Arabian nights in Saigon

Yesterday I was visited by a woman called Lisa who used to work with Jessica, and has agreed to have weekly language classes with me. She will teach me the basics of Vietnamese while I help her to improve her English grammar and pronunciation . She arrived at midday and we talked for an hour and a half. I had been a bit worried about this; although I like learning languages I have never taught before so was worried at what I could offer Lisa. Fortunately, she was very competent in English and mostly asked me the things she wanted to know. She taught me the numbers one to ten (from which you can work out all the numbers up to ninety-nine), how to address people in Vietnamese according to age, gender and relationship, and a few other useful phrases.

I've been told that it will be very difficult to learn Vietnamese. The grammar is very complicated and pronunciation relies on understanding six different tones that, as in Mandarin Chinese, indicate the way in which a vowel should be pronounced (whether falling or rising, heavy, sharp, etc). Fortunately for me, the Vietnamese language is now based on the Latin alphabet, which should make it infinitely easier for me to learn. This is due to the work of Alexandre de Rhodes, an early French missionary who first arrived in Vietnam in 1627 and created quoc ngu, a phonetic Latin alphabet system to replace the Chinese characters previously used in written Vietnamese.

In the evening it was time for the long-awaited Arabian Nights ball. This was the annual charity ball of AusCham, the Australian Chamber of Commerce Vietnam, of which Jessica is a member. She invited some friends, most of whom I had already met at Mui Ne last weekend. There were some impressive outfits on display, including some rich Saudi Arabian oil tycoons, women in niqabs teamed with short black dresses and several Egyptian kings and queens.The reception and dining hall decoration was equally well done. Around our table were Jessica and I, Yvonne and her boyfriend Conrad (a Latin American man who Jessica thinks resembles George Clooney), Jessie and Jasmine, a Puma colleague named Vincent, as well as a quiet Russian couple who won the raffle twice, and a dried-up old rich man with a heavily-botoxed blonde who everyone steered clear of.

Jessica with some new male friends

My first time on a camel!

As we ate and drank lovely Australian wine, we were entertained by belly dancers (very good) and a sword-swallower (not nice when eating). Dessert was a real treat- turkish delight and baklava. Dinner was followed by more drinking and dancing to a fairly unexciting live band playing the usual Florence and the Machine and Kings of Leon covers. The DJ set afterwards- DJ Jases' 'Magic Carpet' Mix, was much better, playing some golden oldies. For example I was very happy to hear two Prince songs over the evening, although several members of our group made a point of commenting on how much older the songs were than me...

Laoshi Lu gives a dumpling masterclass

Today I had a long lie-in after the late night before, and when I awoke Jessica was expecting her friends round any minute for a book- and movie-club meeting. When they arrived we made dumplings together as a fun activity, which were then eaten for lunch. After this I retired to my room as the book and film would be discussed in Chinese, so I sat on my bed listening to The Smiths and generally making good use of my time. I thought that today would be a right-off in terms of interesting things to write about in my blog, as the only other thing I had planned was being taught some yoga by Jessica before tea. But in the middle of our stretches Jessica received an unexpected phone call. She had been invited to a dinner event for this evening, but had never received the invitation, and was being called to see whether she would be attending.
"Chi Thuy! No dinner tonight!", Jessica called down the stairs, and told me we would be going out to a party for a free dinner. I was very confused but continued with her yoga class as instructed, after which I had to hastily get ready for this surprise dinner party. I asked Jessica if this sort of thing happened to her a lot, and she said yes. From now on I will have to be prepared to rush off to some social occasion or another at any moment!

In the taxi I tried to establish from Jessica what sort of event we were going to, but she told me she didn't know, apart from that it was being held by the developers of a new set of apartment blocks in the district, and she had most likely been invited because she has recently bought one of these apartments. We had arrived late and were seated on a round table in a room lit with green lighting where middle-class Vietnamese couples were listening to speeches by the host. This was followed by a dance performance by a troop of young girls and one eager looking lad, all wearing glittery orange outfits. It seemed that this event was being held to mark the 20th anniversary of the host company, and the dancers were performing a 'happy birthday' routine to some garish pop song, pumping their fists and shaking their hair a lot. We agreed that they were quite talented kids although the routine was a bit of an eye-sore! The dinner was a Chinese-style banquet, with numerous courses served, which kept the waiters and waitresses very busy. Jessica and I were disappointed that the huge white birthday cake on the stage turned out to be an ornament, and we were not going to be offered a slice. However, a surprise perk of the evening was the announcement (which somebody translated into English for us) that everybody attending would be given a complimentary two-night stay at a four or five star resort in Dalat or Ninh Binh, courtesy of the event's sponsors. How lucky! I had managed to free-load an awful lot this weekend, so I should feel very fortunate to have such an important friend as Jessica Lu!