the dark night
So it turns out that after you've been away from home for 2 months or so, you don't want to spend every minute going to some huge tourist attraction. When you've seen one wat/temple/garden/Buddha statue you've seen them all so you start thinking about things you might do if you were at home and you end up at the movie theatre.
I've seen two movies in SE Asia, both vastly different experiences. In Bangkok I went to see the new Batman movie “The Dark Knight” and sat in the VIP theatre. VIP theatres in Thailand feel like a first class in an airplane. You get an assigned seat that you pick from the seating chart. There are probably 15 rows in the theatre with about 8 seats per row. The chairs are huge comfy recliners with little tables by them. They serve food and drinks and some have waitresses that do table service. It's a glorious movie experience. Plus the movie was in English with Thai subtitles. Plus it was a great movie. Overall, an A+.
RIP Heath Ledger...
In Hanoi I decided to see Hancock. I was with a friend and we had driven by several theatres that were all advertising this movie. However, in Asia they will advertise movies that aren't showing... or are only showing every other day or were showing last week... And unlike Thailand English translations of signage are not as common anywhere in Vietnam. And English isn't as commonly spoken so it's much more of a crapshoot to get places.
We had the cabdriver take us to a movie theatre where Hancock was advertised but after we went up to the theatre office we discovered that only Mummy 3 was showing. The previous mummy movies have already sucked away 4 hours of my life that I'll never get back so I'd rather see anything else than the third installment.
We went back downstairs and spent an extremely frustrating and hilarious half hour trying to get a cab and explain to the driver that we knew we were standing in front of a movie theatre but we wanted to go to a different one. Yes, a movie theatre. Yes, we know this place shows movies. No, we don't want to go here. Blank look of incomprehension and that underlying feeling that you are being a crazy American. Again.
Finally a driver picked us up, not comprehending what we wanted but willing to try to figure it out. He called a service – that they also have in China – for cab drivers with English speaking clients. You can explain what you want to the English speaker who in turn translates it to Vietnamese (or Chinese, or whatever). It's a delightful idea but has it's own pitfalls, namely vocabulary.
Movie theatre didn't register with our translator, even after spelling it – and being fairly certain that she was getting “B” instead of “V” despite the number of times and clarity with which we spelled. We tried “cinema” and then just “theatre” and then tried names of popular movies “batman??” mummy??” while watching the meter run up. We were on the verge of giving up and going home when something we said, I'm not sure what, registered and the cab driver understood what we were after.
He then took us on the longest cab ride of our lives. Took at least half an hour and covered most of Hanoi. After the second time we asked if he was taking us to the movies we pulled up in front of a movie theatre. Hooray! Big tip for the driver for his efforts and we got out to see a ticket office outside.
We had to find the advertisement for Hancock on the wall and look at the Vietnamese name translation ( Sieu Nhan Cai Bang, which probably directly translates as “Man who makes things go Bang”) so we would know what movie tickets to buy. We tried to go into the theatre and the guy manning the door wouldn't let us. Finally we realized we were an hour early. This is what happens when you can't read or speak a language...
So we decided to get dinner.
Meanwhile, as with most of my experience in Vietnam there wasn't a Westerner to be seen except us. We had a quick dinner and showed back up at the theatre to discover that it was a sort of cheap theatre, which we should have expected when we paid the equivalent of $2 for the tickets. As in Thailand the seats were all numbered and everyone abided by the numbers even when there were better seats that were empty.
You know, except us. We moved. I know. Impossible Americans.
And then the movie just started. No previews or other nonsense, just get to it.
From the quality it was clearly a bootlegged version of the movie, probably filmed from inside another theatre.
And it was dubbed.
Loudly.
Over the full volume English dialog.
By one person.
A woman.
The dubbing was off by a second or two so as long as the comments were short, you could catch the English. Otherwise you had to somehow block the yelling Vietnamese woman and try to hear Will Smith mumble. And when in doubt, watch the pictures and try to read lips. Do I need to mention that there was no food service here? No? Alright then.
I think I caught the gist of the movie but it was still the weirdest $2 experience of my life, which in SE Asia is saying quite a bit.
