No wedding, just more waiting

I've been told this happens to the Vietnamese as well as foreigners. Officials demand paperwork in triplicate, then demand a copy of the same paperwork a few weeks later. Then they want the original. There are countless "emergencies", where the officials who demanded the paperwork are not available, so a trip to the courthouse to deliver another copy of some requested document becomes a waste of time. To make a ridiculously long story short, Phuong and I were not married on Thursday, March 10, as we expected and as the court scheduled. Some "boss" had to leave town for an "emergency" so the court wouldn't give us our marriage license. We were told to try again next week. This whole process has lasted 16 months and we're still not married. I don't understand how this benefits anyone. But, of course, I don't understand.  I've also been told that the Vietnamese have a saying: Waiting is happiness. I can certainly understand how that saying came about.
Phuong and I will happily wait until next week, call the courthouse first, then hopefully get the marriage license that Phuong has already seen. I don't want to make trouble. I don't want to challenge authority. I just want to marry the woman I love. Is that so wrong?
I did tell Phuong that since we're not married yet, I can go out and make whoopie for a few more days. She says my picture has been sent to all the massage parlors and "coffee shops" in Bien Hoa with orders not to do business with the White Monkey. My options are limited. I'll have to go to Ho Chi Minh City.
Oh, when we went to the courthouse to try to get married, I rode my motorbike into the parking lot after Phuong got off. I guess there's a sign in Vietnamese that says turn off your bike and walk it to a parking space. I don't read Vietnamese so I broke the rules. Some woman took offense -- I'm not sure why -- and got in Phuong's face about it. "Why did you let that foreigner ride his bike. Where are you from? Can you read?" And she was really nasty about it, as you can tell from her intelligent line of questioning. She was jabbering Vietnamese so I didn't understand what was going on. Good thing. I would have given that woman something to read between my index and ring fingers, and I would have told her -- in a language even that moron could have understood -- where she came from and where she could go. Not that any of that would have mattered. As Phuong says, People are people. And Phuong was so nice, even to that dill weed.
Some of my kids' classes can get rambunctious, and in keeping with my week, I had a few beauties. But that's just shop talk. I'm sure students take their shirts off in classes everywhere, and put their bare, dirty, smelly feet up on their desks, and kick and throw punches at teachers. But I have halted the "What the f$#@?"... even the White Monkey has his limits. Actually, my students are very cool and a couple even get my jokes. Teaching here is OK. A lot more enjoyable than trying to get married.