It’s Karaoke Jim, But Not as We Know It

If there’s one thing Asian countries love above all else, it’s karaoke. Vietnam is no exception. The streets are littered with karaoke bars and even worse, “karaoke massage” establishments (you’ll likely come across a few of these while you’re backpacking around Vietnam). I love nothing better than to belt out a good tune in the privacy of my own home, and am even part of an all-girl choir and amateur operatic group in my home town, but going it alone on a microphone in a less-than-sober state? Not usually. So how did it come about that one night in Hoi An I ended up singing “Last Xmas” by Wham! with my new Irish girl friend to an audience of a Thai man, a Vietnamese couple and a Canadian?!

The truth is, I actually don’t remember. There were jokes made over beers about a karaoke session (although I think the men of the group were hoping for a visit to the aforementioned karaoke massage place, as opposed to just a regular bar, tsk tsk). Next thing I know, a tour guide taking us around the old part of the town was promising us the best night of our lives at his friend’s bar. The rest is a blur. We arrived, were whisked to what appeared to be a private upstairs karaoke room and a microphone was thrust into one hand and a bucket of beers into the other.

Vietnamese karaoke seems to work differently to our karaoke in that it’s more like the computer game Singstar: you get a score at the end of the song depending on how many correct notes you hit. This adds a competitive edge, which was only slightly ruined by the montage of Vietnamese landscape photographs displayed while you’re singing (I defy anyone not to feel awkward singing “Love in an Elevator” with a backdrop of grazing water buffalo). The list of songs was also pretty diverse. And out of date. Throughout the course of the evening I got through a duet of “Ebony and Ivory” (which I quickly realised I knew none of the proper tune to, apart from the title line in the chorus), “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”, “My Sharona”, “Paperback Writer” and the pièce de résistance – “Last Xmas”. I don’t like to boast, but our score of 100% for the Wham! classic was the highlight of the evening. That and watching a stranger sing a song completely in Thai with us waving our arms in the air as if we had known him all our lives – the only thing that was missing were the lighters.

We stumbled out of the bar at midnight (I’ve mentioned the annoying fact that everywhere in Vietnam shuts super early in previous posts) and into a taxi in the pouring rain. I realised I’d left my camera in the bar. This was totally out of character for me. The whole rest of the trip I had been super aware of my belongings because I had heard so many stories of theft and bag snatching in Vietnam as a whole.  I ran back upstairs and straight into the torso of a half-naked Vietnamese man who was clutching my camera. He’d gone in to clear up after us. I hugged him and kept saying “Thank you, thank you”, which was probably slightly over the top considering a) he wasn’t wearing a top and b) he hadn’t really done anything, but I was so thankful that I hadn’t lost all of my precious memories from the previous days of the trip. He looked at me like I was crazy and turned a very deep shade of red before giggling with his male friends as I ran back out to the taxi. The singing continued as we headed back to our base and continued our own private party accompanied by music played through our phones (why did no-one think to bring speakers?!).

Will I be lambasted by some for partaking in such a non-authentic pastime whilst in this wonderful country? Probably. Do I care? No. We were enjoying ourselves with the locals whilst supporting a local business and most importantly, we were having fun. Drunken, idiotic, make-a-complete-fool-of-yourself fun. And sometimes they are the best memories of all.