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Trung Phan

@TrungTPhan

Jun 12, 2020 • 11 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X

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1/ Apocalypse Now: The Club

Many of you will stream Spike Lee's #Da5Bloods on Netflix this weekend.

An early scene takes place in a Ho Chi Minh City club, Apocalypse Now (aka Apo).

I lived in HCMC for 5 yrs and went to Apo ALOT.

The club has a crazy story.

Here it is. 👇

2/ The venue is named after the classic 1979 Vietnam War movie, Apocalypse Now.

It was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, capping off the greatest stretch a filmmaker has ever had:

1972: The Godfather
1974: The Conversation
1974: The Godfather II
1979: Apocalypse Now

3/ The film (adapted from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness) is extremely dark and its production was insane:

∙ Martin Sheen had a heart attack
∙ Marlon Brando showed up obese
∙ Filming halted by a typhoon that hit the Philippines
∙ Coppola almost bankrupted financing it

4/ The club named after the movie opened in 1991.

It was one of the first western-type nightlife venues in Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon (1975) and the implementation of semi-free market Doi Moi economic reforms (1986) but before normalization of relations with the US (1995).

5/ Per a 1992 Reuters article, the club's founder was a 25-year old Vietnamese who went by a single name (Diep).

He was capitalizing on the in-flow of foreigners as the Communist party relaxed its hardline ways.

He named it Apocalypse Now because "everyone knows the movie".

6/ Apparently for the club's opening, Martin Sheen signed the Apocalypse Now poster wall art that's seen in Da 5 Bloods (with greetings to Diep, of course).

7/ The 1992 Reuter article continues:

"Old Saigon hands say the city is regaining some of its freewheeling wartime character, when tens of thousands of prostitutes plied their trade with American soldiers on leave."

Diplomats, expats, journos, biz-men, locals were all patrons.

8/ Today, Apo maintains the same character, with the same diverse mix of people.

The venue has a big cavernous dance floor where -- as my Viet cousins put it -- the "ladies of the night" congregate to techno music.

There is also inexplicably a "tiki" bar area...

9/ ...and my personal favourite, an outdoor BBQ pit that serves the best hot dogs in Southeast Asia.

10/ For some inexplicable reason, the legendary haunt is only ranked 23rd in Tripadvisor's top nightlife venues in Ho Chi Minh City (or as the real OG's call it --> Saigon).

Whenever you can travel next and end up here (and you will), please help rectify this with some 5-stars.

11/ Anyways, if you enjoyed...read my article I just wrote about Da 5 Bloods & The Vietnam War.

trungtphan.com/da-5-bloods-sh…

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More from @TrungTPhan

Trung Phan

@TrungTPhan

Jul 28

The invention of bánh mì is a combination of climate, trade and urban layout of Saigon in late-19th century designed by French colonist.

When the French captured the area in 1859, most economic activity in the region took place along the Saigon river.

The population built makeshift homes tightly bundled by the river banks. Outgrowth from this eventually lead to narrow alleyways between many buildings that is trademark of the city (the Khmer named the region Prey Nokor then French renamed it Saigon and then it was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 after end of Vietnam War).

Over decades, the French created European street grids and built wide Paris-type boulevards in the city to funnel commerce to larger markets (also make the city easier to administer).

It was at these markets that French baguettes were introduced and traded.

Bánh mì bread is known for being flaky and crispy on the outside while fluffier on inside (so god damn good).

Two features of Saigon helped create this texture:

▫️Climate: The heat and humidity in Southeast Asia leads dough to ferment faster, which creates air pockets in bread (light and fluffy).

▫️Ingredient: Wide availability of rice meant locals added rice flour to wheat flour imports (which were quite expensive). Rice flour is more resistant to moisture and creates a drier, crispier crust.

Fast forward to the 1930s: the French-designed street layout is largely complete. Now, the city centre has wide boulevards intersected by countless narrow alleyways.

The design was ideal for street vendor carts. These businesses were inspired by shophosue of colonial architecture to sell all types of goods as chaotic traffic rushed by.

Vietnam has some of the most slapping rice and soup dishes, but many people on the move in the mornings wanted something more portable and edible by hand.

Bánh mì was traditionally upper class fare but it met the need for on-the-go food.

Just fill the bread with some Vietnamese ingredients (braised pork, pickled vegetable, Vietnamese coriander, chilies) along with French goodies (pate).

Pair it with cà phê sữa đá (aka coffee with condensed milk aka caffeinated crack) and you’re laughing.

Haven’t lived in Saigon for 10+ years but ate a banh mi every other day when I did.

While there, I also sold a comedy script to Fox (pitch: “The Fugitive meets Harold & Kumar set in Southeast Asia”).

It never got made but fun story to retell: readtrung.com/p/im-making-a-…

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Trung Phan

@TrungTPhan

Jul 26

the most underrated winner of the AI boom is the 15,000 person Caribbean island of Anguilla (which has a GDP of ~$320m)

The research team is happy to announce that we’ve played our part contributing to Anguilla’s windfall.

We also paid $99 to GoDaddy to see if we could secure one more .AI domain. Bearly.AI

https://twitter.com/conormyhrvold/status/1949137437768446017

Polynesian island Tuvalu has an even smaller population (10,000)!!

https://twitter.com/conormyhrvold/status/1949137437768446017

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Trung Phan

@TrungTPhan

Jun 8

someone used Veo3 to make Moses as a YouTuber live-streaming the Exodus

accent does change at end: reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/s/bO…

On-demand history vids like this in few years with Google Veo very plausible.

I previously wrote on YouTube as greatest athletics learning machine ever…could get souped up: readtrung.com/p/youtube-the-…

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Trung Phan

@TrungTPhan

Jun 8

reminder that no “asian guy and stripper” story will ever top Enron Lou Pai’s “asian guy and stripper” story

Totally forgot Lou Pai got the stripper pregnant.

If this story was transplanted to 2020s, Pai would probably have been a whale on OnlyFans and gotten got…anyways, I wrote about the economics of OF here: readtrung.com/p/onlyfans-sti…

https://twitter.com/jayvas/status/1520795644226588672

LOU PAI!

https://twitter.com/jayvas/status/1520795644226588672

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Trung Phan

@TrungTPhan

Apr 29

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) trained an AI slideshow maker called “Decker” on 900 templates and apparently gotten so popular that “some of its consultants are fretting about job security.”

x.com/bearlyai/statu…

Sorry, called “Deckster”. That excerpt was from this BI piece that also looked at McKinsey and Deloitte AI uses: businessinsider.com/consulting-ai-…

The Mckinsey chatbot is used by 70% of firm but same anonymous job board said it’s "functional enough" and best for "very low stakes issues." x.com/bearlyai/statu…

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Trung Phan

@TrungTPhan

Feb 4

Norway discovered off-shore oil in 1969. It launched its sovereign wealth fund with $300m in 1996.

It’s since grown 6,000x to $1.8T or $327,000 per Norwegian (5.5m people).

The fund owns 1.5% of all global equities but, most impressively, had a UX designer put a real-time fund value tracker on its website landing page.

Norway’s SWF roughly is 65% equity, 25% bond, 10% real estate/infra (all global).

Unsurprisingly, its largest holding is Apple ($47B, or 1.4% of the entire company).

On a related note, here is my deep dive podcast on Steve Jobs and making of the iPhone: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caf…