Knowing that I will be in Hanoi over our once a year national birthday, I decided to celebrate Canada day with my local Hanoian-Canadian peers. Mentally this was important to me because I know that it will be my last Canada Day in Vietnam as both Moon and I have plans to return to Canada for work and studying in the fall. The Canadian birthday party was held at a private serviced apartment complex overlooking West Lake which was a few minutes away from the house that I am currently looking after. I showed up late because during the party starting time, it was pouring buckets and buckets of rain on the city making it virtually un-drivable until the floods find their way into the main river stream on the far west side of the city.
Arriving at the party after the floods are finished, I was greeted with a Molson Canadian beer served by a fellow Canadian who was wearing his classic Montreal Canadian Hockey jersey. What a hoot that was. Of course with two languages in Canada, it’s important to say "bonjour" and the French Canadian greetings which is very popular in the Canadian community of Hanoi. My two best IT friends finally showed up and we got a chance to catch up and say hi as it’s been a long time since the three of us were in a single place for more than 5 minutes.
After the party, I had to quickly pick up Moon for the big surprise 2 year anniversary. Knowing that we both forgotten our 1st year anniversary, I felt it would be cool and exciting for both of us to have a nice Candle light dinner follow by a nice relaxing night in town. I brought her a couple of presents from my European holiday that I was planning not to give to her until this night and managed to wrap them up in a pinkish decorative box filled with hundreds of red rose petals. The actual surprise was that I had her blindfolded on the back of my motorbike and drove across town to the Highway 4 restaurant where we first went to after we met for the first time.
The dinner, presents, candles, roses, night in town and the ambience was indeed perfect and we enjoyed every minute of it. It’s is sure nice to celebrate two specials events on July 1st therefore I am looking forward to next year as we can watch the fireworks overlooking Scotman’s hill in Calgary.
