Apocalypse Now
Two nights ago our group went to a club called Apocalypse Now, obviously themed after Coppola's movie about the Vietnam War. The club itself was on the smaller side.
The music was far too loud and the bass was up way too high. The music itself was a standard club mix of trance and house music. They didn't touch the hip-hop or R&B until the last four or five songs of the night when it was just us Americans left there. It would be nice if we could here a little more variety from the DJs here, but I guess that will come with time as Hanoi gets more integrated into the world music scene.
The layout had as many problems as the music. Tables and stools were hardly ergonomically designed. It was as if the chairs and tables were specifically designed to force us to dance. Although it was a Saturday night, there wasn't really enough space in the club for the number of people there. Considering that the club had just recently moved from another location, this shows an astounding lack of planning on the part of the management. The dance floor was jam packed and dancers spilled over into the eating/drinking areas. Drinks were spilled and chairs were overturned by flailing arms and legs.
The Apocalypse Now theme wasn't really that obvious from the decor; a couple of movie posters were framed and a fake helicopter poked out of the wall but, by and large, it looked like any other club in any country.
The drinks were about 30,000 dong (2 USD) a piece - not bad but not great, either. They had a limited selection of beers. Fewer imports than I'd like to see at a club with the reputation of Apocalypse.
On the plus side, the patrons were mostly locals; there were no discernable sex tourists like there were at the New Century club that we visited last weekend. Also, there were enough waiters that we never really had to wait for food or drinks. There was a lot of security waiting to break up fights. Security was key to making this club a civilized place, hospitable to the local gay scene - something that doesn't exist in a lot of clubs in the US. Unfortunately, the security stopped at the threshold and one of our girls was assaulted by one of the locals (who was probably the kid of a corrupt official or factory owner) that run with impugnity here. A couple of police officers standing nearby did absolutely nothing to stop the physical assaule. This is what (mostly) sets Vietnam into the third world column, this matter-of-fact corruption that pervades all level of government. Thankfully, Vietnam appears to be working on reforming their governance from the local to the national level in order to gain the confidence of international investors.
As if the assault incident weren't enough our evening took a turn for the worse. Some of us were hungry enough to look for a pho shop or a bia hoi in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, everything closes early in Vietnam and we had to walk about a kilometer before we found anything. Finally we found a bia hoi open. It was on a road on an incline that branched off from the main boulevard. As we walked up the road on the incline, a motorbike came up pretty quickly from behind us. Simultaneously, another bike rounded the bend in the road in front of us at about forty miles and hour. The bike from behind was passing us on the right as the one coming from in front made it to where we were on the road. He was going way too fast and he didn't expect there to be traffic at that point in the road. The bike in front swerved to avoid the bike that was passing us but he wasn't able to turn quickly enough and he knicked the bike as he passed. At normal speeds eveything would have been fine but the impact was a lot worse because he was going so quickly. The speeder fell off of his bike about fifteen feet behind the group and the woman who had been passing us was thrown sideways onto the ground. As her bike fell it actually toppled on top of the leg of one of the guys in our group.
The woman appeared to have broken her wrist or her arm. The speeding man appeared to have some abdominal injurie and may have broken some ribs. A crowd from the bia hoi came out to help and pretty soon there were about twenty people trying to figure out what to do. The speeder was pretty drunk according to one of the guys in our group who was standing near him. One of the women who came out began blaming us for taking up too much of the street and causing the accident. They were just trying to figure out someone to pin the blame and the hospital bills on - rich Americans are as good as anyone else. We high-tailed it out of there at this turn of events. We got a couple of taxis right down the street and took it back to our dorm.
What's really scary about that whole incident is that there is a high likelyhood that if the speeding motorbik had not smacked that woman he would have plowed into our group and could have hurt or killed us. Although the whole incident was pretty grisly, it could have been much worse. One of us could have been seriously injured or killed. I guess these are the unseen risks of living in a quickly industrializing country with shortages of street space and policing and a glut of motorbikes.
