tangoLA's Posts

No reviews or comments posted; 6 questions asked; 14 answers given.

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• Hi, does anyone know of any place in Hanoi where people dance Argentine tango? I've seen this link for Hanoi tango club - does anyone know anything about it?

  http://hanoitango.com/f/index.php

  And is there a fun place to dance salsa in Hanoi?

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• Hi everyone, a few weeks ago I posted a question asking if anyone knew anything about dancing Argentine tango in Hanoi. Well, to answer my own question, I've found an amazingly enthusiastic and dedicated group of tango afficionados in Hanoi. They have weekly practicas just across the Chuong Duong bridge, in Gia Lam, on Wed evenings 8 - 10 pm at a place called One Studio. They have bi-weekly milongas (tango dances) on Sunday evenings at Le Club on 162 Phuong Liet, 8 - 10 pm.

  Information in Vietnamese on the Hanoi Tango Club can be found at Hanoitango.com and www.vietnamdancesport.net.

  The practica is hard to find. It's best to go with someone from the club the first time. The contact people are:

  Diu or Phú

  hanoi.tango@gmail.com, ziusha@hanoitango.com

  Tel: 0912.268427 (Diu) OR 096 224 1987 (Phú)

  Happy tango dancing to all!

  See Answers

• Hi everyone,

  I'm in the market for a motorbike and would like some advice.

  I'm going to be in northern Vietnam for about 5 months, and then southern Vietnam for another 5 months. I plan to take frequent trips to the countryside, including mountainous regions. After that I'd like to take a motorbike trip to Cambodia for a month, then come back up to Hanoi, sell my bike, and then leave the country.

  The question is, what type of bike would be best for this type of situation? I have been renting a Wave for regular in-city use, and renting Minsks for out-of-town trips. However, when I went to Hoa Binh last weekend, I noticed that almost all the locals used Win 100s. Does anyone have an opinion on the Win 100? I found a dealer in Hanoi who's offering a new Taiwanese-made Win 100 for about $420 (7 million dong). I tried an old used Win 100 before: the brakes seemed awful (but this was an old bike), and the handlebars seemed too low (I'm 5'8", 173 cm). I like the raised handebars on Minsks. The Win 100 also seems more frail than Minsks.

  On the other hand, the Win 100 looks to be far less obnoxious in city traffic than Minsks, since it doesn't produce copious fumes; so I could just buy one bike for both in-town and out-of-town trips, instead of renting two.

  Thanks for any tips~

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• I'm interested in playing pick-up basketball in Hanoi. I've seen some old postings about pick-up games in Van Phuc, etc. I'm just wondering if anyone has current info about pick-up basketball.

  Thanks for any tips~

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• The other day a Vietnamese friend and I watched some guy putter through Hanoi traffic on his Minsk, cutting a wake as other riders veered away from the odious fumes produced by the Minsk. My friend said something that really made me feel ashamed: she noted that Westerners came from countries where polluting vehicles were banned, and yet Westerners felt free to pollute the air in Vietnam. That gave me pause; why, I wondered, do we Westerners permit ourselves to ride Minsks in city traffic here? I've rented them a few times. They're cheap, sturdy, large enough for a taller frame, and can handle bad roads - that much is obvious. But I found it hard, after hearing my friend's comment, to justify riding one in town. In North America, I don't condone SUVs or Harleys. However, the pleasure of riding a Minsk seems basically the same - it's a big, loud, attention-grabbing testosteronal hunk of steel. And my friend's friend's comment hinted at something else that I found quite disturbing - we treat our own citizens in the West with as much respect and consideration as our environmental regulations and social norms can muster - yet here, in Vietnam, with respect to Minsks, we don't mind poisoning the air of Hanoians, if it gives us some incremental pleasure. It's a mindset that seems almost... colonialist.

  Well, those are just my thoughts. Perhaps people who have lived here longer can explain how we can justify riding Minsks in town. I don't mean to be judgmental of others - like I said, I have ridden and derived great pleasure from riding Minsks in the past. But my friend's comment made me confront what seems like an ugly hypocrisy in my own chest.

