JEMALUANG, Johor - With the rise of female self-consciousness, more and more rural women have flocked into big cities for better developments and this has caused many bachelors there fail to get their life partners.

Jemaluang in Johor has been facing this problem as well and as a result, the market for Vietnamese brides has become increasingly popular there.

Within the last couple of years, more than twenty Vietnamese brides have been married to Jemaluang men.

Blind date marriage

23-year-old Vietnamese bride Ami has been living in Jemaluang for more than two years and has adapted well to the customs of the village as she dislikes the busy lifestyle in cities.

Ami and her husband have an 11-month-old daughter and she is satisfied with her life her as her husband's family has treated her very well.

After her marriage, Ami started learning Mandarin and Cantonese from her husband within the first three months.

She does her chores and takes good care of her child every day, and whenever she has some free time, she will meet her friends from Vietnam and cook some authentic Vietnamese dishes as a way to relieve her homesickness.

Ami will be visiting her family in Vietnam together with her daughter soon. Ami married her husband through blind date but is grateful that she has a husband who treats her well.

She said being respectful and understanding of the local culture was the key to a harmonious family life.

A security officer at SJK(C) Jemaluang, her 52-year-old husband Li Zhi Rong said he married 37-year-old Vietnamese lady Duan Si Xian from Ho Chi Minh City two year ago and the couple now has a one-year-old daughter.

Li admitted that he was influenced by friends who had married Vietnamese ladies.

Li worked in Penang and Kuala Lumpur when he was young. After he made up his mind to return home and get married, he found it was difficult to get a suitable woman to form a family with due to his age. So he married his Vietnamese wife after they met each other in a blind date and dated each other for only two months.

In Jemaluang, bachelors over the age of 40 normally have missed the golden opportunity to get married because many of them might have spent most of their time working in the oil palm plantations or other agricultural industries.