Vietnamese Rock!!!
I was invited to a Vietnamese Rock concert...knowing that I would be totally clueless of what was going to happen, I invited Naomi to join me... I wasn't going to go through this alone...It was the final concert of (maybe the only rock band in Vietnam) The HURs, and the concert was called the 'Last Saturday' tickets at 50,000dong (sg$5.00)

It was an interesting day as I had to travel through most of Hanoi to find an extra concert ticket...my search finally led me to the Giang Vo exhibition centre where the concert was taking place that same evening... Not speaking any vietnamese, I had managed to tell the security guard that I wanted tickets and he gestured for me to go around the compound....strangely enough I ended up at the stage area of the concert...then I saw a couple of vietnamese and I approached them to find out where I could get tickets... amazingly one of them was the organiser and said to me that he could sell me the ticket on the spot...he then whipped out a ticket from his inner coat jacket and that was the end of my hunt...Cool eh...

So we met My (mi) and her Brother outside the lakeside hotel and walked to the concert and wow...it was totally mad....The streets were jammed with people and motorbikes and I was honestly afraid...

And so it begins
As we were making our way towards the concert area, the jam had already begun...Thousands of people were squeezing, pushing and shoving their way so that they could gain entry into the show. Believe me...it was a potentially dangerous stampeed situation... People were pushing, policemen were barraccading, women were screaming....what a rush....After I managed to get through the gate...it was all peaceful....everyone slowly walked towards the stage and it made me wonder...what was all the pushing about anyways?

So when the music began, we could feel the earth beneath our feet shake..and WOW!!! that was scary! Naomi commented 'isn't concrete not suppose to move' I just shrugged my shoulders...

So after a few minutes of experienceing the 'man-made' earthquake...I was distracted by another sight....an idiot had taken off his jacket and lit it....and the idiot was swinging it round and round and I could see a couple of people being traumatised by it...and believe me so was I.....

Idiocy
Things that made me cringe...

1) People setting fire to their clothes and swinging it overhead
2) People setting fire to newspapers and swinging it overhead
3) People setting fire to tissue paper and swinging it overhead (what's with the fires?)
4) People throwing (filled) bottles of water into the air (which would land on a random person's head)
5) People taking off their clothes and walking about bare bodied dispite the very apparent cold winds.
6) The endless head-bobbing
7) The endless 'air-guitaring'
8) The endless running about and ramming into random people...What the Hell?

Can I borrow your hat?
It's normal for Vietnamese to come up to you to practise their english on you...especially so if youre blond haired blue eyed (or after they find out that you are an english teacher)... Naomi had this guy come up to her to borrow her hat because he wanted to sneak his friend in and later he wanted to know if she had a spare ticket which he could buy off her so that he could get his friend in... Well that was how he started the conversation which led to a 1/2 hour long conversation with her and well he knew pretty much everything about Naomi.....Sehr Interrestant...

The Fan
It was pretty nice to see that everyone was getting into the mood of the entire thing and there was even a guy who had drawn the lead singer's tattoo on his jacket... Speaking of which I have seen many guys who actually use liquid paper and permernant markers to customise their jackets...What the hell?...Still....Toi Yeu Viet Nam