The weather did turn in my favor, and I got an excellent snorkel in that afternoon. Similar vibe to paragraph below.
CEBU CITY, 1/22
And the next morning, too...I hopped in the boat with the divers, and we went just up the shore from Panagsama Beach to where the reef drops off to infinity or so it appears. The reef itself is under only a few feet of water, and you spend your time about 100 feet from shore. The boat dropped the divers, and then moved to the pick up point, maybe 100 yards further away. I was the only snorkeler so I was on my own. It was magical, the diversity and activity of the reef was mind boggling. The best spot was to hang out over the drop off, and look down the underwater cliff. I saw grey and yellow puffer fish, bright goldenrod boxfish, Moorish idols, parrotfish, many of them quite large, and all the stripey, spotty, colorful things you can imagine. As the corals breathed out, the fish would teem to feed, and often leave the reef to chase tasty bits, so I would find myself in a cloud of butterfly-hued small fish. Some fish congregate in dense, writhing clumps. There are also tiny creatures, who bear some resemblance to sea horses, but straightened out, who lay on the coral heads, sometimes two would appear to be snuggling. There were crown-of-thorns starfish, and more agile black brittle stars. Coral that glowed ultraviolet from within, coral that was vibrantly alive, and coral that that spread out like a huge birdbath covered in tiny antlers. A sea turtle would drift by now and then. I spent most of my time drifting over the reef looking down but when I looked ahead just under the surface of the water there were tiny sardines, and goofy looking trumpet fish. I saw something big off the cliff, roughly the dimensions of a sunfish, but not quite that big--but tall and skinny like that. No sharks, no real jellyfish. There are poisonous fish in the area, such as lionfish, but I never saw them. Sea snakes, too, but I never saw them. Sharks...but never saw them. The area is renowned for occasional whale shark sightings, that’s kind of the holy grail for divers coming to the area, but none were spotted (well, they are *all* spotted) while I was in Panagsama. Other highlights were tiny little fish that were as thin as leaves, that hovered upright together down by the coral like a kind of seaweed, but with black and orange stripes. And on the cliff face, bright yellow feather dusters, and balls of swarming sardine-like fish.
I’m a good swimmer, and had a good feel for how long the dives were lasting, so I was meeting up with the boat no problem. I had time for one afternoon snorkel, and the boat was heading to Pescador Island, where I had my first snorkel that week, which was pleasant and mellow. The weather in the afternoon wasn’t awesome, but I figured I’d have one more swim in. Like last time, the boat dropped me and the divers, and the plan was for me to swim around the island and meet the boat on the otherside. I jumped in and went off, again, I was the only snorkeler. Huge shoals of silver fish congregated, and the trumpet fish here were bigger and hungrier. The other fish, too--parrotfish and other large reef fish were even bigger, about the one foot variety. The boat was gone. I was all alone. But we were on the side of the island facing Cebu, and it was not the same big slab of reef, but a smaller skirt and then the rather intimidating drop off to open water. And the wind suddenly came up, and the sun was gone in the clouds, and then the waves were *really* rough. Was the boat 100 feet around the bend, or 100 yards? A free rock stuck out from the island, and no reef past it. And the waves increased in frequency, and suddenly, it was strange out there...and not good strange. Waves were making the snorkel useless, and swimming difficult. There was no way I was going to swim around that rock, the wind was blowing in and the waves were starting to crash with spray. Uh oh. All alone. Strong waves, and the island itself was a column of rock, no shore to swim to. Swim the other way? Nope. But, also, while I was trying to figure out what to do, I was also taking water in my mouth on occasion...this was really starting to get scary. I knew there was only one thing to do: get out. But the island is a cliff, with big waves smashing it...how? Miraculously, on this uninhabited rock, there was concrete staircase up the side of one cliff, a few stone carved steps below it. They were about 3 feet out of the water tho. I hoped there would be footholds and that they wouldn’t be slippery. I had to time my arrival between waves and then approach. I grabbed, there were some places to get a grip, and despite the pull of incoming and recding waves, I hauled myself up (no flippers, so my feet were free, thank the lord). The rocks were more pointy than slick, which was fine by me. I made it to the steps and went up to the top of the