Hanoi nightlife” can feel like an oxymoron. There are times when I question whether such a thing even exists. As the capital city of a (technically) communist country, Hanoi regulates nighttime activity with great seriousness: all establishments are legally required to close before midnight unless they have a special permit, acquired either through official processes or in a hush-hush manner. I love welcoming friends from abroad to Hanoi by taking them out for a usual “night out”—one that ends at 11:45 p.m. on a Friday night. As the staff of my favourite vinyl bar usher people out of the building ahead of the curfew, my friends—especially the European ones, used to partying until dawn—stare at me in disbelief. It’s their first taste of the wildly different fuel that Vietnamese ‘nightlife’ runs on.
Sometimes, when the work week gets long and exhausting, I decide to stay out a little longer, past the curfew. At midnight, Hanoi turns itself inside out, and I feel like Cinderella leaving my daytime drag behind (as the American drag queen RuPaul says, “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag”) as I follow my fellow queer people to our favourite destination: Savage.
Shrouded by palm trees in a corner of Hanoi’s Quảng An Peninsula, Savage occupies a charming poolside French villa, a building that once served as the Angolan embassy. Queerness permeates the space as I go up the squeaky wooden stairs to their second-storey anteroom. Beautiful, well-groomed people with blinged-out outfits and shining eyes fill the room, their collective energy jolting you out of the city’s reserved air.
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