(Version française below)

New Year’s Eve didn’t start so well. I had a very difficult time finding a hotel room in Dalat as everything had been booked months before due to the flower festival Dalat was hosting. It was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to stay in Dalat as long as I had planned. Over lunch, I asked my waitress for some tips. Ngan said there was no hope to find a room as Dalat would be crowded with Vietnamese tourists over the next few days.

Despite this bad piece of news we became friends and decided to spend New Year’s Eve together.
Her younger sister, Phuong, and her aunt, Hong- a baker- joined us too. We had a night stroll hoping we would see fireworks, but there were none.

At 10.00pm Ngan had to go back to her five month old baby. That’s when Hong told me she used to go to a French high school in Dalat. She doesn’t speak much French anymore but somehow, she remembers the 1960s songs she used to listen. So here we are, in a café on New Year’s Eve, singing old tunes like France Gall’s ”Poupée de cire, poupée de son” and Françoise Hardy’s ”Tous les garçons et les filles de mon âge.” Unforgettable!

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