Meet the brave drag queens tearing up Hanoi’s nightlife
What began as a viewing party for RuPaul’s Drag Race is fast becoming a mainstay of the Vietnamese capital’s LGBT scene. But it has not been an easy transition
Hanoi is not renowned for its nightlife. On most evenings, police patrol the Old Quarter just before midnight, enforcing an official curfew and sending drinkers home or to lock-ins. Compared to Saigon, where revellers party until dawn, the capital is staid and conservative.
Or at least it used to be. Earlier this year, the city took a small step towards jazzing up its reputation by embracing Vietnamese drag. What began as a weekly viewing party for RuPaul’s Drag Race has grown organically into an expressive, norm-challenging night of performances. Now 10 shows deep into 2018, the event feels like a mainstay, drawing increasingly large crowds each week.
As the queens prepare for their latest show, their host Tamah Lake, is in a buoyant mood.
“The people who started coming to watch it were queens or people I didn’t know were queens,” she says. “And it evolved into something else purely from people coming to speak to me. It’s just a whole other animal.”
Lake works as an English teacher during the week, but dedicates the rest of her time to the show. “The reaction has been extremely positive,” she adds. “The audience adore the queens and get very involved in the performances. We have lip sync competitions where the audience sings against another person and we decide a winner so it’s very interactive.”
