🛫 The ticket said Ho Chi Minh City. We followed the bride into Saigon. 🇻🇳

One morning, my brother and his bride stood together and served tea to both families. Another night, after my mother had gone to bed, I insisted that the newlyweds take me somewhere naughtier.

I had four nights and five days in Ho Chi Minh City. My brother’s wedding was the reason for the trip, but I was also excited to meet the city. I had travelled through northern Vietnam before. The south was new to me.

The wedding began early at the bride’s family home. Dressed in traditional Vietnamese wedding attire, the bride and groom stood before us for the tea ceremony. My mother and I were seated first on the groom’s side, followed by the bride’s parents, while the couple served each of us tea. By accepting and drinking it, both families accepted them in return: a new daughter-in-law on our side and a new son-in-law on theirs.

There was something lovely about the size of the cups. Weddings are very good at making everything bigger: the flowers, the photographs, the guest list, the promises. The tea remained small enough to hold in one hand.

The gold required considerably more room.

Each family had its own wooden presentation boxes laid wide open on the table. They were enormous envelopes without the inconvenience of discretion.

Inside was gold jewellery: chunky rings, heavy bangles and enormous necklaces, all yellow enough to tell me they were high-carat. One necklace spread across the bride’s chest in intricate motifs, its craftsmanship too elaborate and its weight too substantial for ordinary life.

Beside the jewellery sat thick stacks of Vietnamese đồng. For a few minutes, both families looked like billionaires. That is easier to achieve when the currency comes with so many zeroes.

No amounts were announced. Everyone could see enough.

Our side went first. My brother and my mother lifted the gold from our family’s box and placed it on the bride. Then the bride’s family presented theirs. The cash followed. My mother handed our family’s money to the bride’s mother, who then repeated the exchange in reverse.

From what I could see, the bride’s family returned at least as much as ours, perhaps more. Gold moved between two families. Cash crossed the room and came back again. Each side showed what it was giving, then waited for the other to answer.

None of this had begun that morning. Weeks earlier, there had been a wedding planner to find, Vietnamese ceremonial attire to hire, a bridal gown to choose, decorations to approve, symbolic objects to assemble, photographers to organise and an eight-course banquet menu to negotiate.

After the ceremony at the bride’s home, the celebration moved to a flashy ballroom with ten tables and around one hundred guests. The bride and groom changed from their Vietnamese wedding attire into Western wedding attire, with the bride in white. Later, they changed again into Chinese ceremonial wedding attire to represent our family’s heritage.

Then came the photographs. There were photographs with the groom’s family, the bride’s family and both families, followed by every possible arrangement of relatives, friends and guests. The photographers moved us with the confidence of people who understood that a family is never properly assembled until everyone has changed places three times.

Meanwhile, the banquet had started.

The bride and groom were supposed to sit at our table, but they spent most of the meal moving from table to table, raising a glass with each group of guests to thank them for coming. Whenever they returned, they managed a few hurried bites before the next toast, photograph or obligation called them away.

The waitress assigned to our table knew the routine. As each course arrived, she set aside a portion for the bride and groom before serving the rest of us. Everyone was eating except them.

Getting married looked exhausting. Fortunately, I am not the marrying kind.

After the big wedding day, we did the usual sightseeing and visited some of Saigon’s must-see landmarks. Most have already begun to blur together, but I remember exactly what it felt like to stand at the edge of the road.

My sister-in-law’s first lesson for the other three of us was how to cross it. My mother, my brother and I stood at the kerb, alarmed by the sheer number of motorbikes pouring through intersections, around cars and into every piece of road that had not already been claimed by another motorbike.

We waited for a gap, which was our first mistake. There was never going to be one.

“Walk straight,” my sister-in-law told us. “Don’t suddenly stop.”

She stepped onto the road. Against every instinct, we followed. The riders saw us and adjusted their paths. Motorbikes passed in front of us and behind us, flowing around our bodies without stopping.

We did not trust the traffic. We trusted her.

A queen does not wait for traffic. After a few successful crossings, my mother and I joined her. My brother, outnumbered three to one, became king by default.

Electric bikes, taxis and cars threaded through the petrol traffic, making Australia’s progress look strangely timid. The old shops and buildings, street vendors everywhere and motorbikes filling the roads reminded my mother of the Kuala Lumpur she once knew, before much of that street life disappeared from present-day Kuala Lumpur. Saigon’s modernisation impressed her just as much.

My sister-in-law also knew where visitors were expected to shop and where local people actually went.