The music was far too loud and the bass was up way too high. The music itself was a standard club mix of trance and house music. They didn't touch the hip-hop or R&B until the last four or five songs of the night when it was just us Americans left there. It would be nice if we could here a little more variety from the DJs here, but I guess that will come with time as Hanoi gets more integrated into the world music scene.
The layout had as many problems as the music. Tables and stools were hardly ergonomically designed. It was as if the chairs and tables were specifically designed to force us to dance. Although it was a Saturday night, there wasn't really enough space in the club for the number of people there. Considering that the club had just recently moved from another location, this shows an astounding lack of planning on the part of the management. The dance floor was jam packed and dancers spilled over into the eating/drinking areas. Drinks were spilled and chairs were overturned by flailing arms and legs.
The Apocalypse Now theme wasn't really that obvious from the decor; a couple of movie posters were framed and a fake helicopter poked out of the wall but, by and large, it looked like any other club in any country.
The drinks were about 30,000 dong (2 USD) a piece - not bad but not great, either. They had a limited selection of beers. Fewer imports than I'd like to see at a club with the reputation of Apocalypse.
On the plus side, the patrons were mostly locals; there were no discernable sex tourists like there were at the New Century club that we visited last weekend. Also, there were enough waiters that we never really had to wait for food or drinks. There was a lot of security waiting to break up fights. Security was key to making this club a civilized place, hospitable to the local gay scene - something that doesn't exist in a lot of clubs in the US. Unfortunately, the security stopped at the threshold and one of our girls was assaulted by one of the locals (who was probably the kid of a corrupt official or factory owner) that run with impugnity here. A couple of police officers standing nearby did absolutely nothing to stop the physical assaule. This is what (mostly) sets Vietnam into the third world column, this matter-of-fact corruption that pervades all level of government. Thankfully, Vietnam appears to be working on reforming their governance from the local to the national level in order to gain the confidence of international investors.
As if the assault incident weren't enough our evening took a turn for the worse. Some of us were hungry enough to look for a pho shop or a bia hoi in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, everything closes early in Vietnam and we had to walk about a kilometer before we found anything. Finally we found a bia hoi open. It was on a road on an incline that branched off from the main boulevard. As we walked up the road on the incline, a motorbike came up pretty quickly from behind us. Simultaneously, another bike rounded the bend in the road in front of us at about forty miles and hour. The bike from behind was passing us on the right as the one coming from in front made it to where we were on the road. He was going way too fast and he didn't expect there to be traffic at that point in the road. The bike in front swerved to avoid the bike that was passing us but he wasn't able to turn quickly enough and he knicked the bike as he passed. At normal speeds eveything would have been fine but the impact was a lot worse because he was going so quickly. The speeder fell off of his bike about fifteen feet behind the group and the woman who had been passing us was thrown sideways onto the ground. As her bike fell it actually toppled on top of the leg of one of the guys in our group.
The woman appeared to have broken her wrist or her arm. The speeding man appeared to have some abdominal injurie and may have broken some ribs. A crowd from the bia hoi came out to help and pretty soon there were about twenty people trying to figure out what to do. The speeder was pretty drunk according to one of the guys in our group who was standing near him. One of the women who came out began blaming us for taking up too much of the street and causing the accident. They were just trying to figure out someone to pin the blame and the hospital bills on - rich Americans are as good as anyone else. We high-tailed it out of there at this turn of events. We got a couple of taxis right down the street and took it back to our dorm.
What's really scary about that whole incident is that there is a high likelyhood that if the speeding motorbik had not smacked that woman he would have plowed into our group and could have hurt or killed us. Although the whole incident was pretty grisly, it could have been much worse. One of us could have been seriously injured or killed. I guess these are the unseen risks of living in a quickly industrializing country with shortages of street space and policing and a glut of motorbikes.
posted by S D at 1:29 AM
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