Walking Into Places

Not Just Surviving, but Thriving Abroad.

One of my goals early on in Vietnam was to do a lot of writing. The trip was chock-full of new experiences that I figured some people would appreciate knowing about, and the teaching, while often exhausting, was only 4 days a week, consuming no more than 25 hours over those four. Ideally, I should have had plenty of time. I was doing some writing, but I was distracted. The 2-mile round trip to my school and back in the infernal heat and on the seemingly chaotic streets, plus the pressures of teaching, drained me and sometimes made me want to go into temporary hibernation. I found a chain coffee shop in a nearby mall, where I’d get a ca phe nau da (Vietnamese iced coffee), and listen to an audiobook or some music on my phone as I basked in the air conditioning, and the afternoon wound down. Sometimes I managed some journaling or a short story before the annoyance of hearing screen-reader speech through headphones, punctuated by boisterous rush-hour family patrons, and the pervasive sound of annoying Vietnamese and global top 40 pop on the shop’s PA forced me to wind down -- single-blind foreigner problems I suppose.

Another distraction was my hunger to explore. If I was going to have good material to write about, after all, being a hermit, and doing the same single-blind foreigner in a coffee shop thing every day wasn’t going to cut it. I began forcing myself to do things – little things. These often included simply walking down an alley or street I’d not explored and retracing my steps, selecting a place on Google Map or BLIND Square (usually a café or restaurant) and trying to find it, and trying to start up a conversation with an unsuspecting patron (usually from South Africa) at one of the cafés I passed on my commute to and from teaching. Little successes took a lot of energy but usually felt good. I had to push myself to get there, but I often felt restless if I didn’t. Another source of restlessness was music. I was such a musical snob, and neither the kids’ music I played at the school nor the pop and karaoke I was subjected to around town were doing it for me. I needed to explore and see if I could find things that I could be deeply inspired about.

One morning I stopped at one of the coffee shops and fell into chatting with a chatty Irishman who’d obviously been chatting his way through the previous night, among other recreations. He seemed genuinely interested in me and wanted to meet up again. Lots of people were curious about the blind foreigner walking around Hanoi I knew, but I was feeling lonely and in need of comradery.

The Irish fellow and I would meet up for a Saturday on the town, bouncing between rather upscale restaurants and lounges – the guy seemed to have the cash to spare, and a thirst to quench. We chatted with strangers and drank, my friend, doing the lion’s share of both. At our last destination, an upscale Tay (western)-style restaurant overlooking Ho Tay (West Lake), we drew the attention of a couple of Tay fellows, who’d recently founded Chao Hanoi, an online English language magazine mostly targeting the foreigner population. Now I was getting somewhere. I told them both of my interest in writing, and my desire to find some good music around town, like a jazz scene – I studied jazz guitar in college. They, like perhaps thousands of people in Hanoi by now, we're primarily interested in my story as a blind foreigner in town. Having only been around for a few months, and having mostly spent that time going between school, home, and some nearby eateries and shops, I didn’t think my story was much to write home, or even to the café next door about. I’d give them my story, but I had another, grander scheme.

My idea was to find some performing musicians in town. I’d seek out Hanoi’s jazz scene, get to know some of its top brass, and see if I could get involved in some modest musical collaborations, like some jam sessions, or a one-off performance that I would feature in. This seemed rather daring but desirable, and worthy of modest copy – other people enjoy music too or at least read about it.

The day after this auspicious round of carousing with my Irish mate, I left my home in search of a vegetarian food festival at a beer garden. This was an event I’d learned about through browsing Chao Hanoi, where I tried to acquaint myself with their featured brand of a copy. As usual, it took a lot to push out the door. The festival was an all-day event, but the sun was already setting. I’d never been to the beer garden, and this would only be among a handful of trips I had as yet maid alone using Grab, the most popular ride-share service in the city.

The ride didn’t go well. The motorbike driver seemed to be going around in circles. The place, according to the Grab app, was less than a kilometer away from my apartment, but we’d been driving some 20 minutes. I’d not been able to get in touch with anyone, as the guys from Chao Hanoi, that I thought might be at the festivities. From the back of the motorbike, I managed to slip my phone from my pocket as I held my non-collapsing cane with one hand, opened google translate, and refreshed my memory on how to say “I want to return home” in Vietnamese. I said it aloud for the driver to hear, and this apparently worked. He returned me to my door and apologized. I paid him for two trips, and that was that.

