-^-for posterity-^-

vietnam made it past the qualifying rounds of football. this was the semi-finals. tonight they played malaysia for the rights to play on the championship game. would they be playing thailand for the most holy of seagames prizes? would they win or would they have to settle for playing myanmar for the humiliating bronze metal.

i watched the game with some of my friends from basketball. we sat in a room the size of my living room at home. well, maybe it was a bit bigger, but not much. i counted and there were 63 people in the coffee shop. everyone was seated on small chairs behind hilariously small tables. we were all facing the same direction. we were looking at a television that couldn’t have been more than a foot high. it was mounted high on the wall.

everyone was wearing their vietnamese finest. we all had shirts on. i was wearing a vietnamese football jersey that i bought in ho chi minh city. it has the number 10 on the back. that’s important for later in the story. most of the girls had stickers on their faces. they were all red flags with a large yellow star in the middle. the boys all had bandanas on their foreheads that said a number of things. “vietnam is invincible” “vietnam victory” and “vietnam is resolved to win” someone gave me a bandana that said “vietnam is resolved to win”. i wore it.

the game started and vietnam came out with passion and energy. they slid and tackled. they jumped and sprinted. they used every bit of their energy to achieve the victory.

at one end of the stadium there was a large sign that said ‘vietnam 3 – 1 malaysia’. it wasn’t an amateur sign. it wasn’t made out of cardboard and there were no markers involved. this sign was at least 50 feet across and 10 feet high. i thought it incredibly audacious. who on earth would commission a sign that predicted the score of an international sporting event? also, there were a number of huge, professional signs that said ‘vietnam is invincible’. everyone believed it.

the first goal was scored by vietnam. all the coffee shops across the nation rose to their feet and screamed. everyone started beating on things. at first, people hit ash trays. then, they started to bang plates. then, someone brought out a whole lot of pots and pans and handed them around. someone had raided their mother’s kitchen. then, all the waiters somehow made some sort of whistling humming thing a ma gigger that made quite a lot of noise. they banged and crashed all night long.

vietnam was rolling to victory and no one had a care in the world.

at half time we watched ricky martin sing and shake.

the second half began and everyone believed the signs; vietnam was invincible. there was nothing malaysia could do to score. malaysia (yellow) would charge down the field and vietnam (red) would casually pass the ball back up field. it was as if the field was tilted in vietnam’s favor. everything they did was roses. it was all wonderful.

vietnam scored again. pandemonium. we would have hugged each other but, with that many people in such a small space, we could all barely stand up.

the game dragged on. each team had a few opportunities but nothing came of them. i started looking at my watch waiting for the final whistle. it seemed all the signs were telling the truth. all the signs except the 3 – 1 sign.

then the unthinkable happened. the malaysian goalie punted the ball. it was raining in hanoi and the ball tends to skip a bit when the pitch is wet. the goalie punted the ball hard and far. it seemed to carry and carry and carry. it flew all the way to the other team’s 18 yard line. there, it landed. it landed in a group of players (yellow and red, but the red was, up to this point, invincible). the ball skipped and lollygagged over the goalie’s head.

the last time i saw something like that was when i was in middle school. i went to a school called penn view christian school. we had a football team (then called soccer). i was a member of the team, but a member that did most of his participating from the right side of the bench. we had a goalie named eric kratz. he had a crew cut and was tall and thick. i remember one game in particular when he did the same thing (on a much shorter pitch (then called field)) to the opposing team’s goalie. agh, the memories.

no one said a word.

it turns out that, yes, a goal could be scored. our communal hopes were shattered. however, no matter. we were still winning and there was only 20 minutes left.

vietnam scored again. it was a beautiful goal scored by the player who was wearing number 10. everyone started pointing to me because i was wearing a vietnamese jersey with the number ten. everyone started calling me van quyen. that was my name tonight. so, the signs did not lie. it turns out that yes, vietnam was invincible and yes, the audacious sign that still limply hung from the side of the stadium was correct. vietnam would win 3 – 1. i would never doubt a sign again. there was only 5 minutes that remained and this sign led euphoria would continue. or so i thought.

with two minutes to go, malaysia scored again. it was a terrible goal. you see, there was a corner kick and it went through the legs of one, two, three people. yes, three people. the fourth person kicked it in. ok, the ground is a bit wet but under no circumstance should a ball go through one, two, three people’s legs on the way to a goal. just as under no circumstance should a ball bounce over the head of the opposing goalie after a eric kratz style kick.

so, it was only 3 – 2. at least i didn’t have to put much more faith in signs. i sat back and waited for the last few minutes to tick away.

malaysia scored again.

the coffee shop was silent. it was as if we all died in our seats, a gas leak or something. it was a bad dream that we would all wake up from and find ourselves shaking our heads and grinning. we would thank ourselves that it wasn’t reality.

could life go on? what if it was a tie and we went into extra time and lost? or lost in penalty kicks? what if we only won the bronze? what would the value of life be?

the vietnamese team was not about to find out. in the remaining injury time, we scored again. the unthinkable happened: three goals in three minutes. we rose to our feet and screamed. the banging and clanging continued but it was no matter. vietnam had won and one sign was right: ‘vietnam is invincible’.

we left on motorbikes and thus starts the second part of my story. what do you do after you have moved on to the finals in the seagames? you parade around town on your motorbikes. we drove, rather crawled, through the streets. the police had cornered off a track around town that we could all drive on. motorcycles and bicycles were driving 8-10 abreast on the streets. people were waving flags and shouting. people were screaming and singing. people were yelling “vietnam is invincible” “vietnam victory” and “ho chi minh forever”. i was the only foreigner in the whole lot and i got a lot of stares. my friends did a wonderful job averting the confusion associated with me participating in a vietnamese flag waving nationalistic event by showing everyone my jersey and telling them that my name was van quyen. i liked that. we yelled and honked and ambled through the streets. we were stuck in a hot, dusty whirlwind of vietnamese passion. i have never seen so many people in one place all celebrating the same thing. they were all driven by pure ecstasy. they were motivated by nationalism and pride. their country, their people had been wonderfully victorious.

they were a sea of traffic. it was a giant circle that stretched from the bridge to the church to the statue of uncle ton to the lake back to the bridge. it went on forever. we went around the loop once and took a break. we sat back and watched thousands upon thousands of people slowly drive past. it was electricity.

i tried to drive along side my friends slowly and watch. i watched the passion and the fervor. i have never seen anything like it in my life. my insides were pure adrenalin. i had played the game. i lived vicariously through their experience of living vicariously through the lives of 11 humans they had never met playing a strange game in a city thousands of kilometers away against a country they have never seen or have ever cared about.