Jazz in Hanoi
Tonight calls for a big night out. No reason, just because I have been so practiclal up to now. Freshly showered and totally dressed up, I was ready for a night out on the town.
Okay, let me stop to re-define "dressed up". As many of you know who inquired before I left, my streamlined bag of a mere 22 inches long allows me to palck only a select few items. So dressing up meant wearing 1 of the 3 pants/1 skirt I brought, my impractcle sandles (not the sturdy walking sandals tucked in my bag), 1 of the 3 long sleeve shirts I brought (I selected the sheer long flowing white one as the most drssy winning out over the t-shirt or plain button down), and the new quite sexy and scrunchable camisole top that was a giftie given to me before my trip.
As a side note, for those of you interested in my packing, in addition to th things mentioneda above, I packed:
running shoes
3 pr socks
bathing suite and sarong
toiletries (shampoo, brush, toothbrush and paste, soap, sunscreen)
medicines and first aid bare minimums
baseball hat and multiple hair ties
2 cameras w/ extra batteries
travel clock
guide book, novel and journal
5 panties (thank you to Robyn and Amy for making me take extra)
4 t-shirts
3 tank tops
2 bras
...and a partridge in a pear tree
So back to going out in Hanoi....
There's just 1 jazz club in town. The 5 piece house band had a single sax player and also a female singer who joined for a song or 2. Let's just say that while I appreciated their rendition of some classics, I've never heard a sax solo quite like that. It made me cheer to get the vocal stylings of Ling Mai back on the stage. It was fun though to apreciate the complicated differences between jazz and the traditional Vietnamese music I heard at the water puppet theater ealier in the day. If nothing else, it was moment to help me remember thast I am sitting in a little night club, on the other side of the world. And at that moment, I nodded my head to the rhythm of that funky little jazz tune, in th middle of a city in Vietnam.