Night Out In DalaT
I don't claim to be an expert in Southeast Asian nightlife, but I can draw from some pretty extensive personal experience trying to party with English-speaking Americans in cities that don't remotely resemble State College. Penn State is a good place to earn an undergraduate degree in pregaming and apartment crawling. It does not prepare you for Dalat. Here are a few guidelines (most of) our eleven-student group followed in pursuit of a fun night in a foreign land:
1. Vietnam is cheap, but it’s still a good idea to pregame. Try some local beverages. Not too much though because... 2. Keep your wits about you. Walking down Frat Row is a struggle with too many drinks for your liver to process. Navigating a new city -- especially one with steep, slippery steps, winding sidewalks, a lake, a dam, a waterfall, and very few traffic rules -- is potentially much more dangerous. 3. Identify the familiar, then find something else. If you've never sat at tiny, red, plastic tables and chairs designed for kindergartners and ordered a beer by announcing its local name "Bah Bah Bah" then try it out, even if this outdoor cafe is literally on the street where motorbikes and cars whiz by just feet away. 4. A big group should consider sometimes splitting up into smaller factions for the night. It's nothing personal. Making decisions becomes less of a burden. Authentic adventure becomes easier to find. 5. If you insist on photo-documenting your night, leave the selfies at home. A close up of your mug and you holding your mug looks the same in Saigon and in State college. Ask a stranger to take your groups' picture. Make conversation. Get the stranger (or strangers) into the next snapshot. Bam! New friends! 6. Be safe in every euphemistic definition you can think of! |