singers had gotten together and held a benefit concert to raise money for the
well loved singer’s surgery. Working as I did for a local English-language
Saigon magazine, I was eager to see if I could get an interview with him,
and one of the other photographers at the magazine managed to obtain his
mobile number for me, but whenever I called, Wanbi did not answer. I was
not sure if the number was incorrect, although it had been supplied by one
of his close friends so I was fairly con- fident it was correct, but I only
called it a couple of times because to be honest, I was terrified at the idea of
interviewing such a popular star one on one, especially knowing about his
health condition, so I decided to wait for a while before I called him again.
Only a month ago, I was out drink- ing one night and I had a bellyful of
beer when I saw one of the local cd vendors who ride along on a three
wheeled bicycle with a stereo at the front pass by and I chased him down
the street and he looked at me dubi- ously, wondering how to explain that
he didn’t speak English and only really carried Vietnamese music. I just
said one word to him “Wanbi ! WANBI !” and he smiled and nodded and
found me a DVD collection of Wanbi’s mu- sic. I remember returning home
in the early hours of the morning, holding it up triumphantly to my wife
yelling excitedly “Look ! I finally have Wan- bi’s music ! I bought it tonight
from a street vendor !”
When I returned to Australia two weeks ago to visit family and obtain a
new passport, I put only one thing on my iPod – a rip of the Wanbi DVD
that I had bought. I watched it on the plane on the way to Australia. Since I
was traveling light, it was the one little piece of Vietnam that I was bring-
ing to Australia with me and when I found myself without any money or
anywhere to stay and I was sleeping in the park, I would listen to it at night
to remind me of the beautiful city I had just left and how much I wanted to
re- turn. Wanbi kept me sane when I had noone else to turn to and I didn’t
have the ability to see my wife.
Well, tonight, as I was flicking through my Facebook entries, I saw
something posted on his fan page. I just saw the words “tuổi 26” meaning
