Try and learn a new martial art
I am very much peaceful and against conflicts, and I despise physical fighting. But, staying with AK in Bangkok, she convinced me to join her in her Muay Thai lessons. I was insecure and feeling out of place there, but eventually I got used to the practices and at least felt good about finally caring for my body again after a long hiatus. The problem is that if you almost never move for over half a decade and then start training 6 times a week, 2 hours a day, you risk overstretching yourself – in my case the tendons in my feet (Achilles and peroneal tendonitis).
Think of going to Nepal
Nepal would probably scare me off – what would I do in a country so poorly developed, and so foreign to me? I am no climber, what would I do in the highest mountains on the planet? Fortunately, AK had a friend there, and when she started following information and Facebook groups and forwarding it to me, the picture started getting clearer and the trip started seeming easier. The Annapurna Circuit Trek in particular seemed to be easily doable. Even though I strained my feet tendons a month or two prior to the trip and the doctor suggested I should let it rest for at least three months, I decided to go, especially since it seemed that if I ever get overstretched, I could just follow AK in a bus. Well, the bus REALLY wasn’t an option, the hardest sections were barely accessible for horses – but we made it (with a little equine support), and it is one of my best memories now.
Learn Vietnamese
Learning a new language, when you are over 30, is not easy, and my sub-standard memory doesn’t help either (there’s a reason I only have a high school diploma). However, having so sweet and caring second family would eventually move almost anyone to try and be more communicative than just what Google Translate can help with, and even I fell victim to this. Twenty years younger me wouldn’t dream of trying to learn such a linguistically and culturally distant language. Back in high school, people who decided to learn Chinese seemed driven but almost crazy to me. Now, Vietnamese has the advantage of having transferred to Latin alphabet instead of the spilled tea leaves script where you have to memorize separate picture for each word, but on the other hand, while both are tonal, Vietnamese has even more tones, so not easy to say which language has the dubious honor of being harder to learn for a European. However, I jumped into it (or rather slowly and carefully waded) and after about 5 years of stopping at counting to five and knowing just a handful of dishes I liked to order, I finally started more serious effort to expand my vocabulary and to be able to form some rudimentary yet valid sentences. I ignore the tones for now and hope it will work out somehow, which it so far does. It feels almost empowering (however I hate this word) to be able to finally talk about the basic daily stuff. (Not have a conversation, but at least offer, ask for, or respond to those in a civilized manner.)
Spend €500 on a two day hike up and down a mountain
Going back to our travel, AK can be a bad influence too. If my teenage myself knew I would eventually fly to a new place, go for a weekend trek to go up a mountain, take a few pictures at the top, hike back down, pay about €500 for that privilege, and leave the place, that myself would probably barely believe it to be possible [not to buy some nice gadget instead]. And yet that’s what we did at Mount Kinabalu in the Malaysian part of Borneo. And it was awesome.
Try to reduce my belly
What comes with age, unfortunately, is body fat. I think that both the teenager me and the 20s me would be happy that I can eat so much that I actually gain weight. Furthermore, the teenager me would probably be shocked that I would be willing to adjust my diet to reduce my belly fat. Yet that’s what keeps happening under AK’s supervision. Thank you <3
Run 30k in mountains
Well, it is all in the title really. While 30k wouldn’t scare me off in itself, 30k run, and in mountains, is not something I think I would have done by myself. For one, I rarely join group activities, or paid activities, and this is both. But AK keeps finding these obscure things online, and I guess she wanted to punish me for buying a not so cheap sports watch without an intention to use it for sports, so she sold me on this “Chiang Dao 100” trail run, where we’d “only” do the 30k variant. We did some light preparation in Bangkok and off we went.
Turns out, I can do 30k, with 1340 m elevation gain (and loss, which was the harder part for me and my knees). Having more than 50% of the route on double and single track in the mountains of Chiang Dao helped make this a beautiful experience – so nice in fact that I didn’t even mind losing by hours to my female friends running with me (one of them being the ultimate friend – my beautiful and competitive upcoming wife).
Kneel in front of an altar with incense and homemade vodka
Do I really need to say more? Isn’t the title self-explanatory? Well, it probably is for the Vietnamese contingent of our wedding, and probably really confusing or even alien for the rest. So, let me explain.
As you may or may not know, the Vietnamese people (or the majority that engages in these activities) hold their ancestors in the highest regard. To make sure they know about the new addition to the family, the upcoming groom – me – had to take part in a ritual where the food was offered, the incense burned, the introduction presented by the highest ranking family member, dad Phuc’s eldest brother Dang, and the groom-to-be bowed, kneeled, drank a shot and more in a traditional dress (Ao Dai). We also took plenty of pictures around the area, thanks to our little sister Ngoc and her photography skills.
Make this list of things I wouldn’t do if…
This was a real struggle. AK wants so much from this wedding and from this groom. I am already willing to survive such a big event, to look handsome, wear fancy clothes, entertain large amounts of people and welcome you all to the beautiful Vietnam. But I also need to be creative and (ouch! My heart!) write for the website I set up for us. (To be fair, most of the content is from AK, but I did the installation and that’s what counts, right?)
I rarely do introspective in a written form, or make lists out of it. And yet, that’s exactly what I did to make my beloved happy and to make this invitation to you more genuine and balanced from both of us. And what started as a short list turned into a multi-page essay. You’re welcome. (But don’t expect any vows, this is the extent of my creativity right here.)