I was proud of myself for well-executed Vietnamese communication, but I was still feeling down. It was a nice Sunday evening, and I’d not been out anywhere or done any socializing. Emboldened to make something of the day, I looked up Jazz on google map, thinking that this might lead me into an even wilder goose chase – the only jazz club I’d heard talk of, including from the Chao Hanoi folks, was in the Old Quarter, several kilometers away. Reviews on google included a remark that it was difficult to spot from the street. I was a restless goose though, and I wanted to have one major day’s accomplishment on the record.

It came as a pleasant surprise then, that another jazz club showed up first in line after I filtered for distance. This place, called Urban Gentry (a guilty name indeed), was said to be less than ten minutes walking from my home. It seemed too good to be true, and I set out to find out if it was. As usual in Hanoi, Google Maps overshot me on my walk by a hundred feet or so. The streets were quiet, and I didn’t hear music. I finally found someone to ask, who directed me to the place with the loud barking dogs. Low and behold, sitting at a bar behind a row of motorbikes, the aforementioned dogs, and an open gate, were the proprietors: a South African jazz guitarist, and his Vietnamese fiancé (a chef and professional caterer).

“You play jazz guitar, eh?” said Jonathan, the former. “We don’t get many jazz guitarists in Hanoi.” This was not only sounding auspicious; it was almost too good – too easy. I earlier figured, maybe I’d find this Urban Gentry place, and come back on another night for performance if I was successful. Instead, Jonathan invited me to a drink and introduced me to the night’s performers who were about to head on stage, an American man named Miles, and a Russian woman named Lidia – both jazz singers. Neither was shy around me. It’d been a while since I’d actually played jazz guitar with anyone, but I must have made a good boast. We chatted it up, and I went inside for the Sunday night show amidst a gentle, candle-lit ambiance – just what one might stumble into on the Sunday night of their romantic daydreams.

Everyone friended me on Facebook, and Miles drove me home. He later added me on a Hanoi musicians Facebook messenger group, and we met up frequently. Urban gentry was practically my neighbor, and I could get their sleepwalking. Quickly Miles introduced me to dozens of mostly foreign musicians that had been playing around Hanoi for years. I bought a guitar from one of these, and in a pinch, I found myself being a staple at jams and open-mic events, at Urban Gentry, and elsewhere.

I didn’t do anything remarkable, but through a little persistence, adequate knowledge of mobility techniques, and connections with others, I became enmeshed in the Hanoi “Tay” (westerner) music scene beyond my dreams. It all seemed to happen so quickly. In fact, it was probably something I could have begun months earlier when instead I was at home or cocooning myself in a coffee shop – which I don’t entirely regret – ca phe nau da is pretty nice. I didn’t even know this scene existed.

While I learned a lot, made more and more friends, and jammed with jazz, blues, and folk musicians, truly finding my footing as a performer in Hanoi took time. I wasn’t in a band, didn’t have the equipment or a huge repertoire, was ignorant of or felt not completely comfortable with going to all the other major music destinations in town, and was still a newbie -- not in the deepest of inner circles. Plus, I was just the shy, awkward blind guy – cute and good fodder for inspirational stories of survival, but not real muso material. COVID also struck less than three months later, and while Vietnam mostly managed to heroically keep out the pandemic, and stay in business through the majority of 2020 and early 2021, Urban Gentry closed and moved out of town, as did numerous other establishments and several of their foreign patrons at the start of the epoch. I did find my footing more and more, however, and after a few months, I would be performing all around town and outside of Hanoi, both alone, and in collaboration with a musician, I was inspired by.

Music came to dominate my free time for the remaining couple of years I had in Hanoi. Unfortunately, this came at the expense of my writing efforts. I wrote a couple of unrelated pieces for Chao Hanoi and continued to journal from time to time, but I’m not sure where that piece on my pipedream of becoming involved in a Hanoi music scene flew off to. The time all seemed like a dream. The lesson I gather from this is that not only skills, but small, persistent efforts pay off, especially when it comes to stepping out of the comfort zone. That zone is important, but shouldn’t dominate us. Surprising opportunities abound outside, whether they be musical, literary, or in the form of a loquacious Irishman. They may repel you at times, but human connections have delivered for me, time after time. Connect and persist.

Read more about my experience from the pieces on the Chao Hanoi: A Contemporary Guide to The Vietnamese Capital.