Flamencing Vietnam

The rhythm. The ambience. And the audience at Carmen.

Different breed. Different beat.

The Vietnamese singer tried hard at rolling her Latin “R”‘s, just like her predecessors at the French “un”, or the English “you”.

Vietnam, and Saigon in particular, has  always been a mix of culture: Cuban band on Caravelle terrace or Carmen Club nearby.

Not far away, you’ll find the Japanese and Korean alley.

All these venues accommodate a variety of taste and eccentricities.

A few million visitors, and 87 million residents. Even just the top 1 percent need a night out is a crowd.  A business man tried his hand at opening a club in California, thinking their expat counterparts can use some home-grown entertainment. He took a loss and closed it down after a year.

So, Hotel California did not play “I will Survive”.

Ironically, the pool of Viet Kieu would rather spend their entertainment dollars here, thinking it would stretch more. Typical tourist’s loosed purse.

Carmen, with Spanish decor and motif e.g. catacomb and medieval. Very pre-internet with candle and dark menu.

Servers’ outfit has some red on, female ones with flowers on their hair.

Flamenco, or ” I will Survive” in Spanish, all night long.

It strikes me as odd. In Orange County, where Little Saigon was right next door to Santa Ana (one is predominantly Vietnamese, the other Hispanic) you wouldn’t see a Vietnamese in a Hispanic bar. But here, in Vietnam, you  find even on a slow night, Korean and Vietnamese tourists enjoy Spanish exotic flavor, flamencing the night.

Passion evoked by the foreign element of it all.

In Santa Ana, it gets to be too familiar (scarcity principle).

Here, just pass the entrance, you enter a pre-medieval space. And it’s a neutral territory, since there has never been a Spanish War with Vietnam.

So, feeling safe, I joined in. clapping, but not dancing. Only those Korean expat women were brave enough to do so. Must have cost them a  ton of vodka and tonic . When the music stopped in between sets, they left. Probably went bar hopping. French maybe?

They can “tutoyer” over there then. Vietnam can handle that too,  C’est la meme chose.