Fast Soul Music: Better delayed than never delivered

Ok, so I really am a bit shit at updating this...but let’s not spend life walking around resenting ourselves. Here it is. An update!

I’ve been in Hanoi for almost 4 months now. WTF!? Yes, WTF! Time has gone pretty fast but I also feel like I’ve been here a long time. Not in a bitter way at all. I just feel pretty settled here now. A lot of this is down to the people I have met here. I really have made some great friends and had a lot of fun so far. My housemates are great but 3 of them are leaving in a few days so it’s all going to change here. I’m pretty sad they’re going as 2 of them are leaving Hanoi for good and I love them. They’re ace guys! However, change in an environment like this is inevitable and not always a bad thing. Who knows what’s to come! Replacing the current housemates are 2 guys, Tony and Rich, and my friend Kelly. It’ll be nice to have a girl in the house, especially a friend of mine.

I went to a day festival over the weekend, which was just AWESOME! Not only was it a festival but a festival in Hanoi! The festival was made up of various bands and DJs from all over the world – Japan, Australia, England, Thailand to name a few places – and the music was some of the best I’ve heard in a long time. Forget the fact I’m living in Hanoi and the music scene here isn’t as fast paced as London. The music was genuinely brilliant and I danced my way through the day and night. There are a lot of bars to drink in here but there aren’t that many places where you can dance to really good music. There are some but they generally consist of cheesy pop music or electro house. Every so often you’ll get a good bit of drum n bass thrown in but most of the time it’s when you’re sat in a bar.
I spent most of the festival dancing round with my housemates and after it ended we went to a couple of clubs till the sun came up. It got pretty crazy towards the end. I busted my foot open during the festival (didn’t stop me dancing though!) and had to get a tetanus jab the following morning as I wasn’t sure if that was something I had actually had before coming out. Checking out the results of what that shit does to you when you’re a little worse for wear is a bad move, so despite how awful I was feeling I had to go to the medical centre and get myself topped up.
At the final club, as the sun was coming up, we all decided to go down to the river and being foolish and fun and avoiding the advice from my housemates (who had made the same mistake before) me and a few others decided to get one of the shoddiest looking fisherman’s boat and take it out. It didn’t get very far until it sank...with me in it...wearing all my clothes. So I had to walk back through the club past all the staff dripping wet and avoiding eye contact. I haven’t been feeling on top form this week due to the weekend’s shenanigans. The Red River in Hanoi is a bit like the River Thames in London, not something you want to swim in!

Aside from the teaching and partying I’ve been trying to get more involved in other things here. I’m going to the filming of a Vietnamese quiz show later today...to be in it! They wanted English teachers to read out questions so I’m going to be on Vietnamese TV. It should be pretty fun but they’ve asked me to wear my Apollo t-shirt (which is thick cotton) and trousers. That’s fine but the filming is outside and it’s 33 degrees at the moment so unless they have mega professional sweat proof makeup (which I highly doubt they do) then I’m going to look like a melted mess on TV...yay!

A friend of mine, Vanessa, is manager of a club here. She has been here for 3 years and used to run music nights in Hanoi. We’ve been chatting and she wants to get involved with me and start something up again. She knows a big name drum n bass DJ coming from Australia to play in Hanoi in a month or so and the gig he is doing is pretty big but she reckons he will be up for doing a smaller show if we sort something out. We’re going to check out a venue on Sunday so watch this space!

I’m also getting involved in the Hanoi International Theatre group. They’re putting on a workshop on absurd theatre on Saturday, which is right up my street when it comes to performance. It’s going to develop into a production in June and I really want to get involved in that too. Very much looking forward to it!
I’ve also been looking into starting dance classes although I’m not sure what style. I found a group who do SWING DANCING!! AMAZING!!!! However, they only seem to have one session a week and that just happens to be right when I’m teaching! Gay. So I’m looking elsewhere. Maybe ballet, or capoeira or contemporary dance.

I love my life here. I'm earning enough money that I can buy most things I want, eat and drink what I like and go where I fancy. This does make the whole 'lose weight in Hanoi' rumour complete bollocks though but never the less it's all good. I am missing London and my friends though. I would love to go back for a visit and see everyone but I'm not quite sure what I'm doing in the future. I definitely plan on staying in Hanoi but in terms of holidays and home visits, at the moment I don't know much! My cousin might be coming out here, which would be ACE! He had plans to go to Singapore but those plans fell through and he doesn't want to stay in the UK. I hope he comes here. Hanoi is an amazing city.

I just had a phone call from the TV company telling me there was an emergency and they have had to cancel filming this afternoon. Bawls.

Well, til next time folks x