A Powerful Coincidence He said yes, and the sky agreed
For a few weeks, I carried around a number in my head that my boyfriend, Jayden, had no idea existed: his ring size.
I measured it in secret, like in one of those low-budget heist movies: He was sleeping on the couch while I put a string around his finger – the classic way. Then, I did what I always do when making a decision: I over-researched it. I made comparisons and explored options, scrolled through Wikipedia and enlisted Claude as an accomplice. Minutes turned into hours turned into days… until I said “Screw it!” and went out to PNJ – the most ordinary yet gloriously perfect Vietnamese jeweler – and tried on dozens of rings. With success – I left the store carrying two plain gold bands. Not Tiffany’s. Not Chanel. Nothing imported from some foreign concept of how this is supposed to look. Just grounded PNJ, where every auntie in the country has been buying gold for forty years. Trusted, reliable, and established; that part mattered to me.
I just had to do it. Couldn’t be easier, right?… Not a chance!
My first – okay, second – idea was to recreate our very first date on a Saturday. We would pack snacks and Chloe in the backpack, walk the same route, and have a picnic in a park. Chloe is our teddy bear, by the way. She’s been with me since 2017 when she took over for Dalton, the teddy bear before her. It’s basically a fluffy-cuddly dynasty… don’t ask. So we walked, joked, sweated, bought fresh iced sugarcane juice, played some Empire of the Sun, found a cozy spot, and settled in.
And hey – the park was nice. Beautiful, even – trees, flowers, butterflies, and little picturesque pavilions. But there was also a nonstop parade of dogs being walked – barking, peeing, and fetching sticks – while their owners stared at the two guys hogging half the park with a speaker, a picnic, and a teddy bear. And it was hot – the feels-like temperature was 44°C, and, right on schedule, a massive thunderstorm rolled in by late afternoon. At least I tried.
We had a wonderful day. It just wasn’t our day. Sometimes you can feel (and hear and smell) that a moment isn’t right.
So I went bigger
The following Sunday morning, I scrapped the whole thing and aimed higher: Vũng Tàu. Day trip, just around the corner (a very big corner). We repacked everything – Chloe, battery pack, music box, snacks, and water – and stopped at GS25 first, because, well, breakfast is breakfast, and ours has strict rules: we grabbed sandwiches and those continuously heated 24-hour convenience store snacks that no nutritionist would approve of, and also got a cup of sugar-loaded Vietnamese coffee. This profound little ritual opens every trip we take, and we love it more than most restaurants. Convenience stores are like churches for people like us: they’re open all night and sell everything you need, including iced coffee in a cup. Mlem mlem!
Refreshed and reenergized, we were ready to start the trip. The sun was already beating down on us, so we suited up in the full kit: white sun jacket, gloves, face mask, sunglasses, and helmet. Locals half-affectionately call this head-to-toe sun armor “áo chống nắng”, or “Ninja Lead” (a nickname mostly aimed at women and bundled with a stereotype about their cornering – so wearing it as a couple of men is its own small joke). It turns your body into a Finnish sauna and keeps your skin from getting fried instantly. Worth every degree.
Then, we rode our motorbike to the ferry bound for Bình Khánh. From there, straight into the lush, green Cần Giờ mangrove forest – it was noon, so “humid” carries a lot of weight in that sentence – and then out to the Cần Giờ village coast, from where we took a 45-minute ferry across to Vũng Tàu.
Vũng Tàu’s shoreline roads are genuinely beautiful. We headed to the foot of Núi Nhỏ, also known as little lighthouse mountain, and stopped at a Highlands Coffee that we had visited maybe ten times before – with an ocean view and reliable air conditioning. Too reliable: turns out we weren’t the only ones who had that idea; it was packed. Not busy. Packed. There were students doing homework, families spanning three generations, and a cacophony of TikTok, YouTube, squeaky toys, and chatter all braided together. The only thing missing was someone singing karaoke (though, in fairness, it was still early in the day…). But who could blame anyone? It was like an oven outside and an iced glacier inside. We drank quickly and left again.
Next stop: Family Mart. Another convenience store, another place we’ve frequented for years, another heated rice box and a soft drink. This particular Family Mart holds one of the most intense memories of our relationship a couple of years back – Empire of the Sun was playing, and Chloe was with us. The constants were already in place. We just didn’t know what they were rehearsing for yet.
Where the road just stops
The trip continued. Out past the city, the coast was a war zone of concrete mixers, excavators, and cranes. Mega-project after mega-project, residential and hotel towers rising where nature and small beach resorts used to be. Until, with zero warning, it stopped. Rural. No more constructions, scaffolding, or signs of development – just a road peeling off toward the water with a steady trickle of local motorbikes on it. Pretty promising.