island. Phew. Contemplating the very real fact I could have drowned if I had been less of a swimmer, I set my mind on alerting the boat to my presence, which proved impossible--the surface of the rock was sharp volcanic stone, with impenetrable brush growing on it--I would have to fight and hack my way to any point on the circle, and no way of knowing *where* on the circle the boat was. So, I figured they would come looking for me after the divers came in and I didn’t. I was prob. 20 minutes, but it was a looong 20. But, I did what any sensible person would do: I enjoyed the view. I could observe Cebu and Negros, and the sun had come out a bit (still windy and wavy tho). Debris floated in to the island--leaves and the odd coconut. Fish would come up to investigate. And, then, a farily big turtle emerged and poked its head out of the water, and stuck around for a bit. Eventually the boat came around, and I went back down the steps, and had to again time my entry into the water between big waves. I dove forward with the mask around my neck, and had to actually swim around that damn rock to where the boat had grabbed one of the floating permanent moorings, a plastic tub attached to big underwater ropes. That swim of 50 feet or so was really difficult, and again I am a really good, strong swimmer. I had made the right decision to get out. I had some cuts on my feet, legs and elbow from the sharp rocks, but I was alive. It changes your day.
At 4.30 my car came to take me to Cebu. I paid my hotel bill, my whole week there had cost me a couple hundred bucks--hotel, meals, snorkeling, and the 2.5-hour drive each way from/to Cebu City--all told. Amazing. The car headed out of the village, and I spent the drive alternating between surreal dozing, further contemplation between the thin line between life and death, and observing the dense thicket of human activity that lined the road--steel plants, crowded churches full of singing, drum-beating church processions, markets and eateries, many just shacks, of all sizes. Goats, scrawny dogs. Big deluxe houses and thatch huts. We got into the city, past its industrial harbor old downtown, which seems to be largely crumbling, but looks of decrepitude can be deceiving here...just because something looks like an abandoned, nearly toppling shell doesn’t mean its not still an active enterprise. We started to head up the hill, past big modern hotels and gleaming malls, each inch of progress made in sheer willful defiance of the abject gridlock that had the city in lockdown mode on Friday night. My driver finally gave up his assault on the hill, and pulled into the parking lot of some gleaming tower to take a leak, recalibrate his approach, and like 2 minutes later (this is after fighting up the hill for 40 minutes on our first attempt) we were at the venue. If it was that easy....
The Outpost has a kind of Hollywood Hills bungalow vibe, nestled into a tranquil nook up above the fracas that is central Cebu City. There’s a main cottage that’s fully indoors, with a small stage, tables, a bar and restaurant kitchen (plus a little conference room for backstage) and then outside there are a couple different levels of patio, mostly covered, and integrated into the surrounding trees. Quite cozy, a little bit of a treehouse vibe. I was soon greeted by Sandy, the owner, a young and energetic guy, we’d been in touch setting up the show for some time. And, soon arrived Chicoy, the 40-something uncle of my Manila promoter, Joff. Joff was introduced to me by Mohd, my labelmate from Malaysia, and Joff in turn introduced me to Sandy in Cebu City, my promoters in Vietnam, and his uncle Chicoy, who offered me his home for the night. Chicoy is a painter, and he lives in a big house outside the city with his wife, a teacher who used to sing in a rock band, his teenage daughter and his twenty-something son. The whole family plays a little music, sometimes together...more on this later.
So, I had some food from the kitchen and then set up and soundcheckedd. Chicoy had brought his son’s Ibanez electric, modeled on the Jackson shape that you’ve seen in many a hair metal video. It didn’t stay in tune very well, and I asked about the beautiful ’59 ES-135 hanging on the wall. “Oh, that doesn’t have all the strings, uh....” etc etc. Not a complete no, but I would need to work that small window of opportunity. “I have some strings....” and so I put on the top three strings, and soon the guitar’s owner, a local musician and partner in the venue came in and gave his blessing. It had no front strap pin but my sound engineer worked out some plastic twine and we were in business. Played thru a small Orange amp, it sounded beautiful and looked really cool. My piano sounded good too. People started to trickle in for the show. It didn’t take many of them to fill up the available tables. But there was some music coming in from the outside...
