Apart from traffic & that restaurant, the only other recording I did in Saigon was some ambiences from my hotel room on the fifth floor… There is a funny historical law in Vietnam that means buildings are taxed based on the width of their street frontage. Accordingly most buildings are tall and thin, and all the hotels we stayed in had only two rooms per floor, as you can imagine in the photo of the building below.
So the first recording from this location was mid-day on a Sunday:
AMBIENCE Saigon 5th floor hotel midday by timprebble
The next recordings were from the same spot but later on a Sunday evening – I’d been inside for a bit with the aircon cranked up, so when I opened the window there was an equal rush of hot humid air and city ambience! I got the distinct impression this part of the city never stops…. I set the mics up and left it running while I had a snooze… Turned out I recorded for 40 minutes, this first bit is typical ambience followed by an excerpt with a woman’s voice that was particularly evocative and almsot musical in nature….
AMBIENCE Saigon 5th floor hotel night by timprebble
AMBIENCE Saigon 5th floor hotel night voice by timprebble
I loved how many of the inner city buildings had rooftop gardens
Wow the buildings in the 4th picture have an incredibly unusual yet beautiful architecture design