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Getting Married in Viet Nam

A few days before I left my second home for my third home, if that makes sense, I spent an afternoon with Chi sorting out all the paperwork for our marriage certificate. I’ve already had a Notice of Marriage posted in British embassy for 21 days. If the NOM survives this amount of time without anyone objecting, which it did, you collect the CNI (Certificate of No Impediment). In other words, I got the green light from the British to get married. Well thanks. And thanks for making me pay over 2m VND (60 quid) for the privilage as well…..then of course they had to be certified by the Vietnamese Office of Foriegn Relations (another 320,000 VND). Also had to get 3 copies of my passport and visa certified, at ‘Public Office No 1′ on Pasteur. Thankfully that was quite painless and only cost 4000 VND (10p)………but then we went across the street to a translation service to get my ‘Marriage Application Form’ changed into Vietnamese. 240,000 VND for that. Anyway, you get the idea…..

What I really wanted to talk about was our trip to the hospital. I thought I was required to have a medical, but it seems to depend on where your spouse is from.

Since Chi is from HCMC, I only had to have the ‘mental’ health check. This was just one of those ‘experiences’ which will stick in my mind. The only other time I’ve been to a Vietnamese hospital was when I got a health check for work permit requirements last year.

I had to sneak this photo as to my left were two more desks, one with the nurse processing documents, and one old guy who was reading a newspaper. His desk was exactly as bland as the one above - “What the hell does he do all day?”I was thinking. It looked like the office had been deserted for 30 years and they’d just come back to work. Once the nurse cleared our paperwork we were waved to the guy at the desk. He took my passport and had a good look at it. He began…”Are you, errrr, hmmm, from Northern Ireland?”. “No”, I replied sincerely, “I am from England”. “Hmm”. More scanning of my passport. “Errrr, are you, umm, still living in London?”. Once again I replied nicely, “No, I am working in Ho Chi Minh City”. This intense physcological profiling continued until he was satisfied that I wasn’t off my rocker. Safe to say, me and the misses both passed with flying colors.

So, we had the dossier of mindless red tape,otherwise known as the marrige application, all ready to hand in. Chi organised everything herself bless her and left me to simply drive around, pick things up, and smile when neccessary. She has been ‘overly generous’ (if you catch my drift) to certian members of officialdom. At the office where all types of registration takes place (births, deaths, marriages etc),located on Pasteur, we once again came face to face with our nemisis desk sucker, name unknown. We’ve been seperated by perspex with this man three times and not once has he made eye contact. He seemed very content with his level of malice which wasn’t just reserved for us but other happy soon-to-be married couples. After shuffling through our well prepared paperwork he throws the folder back at us and writes a list of what we still need to do. I tell him he’s not very helpful, he says “don’t understand”, at which Chi later quipped “doesn’t understand without any money”. Chi beavered for the rest of the day and furnished the folder with its required nonsense, we were then ready for a return to see Mr Happy. This time he had simply run out of things that were missing…..Chi had back-up copies of pretty much anything he could ask for all stamped and translated and notorized ready to shove down his throat if the chance arrived. Reluctantly he processed the application.

I’ve gotten distracted here - what I really wanted to talk about was the interview. As we’re leaving the office Chi says we have an interview scheduled for next week. We both laugh. An interview? To get married! WHAT! OK, whatever, lets play along…then I came across this article today: Vietnam Tightens Regulations On International Marriges

Extract:

Under the decree, within 20 days of the date of the receipt of marriage registration dossiers and fees, the Judicial Department of a city or province must conduct a person-to-person interview with both applicants.
The interview is designed to check whether the two applicants agree to the marriage of their own accord and how much they can communicate

So, hopefully, like the mental health check, we can get through this one as well (ow! that was my tounge in my cheek).

I recently discovered that most people use a company to organise all the documentation for their wedding applications for them. Not Chi, she organised everything herself. Apparently it’s quite tricky…..

We dropped into our favourite public office for our interview yesterday afternoon. The new rules. Firstly, again without eye contact, we were told that we needed to have a translator for me. Would have been nice if Mr Happy had told us that last time, but Mrs Happy informed us through what I can only describe as a forced scowl. So Chi calls up her friend from work and he comes down to the office to help us out. We sit and wait and eventually Chi gets called in. She had a 30 minute grilling - the only thing missing was the bright lamp and windowless room. I won’t go into the details of what he asked but it was all highly personal, and some of it, in my opinion, highly inappropriate. Stopping short of what color my grandfather’s living room is painted, Chi was asked if the people she had invited to her house and travlled to Phu Quoc with over Christmas and New Year in 2005 were really my family - she described her incredulousness to me. Is he serious? I can speak English. I saw them talking together for 2 weeks. I went to Phu Quoc Island with them for 3 days. I saw their passports. He looks exactly like his Dad for GOD SAKE! He then went on to describe to her what would happen if we failed the interview; once again Chi related her feelings to me and it requires some brain-racking to find synonyms for incredulous which I have already used…..ah yes, here we go, flabbergasted, dumbfounded, astonished and thunderstruck. How could we fail? We can communicate. We have no age gap to speak of. We have lots of evidence of our relationship. “Just for example….I have to tell you” he says.

My interview was much more humane, although that may only have been because the office was due to close at 5.00 and I sat down at about 4.30 (we arrived at 2.15). It may also be the norm, and the officials are much more interested in what she knows about me than vice versa. All I know is that this whole process has drilled my better half into the ground and she came out of it a little frazzled and definitely stressed out; it’s a little too premature to be relieved, we find out if the interview was successful on the 7th September.

Here it is in all it’s bureaucratic glory. We’ve finally burst free from the assemblge of red tape which has bound us since April. Although we’ll be celebrating tonight, in our minds it’s not done until the wedding party later in October. However, we are of course very happy to have gotten this over and done with! I feel I had to blank out some personal details because I am petrified of lonely Internet cyberloonies who will stalk me, yes, I’m talking to YOU. It was strange coming out of the office as a legally married man and then heading off back to work as did the misses. We did manage to squeeze in a matrimonial bowl of pho of which I took a picture in a bid to emulate those countless images on drool-worthy food blogs such as Sticky Rice.

Yes, one of the most popular posts from my old blog the final word (in Saigon).

Getting married in a communist country that is still developing is just as much fun as you are probably thinking it is.

I had five post altogether, so it is kind of a series. Here is the link to the links. Yes, I had to do it like this, back in my old school blogger days.

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