We followed them to what I can only call a secret beach for the people of Vũng Tàu. There were no foreigners, tourists, or expats except for us – instead, students, young couples, families, and a few stalls selling cheap ice cream, cotton candy, waffles, dirty sticks, coffee, soda, and balloons. We parked, grabbed our things, and walked away from it all toward the quiet shore.
First, some dunes caught our attention; wind-sculpted and lovely. We climbed the tallest dune and found ourselves standing in our own sandstorm. The coastal wind was throwing sand in every direction (in OUR direction), and our sweat-soaked skin was the perfect surface for it to cling to. Our faces, mouths, ears, arms, legs, and shoes were quickly covered in sand. Sand, sand everywhere – it was a full-body sandblasting experience. Somehow funny and disgusting in equal measure, which is true of most of the good things in life #soDeep.
We escaped and hit the stretch of shore strewn with trash (which is inevitable in any non-tourist area that isn’t cleaned nightly) and kept going. Until the scenery changed again.
And then, all of a sudden, this little dune world popped up: sandy valleys and hills, trees, plants, and blooming crown flowers (which are highly toxic), with little romantic pockets tucked between them. No trash. No people. No dogs. No sign of anyone at all except for old motorbike and shoe tracks slowly disappearing into the sands of time. It was afternoon, and the sun was a few hours past its peak. Everything was bathed in a light that started yellow and slowly turned to gold. Thunderclouds were stacking up in the distance – the standard for rainy season – but they were hours away.
THAT was the place.
The place to mess around. So, as usual, we got silly. Childishly. We ran, jumped, screamed, laughed, and took plenty of ridiculous photos of each other. Until the beauty of the spot hit us both, and we went quiet. We climbed to a higher point with a view of the dunes and the sea, turned the music back on and sat down. Empire of the Sun again. We held hands – and felt the place and each other. Felt peace. There were no distractions, no problems, and nothing to solve. Not a single ant or mosquito bothered us, which in this country counts as a minor miracle.
When Jayden looked the other way for a second (okay, maybe there WAS an ant), I reached into our pink unicorn backpack – another lifelong constant – and pulled out a little golden box. I held it out and asked him:
“bb, do you want to marry me?”
Oof. His eyes did a thing. First, surprise; then, pure, unbuffered happiness. He just said: “Yes, bb!”
I invited him to open the box. Inside: two gold rings; shiny and simple. The kind of thing that never goes out of style because they never tried to be fancy in the first place, and is occasionally hurled into Mount Doom. But this place ain’t Mordor, it’s Rivendell. I slid his onto his finger – it fit, pheww! – and he slid mine onto mine. And then we ran through the whole catalog: kissing, hugging, nose-kissing the way Vietnamese moms kiss their children, holding hands, and staring at the rings and each other like a pair of loving idiots.
After that, we joked about how we might not be completely certain. We promised we weren’t joking and made the hand sign we always use to make a promise; the one that means “Do you still love me?” and “Yes! Promise!” 🤙🏽. But we weren’t finished yet: I declared that I was going to attempt to kneel like they do in the movies. So, we reenacted the whole proposal scene on one knee, laughing and quoting lines from Desperate Housewives.
The jokes were just that – jokes. The proposal, however, was not. Our promises are real, our love is unconditional, and we both understand the significance of this symbolic gold ring and the cascade of challenges and adventures it has set in motion.
In terms of rings, we didn’t start here. We started with silver – a pair of silver rings from the beginning of our relationship, when our journey began. We still wear those rings today, so this isn’t silver being traded for gold. Gold is being added on top of the silver. Nothing was replaced. Only added; pushed to the next level.
And then the sky did something
We continued to wander up to the highest dune. In front of us, the view opened up to reveal a lush forest, farmland, and mountains in the distance. Even the faint smudge of construction cranes on the horizon was visible – the city we had ridden out of. The most noticeable thing was that the thunderclouds had moved in. They were huge, dark, and mighty – the full theatrical setup. Yet we were still standing in the last of the evening sun’s light, like two golden boys wearing golden rings, bathing in gold.
And in the colorful prism of a rainbow: on top of the biggest thundercloud, a thin cap of clouds lit up in a full rainbow of colors; pink, green, blue, and gold. Fragile and soft, like a colorful silk scarf someone had draped over the storm. We had never seen anything like it in real life, and this phenomenon appeared just moments after the proposal – the timing was, frankly, showing off.
We saw it at the same instant and said the same five words out loud, in sync, word for word: “bb look! The sky agrees!”
Here’s the thing, though. We’re not religious. We don’t believe in fate, magic, or spirits. I can tell you exactly what it was: an iridescent pileus cloud, a smooth cap that forms when a storm’s updraft quickly pushes the air above it upward, condensing a veil of tiny, identical droplets that split sunlight into colors. Rare. Short-lived. They love hot, humid afternoons with a low sun and a fast-building storm, so the colors aren’t a cute message – they’re pure physics.
The sky did not agree. It was just beautiful in our direction, and we happened to be looking. Again, timing!
