, I’d promise treadmills on every street corner and stroll to a landslide victory.

Personally speaking, it would never work. Jogging makes me too thirsty and there’s too many cafés and bia hoi around, so I wouldn’t get very far.

Alternatively, I could join those that opt to cycle to work, and even to the pub, but there’s only two or three months a year I can manage that without melting. Then there’s the gymnasium with the AC in its favour, but the whole mentality of “if I pay $80 a month, it will make me exercise” seems like a self-imposed guilt trip, which is far too Catholic sounding for the heathen-likes of me.

Another suggestion was to try my hand at Kung Fu, but for a man who hasn’t touched his own toes in a decade or so, I might have to set my ambitions a little lower.

But as I’ve yet to find a Pétanque patch, or garden bowls outfit, I have to resign myself to sporadic bursts of exercise, which do happen from time to time, sometimes whenever I least expect it, meaning spontaneity is the key to my enthusiasm. Like the time I chased the shoeshine boy from Le Van Huu street all the way up Pho Hue to Hoan Kiem lake after he stole my shoe. The day I was crucified by a 65-year old man in a game of badminton (To make me feel better he let me play his granddaughter who beat me as well). The multiple occasions I’ve had to push my bike down the road when it ran out of petrol or got a puncture. The night I was drunk and swapped places with the Cyclo-driver. The impromptu game of football between myself and a bunch of foreigners against a town’s worth of barefoot 11-year olds in Mai Chau, (in a scene reminiscent of the film Zulu, they overran our midfield and annihilated us without mercy).

These little bursts of activity may save me, or they may not. For now, I’ll console myself with the words of my father Teddy senior, who never exercised a day in his life, and told anyone who asked him why he wasn’t out playing football, “Sure, I’m saving myself for the bedroom Olympics.”

No better man.