  Have other people come up with suitable alternatives to Minsks? I bought a new Win 110 recently for $500, and it's been quite rickety, but relatively quiet and less polluting so far. Then again, my bicycle in Canada cost more than this Win.

  Cheers

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• Hello, does anyone know where I can buy 6 inch calipers with 0.01 mm accuracy? Ideally I would like to find digital calipers, but dial calipers or just plain old Vernier calipers would be fine.

  Thanks for any tips.

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Answers (14)

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Great, thanks Cheapie! And would you or anyone happen to know where I can buy dancing shoes in Hanoi?

  In response to the question: Hi, does anyone know of any place in Hanoi where people dance Argentine tango? I've seen this link for Hanoi tango club - does anyone know anything a...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  I recommend Tam Huong, an eyeglass store on 157 Le Duan, a few hundred meters south of the train station. The owners are kind and honest and the prices are amazingly cheap, compared to opticians in the West. The owner's daughter Hanh speaks English and Mandarin.

  In response to the question: Can anyone recommend an optician - I need to upgrade my glasses Thanks...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Hi Riki,

  Well, I shave my head bald... :) ... and I've also asked this question many times myself...

  The short answer is, upper-class educated Hanoian girls don't 'hang out'. They're taught to spend time primarily with their families, and then marry fairly early: 24 - 26 is considered to be the ideal age for marriage, which leaves a very narrow window between graduation from university and domestic life. Moreover, Hanoian girls don't 'fool around' - they (along with Hanoian guys) are typically quite serious about marriage in romantic relationships, cherishing, for better or worse, a concept of love that may seem to jaded Westerners as quixotic. The guys they tend to meet are

  people who are introduced by third parties, or whom they meet at work, or (rarely) who live in the same neighborhood. Hanoian women also face the danger that their reputations and hence marriageability will be sullied, so they're careful about whom they're seen hanging out with. Add to this the fact that Westerners in general are seen as being promiscuous (not a bad assumption), and you can see the outlines of the predicament. As the irate tone of the some of the responders indicates, being a player in Vietnamese society can really rock the boat, and so one has to be extremely careful to be respectful and to not disrupt the social fabric that Vietnamese women are embedded in.

  That being said, and assuming your intentions are honorable, one way to meet educated Vietnamese women is through social dancing. It's part of the curious heritage from the French colonial period that although many forms of social contact are frowned upon, it's perfectly legitimate to cha-cha-cha and tango the night away with the opposite gender. There are many venues for learning and practicing social dance around Hanoi. I myself will be teaching a six-week series of beginner Argentine Tango at Quan Hoa Hotel, No. 20, Ngo 165, Cau Giay, that starts this Wednesday, Sep. 17, 2008, 7:30 pm - 10 pm:

  http://letuhuy.bol.ucla.edu/home.html

  I'm part of the Hanoi Tango Club:

  http://wordpress.com/tag/tango-hanoicom/

  There's also a happening salsa/tango scene at Nocbar on Hoang Hoa Tham on Friday nights (tango 8 pm - 9 pm), and various milongas (tango dances) during the weekend and week.

  Hope this helped.

  In response to the question: Okay people...don't bash me too hard here (he-he): Since I have been in Hanoi, I have only met the WRONG types of women. Either they don't speak Engli...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Hey, thanks everyone for the input! Based on advice given here and elsewhere, I'm going to buy a Win 100 and see how it works out in Hanoi. I'll post here later to let everyone know how it goes. I have also heard about and seen the Honda NeoFuture, but it seems beyond my financial reach ($500 - $1000). I'll see if Anh Hung or another mechanic can put a set of risers on the Win 100, as suggested by Artictis.

  In response to the question: Hi everyone, I'm in the market for a motorbike and would like some advice. I'm going to be in northern Vietnam for about 5 months, and then sout...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Hi all,

  As promised, here's an update on how the Win 110 (not Win 100, as I mistakenly wrote before) is working out. I got one through Anh Hung from Flamingo Travel. He advised me to avoid some of the cheaper Wins available in Hanoi, and said that SUFAT and DETECH are two good Win manufacturers to go with. I eventually got a brand new DETECH Win (aka Espero) for about $500, with a large Honda carrying box on the back rack. Another box that I purchased earlier was terrible and kept detaching itself. The carrying box is necessary with a Win in the city because there's no convenient space to stash belongings as with city motorbikes.

