Mỹ Đình Stadium in Hà Nội has hosted plenty of big nights, but few like this. Over October 24 and 25, more than 80,000 fans packed the venue across two shows as BIGBANG — now performing as a trio of G-Dragon, Taeyang and Daesung — brought their XX: COSMOS world tour to Vietnam. The tour marks two decades since the group's 2006 debut, and Hà Nội clearly left a mark: Daesung told the crowd it would be the greatest night of his life, and Taeyang called it the best show he had ever played.
The setlist read like a career retrospective. Fantastic Baby opened proceedings under a stadium glowing with golden light sticks, and the hits kept coming — Blue, If You, Loser, Bae Bae and Haru Haru, with the audience handling the fan chants so well the band barely needed to sing. Each member also had a solo slot: G-Dragon brought Power, Crooked and Crayon; Taeyang ran through Bad, Ringa Linga and Live Fast Die Slow; Daesung performed Universe and Wings among others. A run of party tracks — Bang Bang Bang, Sober, We Like 2 Party — carried things towards a fake ending at Home Sweet Home, after which the crowd simply refused to leave, earning a proper encore that closed with Still Life.
What people will remember, though, is the banter. The members greeted fans in Vietnamese throughout, and on night two G-Dragon finally worked out why the crowd kept calling him 'Anh Long', repeating the nickname to huge cheers. Daesung reprised a Vietnamese-language version of Hando Chogua with an impromptu hip-sway dance, and Taeyang threw in a chant of 'Việt Nam Vô Địch' — plus a warm nod to phở during his audience chat. At the end of Still Life, all three knelt together to thank the crowd.
For travellers, this is a reminder of how big Hallyu tourism has become in Southeast Asia. Hanoi pulled off a stadium-scale K-pop event without a hitch, and the city's mix of street food, old-quarter streets and cheap flights makes it an easy add-on to a concert trip. If BIGBANG's hope of returning to Vietnam pays off, expect tickets to vanish fast — and expect the fan chant lessons to start weeks in advance.
