There are quite a few long faces among the local Vietnamese population too. After all, the rain's been falling for three months now and it's enough to get on anyone's nerves. What's more, in a country where mopeds are the favoured mode of transport -millions of moped-riders dominate the roads, buzzing past in packs in a permanent state of rush hour and preventing innocent pedestrians from crossing the street - months of drizzle can have decidedly dangerous side-effects.
Zazie appears unperturbed by the local weather, however, and emerges from her dressing room with a smile, only slightly surprised at having to share her room with a gigantic bust of Ho Chi Minh! Grinning, she arranges her black ao dài - the traditional Vietnamese tunic she had made at the local market this morning. True, Zazie's ao dài has a slightly higher slit on the side than the local version - but then she does have to keep up a certain image of being France's sexy young pop diva!
After Zazie's last unusual stage performance - an open-air concert in a moonlit garden in Burma - the singer is back to more normal conditions in Hanoi, performing at the Théâtre de l'Amitié where a crowd of 2,000 intrigued locals have turned out to see her. Vietnamese music fans are not exactly au fait with the French music scene, but they have a sort of instant empathy with the handful of French songs they've heard on national radio. Having said that, however, the only French star who has any kind of recognition factor in Vietnam is 60s' pop idol Françoise Hardy!

Zazie is not the kind of singer who turns up, does her show and then jumps back on the tour bus the next morning. The French singer is into the idea of sharing and caring. Thus it came as no surprise to see that Zazie invited two young singers, My Linh and Thanh Lam (both veritable celebrities on the banks of the Mekong) to duet with her on two songs. Both My Linh and Thanh Lam put in impressive performances - especially seeing that neither of them spoke French and had had scarcely any time at all to rehearse their numbers beforehand. In fact, both Vietnamese singers managed to give the impression they'd spent their whole lives singing "Un Point C'est Toi" and "Chanson d'Ami"!
Zazie certainly appreciated her co-stars' talent, confessing that she herself would have been totally incapable of learning the words to a Vietnamese song so quickly. The French star did manage to weave a few words of Vietnamese into her finale, however, waving goodbye to the crowd and shouting "Cac ban Viêt nam tuyêt voi" ("You've been brilliant, my Vietnamese friends!") I've no doubt she'll be repeating the same phrase again at her next show in Ho Chi Minh City - which we'll be reporting from on the spot in "Le Petit Journal".