Sunday 18 January 2015

A love letter to RAY QUAN: The restaurant on the Railway.

In Hanoi, there exists a place that couldn't be conceived of in the West. It's a restaurant which involves one walking over functioning railway tracks to enter. And that's the only entrance.

My favourite of all nights to go there is a Sunday night. There exists a kind of reckless abandon of the upcoming week: "to HELL with Monday!" we say, gulping another shot of artichoke rice wine while a train bellows past us.

Tonight was special. It was a friend's birthday. I was late. I arrived into a cacophony of girls gyrating to female pop stars, while the young Vietnamese male waiters wore an expression of utter befuddlement, filming the whole thing in disbelief on their phones.

We danced for the next couple of hours, on tables, waving, clapping. More girls joined us. Boys sat on the sidelines. Two small kids stood nervously near, we invited them to join in, and they proceeded to out do us all with their dance skills, with knee-dives on the floor, swirls and shimmying galore.

I left and the party was still continuing, and as I looked across at Ray Quan from the other side of the tracks, I took a photo to remember this night forever.


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