When you’re always traveling, sometimes it’s pretty difficult to figure out what to do with your winter coat - or in other cases how to find one. Well, we can tell you that exiting a plane in Vietnam with a winter coat on, then catching a bus, and walking the streets toward our accommodation was quite the experience. Somehow this happens to us a lot though. Staying hydrated is luckily not too difficult in Vietnam though, where you can find all sorts of delicious freshly squeezed juices… In fact, probably 90% of the conversations we had in the country dealt with food, it makes small talk pretty easy. We did have some great experiences, such as our Lunch Lady lunch, rice cakes and op la breakfasts, tiger prawn feasts, and even delicious vegetarian meals. But equally memorable were all the spontaneous shared meals that constellated this tour that took us from the southern city of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) through Dalat, Danang, Hue, and finally Hanoi.

Our first show took place at Neo-, a vibrant spot and international meeting point run by a great bunch of people and home to their nice locally brewed beer. Funnily enough, a large part of our audience happened to be from Japan (where we just were previously), visitors for a conference on urbanism. The main highlight of our brief time in the city was probably the Water Puppet Show, that we enjoyed both in terms of music and use of the Vietnamese language. The language is so musical, and hearing it weave between the traditional instrumentation was really interesting. The electricity cut off for ten minutes in the middle of the show though, and it was interesting to see the curtain peel back on the logistics of the show - we were also later told that the musicians don’t get paid very well unfortunately…

Our kind sound engineer at Neo- also helped us book our “horizontal” seat for an overnight bus that took us to Dalat. The city is beloved by many as it stands at a higher altitude and therefore offers respite from scorching temperatures and diabolic air pollution that’s fairly confrontational elsewhere in the country. We didn’t really have time to explore the mountains around, but we did have time to discover some new food and walk around the city.

We also really enjoyed our visit to Danang! Corresponding to most of the stereotypes that you could have for a beach town, it does indeed offer a higher quality of life, having coconut coffee in the morning, beach walks with one some of the most beautiful waters we have ever experienced too. The beach was sectioned off and it seemed that many parts were reserved for fishing, so we spent a lot of time watching people install and pull onto shore their large fishing nets. Our gig here was organized as a collaboration between Â Song Collective, Mutant Lounge, and the venue Fugu. Toby, who is also one half of Tiny Giants, opened for us and brought most of the audience too. It was great to chat about his life here and how the local art and music scene is growing.

Our show in Hue was held instead in a brand new cafe, called Be Café, the brainchild of a jazz lover and English teacher there. The venue feels more or less in the countryside. We really loved visiting Dong Ba Market, and then touristing around a bit in the Imperial Citadel. One of our favorite parts about playing these sorts of small concerts around the world is the conversations we get to have with audience members about just about anything you can imagine. Hue was not an exception, and so we learned a lot about the different genres of music there, such as the Imperial music, the folk music performed on the Perfume River (mostly on Dragon boats for tourists), and the very interesting Dao Mau (the Mother Goddesses that is a combination of Vietnam's indigenous religion with some characteristics of Buddhism.)

Then, it was with an overnight train that helped us reach our final destination, Hanoi, where four concerts in a row would be waiting for us. Maybe the most attended of all our Vietnamese shows took place at Manzi Art Gallery; that was followed by our participation in Noise Night, a monthly noise-oriented series organized by the Alec Schachner who also founded the recording studio Ech Ech Studio. The performance was followed by a late night fantastic pho too, thanks to the initiative of fellow Hoi An-based performer Chinh Ba.

The last two performances were a later addition. Anatolia takes its name from the movie “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” and is also a private initiative. It is held within a traditionally built house, which includes also a lively garden with cicadas, frogs, and all sorts of plants. We were so intrigued by the little community around, and also the connections it carries with a not so far away ceramic residency called Muong AIR Studio, that we came back the day after. We spent some time with artist Judith Runge and the neighbors, eating fried tofu and looking at bonsai. Finally, with all of our bags, we went to Tender Bar to give one last performance, sweating a lot in the rooftop location but enjoying the atmosphere and the excitement of the audience.

There are many more music traditions that we would enjoy researching in the country, including rice pounding folk songs, or the tradition of Ca trù, but we will need to come back for all of that!

Special heartfelt gratitude to Cao Thanh Lan who opened so many doors for this tour to be possible!