Vietnam, Positives from A Vietnam Tale
I read A Vietnamese Tale – My Perfect Wife and I also travelled to Vietnam (2012 work conference) and met someone who I thought
was special and for the first time started thinking about settling down and having kids. I’ve have had long relationships with some beautiful and intelligent women but have never thought of being tied down with the responsibility of having
a wife and family. I work in a relatively prestigious job and am happy with my single life.
I met my sweetheart, Chi, in Ho Chi Minh City (Sept 11th 2012) whilst on a break from a work conference. I’ve never had the compulsion to waste myself drinking at these conferences so I normally spend my off-time walking, eating and
seeing the sites of a foreign city and wanting especially to see Saigon with all its history.
Chi pulled me up on Le Loi Blvd and asked if I wanted a massage (red flag). I’d rejected the offer on every corner for the past few hours but because Chi is small I stopped and listened. I’m also small at 5'2'' and very attracted
to small women, Chi’s being 33 and around 4'7'' no fly-girl looks at all. I asked if it was bang bang and she said no no proper massage. I said I would if she did the massage. She said she wasn’t one of the masseurs
but come and have a look. I said I would only do it if she did the massage. Hesitating, she agreed, but said she wasn’t experienced. We got on well and it was in fact a proper massage. We chatted for over a couple of hours and agreed to
meet up over the next week when I had the time. I really started to like this girl. She seemed like a good girl, no sex before marriage, didn’t ever massage the clients (red flag) and she was lucky to see me and I was special. She was also
the manager at Lucky Beauty and Spa because Chi was the only one that spoke English to a degree. She wasn’t overly attractive but I felt we had a connection and thought maybe we could be something.
My last night was off-time so I invited Chi back to my hotel, the Caravelle, after dinner. This to my amazement scared her a little and at the time I thought it was because it was 5 star. This was maybe confirmed at reception as they did
not want to let her in after 10 as she wasn’t a registered guest. We decided to go to another hotel and that first night together was like a dream. She was like a first timer and this fastened the impression she was good girl as she had
said on numerous occasions. We spent the next day together apart from her having to work and I having to fly out back to work but I said I would come back in a couple of weeks after rescheduling work.
For the second visit I pre-booked the Palace Hotel. Being just round the corner from her work and not so 4-star, I thought this would suffice. I was greeted at the airport and was told she didn’t want to stay close to her work. As
the booking was on-line and non refundable I was perplexed but accepted the fact it could be cultural. We booked the hotel of her choosing, the Hong VY 3 some distance away. Chi explained the reason some days later and now I think it was lie.
The week was fantastic as she led me round her city like a puppy, paying expensive cab fares and eating in yummy restaurants. Towards the end of the week we visited the auntie's house in the delta for 2 days and I felt I was made welcome
with the occasional reminder of marriage and baby. It was comforting and convincing to think I had the approval of the family. I was still getting the language so there was a lot of talk between the aunts and Chi with the occasional translation
for me.
We were getting closer and in my eyes falling in love when on the last morning Chi confessed and told me why she didn’t want to stay at the Palace. She had a boyfriend who worked in the restaurant next door to work. She was still with him on my
previous visit but he was apparently a player and was dating two girls. The other girl was Hahn who worked on reception in the Palace. Hahn had one day punched Chi in the face and said she was no longer the guy's girlfriend. (Guy's name
still unknown if he even exists at all.) Chi said the aunts had apparently been criticising her for not telling me and now she felt she should. Awkward for a moment, but afterwards I was ok with it. She felt she could tell me and all in all the
second visit was another fantastic time with Chi. I now wanted to bring Chi back to Australia on a holiday visa to see if she liked it. She agreed as long as we got married beforehand. I said YES without hesitation…wow!
I was getting married and so happy! We planned the wedding in Vietnam towards the end of December to give us time to organise visas and the like. Sadly work beckoned and I returned back to Australia to research the requirements.
We speak / spoke multiple times everyday and occasionally via email planning the big day or conveying how much we missed and loved each other/ ‘I love you so much’…I loved it when she said that!
The cost of the wedding was 80,000,000.00 Dong which is under 4K in Aussie dollars so no hard stretch for such an important event. All up with maybe a marriage visa, airfares, the actual marriage and other unknowns, (heads-up from the above link) it would
cost me around 10K if not more.
A couple of weeks back in Australia and Chi calls asking if we could delay the wedding till lunar new year and to come alone, (red flag). I was ok with this as it gave me more time to get ready, organise a holiday and I thought, great, Chi
could have more time off work as it was the national holiday.
Then during a call Chi says her aunty is taking her to Singapore for a shopping trip for 3 days so she won’t be contactable, another red flag. I was ok with this but was suspicious as I had worked in Singapore for a couple of years. Why would you
ever go from Vietnam where things were cheap to Singapore? I said call me when you get back and if possible send me photos.
On my return from Vietnam I Googled “Vietnam Marriage Scams” and found “A Vietnamese Tale”. As my time
with Chi was pretty good I put it out of my head, but now because of the Singapore trip I found myself thinking more and more. Crap started entering my head…was there another man…was the restaurant guy still around…was organised crime involved?
I work in the communication sector and I can’t say how people do things but I do know how. My bad. To my surprise and horror, Chi is not with her aunty but with a 45-year old US gentlemen named Paul. I know the flights, hotel bookings
and it looks like a really nice room. Worst of all, she says she loves him so much, just the way she says it to me. Paul had said his holidays are from December 18th to the January 23rd and he’ll be in Vietnam around the time we originally
planned our wedding. Wow, a month off to screw my fiancée.
I feel I should copy Paul and Chi in on this story but that would be helping Chi better plan for the next fall guy and I’d like to find out her angle before she knows we’re over. Maybe an anonymous (sic) email just to Paul a
couple of days before the 18th December?
At the time of writing, it's Sunday, the day of Chi’s return to the land of communication. She will never know what I know unless she confesses after I squeeze the paranoid guilt trip out of her. She’s a good girl so I
know she’ll do the right thing. Mostly I’m shaking with heartache but thank myself for having the tools to figure it out.
Thanks Stickman for keeping the original posting, you’re a life saver : )
Stickman's thoughts:
While it would be easy to criticise someone for falling for a lady who approached them on the street and was offering a massage, I think the big mistake here was simply rushing things. You met her in September and were engaged pretty quickly after spending precious little time with her. As Caveman once said, not all the data was in…
My feeling is that now that you know she is up to no good, just move on. Forget her and move on. There's nothing to be gained by stringing it out and feeling something good because you know something about her that she doesn't know that you know… Move on with your life!