If anything, that’s even better. Nobody bent a rule for us. The universe was out there doing its enormous, indifferent thing. For about ninety seconds, it happened to do so gorgeously, right above above the two guys who had just promised each other forever. A coincidence. A powerful one.
The other “giveaway” was hidden inside the beauty – that iridescence occurs only when the updraft is violent and the storm is intensifying quickly. The same system that created the colorful display fell out of the sky onto us at the ferry harbor two hours later.
But that came later. First, we sat for a while longer, eating jackfruit and snacks, playing music, and holding hands. We smiled. We kissed. We did all these little things until the clouds got close enough to pose a real threat, at which point we packed up. The parking spot was empty – every local had gone home – and the sun had disappeared behind the clouds. Darkness fell.
We rode back along the coast, through the city, and back to the ferry. The second we reached it, the sky opened up and unleashed the entire rainy season at once: lightning, thunder, and a tropical downpour. We crossed the bay anyway. By the time we reached the Cần Giờ side again, the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared as if nothing had happened. Then came the long, dark, empty ride back through the now cold mangrove forest and then the other ferry. Finally, we arrived home in Phú Mỹ Hưng around 11 pm.
We took a very long shower (so much sand everywhere; I’ll never be fully free of it), stopped at the same GS25 as in the morning to buy boxes of rice and spaghetti, watched some more episodes of Desperate Housewives, and went to bed.
Happy. Lucky. United. Engaged. All of us – Jayden, Chloe, and me.
Now for the genuinely absurd part
Our symbolic engagement was the opening scene of a silly, bureaucratic main quest line reminiscent of Papers, Please, Kafka’s The Castle, and Permit A38 (if you know, you know).
The constraint that shapes the mechanics of the quest line is that Vietnam does not recognize same-sex marriage. While the 2014 Law on Marriage and Family eliminated the previous strict ban on same-sex marriage, meaning ceremonies aren’t illegal and are publicly conducted by stars and celebrities, the law grants same-sex marriages zero recognition or protection. They are symbolic only. Therefore, whatever we do, we must do it abroad. After far too much research, two main quests remain.
🇩🇰 Quest row A is Denmark. Same-sex marriage has been legal there since 2012, and a single national agency, Familieretshuset, processes foreign couples and issues a multilingual certificate that is automatically recognized by Germany and the rest of the EU. It’s straightforward – at least up to a point. In the past, this method had an “express-lane European wedding” reputation among EU citizens. But for a binational couple where one partner has a Vietnamese passport, the rules have tightened and the general paperwork process is arduous. Plus, Jayden would need a Schengen visa, which can be quite challenging for a Vietnamese citizen to ever obtain. Moments like these teach one to humbly appreciate the unfair privilege of one’s own completely random origins. In short, choosing Denmark specifically is a gamble and comes with a set of challenges.
🇹🇭 Quest row B is Thailand. The plot twist that I didn’t have on my radar: In January 2025, Thailand became the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage – a first positive turning point. The visa issue is also resolved: due to travel agreements among the ASEAN states, a Vietnamese passport holder can stay for up to 30 days without a visa. The flight from Sài Gòn is 90 minutes, so Jayden’s family from the southern countryside of Cà Mau could actually attend – something that was impossible in Copenhagen. However, there’s still a challenge on the Vietnamese side. We need to get single-status paperwork issued by a rural commune office for Jayden, which should be easy, and by the Vietnamese embassy in Bangkok, which could be difficult because those offices basically have no script for it yet. The embassy would need support for something that isn’t allowed in their home country but is allowed in Thailand. As far as I know, there are no well-documented experience reports about this particular scenario yet – we would be writing part of that playbook ourselves.
Which quest row wins? No idea yet. Each option involves trading one type of risk for another. “Wedding planning” looks less like booking a venue and more like a months-long campaign spanning four jurisdictions. It will be its own saga, and I will write about that, too.
What about Vietnam itself? As I mentioned earlier, it won’t recognize us on day one, and we’ve come to terms with that. It’s no big deal to us. And the ground is shifting faster than people abroad realize. 65% of Vietnamese people support same-sex marriage, which is a higher percentage than most people would ever guess (Pew, 2023). There is also a real push for advocacy aimed at the 2025-2030 reform window among politicians. If Vietnam legalizes it within the next ten years, a marriage we register in Denmark or Thailand could quietly become recognized by Vietnam later on without our having to do anything – well, okay, probably some paperwork at least 🌈
No guarantees. But that’s fine, since that’s not why we’re doing this. And saying yes today is also a small bet on a potentially more open tomorrow.
The legal map is patchy, the challenges are real, and the obstacles are formidable. But none of that is what this is about.
He said yes. The sky was beautiful in our direction. Everything else is just nasty paperwork.
Hero image: Photo taken by me and enhanced with google/nano-banana-pro on June 20, 2026, at 3:36 PM.