  I haven't taken the Win out to the countryside yet, but so far it runs fine. It's very light, esp. compared to a Minsk, and seems prone to rattling. My footpegs came undone after a few days and had to be reattached - the bike really rattles between 40 and 60 km/h (esp. on the left footpeg), but is fine below and above that speed. The Win is very quiet compared to a Minsk, and doesn't produce copious fumes. It seems to have much poorer mileage than my Wave, but I'll have to take a more precise measurement. The handlebars on this model seem higher than the older model I tried previously, so I don't have a problem with being hunched over.

  The bike didn't come with a manual, and I had a lot of trouble starting in the morning, until Linh from Flamingo Travel found a lever on the left hand side that acts like the pump on the Minsk. The lever needs to be pulled up in the morning for it to start initially.

  I plan to get side racks and some saddle bags soon (any advice on that, anyone?), find a way to dampen the vibrations on the left foot peg (any ideas?) a bunch of spare parts, and take it out to the hills in a few weeks. Hopefully this bike will be able to handle a trip to Saigon and to Cambodia. I'd also like to form a Win club, but I think that would consist of myself and my artist neighbor, for the time being...

  Cheers

  p.s. thanks for the tips about the Neo Future, folks, I'll keep that in mind for the next time

  In response to the question: Hi everyone, I'm in the market for a motorbike and would like some advice. I'm going to be in northern Vietnam for about 5 months, and then sout...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Excellent, thanks very much Hung_107! TomSunLee, see you on the courts?

  In response to the question: I'm interested in playing pick-up basketball in Hanoi. I've seen some old postings about pick-up games in Van Phuc, etc. I'm just wondering if anyone ...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Hi Travelgoddess,

  I don't know if Argentine Tango is of any interest to you, but I'm teaching a regular tango class every Wednesday with the Hanoi Tango Club at Quan Hoa Hotel, Number 20, Ngo 165, Cau Giay Street, 7:30 pm - 10 pm. I've also been invited to help out with the New Dance tango class, Mondays at Quang Trung School, 91 Tran Quang Dieu street. There are two regular tango milongas - one is with the New Dance club, one is with Hanoi Tango club, usually on alternating Sundays.

  For more info about Hanoi tango, please contact:

  Mr. Phu : hanoi.tango@gmail.com

  Ms. Ly : 0904350538

  wordpress.com/tag/tango-hanoicom/

  For more info about New Dance's events, please contact:

  Nguyen Quang Vu - email: matadorvn@yahoo.com.hk - cell: 0904 699779

  Bui Minh Duc - email: ducbui85@gmail.com - cell:0988905164

  Tran Phuong Thao - email:macotobani@yahoo.com - cell:0989.310.911

  Good luck!

  In response to the question: Just started a once a week dance class and am loving it. Would like to find more classes. Any ideas on where to look would be appreciated. Esp interes...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Ah, perfect! This is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to stoke - between Vietnamese and foreigners, Minsk and non-Minsk riders.

  To clarify: as Candide correctly observed, no one, including me, thinks that putting the few Minsks in Hanoi to rest would make any dent on local environmental conditions or Hanoian life spans. As Candide eloquently notes, it's this queazy feeling that perhaps we unconsciously take advantage of laxer environmental regulations here, at precisely the same moment that our home countries preach about solidarity in rescuing the environment. And I worried also that Hanoians viewed us foreigners as being hypocritical, at least with respect to Minsks. That was the sense I got from my Vietnamese friend. I hoped that other people on this website would chime in so I could get a sense of whether my views were correct or misinformed.

  Thanks, SoViet, for pointing out the optimal fuel/oil ratio for in-city Minsk riding. Regarding your broader arguments about carbon footprints, etc., I take your point. It would be nice if someone had some statistics on hand about such matters to enlighten us; but perhaps this is wishful thinking?