the Children’s Joy Foundation was jamming out on the patio. CJF is an organization that takes orphaned and abandoned kids off the streets and helps them get cleaned up, educated and productive. Sometimes the kids go out with a supervisor and play music--an adult on guitar, and the kids sing, play guitar, banduria, a kind of mandolin with a banjo body,and percussion. Two little girls danced. They played sweet old-timey music, local and otherwise. They wrapped it up, passed the hat, and then I went inside and did my show. A collection of local musicians, a handful of curious expats from various non-Asian countries, regulars who had no idea what the program was for the evening, and a large table at which Chicoy’s family and friends were seated, had filled up the small room--we’re talking 40 people here, but it was full. Occasional stragglers would amble in, and more often as not, amble out, feeling too self-conscious to be the only one standing in a room full of people seated at tables. There was a trio of 60-something couples having a bottle of chilled wine; there were some nervous and giggly kids who had to have been about 20, and Chicoy’s daughter (named Chicay) and her teenage friends. Quite a diverse crowd. The place was pretty noisy, and the fact is that the door to the outside was immediately to my right, so, servers carrying plates from the kitchen (completed orders announced with a bell), as well as new arrivals coming in, all had to travel on the path between the stage and the audience. So, my ability to walk into the crowd and sing unaccompanied was hampered by the layout--there was no space really to wander in between tables, and I was quite nervous about my cables being something for a server to trip over. So, generally, I stayed back at the mic. Now, I would describe the reaction to what I was doing as mostly polite, curious, etc. I was thinking that something was off, like, was there a bird perched on my head I didn’t know about? I played my songs, and wasn’t really feeling like the ultimate connection had been made. Finally, an audience member timidly requested a Posies song, and the first notes of Solar Sister caused the room to go nuts. Basically, people had been waiting 17 years to hear the Posies live in Cebu City, and my unreleased solo stuff was rather in the way of that.....from then on, the ice was broken. I mixed my songs with Posies and Big Star songs, and people were seriously going completely crazy. It was then that I remembered looking at sales sheets for Frosting on the Beater and being surprised by significant numbers of sales in the Philippines and Thailand. I thought it was all expats and US army PX sales...and I was so, so fundamentally wrong. I thought I was done, too...but as I tried to wrap it up, I had requests for ‘Love Comes’ and more stuff, and now, the kids (there was a group of local musicians who would definitely have been too young to have heard FOTB at the time of release, so word of mouth was expanding the Posies myth) were up at the stage, and I was playing songs from FOTB and more, and people were loving it. Photos were taken on every cell phone. I could see Chicoy rolling his eyes and laughing, he and his family were sort of counting on getting out of there a lot earlier, but they were cool. Finally I said my goodbyes, was handed some money (a surprise, as it was a free show) and piled my stuff into Chicoy’s van and we drove to White Sands, on a smaller island connected to Cebu by a short bridge. Bonus of this location, the house Chicoy inherited from his late mom, is that it’s only 15 minutes from the airport, which would make things easy the next day. But this day wasn’t over yet...as we settled in to their totally-Brady Bunch house, Chicoy’s boy busted out the guitars, Chicoy sat down at a drum kit set up on their patio, and we jammed, on Led Zep and Yardbirds tunes til like 2am...seriously, we were outside, and Chicoy was full on beating the drums, I was wailing on the Ibanez, and there was an acoustic for my jam partner. The neighbors actually put up with this for like an hour before they called and said, “uh....”
