Tag: Vietnamese

Brunch w/ a bunch (of jamers)

It’s my first time at  Van’s Cafe, 46 Pham Ngoc Thach, District 1 Saigon on Sunday morning. And I found myself walking into the door with 2 musicians I know: Mr Hai, on base guitar, and Quoc Dat (blind but extremely gifted jazz pianist, and a student of my now deceased friend.).

Before I knew it, people with guitars, chains in their jeans, rings in their ears, started to fill the room.

It’s a very rare place, if not, the only place where everybody knows your name (Saigon version of Cheers) . But you have to shout over their perfectly set acoustic.

Two sweetest Singaporeans, twice my size, recommended “banh mi bo kho”on the menu (that was before the owner, Khac Trieu, also multi-talented: drummer, vocalist, guitarist, clarinetist and keyboardist, ordered beef wasabi, Van’s Cafe new item).

The lead vocalist is named Rex, from the Philippines. He sings in English, Korean and Vietnamese (or trying).

My fear of  being new at Sunday jamming was dissipated, when Quoc Dat, with my help to get to the piano, started his jazz numbers.

World-renown photographer showed up, with Vietnamese wife and his daughter (who I had eye contact with to help me jump-start my Beatles‘ Imagine number). Other expats followed suit.

You can never guess what would happen at Sunday Jamming, or at night on the 2nd floor with scheduled Rockers, French singers (BTW, Christophe is in town here in Saigon this weekend), DJ at half time and open-mike jammers at midnight.

That’s when I met our regular clubbers-turned-friends like Willie and Warren, Danny and Bill.

And of all people, my friend from childhood also showed up. Apparently all roads lead to Rome for music lovers.

So come, for the food and the fun, the music and musicians. You won’t be disappointed as I have found out.

But don’t come too early. Live music starts at 9:30PM 7 nights a week. With Sunday morning, we can call it 8 days a week at Van’s Cafe here in HCMC. See you one of these beautiful sundays or, if you want to dance too, then after 9:30PM 7 days a week.

“You may say that I am a dreamer. But I am not the only one. We hope someday you’ll join us…..”

Strange shores

I reward myself with strong coffee after my morning exercise.

It had been a month before I found out that Cam Ly, a Vietnamese famous singer – with her signature song “Bo Ben La’ (strange shores) live in the house next to the alley where I had my coffee.

Strange shores, strange circumstances.

When in the US, I listened to that song, thinking about being a stranger selling sea shells at a  strange shore (tongue twister).  Now, sitting here, next to her house, stirs strange sensation.

Ironic! Fateful!

The Vietnamese diaspora has come to terms with itself.

It’s been almost 38 years to date.

More than enough to heal old wounds, start new life and families, or reinvent one’s self.

Some even had new names: Tommy (not Hilfiger), Cindy etc..

But strange names might not guarantee same results.

The women seem to adjust better in foreign environment (manicuring trade).

Male expats (immigrants in this case) have receded to the far corner of vices (gambling, alcohol and homelessness – including many GI‘s).

The hyphen generation (Vietnamese-American) have fared better: doctors, dentists and designers.

But the third generation will ask questions: why do I look the way I do (slanted eyes, but white inside. Banana generation).

They will Google the Vietnam War, google The Last Day of Saigon etc…

They will search and research.

What legacy? what is there to be proud of?

Stranded on strange shores, what are their heritage? When they visit Vietnam, it will be strange shore to them.

Meanwhile, a new generation of Vietnamese students here are preparing to study abroad. I saw their eagerness to learn “when do we have that tutoring session you mentioned the other day?”.

I like it.

Learn, baby learn.

You will need to log in 10,000 hours to master a new skill set.

English has 2 million vocab and counting.

Co-location and forms vs functions will exponentially increase that pool.

Learn baby learn.

Then share it with others.

Be the Master.

Be the Master of your universe.

Be back from strange shores and share the spoil.

Bo Ben La, Bo Ben La.

I miss that song already, even when the singer is living right next door.

Maybe I can make off with a  ticket to hear her at live concert. Let me see if my diplomatic skill still works here after living in strange shores for so long. ” Hi, I am your fan who has traveled really far to hear you. Can you sign here…woops, I don’t have a ticket to the show for you  to autograph”.

Keep dreaming. Bo Ben La..

Adventure in my homeland

One of my earliest  collections was the Adventure of Tin-Tin.

It was a roadmap for my adventure later in life, which took me to ten countries and roughly fifty cities in North America. But nothing had prepared me for an adventure in my homeland. Certain familiar elements still exist: Chemin de Fer, Ben Thanh Market and the noodle stand in my old neighborhood. But new elements have emerged as well: I-Pho T-shirts, I-Center and Steve Jobs biography in Vietnamese.

At rush hour, thousands of helmets compete for pavement and sidewalk. Call it “Helmet Nation”. But at night, when the heat subsides, tables and chairs sprout up on the very sidewalks commuters had just fought for the right of way earlier.

People are getting married (young demographic), are into fashion and style and going to school at ALL hours of the day ALL WEEK LONG.

I heard that Koreans work  the longest hours (55) and the French shortest (35).

Maybe Vietnam should be ranked at the top for classroom hours vs free time.

(This study load perhaps did not scare off the only Korean student enrolled in Vietnam University to study MBA out of a few thousand foreign students in Vietnam, most taking Vietnamese lessons).

During my “re-entry” I could pass as a “pure” native, until  my slightly red-hue hair gave me away

“Good morning Sir, would you like to see the menu?” one vendor approached me at Ben Thanh Market.

And before I knew it, I purchased a Steve Jobs biography by TIME’s former Editor (in Vietnamese, by Alpha Book) instead.

After all, Steve was born Syrian. And his idea of “think different” would fit here where “Sorrows of War” copies are sold along with I-Pho T-shrits.

On my way home, I stopped by the I-Center in District 3 to see how closely this “reseller” reflects Steve’s original and obsessive control of  every Retail  detail (inadvertently, I acted as an unsolicited mystery shopper).

The rep asked “what would you like to buy”?

In the States, his counterparts would have left me alone to play with the I-products, until I became so engaged and enthralled that I wouldn’t need to be asked (puppy-dog sales).

The strangest feeling was to walk out of Mission Impossible (which took the audience to the Kremlin, Dubai and Mumbai) and emerged into the sunlight of my old neighborhood in District 3. For a moment, life seemed to be  a continuous loop, from Adventure of Tin Tin, to Tom Cruise, to Tommy (me), as one  writer put it, ” return to the same place, and see it for the first time”.

I finally understood the expression “the eyes of one’s heart”. Perhaps we will reach the Empathic Civilization sooner than thought: understand others and be understood. Full circle. Adventure that started at my doorstep ended there as you may have guessed. Ecole L’Aurore. District 3.

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.