It’s our second visit to Hoi An, Vietnam. Our first visit, three years earlier, we’d spent a month volunteering at a school called Pinberk Academy, which is alas no longer in business — the space is now occupied by one of the town’s numerous spas. So on this visit, we have more time to play tourist — though we’ve had to deal with our share of technological headaches, including Dennis having to replace his phone. Stilt we savor our time here, and it climaxes in grand fashion. With, appropriately enough for us two retired thespians, a superb theatrical and cultural presentation.

On Saturday, Dennis is still feeling a bit out of sorts, so Kimberly goes out alone on her mission to obtain a much needed massage. (Along the way, she passes a family ostentatiously dressed in garish yellow outfits that scream “Tourist!!!” They must really enjoy getting hit up for money.) Her destination is Art Spa, a stellar- reviewed massage emporium, and she finds that it lives up to its billing. She gets a blissful going-over that she raves about and highly recommends to her significant other.

On Sunday, we’re both pretty much back to our old feisty selves, and we take a walk on the other side of the river, which seems to be a stretch that is particularly thick with hustlers for tours, restaurants, and whatever. We decided to keep track of how many of them approach us, and it turns out to be “only” six — which we’re certain is considerably lower than usual.

Our ramblings take us to the Lune Theatre, a structure that’s hard to miss because it’s a dome — a bamboo dome. It’s Vietnam’s first and only bamboo theatre, designed to look like the full moon rising above the horizon (hence the name, we suppose). Sort of a half of a full moon. Though it was constructed in 2018, it looks older, because it’s supposed to. It’s one of three homes of Vietnam’s Bamboo Circus (the other two being, as you might expect, in Hanoi and Saigon/ Ho Chi Minh City), a tribute to the country’s folk traditions.

Having already seen and salivated over Phare, the Cambodian National Circus, we’re certainly enticed by the Vietnamese equivalent. A performance is getting ready to begin, and as we are admiring the facility out front, a young woman asks us if we are coming to the evening’s performance. We reply in the negative, but add that it is on our to-do list while we’re in town.

And so we make plans to do just that. There’s no show on Mondays and Fridays, so Tuesday is our next option. Getting tickets, however, turns out to be quite a mountain to climb. For some reason we’re unable to buy them on the theatre’s website — or several other websites we try. Finally, we connect on a website called Joytime, but the connection is quite faulty.

At least Joytime informs us that (contrary to what the other websites had stated) the lower priced tickets from among three price tiers are still available. (From what we could tell on the seating chart, these are quite adequate, and almost as good as the more expensive berths). But actually acquiring them proves to be a Herculean task.

First, we receive only a confirmation by email, and no actual tickets. So we email Joytime, and they say to check our Spam, which we already had. Poring over the Joytime website again, we find a box that says “Get Tickets”. Clicking on it we get the message that the tickets have been emailed. They haven’t. Click on Chat, type in the problem, and it says the tickets should be arriving soon (soon is already well passed) and if we don’t receive them, we should connect with live chat. Which is exactly what we’ve been trying to do, with no luck. After sending two emails and getting no response, we send a text. The response (none too prompt) is that the tickets should be arriving by noon. At noon, we check our email, and they still are MIA. So we are about to try calling them, when Kimberly notices that the tickets have been sent to our WhatsApp — not to our email. So if you ever have to deal with Joytime (which you just might if you want to see a show in the Lune Theatre and can’t get down there in person beforehand) be aware of the peculiar pitfalls and procedures, and prepare for protracted patience.

Meanwhile, Dennis finally succumbs to the temptation to indulge in a local/regional/national treat that he’s seen advertised around town: egg coffee. So he goes to a coffee shop around the corner and inquires, with some linguistic difficulty, and is told that, while it’s not officially on the menu, they will manufacture one especially for him. It takes a really long time (but not nearly as long as buying the tickets), and is a bit pricey for Vietnam: a dollar and seventy-five cents. But it’s worth the wait and the expenditure. Creamy, not too sweet, definitely eggy tasting, and utterly delicious.

So having sampled that modern bit of Vietnamese culture, we’re off to Lune Theatre. for a different and more traditional sort of fare. Tonight’s production is called Teh Dar, which in one of the indigenous tongues of the region means something like “going in circles”. And circularity figures prominently in the show — including, of course, the moon-shaped venue. When we take our seats, we see that, as we suspected, the “AHH” section where are seated is right next to the “OOH” and “WOW” sections, which cost nearly twice as much. In fact, there really isn’t a bad seat in the house.

Part circus, part storytelling, part mask show, part humor, and part music and dance, this unique “bamboo circus” does indeed “ooh”, “ahh” and “wow” from the get-go. A nimble cast of about 20 enters through the audience, near where we are sitting, in a procession of stylized movements accompanied by percussion played on instruments like gongs, each in a different pitch, with each of the players striking one note at a time.

The opening act revolves (literally) around a large bamboo structure onstage shaped somewhat like a parachute, with the cast balancing and doing stunts on various locations on the shafts and the bulbous hub. And then the contraption begins rolling around in a circle, and they continue balancing on it. At one point, performers lying on the floor leap onto the poles as the thingamajig rolls over them.

One dazzling sequence (out of many) has the female performers juggling balls, while bouncing them off drums, and then into the air and into baskets on their backs. That’s an ooh and an ahh and a wow no matter where you’re sitting,

production photo courtesy luneproduction.com

No photos are allowed during the show, but afterward there is a little mini-show in front, and the cast poses for photos with audience members. We, however, do not feel like standing in line to get one of ourselves. The memory of the dazzling spectacle we’ve just witnessed is souvenir enough. Teh Dar is definitely one of our highlights of Vietnam, and a sensational way to wrap up our visit to Hoi An.

Events occurred 7/19-22/2025