There's really only two gadgets I can't do without. The first is the Apple Powerbook, regular readers already know this.
The second is a good stereo. I didn't bring my system from Australia so I needed to pick one up here in Ha Noi. Conventional wisdom says that Hai Ba Trung is the place for all electrical appliances. You certainly wouldn't be disappointed by the range of things you will find there.
My requirements were very simple. I wanted a Stereo Amplifier and a set of good bookshelf speakers. I did not want "home theatre" with DSPs and optical inputs. I just wanted a good stereo amplifier. I say "I" becuase by this stage Emma had given me over to my OCD nature and left this job to me.
Denon, Onkyo and Marantz can be found in abundance. These are all great and I would have been happy with any of those but I really wanted a Harmon Kardon HK-670.
I found a great dealer with a really good range and the owner has excellent English. These guys are found at 20 Ngo Quyen in the Hoan Kiem district. If you are after Harmon Kardon then I would recommend them.
If I had wanted Infinity or JBL speakers I could have gotten these here also. As Emma will tell you I’m annoyingly picky and wanted a brand of speakers they didn’t have.
For the speakers we needed a pair of good bookshelf units. I really had my heart set on a pair from Polk Audio. There is a Polk distributor in Vietnam and a number of shops around town
I had already found the speakers I wanted (7Lsi) at another shop on Hai Ba Trung. The only problem was that by the time I got there one night they were closed. Despondently I walked up the street and came across the shop in the picture above at 48 Hai Ba Trung. It looked to me like they had Polk speakers even though their sign didn’t say so.
I went inside and the guy was opening his shop THAT DAY. I asked him about
Polk speakers and he said he was hoping to get more stock soon but he did have these (you guessed it) 7Lsi bookshelf speakers. Furthermore his price was a $100 US dollars LESS than the shop I had visited earlier. He was as delighted to make a sale as I was to get the speakers. Very nice Guy
The picture above shows one of the Polk 7Lsi speakers.
The picture below shows the HK-670. The whole setup sounds magnificent and proves once again that you can get almost anything in Ha Noi if you look in the right place!
