Shopping Trip & more Bia Hoi!
So here we are all set for Extreme Shopping excursion number two! The mission - find a huge replacement rucksack for me, a replacement camera for Martin, a better blue guitar, and some new T-Shirts. What did we find? A 120L rucksack (up from 65-85L so now loads of room!) for GBP11, camera and 1GB memroy card for GBP203 from a shopping centre complete with an electric piano in the atrium which I just had to try out! A few gifts and T-Shirts from what seemed to be fashion street right behind Ben Thanh market...it also happened to be where all the Vietnamese hotties hang out! Following this a quick ride in a taxi from a man who knew where to go to buy guitars and we found Martin his very own Vietnamese hand-crafted blue guitar, a steal at $30! Mission acomplished!
Now with 3 guitars we headed out that night with our old blue guitar in the hope of giving it to some deserving street urchin! In the meantime it provided everyone at the Bia Hoi with some entertainment. We played and tried to sing a few English songs to everyone's amusement and drunken encouragement and the locals played a few of theirs. Wandering dumbfounded after our regular Bia Hoi closed we were called over from another Bia Hoi - I guess news that Phnom Penh's Burning were in Saigon was travellign like wildfire! Guitars are officially a great way to meet random people - that night we met Mr Thanh, a pianist in a restaurant in Saigon District 3 who wanted us to go and jam with him (clearly deaf!) and Billy from Melbourne who we could not for the life of us work out where he was from. First we thought maybe an aboriginal from his looks but apparently not (tho we didn't ask!) he just said he'd emmigrated there. His English was a bit off which confused us but hey he'll show us around Melbourne if we make it there!!
Before making it to Eden Bar we were approached by a cheeky little street girl asking to play our guitar. We were more looking for someone to give it to rather than someone to leech it off us, but after getting her to promise to learn (??!) and getting her to strum whilst I play the chords we told he we'd be back in a year to check out how she was progressing and went tut-bar!
It seemed to be a night for exchanging contact details, with the girls in Eden Bar being in on the act too! Apparently we'd promised when drunk the previous night to come back to Eden Bar about 10pm that night tho, so we were in trouble when we only made it there nearer 1am!! They were still lovely as ever although in my opinion they were not forthcoming enough with their free shots this time...I guess that was the retribution for being late - women!!
Now with 3 guitars we headed out that night with our old blue guitar in the hope of giving it to some deserving street urchin! In the meantime it provided everyone at the Bia Hoi with some entertainment. We played and tried to sing a few English songs to everyone's amusement and drunken encouragement and the locals played a few of theirs. Wandering dumbfounded after our regular Bia Hoi closed we were called over from another Bia Hoi - I guess news that Phnom Penh's Burning were in Saigon was travellign like wildfire! Guitars are officially a great way to meet random people - that night we met Mr Thanh, a pianist in a restaurant in Saigon District 3 who wanted us to go and jam with him (clearly deaf!) and Billy from Melbourne who we could not for the life of us work out where he was from. First we thought maybe an aboriginal from his looks but apparently not (tho we didn't ask!) he just said he'd emmigrated there. His English was a bit off which confused us but hey he'll show us around Melbourne if we make it there!!
Before making it to Eden Bar we were approached by a cheeky little street girl asking to play our guitar. We were more looking for someone to give it to rather than someone to leech it off us, but after getting her to promise to learn (??!) and getting her to strum whilst I play the chords we told he we'd be back in a year to check out how she was progressing and went tut-bar!
It seemed to be a night for exchanging contact details, with the girls in Eden Bar being in on the act too! Apparently we'd promised when drunk the previous night to come back to Eden Bar about 10pm that night tho, so we were in trouble when we only made it there nearer 1am!! They were still lovely as ever although in my opinion they were not forthcoming enough with their free shots this time...I guess that was the retribution for being late - women!!
Labels: Vietnam
posted by Ian Matthias at
10/15/2006 06:57:00 am
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