Karaoke in Viet Nam

Well we finished up the Module 2 of Palliative Care. Mostly this was a brain storming session. It is hard to participate in something like this when you do not speak the language. One of the things that is little hard for me to understand is that in many ways this is a controlled medical system, however, there is the issue of medical resources. The country is growing so quickly and there are private clinics and hospitals all over the place. The medical system here is not as crazy, dysfunctional and mixed up as the USA but they are working on it. I guess I just would hope that they will make a better job of it then we have.

There were some impressive rain storms Friday night, wind and even some lightening. Nothing really compared to the storms back home. I know that this year there seems to be severe storms and tornados back home with damage and death. Every few days there are pictures on the internet of the damage.

Ha Noi was cool and washed clean this morning after the rain. I walked over to see the History of Revolution Museum. Viet Nam as we know has had a pretty turbulent past. In the US we concentrate on our 10 years or so part of the 200 years of their turbulent past. Ho Chi Minh traveled all over the world in the early part of the 20^th century. He spent time in the US and was trying to convince Woodrow Wilson to help Viet Nam get out from under the French. The French were pretty intent on keeping their colonies. However, I wonder what the outcome would have been if someone had listened to Ho earlier on.

I walked over into another new part of town. I also took a taxi to the Ho Tay park and the Sen Restaurant for a group outing. This was kind of like a Vietnamese smorgasbord. The food was great and there was a band. They were channeling the Carpenters’ all evening. There was also a pretty amazing kid who at the age of 4-6 was really belting out some tunes. After this it was time to go to Karaoke. I haven’t been out on the town in Ha Noi and the Karaoke club was not what I expected. Basically there were lots of small rooms and each party could have their private Karaoke machine. Well a few of the songs were in English but most of them were in Vietnamese. I can’t sing that well and I am pretty sure that my pronunciation was not always on target. However, I had a great time with the group and Houng and Thuy have great voices. Lots of songs about love and heart break and being done wrong; it would seem that there is a lot in common with Vietnam and Nashville and Country Music.