Tag: Beer

Celebrating Love in Saigon

Consumer confidence is up. Spending is up. Cards, chocolate and crocodile (over beer).

I thought it must be Christmas or Tet all over again.

Hunting down a ticket for A House in the Alley took me to two theaters, with the only available seats at 11:20PM.

Way pass my bedtime.

Oh well, I tried.

Supporting Vietnamese arts has its price.

From comments I overheard – on the elevator down- the audience covered their eyes, hence missing out on what they had originally come for.

Vietnamese cover their mouths when laughing, and their eyes when scared.

Live a little.

In English classes, I encouraged folks to over pronounce their consonants,  to compensate for cultural conformity and held-backs.

The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo won’t be shown here due to some skin scenes.

What is suppressed in one area will find release in another.

It’s stressful to live in a collective culture: “why don’t you find your other half?”….

Glad strangers care.

Just don’t walk by like they did in China when a kid got run over twice in public.

Back to love in the Alley.

From the look of it, Dan and his crew probably have scored.

What’s more important is they packaged horror genre with date nights.

Keep it coming.

I know tomorrow night, the theater will be back to its norm: full of empty seats.

But love goes on, and finds its outlet in sidewalk cafes, river-front beer stalls and karaoke halls.

In restless dream I walk alone…

But the idea of love will forever endure.

Or else, 80% of music and movies will go to waste. And humanity will see its sorriest day.

I will celebrate, with one more hour left of my Valentine in Vietnam.

Wash away

Rain pours so hard here in Saigon. It feels like a city wash. Yet bike traffic never ceases.

Wet city streets didn’t stop weekend spontaneous racing.

Hard-earned money got washed away just as quickly as it is earned, mostly at beer stalls. People press RESET and go on. It’s not too different elsewhere.

Just differs in intensity and speed. Beer consumption is now ranked in the top 3 countries.

BBC News ranked Vietnam as number 7 most-risked nation in internet security.

In life, I also noticed an army of private security at every establishment.

It is not unusual to walk into a night club, just to find yourself surrounded by people: server, waitress, security and manager.

This spontaneous entourage would empty your wallet as quickly as a New York minute.

Meanwhile, everyone else is asleep, occasionally disrupted by the sound of street racing.

And when it rains again the next day, everything seems to take second place to the one and only priority: stay dry and stay alive (with bikers in front and next to you splashing water into your face). Pedestrian lights are now installed, with visible count-down to allow enough time for an amputated man to crawl across the street.

I admire his drive to survive here. And to everyone, it seems like a daily walk in Central Park.

I too press RESET a lot while here. A splash in the States will only be a free windshield wash. But everyone here seems to take nature’s disruption in stride. I have seen bikers talking on the phone, smoking while zig zagging through an alley. Or in the back seat, not just a lady with a cone hat. But the lady with a cone hat and her two baskets of donuts, balancing on her shoulders with a cane. Anything and everything is transported on wheels . Rain or tears couldn’t stop people in motion. Storm only serves as city-wash. It will take a few more decades to clear away the legacy of war, making way for peace and true prosperity. By the time you finish reading this, our amputated man has already crossed the street on his hands, asking you to buy a lottery ticket. He has already emerged a winner in my book.

 

This Bud’s for Saigonese

The Bud‘s Bus is here. Clumsily made its turn around tight street corners, where beer drinkers sat on baby-size stools, surrounding a hot-pot or sea food grill.

I saw the Budweiser chariot and horses at the  Super Bowl in Miami.

And now, the brand appears here on the opposite side of the world.

Still, someone in International Marketing needs to take context into their planning.

Can’t go around the tight streets of Saigon with a moving billboard which can’t turn the corner.

Things have to be nimble and the look has to “fit”, like KFC on-wheels (scooters).

Now, that takes experience (KFC happened to buy all the Chicken Town outlets for instant dominance).

I must admit, the Bud girls tried hard. They helped out the servers at their assigned restaurants, on par with Hennessy PR girls, who dressed up as if the were beauty contestants.

Bud is playing catch up, before another Japanese brand, locally brewed, begins to make its entrance.

It’ s hot here. And beers have become the liquid of choice. Either that, or you get ENSURE as hospital-visit gifts.

Vietnamese male don’t like to go anywhere near milk, except when it’s mixed in their iced coffee milk.

I notice two beverages that dominate here, and have been for a while: iced coffee milk and Heineken.

One to put you to sleep and the other to wake you up.

And the cycle has never ended, at least for the past decade or even longer. The spirits business promises higher margin than food, which in the Vietnamese slang, “moi”, i.e. appertizers add-ons, translated into higher bill, which requires drinkers to work harder, thus, more stress to be released….)

It’s the loop, very much like the loop in the States, except in the States,

people live to work  (to pay for their expenses, largely bank-own housing.) Here, at least in the South, people work to live, as observed by one Vietnamese now lives overseas. Knowing this, Budweiser should

take a page from KFC play book: beer on wheels, and not huge trucks that can barely negotiate the turn.