a little bit of silliness....click on the picture to create a fly for it to eat....

Friday, December 3, 2010

The end to a perfect day...

To top off my perfect morning I have just enjoyed a pretty perfect evening too!  Amanda suggested that we go to town this evening to sit on the steps of the Opera House and enjoy - on the big screen outside - the performance of the Chinese Disabled People's Performing Arts Troupe (now that's a mouthful).  It's a group of deaf and disabled dancers, blind singers and musicians and a woman who signed in the most elegant and stylised way. She and David had enjoyed seeing them while living in Hong Kong.  Sounds like a plan, Stan!

We met at the lake, grabbed a lovely iced coffee in a fabulous little place she and David discovered a while back - you have to go down a tiny little alleyway and up three flights of stairs but the view of the lake from the top is spectacular, I would have had a photo but I couldn't remember how to put the camera on night mode...doh!  After coffee we wandered off to find dinner, we ended up having some wonderful street food that she and her hubby had discovered last week.  All fried but so not greasy and horrid.  We just ordered one of everything each, a spring roll, a couple of types of dumpling, some calamari, and some pakora type things...yummy...and the bill came to 65000vd for the two of us (that's $3.25 in oz).  After dinner we grabbed dessert near the Opera House, Vietnamese ice cream - which is more like gelato.  We had a coconut cone each for the princely sum of 7,000each (35c ish).  It's almost embarrassing sometimes how cheap it is to eat here, but I remain thankful...if it wasn't I couldn't do what I'm doing.
Full and happy we trekked off the the Opera House and found ourselves a possie on the steps.
We were having a laugh because the sound kept dropping out, then the screen went black...we almost gave up and went home.  Then when it actually started up again and we settled in to watch when the organiser of the whole thing came out and offered us and the two boys near us free tickets to get in! You beauty!

We watched the show from the 'gods' up on the third floor.  I think the altitude must have given us bubbles in our brains because in between gasping with awe we spent a lot of time cracking jokes and laughing uncontrollably...like two naughty school girls.  I was almost expecting to get shushed again, but Vietnamese audiences don't observe silence like European ones, so no-one really heard us...until they did a medley of the Sound of Music and we HAD to join in!  Anyway, take a look at these fabulous dancers and remember that they can't hear the music at all.  There was a woman standing with her back to the speakers waving her arms around like crazy to count time for them...astounding!

I wanted to post the videos I took, crappy as they were but they are too big so check this link for a Picasa album where you can see them if you want...xx
http://picasaweb.google.com/114345190756062080955/DisabledChineseArtistsInHanoi?authkey=Gv1sRgCIvEyNjHjbWFzwE#

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