Sai Gon, October 21, 2001
I’ve had a super busy week out late at night nearly every day. Thursday night I went out with Linh, Khanh, Thang, Thien, and Phu to a very American bar where we consumed a bottle of Hennessy, and then went to another bar afterwards where I ran into two other groups of people I know in Saigon (both very different), and the people I was with also ran into familiar faces. Saigon is very very very small that way and this bar was one of maybe two that closed at 2 am instead of midnight like the rest. The following night I went to meet some friends at billiards (it’s only 25000VND an hour which is about $1.67 USD) and we went off to another bar (and was gratefully home before midnight as I was exhausted from the week’s play). All bars are relatively the same and play basically the same limited repertoire of music that Vietnam offers. It’s amazing how the conformity reaches into everything the people here do.

I had a very relaxing weekend - Saturday I lounged at home till evening, when I went out with my aunt and Chuong to a nightclub where there was live music, and then off to a very cheesy dance club where there were tens of dancing girls for rent by the hour (for dancing, of course). Chuong went back to the house with Di 10 and I to watch “Proof of Life” which I hadn’t seen. They fell asleep and I stayed up till 4 a.m. to watch the movie. Today Chuong, Di 9, Di 10, Phu, Thien, and friends of Di 10’s met at Binh An, a sort of resort-restaurant with live jazz music on Sunday afternoons, owned by Di 10’s friends. We had an excellent Vietnamese lunch and spent the entire Sunday afternoon lounging in the beautifully landscaped gardens (complete with lotus ponds and tiny patches of grass for golfing) with the live jazz band. Very nice way to spend a Sunday.

Tomorrow I’m back at work, and I will have two new employees working for me this week. Hopefully they’ll be capable of learning, as we’ve got a lot of deadlines coming up. Our new magazine is nearly a week late at the printers. Typical.