Halong...has this been going on?

We played tonight in Halong Bay at the Halong College of Culture. There was a packed house of verry appreciative and enthusiastic students and teachers. Have I mentioned the fact that we have had a packed house every where we have played on this tour? Once again we played with Vietnamese musicians. One hilarious thing is the past two nights we played Oh Susanna with them. Apparently, that is one American folk song everyone knows. They really love the tune but don't have a clue as to the words. I said I'd send them along when I get back to ol' Texas.

We've shot about 15 hours of video so far. We played two nights ago at the Welcome Vietnam festival and on live TV and they are going to give us a copy of the show. They also filmed tonight's show for TV so we'll have plenty of footage to add to our continuing docudrama of the flaming exploits of Bob & Tucker...

Tomorrow morning we are going to take a boat ride in the bay. You need to Google Halong Bay, you won't believe what you are going to see. Limestone islands covered my the deepest green jut up out of the water into the sky. It looks surreal and the boat ride takes you between these formations. There is a legend how these amazing peaks and cliffs came to be. Something about a dragon fighting another monster and water spirits and land spirits fighting it out. The dragon was cut into a hundred pieces and scattered in the bay and that's what we see today. We'll be filming a video out on the water.

So I better get to bed, we have to get up very early and be on the water by 8AM. We're going back to Hanoi tomorrow after the trip and have a long drive ahead of us. Tucker and I are both about to drop from exhaustion. We literally haven't stopped moving since we got hear and haven't had a day off. BUT...YAY - we have tomorrow night off and fly to Bangkok on Monday. It looks as though the schedule has changed drastically because of the Thai King's sister's death and the enforced mourning period. But they have filled in the canceled shows with a lot of university programs and we're playing for the US Ambassador and a lot of guests. I'll post the updated schedule and some photos tomorrow.

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OK, this is really it. 'night!

Some Bad News

Yesterday, I received this email from Bangkok: "Thailand's King's sister HRH Princess Galyani Wattana passed away on January 2 and the Thai government announced that there will be an official mourning period of 15 days - to last thru Jan 16. This effectively means that all government institutions including the State Department's partner universities are not to engage in any celebratory events like public performances or concerts during the mourning period."

What this means for us is that many of our shows, including the Rhythm of the Earth Festival on the 18th have been canceled. The Festival will be postponed until March and we are hoping to come back for it somehow. We're still going to Thailand and will be playing quite a bit, but all public shows have been canceled. They are going to schedule several private workshop/performances at music conservatories. This is sad news all around and we are very disappointed, but I'm sure we will still have a lot of fun and play a lot of music. I'll post a new schedule on my website just as soon as I know...

Tonight we Rock!

Today is our first show on this wild east odyssey. We play at the Youth Cultural House here in Ho Chi Minh City tonight. There is supposed to be a good crowd and we're ready to get on with the tour. We have a rehearsal/soundcheck with A local musician Nga on a bamboo xylophone type instrument called the T'rung.

Yesterday, we had a press conference at the American Center with about eight reporters. We had our trusty translator, Mr. Laun, with us and had a lively exchange. We've had a lot of press so far, much of it in Vietnamese. (If you Google Bob Livingston Vietnam, you can come up with quite a few online stories.)

Tucker has been up way before the crack of dawn everyday wandering about the city. He says that at 4AM the parks are full of folks exercising and practicing Tai Chi and other martial art forms. Everyone seems really fit here and I have not seen any obesity what-so-ever. I have tried to get on a normal schedule of getting up at 9AM or so. Due to the massive jet-lag, I do wake up at 4AM, but try "power" back to sleep.

Food has been somewhat of a problem for us so far because Tucker and I are vegetarians and have had some difficulty finding places to eat. But today we went out and found a little hole in the wall called Pho that had fantastic soup and pure papaya juice. To our surprise, there were several large pictures of President Clinton eating there in November 2000. While the crazed recount was going in in Florida, Clinton was visiting several countries around here and eating some mighty spicy food. So we must have been in the right place...