Live music night «Gió Đêm Qua Đường»: Chu Thúy Quỳnh and Nguyễn Kiều Oanh

   Two female voices, a small stage and a few steps between the front table and the microphone: Ho Chi Minh City still keeps the kind of music night where the singer can see faces in the room. This one belongs to Chu Thúy Quỳnh and Nguyễn Kiều Oanh, who have shared a stage in the city before.

   The programme is called Gió Đêm Qua Đường, which reads literally as a night wind passing down the street. No set list has been published, so most of the evening will unfold on the spot, the way a Vietnamese music lounge normally works: a song, a few words to the room, another song.

   The short version of what matters:

   — the two voices of the night: Chu Thúy Quỳnh and Nguyễn Kiều Oanh
— programme title: Gió Đêm Qua Đường
— this is a seated live-music room with tables and numbered places, not a dance club
— the stage pushes out into the room in a half-circle, with the first rows curving around it
— some of the seating is sofas, and a mezzanine level looks down on the stage from above the stalls

   The format itself is a Saigon habit worth knowing. A phòng trà is a music room rather than a venue: the audience sits at tables with a drink in front of them, the band plays live, and the singer talks to the room between numbers. There are no barriers and no standing pit, and the distance is short enough to hear the breath taken before a line.

   The room plan shows a bar inside the hall itself, to the left of the stage, the entrance on the right, and a staircase up to the mezzanine and the technical area. Square places on the plan are sofas, the rest are single chairs set in rows.

   The night suits listeners who like to be close: you stay in one place, you can see the band, and the quiet passages that a big arena swallows are still audible. Because places are numbered, it is worth arriving early enough to find your table and order before the lights go down.

   If you would trade a loud night out for two voices at close range, this is a good room to sit in.