MANILA, 1/23
A wickedly strong coffee, a full blast broadcast of the guitar duel from the film ‘Crossroads’ and we were off in the morning to Cebu City airport. Chicoy dropped me off, and wished me luck. I was quickly set upon by an airport roadie of sorts who sported a casual uniform and ID badge, and was quickly off with my passport before I could say ‘flat eric’. He reappeared minutes later with my boarding pass, and proceeded to roadie me thru the initial security (all bags go thru an x ray on the way in to Philippine airports), the check in, and to the frontier of gate security. I knew a tip was coming, and I tell you what, he earned it, this whole biz took less than 5 minutes, and I could see where he was pushing stuff thru much more quickly than I would have navigated on my own. I tipped him a few 100 piso notes and he was happy, and I was happy. Nothing much to see on the flight, I was on the inside aisle of yet another totally packed A330. Landed in Manila and claimed my stuff, and exited, and was beset upon by the taxi guys. I agreed to much too high a flat rate for my destination, and off we went. Manila is enormous, as my aerial surveys have shown. Public transport has been unable to really grapple with its immensity: there’s a rather limited metro train consisting of three lines. Most people travel by jeepney, which are marvelous beasts, they are share taxis, that stop either on demand or at marked stops in some cases, and travel on regular routes, the highlights of which are painted on the sides of the vehicle. The vehicle itself has a front end like a jeep, and back end like...hmmm. It’s a covered bed with benches along the sides. The vehicles are customized with paint jobs but also striking use of chrome--some are entirely silver, some are painted in fiery colors, most utilize chrome and paint in various combos. Some of the front ends are decorated with customized metal bits, some are plain old jeep fronts, many you could see the cooling fan on the radiator was a vintage desk fan, things like that. They are ubiquitous, you never have to wait for one, because there are hundreds going up any major street. Usually the back would be packed with ten or so passengers. I have to admit, I never took one. Cabs by Yanqui standards are really cheap.
We wound our way once the traffic broke shortly out of the airport to Eastwood City, itself a clump of high rise towers and a big mall in the middle of Quezon City, itself a subnucleus of Manila. Manila is too big to have one center; there’s the old city on the bay, that dates back to the earliest days of Spanish colonialism (and beyond); govt agencies are here. There’s several main CBD’s all with huge towers and for sure each one will have at least one mega mall. In that sense Manila is comprised of layers--the urban poor, the affluent, and the mega affluent would be the main divisions--and like most places, they never encounter each other in social life. The affluent, which doesn’t take much money to be (in that sense each layer has its own economy, tailored to its abilities)--they had comfortable apartments, usually a driver or other servants, and seemed to exist my going from mall to mall for all their entertainment and shopping needs. Most of my friends in Manila would be this category. The urban poor live in tin roof shacks, conglomerations of which could occur anywhere. To keep the populations separated, to prevent the undeniable squalor from bumming the high of the middle class (remember where most revolutions come from and why), the city has actually built walls around some of the favelas, and created facades of more attractive looking buildings to keep the view of the third world conditions from bumming everyone’s high. But still, it’s hard to miss. My 18th-floor apartment looked across the river at one shanty town, and as we took the metro we looked down on millions of shacks, all jammed against one another, with no visible streets amongst them, just mysterious passages winding anthill like thru the hive.
My show was at Route 196, a tiny, tiny little bar with a tiny stage. The main room could fit about 25 people seated at tables or sitting at the bar, and there was a lower level room separated by glass from the main room, it was 2 steps below the main room in level, and had cozier seating, you could get another 25 people here. So, it wasn’t hard to fill up the place, well--it almost was. Despite the fact we had some of the best and most well-known musicians in town on the bill, plus a rare international act, there was a huge free show across town with like 20 bands. But, that kept the riff raff out and those who really wanted to come to see this show, as opposed to *a* show, were there.
