Heartache for sale at ex-lovers market
HANOI — At Vietnam’s Old Flames market, curious customers peruse love letters and pick through perfumes, candles and clothes — relics from failed relationships put on sale by forlorn lovers.
Entrepreneurial exes meet once a month, bringing their baggage — emotional and literal — to a converted cottage on a leafy Hanoi street to find a new home for items they can no longer bear to look at.
It’s also a means of moving on.
“(After a breakup) I’m very sad, I can’t drink or eat, ... but after a while I pick myself up. The past is in the past,” said Phuc Thuy, 29, who was selling clothes, purses and even a tube of toothpaste she acquired during a former romance.
The market has steadily grown since it opened in February, especially among Vietnam’s social-media obsessed youth, unabashed about sharing intimate details of their everyday lives.
“Young people are more open-minded and they want to share deeply and widely to overcome pain, without suffering alone,” said founder Dinh Thang, as a visitor strummed love songs on a guitar nearby.
He started the market after a few bitter breakups left him with unwanted parapherna- lia from a now extinguished passion.
For those who haven’t quite reached Thang’s stage of emotional post-breakup enlightenment, he’s set up a message board to pen notes to exes.
“To all my ex-lovers, I’m sorry because I feel like we never really knew each other,” read one remorse-tinged message. Another was more succinct: “I’M FINE!!!”
Social attitudes have changed as the country has become increasingly globalized and as its vast young population — more than 50 percent of the country is under age 30 — embrace Western dating norms.
That includes internet dating.
“Many young people meet online, date online and break up online,” said Bui Manh Tien, Youth Program Officer at United Nations Population Fund in Vietnam.
Today, men and women are waiting longer to get married and divorce rates are also ticking up, according to official figures.
“We don’t want to give up our freedom too early and get tied to family responsibility when we’re young, we want to enjoy life before getting married,” said Tien, 25.