I've seen two movies in SE Asia, both vastly different experiences. In Bangkok I went to see the new Batman movie “The Dark Knight” and sat in the VIP theatre. VIP theatres in Thailand feel like a first class in an airplane. You get an assigned seat that you pick from the seating chart. There are probably 15 rows in the theatre with about 8 seats per row. The chairs are huge comfy recliners with little tables by them. They serve food and drinks and some have waitresses that do table service. It's a glorious movie experience. Plus the movie was in English with Thai subtitles. Plus it was a great movie. Overall, an A+.
RIP Heath Ledger...
In Hanoi I decided to see Hancock. I was with a friend and we had driven by several theatres that were all advertising this movie. However, in Asia they will advertise movies that aren't showing... or are only showing every other day or were showing last week... And unlike Thailand English translations of signage are not as common anywhere in Vietnam. And English isn't as commonly spoken so it's much more of a crapshoot to get places.
We had the cabdriver take us to a movie theatre where Hancock was advertised but after we went up to the theatre office we discovered that only Mummy 3 was showing. The previous mummy movies have already sucked away 4 hours of my life that I'll never get back so I'd rather see anything else than the third installment.
We went back downstairs and spent an extremely frustrating and hilarious half hour trying to get a cab and explain to the driver that we knew we were standing in front of a movie theatre but we wanted to go to a different one. Yes, a movie theatre. Yes, we know this place shows movies. No, we don't want to go here. Blank look of incomprehension and that underlying feeling that you are being a crazy American. Again.
Finally a driver picked us up, not comprehending what we wanted but willing to try to figure it out. He called a service – that they also have in China – for cab drivers with English speaking clients. You can explain what you want to the English speaker who in turn translates it to Vietnamese (or Chinese, or whatever). It's a delightful idea but has it's own pitfalls, namely vocabulary.
Movie theatre didn't register with our translator, even after spelling it – and being fairly certain that she was getting “B” instead of “V” despite the number of times and clarity with which we spelled. We tried “cinema” and then just “theatre” and then tried names of popular movies “batman??” mummy??” while watching the meter run up. We were on the verge of giving up and going home when something we said, I'm not sure what, registered and the cab driver understood what we were after.
He then took us on the longest cab ride of our lives. Took at least half an hour and covered most of Hanoi. After the second time we asked if he was taking us to the movies we pulled up in front of a movie theatre. Hooray! Big tip for the driver for his efforts and we got out to see a ticket office outside.
We had to find the advertisement for Hancock on the wall and look at the Vietnamese name translation ( Sieu Nhan Cai Bang, which probably directly translates as “Man who makes things go Bang”) so we would know what movie tickets to buy. We tried to go into the theatre and the guy manning the door wouldn't let us. Finally we realized we were an hour early. This is what happens when you can't read or speak a language...
So we decided to get dinner.
Meanwhile, as with most of my experience in Vietnam there wasn't a Westerner to be seen except us. We had a quick dinner and showed back up at the theatre to discover that it was a sort of cheap theatre, which we should have expected when we paid the equivalent of $2 for the tickets. As in Thailand the seats were all numbered and everyone abided by the numbers even when there were better seats that were empty.
You know, except us. We moved. I know. Impossible Americans.
And then the movie just started. No previews or other nonsense, just get to it.
From the quality it was clearly a bootlegged version of the movie, probably filmed from inside another theatre.
And it was dubbed.
Loudly.
Over the full volume English dialog.
By one person.
A woman.
The dubbing was off by a second or two so as long as the comments were short, you could catch the English. Otherwise you had to somehow block the yelling Vietnamese woman and try to hear Will Smith mumble. And when in doubt, watch the pictures and try to read lips. Do I need to mention that there was no food service here? No? Alright then.
I think I caught the gist of the movie but it was still the weirdest $2 experience of my life, which in SE Asia is saying quite a bit.
posted by KBARRETT at 8:35 AM
1 Comments:
can we just talk about how I'm sitting alone in my hotel room laughing aloud at the audacity of that? "Weirdest $2 experience of my life." ahhhh, if I had 2 dollars every time I'd had one of those.
You're pictures are gorgeous.
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