  Another thought occurs to me: in what other respects, if any, do Vietnamese find us foreigners to be hypocritical? Go ahead and take some jabs at us; it's healthy to learn some humility once in a while...

  In response to the question: The other day a Vietnamese friend and I watched some guy putter through Hanoi traffic on his Minsk, cutting a wake as other riders veered away from th...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Hi Candide,

  Yes, you raise an excellent point about bargaining with locals. My behavior has evolved to a point where I engage in some token bargaining, and then goodnaturedly pay a higher price than what locals pay. I feel this is one of those issues that has no fixed moral bearing - you can take the attitude that one should be treated on an equal basis with locals, or that one should pay what is commensurate with one's own salary. I think what determines your attitude is the degree to which you empathize with others. I guess from your commentary that you empathize highly with the locals around you, and kudos to you for that. The world would be a gentler place with more people like you around.

  That being said, Hanoi is a dog-eat-dog kind of city, and there are plenty of people willing to take advantage of the weak. In the evening, when I tug out my wallet and leaf through my grubby dong, reflecting soberly on my day's transactions and all the money that was nickel and dimed out of me, the phrase, "A fool and his money are soon parted" often flits through my head...

  A Hanoian friend once commented to me that Hanoians don't work well in groups, because they are an envious lot, and would rather hinder a group's progress out of spite, than let another person's talents be recognized. It's not just Hanoians who are like this... it's the Jones too. There's something sad and parochial about the human condition that gives us miserly delight in having either equality, or better yet, a clear advantage over our neighbours...

  In response to the question: The other day a Vietnamese friend and I watched some guy putter through Hanoi traffic on his Minsk, cutting a wake as other riders veered away from th...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Well, as the substantive comments seem to be dwindling and the ire seems to be rising, perhaps it is time to close out this mini-symposium, as HanoiAnon suggests. I'd like to thank everyone who took the trouble to answer my query. To summarize, I started off by pointing out that Vietnamese people may see Minsks as symbolic of hypocrisy on the part of Westerners - myself included among the latter. It turned out that the issue was much more complex than I suspected on surface appearance, with a diversity of opinion among both Vietnamese and Westerners. Several Minskites argued that proper maintenance of their cherished steeds would cause less environmental damage than replacing them, which is a point that I (and probably others) had never considered. Candide then raised the sensitive issue of a Minsk bandwagon effect, which perhaps predictably led to some testy exchange. I don't think anyone would disagree that in an ideal world we would all be riding bicycles and buses or walking around Hanoi, but it'll be decades before this city is as public transportation friendly as, say, Amsterdam or Osaka. In the meantime, I suppose we'll have to grapple with thorny issues of public good vs. private interest on a case by case basis, via grassroots forums like this.

  Thanks again to all~

  In response to the question: The other day a Vietnamese friend and I watched some guy putter through Hanoi traffic on his Minsk, cutting a wake as other riders veered away from th...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Hi Hippo,

  Just to make sure that I haven't misrepresented my friend's argument, I think she and most of my other Vietnamese friends would gladly admit to numerous faults of the Vietnamese people, driving being one (a Vietnamese person once told me that traffic here could constitute a horror film for Westerners). Her point was not to declare that Westerners were somehow inferior to Vietnamese people in judgment or character; rather, solely with respect to Minsks, there seemed to be a moral discrepancy between the standards that Westerners applied at home and when in Vietnam. It's a perception that the Minskites on this site have rightly challenged and striven to address.

  I wince a little when I think about my use of 'colonialist' - I merely meant to be provocative with that word, not insulting - but on the other hand, it was my honest attempt to characterize what I thought was the Vietnamese view on this topic. Again, I understand there are greater ethical issues in Hanoi and Vietnam; I just wanted to see what other people felt and could inform me about this admittedly minor topic.