Kate Torralba was up first, Kate is becoming quite famous as a fashion designer, we visited her boutique in Manila’s most posh shopping center. And her music is getting attention, too. She has years of training on the piano, so she can play anything, any style, and she has a kind of crooner voice which she puts over the top. I ran sound for her, more or less and she was visibly nervous at my presence, hahah! After she played the brother and sister guitar/piano duo of
Outerhope played, they are really good...brilliant vocal harmonies thru every song...then Camera Walls played but I took a break as the place was pretty small for a full band to play, concrete walls made a mighty bright sound. But, I did go back in to watch
Gaijin, which features Raimund Marasigan of the band
Eraserheads, who have been called ‘The Beatles of the Philippines’. As the name implies, there’s a yanqui in the band, the singer, Jesse Grinter. They play a kind of angular rock that reminded me a bit of Television. As things run very late in Philippines, I went on after midnite...and played til something like 3am. My voice was warmed up from the show the night before, and I was singing really well so I was into it, and the people wouldn’t let me stop. Highlights: a couple of people dirty dancing to ‘Known Diamond’. A kid named Francis who was handing out his poetry zine singing Neil Young and the Replacements covers I pulled out WAY louder than me (and I’m loud)--oh, by the way, this brings up the fact that as I may have mentioned, the Philippines are stuck safely in the 80s music wise, from most PsOV. I mentioned hearing the Outfield and Quiet Riot in my stay in Panagsama, and the radio was all about the Bryan Adams power ballads and Peter Cetera doin’ it all for the glory of love...and tho you don’t think of them as an ‘80s’ band, they did the bulk of their work then...so I was blown away to hear The Replacements ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ in the taxi on the way to the gig...woah.
The show was an unqualified success, the locals and expats in the audience all loved it, and I was definitely in the groove. Darryl and Laura, a fan from UK who is living in Manila working for a bank and one of his banking colleagues respectively, had a private car and driver (not an unusual thing here--the fact is: the Philippines is the 12th most populous country on earth, and will soon cross the 100,000,000 mark. There is a huge spread in the amount of money made by the lowest and the top rung--the weight of poverty pulls prices and wages in their direction, allowing the purchasing power of the top rung to skyrocket), and dropped me off at the flat.
On Sunday, I slept in--it was like 4am when I got home. Had my morning coffee while it was still morning and had a fish belly sour soup at the mall. There is, thankfully, a place serving Pinoy food amongst all the Starbucks and “Mediterranean Bistro”s. Eventually my friends rose from the dead--Joff, who put on the show, was still at the club when I said my 3.30am nite nites.
He and I met up and took the metro (we had to cab to the nearest metro stop, as I mentioned before the metro can’t begin to encompass the girth depth and breadth of Manila’s 600 sq. km/230 sq. mi.) to the center. We disembarked and walked down into what is massive street market...after the Logan’s Run vibe of the Eastwood mall, all spacious and planned and manicured, here was the city of 11,000,000 as you would imagine its supposed to be: chaos. Throngs of people jamming alleys, jeepneys and cars pushing their way thru. Crippled beggars, car stereo shops with whumping subs (there was one blasting music out of a speaker six inches from the ears of a sleeping dog. I thought they could hear, like...way more than people?). Pirate DVDs, piss, flat dried out squid...smells colors and above all masses of people. Overwhelming, but exhilarating. We walked the alleys and emerged a big square where there was a massive church service going on. The church was a concrete box, more or less, bug huge. And overflowing--a big screen was set up in the square so more worshippers could get in on it. Of course, there was commerce too--all the little tapered candles people burn in church, there were millions for sale, and other paraphernalia. We crossed the square, and hopped a cab (with some effort, as this edge of the square was a major landing zone for jeepneys) to Intramuros.
Intramuros traces the walls of the Spanish fortifications that replaced the Islamic Sultanate’s HQ there. Cebu was actually the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines, but they had gotten word that Luzon had good stuff, and soon arrived to steal Manila from the locals. And that they did, and held onto it for 300 years.
Technically it is the center of Manila, but it’s not the beating heart of the city. In fact, it’s downright desolate compared the market where we were, near the Recto MRT station. That was definitely some kind of organ of the city, perhaps a bit of each one...Intramuros is sleepy and tranquil, completely different vibe. Big vintage-1960s government agency buildings, lots of churches, and quite a few buildings in the process of crumbling. Oddly, the whole fortified walled place is ringed by a golf course, which insulates it further from the city’s bustle. You can access the walls and walk around quite a bit of them, the golf course on the exterior, on the interior a few food stalls there and there, but mostly...nothings. Couples hang out on the wall, the wall dips thru the shady spots from big trees on either side. Church was in full swing so the cathedrals were packed, but other than that...empty. Beautiful. When you’re at ground level, you can look into little dungeons built into the wall (the Japanese made use of these during their visit...) many filled with tantalizing bits of antique oddities...not in a museum way, but in a dad’s garage kind of way, but we’re talking about museum quality pieces of old coffee mills, scales...most fascinating.