All four of us visited Bến Thành Market. It was central, famous and fully prepared for tourists, its stalls filled with souvenirs, food, jewellery, electronics and vendors who could identify a newly arrived visitor before the visitor had identified the nearest exit.

The first price usually arrived in English with enough additional profit built into it to sustain the bargaining that followed. Negotiation was part of the entertainment, complete with aggressive hard selling, exaggerated disappointment and, from some of the male vendors, an attempt at charm.

One vendor leaned towards me.

“U beautiful!”

I smile back. He flirted; I flirted better. Each time I began to walk away, the price fell and his affection deepened.

“Don’t break my heart!” he called after me.

He had no idea who he was dealing with. I bought nothing, but I believe we both enjoyed our brief courtship.

My brother watched from the sensible distance of a man who understood that three women were already making every necessary shopping decision. My sister-in-law was less susceptible to the vendors.

“Don’t buy here,” she said.

“I bring you to another one. No tourists. At least half price from this place. Just look around, eat something here, but don’t buy.”

The other market was Bà Chiểu, exactly where I wanted to go. It was grittier, hotter and considerably stuffier. It was not for the faint-hearted, nor for anyone requiring air-conditioning before making a purchasing decision.

Much of the merchandise was exactly the same as at Bến Thành, with even more surrounding it. There were gold shops, clothes, food, ordinary household items and things people needed for daily life rather than objects chosen to fit conveniently into tourist luggage. Outside, food vendors worked among cars and motorbikes, occupying whatever fragments of road remained available.

Nothing here had been arranged for comfort, and almost everything appeared to cost half as much.

Her language and local knowledge brought us there. Without her, I would still have been another tourist walking through without understanding what I was seeing. She knew which entrance to use, what things should cost, where to look and what we should eat.

My mother was delighted by the lively market, wholesome food and prices that made sense to her. She did what the older women in our family always do when they travel: she shopped for everyone who had not come. Every packet of food or snack came with a mental list of relatives and friends who might like it.

Whenever the three women stopped to point, compare and bargain, my brother found somewhere to sit. He waited with the expression of a man who knew we would collect him when we were finished.

The food went far beyond the phở and bánh mi that have become Australia’s shorthand for Vietnamese cuisine. Some dishes looked familiar from Luke Nguyen’s cooking programmes. I had seen their faces on television, but I still did not know their names.

That did not prevent me from eating everything or having an opinion. The food I grew up eating had taught me that sweetness, sourness, salt and heat should know how to share a plate.

“Eeeee, this one is too sweet. Need some lime.”

The other three agreed. None of us needed to know the name of the dish to know when its balance was off.

One night, after the sightseeing and after my mother had gone to bed, I insisted that my brother and sister-in-law take me to Bùi Viện, the city’s walking street, red-light district and party area. It was tamer than Pattaya or Bangkok, which still left plenty of room for trouble.

Bass from competing bars met in the street while

neon and LED signs climbed every level.

Even here, motorbikes edged through the crowd.

It looked as though a row of Sydney Mardi Gras floats had parked along the street. Young women and ladyboys danced on tables in tiny shorts, sequins and thigh-high patent boots. Topless, muscular young men occupied the same street.

All on the same street.

With the wedding behind us, my brother might reasonably have expected a quieter evening. He had already survived wedding planners, three changes of attire, one hundred guests and several thousand photographs. His sister added the red-light district to the itinerary.

He came anyway.

My brother looked a little longer than necessary. I was hardly in a position to judge. My own eyes had already settled on the topless men.

I gave his arm a playful twist and whispered, “wei! I know what you thinking… Control your wandering eyes ok…Your lao-poh is here.”

We were still looking. 

When we returned, my mother was asleep. My brother had come because I asked. I teased him because that is how we speak to each other.

Among my family and Asian friends, we rarely say “I love you” casually, in Chinese or in English. Changing the language merely makes the embarrassment bilingual.

Say it unexpectedly and the response is usually, “Are you okay?” They are checking whether I am ill, depressed or preparing to deliver bad news.

The other response is less concerned.

“Ewww. 不要这样肉麻.”

“Ewww…Don’t be so cringey!” 

In many English-speaking circles, “I love you” can end a telephone call between friends, yet inside a new relationship the same words become a question of commitment. Among the people I grew up around, affection preferred practical instructions.

During four nights and five days, none of us said “I love you.” We said:

“Walk straight.”

“Don’t buy here.”

“Eat something.”

“Control your wandering eyes.”

“Bring some home.”