Getting married : Vietnam style

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 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.........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. This was quite a similar looking place so I took a few snaps :

The office we entered looked something like this:

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.