  Cheers

  In response to the question: The other day a Vietnamese friend and I watched some guy putter through Hanoi traffic on his Minsk, cutting a wake as other riders veered away from th...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  I have had this problem several times as well. The first time it happened, I took it to a Nokia service center, and they fiddled with it for a while, popped out the SIM card and put it back in, and voila, it was working again. I think this has the effect that AnhChep mentioned above; it seems to reset the SMS settings to factory default. Now every time this happens I just slide out the SIM card and put it back again and this seems to do the trick.

  Why does this happen? I'm not sure. Perhaps when the phone gets bumped around the SIM card is unseated; or perhaps there's something else going on.

  Cheers

  In response to the question: For some reason, the text messaging function on my Nokia phone has stopped working. I can receive, but not send them. Does anyone have any idea why th...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  For anyone who’s interested, there’s a great deal of research and literature on the topic of trust and comparing different levels of trust between countries. There are two quantitative studies that I know of on Vietnam. The first, by Dalton el al. (2001), used a questionnaire survey format distributed to 1000 individuals throughout Vietnam, and found that while only 41% of Vietnamese thought that most people could be trusted, this was relatively high when compared with the same question in other East Asian countries: “42% of Japanese respondents, 41% of the Taiwanese, 52% of the Chinese and only 6% of the Philippine respondents say they trust others.” Thus, Dalton et al. conclude that “the Vietnamese national level of social trust appears higher than some other nations at Vietnam's stage of economic development.”

  Regarding differences in trust between the three main regions of Vietnam, Dalton et al. note that “[e]xpressions of interpersonal trust are, however, much more common in northern provinces (55%) than in central (28%) or southern (37%) Vietnam.”

  http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/Upload/104_social_relations_vietnam.pdf

  This finding is replicated somewhat in a more quantitatively rigorous study, by Tanaka et al. (2006), which compared 9 villages in north and south Vietnam, and found that contributions in a so-called trust game were higher in the north than in the south; however, they also determined that southerners were more generous to poor income groups than northerners. They argue that a longer history of collectivization in the north had the effect of making northerners relatively more dependent on political institutions to carry out altruistic activities, compared to southerners.

  http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/Vietnam.pdf

  To sum up, it seems that Vietnamese are relatively trusting (and presumably more trustworthy), considering the low income level in this country. My experience in Papua New Guinea, South America, and post-communist Eastern Europe supports this view – can anyone else support or dispute this hypothesis, based on your personal experiences? A further piece of evidence for this general hypothesis is that Vietnam (and China) have been the two fastest growing countries in the world, in terms of GDP, over approximately 2 decades, and the presumption is that something other than economic factors – namely trust, or “social capital” – has been allowing Vietnam and China to grow rapidly, and also aided the growth of the East Asian tiger economies. Fukuyama (1995) was one of the first scholars to popularize this view.

  The really interesting question, then, is why Vietnamese have a higher level of trust in their country, compared to other countries at similar levels of income. The topic of what makes some countries trusting and others mistrustful is the holy grail that many social scientists are now trying to address. Some have suggested it’s due to the density of civil society groups. Income inequality seems to play a negative role. Since income inequality is particularly marked (and rising) in big cities like Hanoi (or Los Angeles, for that matter), that could explain some of the negative experiences that foreigners have here. It’s quite an experience to drop in on a random village in the countryside, leave your motorbike at a stranger’s house, and be totally reassured that it will still be there when you come back.

  Cheers

  In response to the question: A person I know complained that she cannot trust ANY local people because she has enough bad experiences about Vietnamese people during her 2 years st...

• Posted Thursday January 1st, 1970.

  Hi Artictis,

  The (Francis) Fukuyama reference is his 1995 book “Trust”:

  http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Francis-Fukuyama/dp/0029109760

  Many economists allude to the importance of trust in "lubricating" economic transactions. I agree with you that foreigners must certainly feel uncomfortable with informal market transactions in makeshift settings.

  ---

  For a study examining the link between income inequality and homicide rates (arguably a proxy for trust) in North America, please see:

  http://psych.mcmaster.ca/dalywilson/iiahr2001.pdf

  In response to the question: A person I know complained that she cannot trust ANY local people because she has enough bad experiences about Vietnamese people during her 2 years st...

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