From there we hitched a taxi ride to Makati, the financial hub of Manila, and went to...yep, a mall. The mall enclosed a massive courtyard packed with people sitting at patio tables....and no less then 5 coffee shops catering to them, including the Death Starbucks and Seattle’s Best. Totally weird. We met up with Kate Torralba and her producer Malek Lopez, and dined on something they call corned beef in broth, but it didn’t bear any resemblance to the corned beef that I grew up in such fear of. It was very good. We also had Kare-Kare, which is oxtail, tripe and beef in peanut sauce--wow. That’s good stuff. And some extremely crispy fried pork. This is heavy stuff, it takes some serious fortitude to be a member of the clean your plate club. So good. After that we cabbed to ANOTHER mall for a coffee and tiny round cheesecake to share. I had mentioned my interest in Civet cat-shit coffee, which in the Philippines is called Motit Coffee, Motit being the name for the Asian Palm Civet in Philippines. It is often translated as ‘fox’ but the Civet, which is not a cat, but a kind of mammal that is grouped in the family “Viverridae” which means “fucking weird mammals that no one knows what to do with”--including Genets, which are sort of cat-like, and binturong, which are just fucking crazy. Anyway, the Civet has a nose for very ripe coffee, which is a berry in case you’ve forgotten, since we call them beans. It eats the ripest, choicest berries, and shits out the beans. And people grind this up and drink it...it’s kind of pre roasted. Now, people have been drinking this stuff in Indonesia and Vietnam and Philippines for a long time. But, I’m confused because I never thought of the Philippines as a coffee-growing nation, unlike the other two. Anyway, it’s available in the Philippines, and we went to a coffee shop just to look for it. And it was closed. And Kate, being a pretty good talker, pushed her way in and commanded a sale of the shop’s last bag, and handed it to me as a gift. Dang!
I flew onward to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon, where I’ve been now for a couple of days. I arrived in on Monday afternoon, spent some time getting my visa together. Basically, if you go the official way, you are supposed to send your passport in to a Vietnamese embassy, wait while they process your visa, they mail back your passport. That’s all fine and dandy for those people that travel like, once per lifetime. Some of us, however, actually work for a living and that work involves frequent, global travel. Who has time to give up their passport? Plus, I just *got* this one, I’m not letting go of it. Uh-unh, no way. But, a little looking around online and you can find Vietnamese travel agencies who can prepare a visa on arrival if you are flying in to Hanoi or HCMC, for a processing fee of about $15. The visa itself you pay for when you arrive, and it’s $25. With that in mind, you think...why would you bother doing it the official way? Basically the via on arrival is meant for large groups, but the agencies just bundle you as if you are in a group with the other recipients that day. It makes no difference once you arrive that you are not part of a group. I arrived, filled out a form, got the visa and Ho’s your uncle.
My host, Rod, soon arrived after I exited the arrivals area. HCMC is perpetually 90F, significantly more sweltering than anywhere I’d been on this trip, actually. But, I’m a lizard, and I think that feels good. Rod is a restaurant entrepreneur of Australian extraction, here’s been in the country for years and is married to a local lady. In fact, it’s easy to start feeling like HCMC is a very small village, populated mostly by Anglo speaking dudes with Vietnamese wives...but anyway, Vietnam is a very dynamic and welcoming place, albeit with a very unique system of governance and society, and it’s growing like a weed in a manner that is pretty much unstoppable and recession-proof. It’s the 13th most populous country on earth, 60% of those people are under 30.
