Next time you’re in the capital and looking to unwind, you could opt for the standard walk around Hoan Kiem Lake and an ice-cold bia hơi. Or you could break something.
Now two months old, Hanoi’s Fury Room is Vietnam’s first and only “stress-relief” venue, in which customers pay to unwind by destroying a room full of old electronics.
“Fury Room opened with the goal of helping people return balance to their lives, to help improve the mood of its patrons, to help people control their emotions and get angry in the right place,” founder Nguyen Ngoc Thinh tells Saigoneer in Vietnamese via email.
The young entrepreneur, who used to work in a customer service job, according to DTI News, first discovered the idea of a stress-relief room online. After learning of similar businesses in Japan, Thinh thought the experience of letting loose in a contained environment might be helpful for young Vietnamese.
The space features a wealth of old, easily breakable items for patrons to destroy with their choice of a baseball bat, a rubber gun or a golf club. Each session costs VND149,000 per person, and all customers are required to wear protective gear for their own safety. Once a weapon is in their hands, however, guests are free to wreck the room however they see fit.
Video via Fury Room HN.
Thinh says most Fury Room customers are 9X, or those born in the 1990s, many of whom are just embarking on their careers or starting families.
“[Hanoi’s 9X] have many pressures in their work life everyday,” he explains. “They also need a place to release tension.”
Students and office workers often come to the venue seeking an outlet for their stress, sometimes after a big exam or an important work event.
Whatever their reason for visiting the venue, Thinh believes Fury Room offers a valuable service in today’s increasingly hectic society.
“I wanted to experience the feeling of being destructive but in a controlled environment, a way to flush out frustration in a person,” he writes, adding: “I realize that in modern society now there are many invisible pressures, often called stress, which cannot be expressed in words. We need to have a separate space, a special action to release [stress].”
[Photo via Fury Room HN]
