Concert «Tinh Hà Say Hi Concert» (Hẹn giữa Tinh Hà)

   «Say Hi» is the loudest Vietnamese music project of recent years: a television show that grew into a whole scene of young singers and rappers. «Tinh Hà» is the concert arm of the franchise, and this autumn it comes to Ho Chi Minh City.

   The name means star river, and the subtitle reads as a rendezvous among the stars. It is produced by DatVietVAC, the company behind the show, with TPBank as diamond sponsor. The scale is large: an open-air ground in the Vạn Phúc district rather than a concert hall.

   The essentials:

   — an open-air ground, Sân số 2, in Vạn Phúc — fan zones and sectors rather than rows of seats;
   — the line-up is drawn from the «Say Hi» circle, the same faces you hear in the local charts;
   — tickets through ticketbox, with entry by the name and phone number given at checkout;
   — it is a street-concert format: come early, queues build at the gates.

   Come if you want the Vietnamese pop scene as it is now rather than in its archive version. This is the country's largest young audience, and the feel of such concerts is closer to a festival than to a philharmonic hall.

   On tickets: the lowest tier from 800,000 VND, with sectors differing in price and in distance from the stage. The programme is in Vietnamese; for a non-speaker that is no obstacle here — the lyrics matter less than the sound and the lights.

   Vạn Phúc is in the south-east of the city, by the river; a taxi is the sensible way in, as parking fills up on concert days.

   One evening, an open ground and the scene the whole young country is listening to. If you are in Ho Chi Minh City in mid-October, this is the concert of the month.