Everyone under the sun

"La Fenêtre Soleil" (French for sun window. Or window sun? Sunny window?) is the name of the cafe/bar, but on Thursday nights it turns into a club for the Salsa, Bachata, Merengue, and the like. Maybe the owners didn't know what kind of dances would become popular when they first named the place. That, and Vietnamese generally know more French than Spanish.

At first I thought it would be strange to hear Spanish music in Saigon, but it wasn't. The city is the most cosmopolitan you'd find in Vietnam, and I suppose the bourgeois need someplace to hang out. I was told to wear a dress, but the attire at La Fenêtre Soleil ran the gamut from gym clothes to business suits, miniskirts to Salsa dresses. Though nothing compared to the pieces of cloth girls wear to American night clubs, the dress here was racier than that of your average local; I think I saw my first thong in the city, bras optional.

The clothes fit the dance, which was innately sensual. It began with a practice session for newcomers, but experts took over for the rest of the night. I was more than a little impressed with how well the dancers handled themselves – confidently relaxed, cheerfully proficient. I could hardly keep track of the dozen or more couples who graced the tiny floor at any given moment, as they switched partners with each new song. Everyone danced with everyone else. I wondered if it was because people didn't need to know each other to dance together (one stranger did ask me to dance). But it turned out that the same crowd goes to that club every week, so they all knew each other. Free love, baby.

Even more impressive was the diversity of the crowd. We were in District 1, so I wasn't surprised to see foreigners, but these weren't just any foreigners. In addition to the Vietnamese and a few tourists, there was a healthy handful of foreigners who'd made their home in Vietnam, and no one seemed to notice skin color. I especially liked the Mick Jagger look-alike, the half-Vietnamese who appeared more Anglo, and the Russian who spoke better Vietnamese than me. But in a way I was lucky that just about everyone – Vietnamese, Indian, French – defaulted to English.