044 VENUE
VENTURES IN VIETNAM
WORDS & PICS: JIMMIE WING
Vietnam now offers a wide variety of entertainment venues and some of the world’s leading sound and lighting manufacturers are making significant inroads. Acoustic, Beta Three, Clay Paky, Coemar, D.A.S Audio, Electro-Voice, Funktion One, JBL, Martin Audio, Nexo, Outline and Robe to name a few, are all establishing a presence. But it hasn’t happened overnight. The venues are getting bigger and bigger and operators are reach- ing further afield. Now, reportedly Vietnam’s largest disco is Ha Long Club, which overlooks scenic Ha Long Bay, a newly developed resort area about 160km northeast of Hanoi. Closer to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) is Sankara, a sophisticated beach club and restaurant that, somewhat uniquely, is 100% foreign owned. Situated in Mui Ne, about five hours by bus from HCMC, Sankara is the first venue in Vietnam with a permanent Funktion One install and Color Kinetics LED lighting. Star Wars, a huge nightclub soon to be completed, is on naval administrated land and owned and operated by Vietnamese investors together with some of South Korea’s leading creators of the mega clubs that still dominate in Korea. In fact, Star Wars is clearly modelled after these kinds of venues and when it’s completed will take over the mantle of ‘largest nightclub in Vietnam’. One pioneering venue is Lush, which even though created five years ago, raised the bar in quality audio and lighting with one of Nexo’s first installs in the country and lighting by Coemar. As with many other Asian countries, the vagaries of Vietnamese club licensing regulations are not clear about dancing, so raised tables and stools cover areas that are not officially dancefloors. In less developed Asian countries sheer brute force volume is highly regarded and when a large mug of beer is shaken off a vibrating sub, that’s pointed out as a sign of how ‘good’ the sound is. To a certain extent this is still the case in Vietnam, but as living standards improve, audio expectations are rising too. Rob Eddy is a veteran American audio consultant based in Ho Chi Minh City. He has a theory that as the housing conditions of the general population change from concrete
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walls and tiled floors, to homes made from different materials with softer furnishings and carpeted floors, so do their aural perceptions. “Historically, Vietnam has been an environment that trained people’s ears to be immune to frequencies that are unpleasant when promi- nent. Small concrete rooms accentuate 500, 800, 1Khz. Bus and truck horns, loud construction noise, studying piano in small concrete, untreated rooms with frequencies that can actually be painful to listen to. Loud televisions with those mid-range frequencies bouncing all over the place are all part of everyday life. Local sound engineers grew up with this, and set up studios and clubs after this ear ‘training’. Foreigners going to nightclubs are very quickly ear fatigued, perceiv- ing it as just too loud,” declared Eddy, whose job description ranges from acoustic designer, system designer / installer, stage designer, recording studio or media studio designer, live and studio engineer, audio production management. Fortunately, Mr Pham Duy Duc, one of Vietnam’s leading sound designers, is of the new generation with increasingly high expectations for quality audio and has overseen installs all over Vietnam including the Saigon Opera House and the aforementioned Ha Long Club. Even though the city is more and more frequently referred to as Sai- gon, the official name is Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon apparently refers to the more central, inner area of the city. Compared to some other Asian countries with a wide divide between rich and poor, there is a feeling of egalitarianism somewhat akin to Australia, Japan and Taiwan. Mobile phone rates are among the lowest in the world. The people are genuinely friendly and even the taxi drivers are basically trustwor- thy, though tending to meander on occasion. For visitors from most countries, visas can easily be obtained online using the official website
www.visa-vietnam.org but anyone attending PALME should make sure to apply early or there’s a USD$60 late application surcharge. And af- ter PALME, for just USD$6, weary guests and exhibitors can hop on a comfortable bus with sleeper births and snooze all the way to a tropical resort like Mui Ne, to see what outside of the city has to offer.
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