Last night we went to a concert at the opera house for the first time. (This picture is from a previous trip.) The occasion was to meet with another Fulbrighter who Ilene had so-far only corresponded with by email. She introduced us to a nice new restaurant I think I'll be spending a lot of time at and arranged for tickets to the concert, which was an east-meets-west kind of program. The Symphony Orchestra of the Ho Chi Minh City Ballet performed and guest soloists were from China, Korea and Japan. There were orchestral pieces composed by Chinese and Vietnamese featuring a kind of Vietnamese bamboo xylophone called T'rung and a Chinese lute called Pipa as well Terrega guitar piece adapted for Pipa. The event was a fundraiser for the Saigon Times Foundation, which supports "industrious students with disadvantages." It was a much better performance than what we attended on our last trip at the Conservatory, though this too was proceeded by a 15-minute lecture on the important connection between art and social values.-Robert