What else is it? Beautiful. Layered. I will have a hard time describing HCMC. It’s so many things at once...hyper modern, hyper jerry-rigged, spacious and leafy, dusty and crowded...full of characters and folks just doin’ they thang. Every inch of the place is picturesque, patinated just so. Old ladies balance counterweighted baskets of stuff, in the famous pointy hats. Skyscrapers are going up in rapid fasion. But still, most of the city is just 4-5 stories high, and where I’m staying, right in the center, has lots of gorgeous colonial buildings, tree-lined avenues, and such. I’ve never seen such a precarious electrical grid--the telephone poles support literally hundreds of individual wires, snarling at intersections in a fantastic rat nest of phone calls, email, and juice to keep the lights on. Speaking of email, Facebook is banned in Vietnam. It’s considered to helpful to possible pro-democracy dissidents. It’s hard to believe that this sizzling hotbed of abject capitalism, which is luring folks like Rod to come here and open restaurants and resorts and such, in which as a visitor you don’t really see obvious manifestations of government power, is technically a communist state with unelected leaders. But other than banning Facebook and making you wait a little bit for your visa, it’s hard to really see what Communism is doing here...other than getting the hell out of the way before it gets run over by all the new cars on the road.
Speaking of which, I was proud to quickly pick up the art of crossing massive multilane roads with no crossing signals...how you slowly but steadily pick your way across giving the drivers time to adjust, and they do.
The first night I was taken out by American expat Curtis King, to a penthouse bar in some hotel, admittedly the free wine we had at Pacharan, Rod’s flagship resto, and the bottle of montrachet we had with dinner had really killed me, I was sort of levitating at this point, plus jet lag, but I managed to join the house cover band for rousing versions of “One I Love” and “Losing My Religion”, it was hilarious. Cover bands are big thing here. Asia’s music vibe in general is that a good song is one that is going to be good in karaoke, it’s changed the face of music here forever. So, Celine Dion, or perhaps the Eagles, rules the....ahem, roost. Cover bands’ popularity here sort of supports that theory, it’s like live karaoke where you don’t have to actually *do* anything. Like watching sports on TV and feeling like an athlete...
Yesterday I walked around in search of lunch. In my centrally-located neighborhood it’s all about the Mediterranean bistros again...even a Texas BBQ place. Uh, I didn’t come here for the burgers. The resto’s are on the streets, where they can be seen. Where Vietnamese people eat are in alleys, which are off the traffic a bit. I ducked into one and found a tiny hole in the wall. My god. For less than $2 I had a pile of rice with greens and the 4 spring rolls I’d picked out (no one spoke English and there were no non-Vietnamese inside, ahhh). Two of the 4 were black, made of ground beef and spices. Then there was a slice of fish, white fish with very thick ribs, this was a steak slice, you know, with the round of the spine at the top as a circle. It the slice was in a sauce of sweet chili and black pepper. Boy howdy was that good. A little soup with leaves came with it, and at the bottom of the soup were three tiny, tiny shrimp. This lunch was made with love, served with care, and ridiculously dirt cheap. In Paris you couldn’t even buy the 3 bug-sized shrimp for that price.
Last night we stopped by the Acoustic club, where a madly brilliant house band plays covers with different vocalists. I did a couple of songs--”Ooh Child” and “Moon River”, and these guys were able to follow me no problem, even with the complex chord changes of the Mancini tune. WOW. But I was feeling like a rank amateur when Dinh Tuan-Khanh, vocalist of the band
Microwave, came up and did a few songs, I recognized “Enter Sandman” but not the others but it didn’t matter. This guy, seriously, could win American Idol. He is an effortless, fucking full on singer, 22 years old, bespectacled and unassuming, doesn’t really speak much English apparently but when he sings...he’s just a belter, man. Like Dio, or Ian Gillian, or...woah!!! He’s awesome. The stuff on their myspace doesn’t really cut it, I’m afraid. He’s like the best live singer I’ve seen singing hard rock, and everyone was saying, oh, he’s not even the best in this *bar*...that guy comes on Saturday. As for Rod, he's really the ultimate host, and he loves his adopted city, and has been a great person to have showing you what's what and where it is.
Today Rod guided me to bank xeo, no, not a futuristic Asian place to put your life savings, but a kind of pancake, made from corn, with shrimp and pork adhered to it. You slice a chunk, and wrap it in lettuce, along with raw fresh herbs and bit of fish sauce, chili’d to taste. Excellent.
I can’t really help you on the visual description of this magnificent city. It could take several coffee table books to even start to relate the endless magnificent details of this town....I’ll try a few photos, perhaps...later.
Love
KS
Ho Chi Minh City, VIETNAM
