“Lost in Translation“ revisited

It’s almost 21:00, and we’ve just finished eating vegetable-no-meat-for-Buddha’s-sake-1st-lunar-day Pho’ (Rice noodle soup) in the old city. Ly’s new mission in life has become to show me around all the places Vietnamese people usually hang out at, but where no foreigners ever visit. First stop – Vietnamese Karaoke!

Ly (over 1.80m), Phuong (nearly 1.50m) and I headed out to Karaoke Street, full of loud crowded Karaoke places with private singing rooms, to try and find an empty spot. Not a simple task, and we had to wait up for another big group to finish screaming before we could enter. Ly has put massive pressure on me to promise her to try my best to sing in Vietnamese along with them, and I made her promise to try and sing along the unknown western songs. We sat down on this huge comfy sofa across from a big TV and Karaoke machine with gigantic speakers and mikes attached and took a look at this book with endless song names and started making our pick. It turned out that Friend has a very good Vietnamese-standard voice with somewhat of a no-breath-through-the-nose singing they really like at this part of the world and that Ly is absolutely terrible. Trying out my singing talent for the first time, I realized that Ly and me would make the perfect singing duet couple, not being able to sing a single note in tone. I’ve had my fun, making them sing Madonna’s “Like a virgin” (:P) and picking up famous nostalgic songs I actually knew most of the word for without looking at the TV (Scorpions, Roxette, Beatles, Stevie Wonder). My singing attempts in Vietnamese were not very successful, but I’ve made up for that with some whistling after catching the chorus’ tone. Some Bia Da (ice beer), Co-ke & unrecognizable snacks have made the whole experience complete. We spent over 2 hours singing our throats dead and laughing our hearts out. I’m going back… soon!