The rainy season is upon us in Saigon. Bouts of rain from ferocious to gentle have helped tempered the searing heat of summer. At one corner of the city, amid the moisture of freshly rained-on atmosphere is the bittersweet caramel scent of sugar syrup bubbling on the stove and of fried dough. It fills me with both nostalgia and a craving for golden, crispy bánh chiên hidden at every market and alley across Saigon.

Bánh chiên literally means fried dough in Vietnamese, referring to a genre of pastry that comes in so many shapes and flavors. Today’s bánh chiên carts are adorned with flashy signage and even twinkling LED lights, but when I was young, they merely consisted of an aluminum trunk with wheels beneath so vendors could take their pastry on the road. Above the counter is an oil wok that’s never not boiling, while a glass display sits in front, showcasing steaming pastry that’s freshly fried.

The fragrance of oil and dough emanates from bánh chiên carts.

Even from afar, you can immediately smell the rich scent of fried food without actually seeing the carts. When you arrive, your eyesight will be greeted with a luxurious platter of puffy pastry arranged in neat rows. It’s very hard to walk by without stopping to grab at least a couple of bánh bò-bánh tiêu sandwiches, or a bánh cam to satisfy the craving.

It’s hard to walk by without grabbing something.

Bánh cam and bánh còng

I distinctly remember a time in Saigon when bánh cam vendors could pass for street acrobats thanks to their towering tray of bánh cam and bánh còng piling atop one another like giant hats. I’ve never seen them drop any while moving about on really cluttered streets.

Who wants a bánh cam or bánh còng?

To show appreciation for their intricate balancing act and sympathy for their hard work, my mother always bought a few bánh cam to help out. One for her, the rest for us. My love for bánh cam was kindled from then on.

Bánh cam is named after orange in Vietnamese, because it resembles a small fruit. Each bánh cam is spherical, covered in a shimmering layer of amber sugar syrup and white sesame seeds. Bánh còng gets its name from the shape which resembles a handcuff. Bánh cam and bánh còng often go together, though the former also comes with a mung bean filling.

Bánh cam and bánh còng with sugar glaze.

Before the first bite, I like to hold the bánh cam up and give it a little shake, just to hear the nub of filling collide with the crispy skin. Upon chewing, you’ll get a little taste of the sticky rice dough mixed with the sweet, salty, and nutty filling.

Bánh tiêu and bánh bò

While bánh cam can easily draw both children and adults in with its sweet shiny glaze, bánh tiêu, on the other hand, is much more rustic.

A traditional and pandan version of bánh tiêu.

Traditionally, bánh tiêu is not a sweet dish, mainly made of wheat flour with toasted sesame seeds. The dough is fried in oil until puffy and golden, for a simple and straightforward greasy treat.

Deep-fried bánh tiêu

I will always remember the weekends and summer days without school when mom would take me along during her market visits. The trips would end with heavy bags of produce, but to make it up to me, she would reward me with a bánh tiêu from the market corner.

The pastry is undoubtedly greasy, but very irresistible.

Bánh tiêu might look plump and round, but the inside is empty, so people often pair it with a jiggly chunk of white or green bánh bò as the filling. It’s a match made in sweet heaven as their tastes compliment each other: the oily fried dough is anchored by the soft, light texture of bánh bò. Just one pair of bánh bò tiêu is enough to make anyone feel full.

Modern bánh tiêu is upgraded with ice cream like durian or taro.

Giò cháo quẩy and other crispy fried treats

Apart from circular and spherical pastries, the picture is incomplete without pairs of sausage-shaped dough called giò cháo quẩy. These originate from Hoa Vietnamese communities, but have been adapted to Saigoneers’ palates.

Giò cháo quẩy and drumstick donuts

As a morning snack, giò cháo quẩy is paired with hot drinks like bạc xỉu and milk coffee. Tear off a small chunk of dough, dunk it in the glass, and enjoy how that woodsy, bitter liquid perfectly balances out the greasiness of the fried dough. Elsewhere, in a savory context, bite-sized quẩy pieces are served alongside porridge and bánh canh. The dough will soak up the flavorful broth and burst in your mouth with every bite.

Of course, any fried food discourse can’t leave out the crispy presence of banana fritters. Small local banana cultivars like chuối sứ are rolled thinly, coated in flour, and then double-fried to produce a golden shell and moist, caramelly banana filling. Not to mention the quirkily named and shaped bánh đùi gà — chicken drumstick donut — that’s both sweet and chewy and smells of toasted sesame.

Fried bánh bao

A more adult offering would be fried bánh bao. A typical bao is soft and white, cooked in a steamer, while the fried version is amber-colored and crunchier, though the mince and quail egg filling is the same across versions.

Saigon’s bánh chiên arts are always a sumptuous feast that can satisfy any palate. Bánh chiên is a rustic treat for the people, a nostalgic snack that not only helps connect eaters with their childhood, but also satiate late-afternoon cravings.

Golden fried dough is never not alluring.

If you’re just off the plane and heading west into the city, it’s hard to avoid the busy six-way Lăng Cha Cả intersection south of Hồ Chí Minh City’s Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport. But it’s even harder to believe that this was once the site of a national monument: the grand mausoleum of Bishop Pigneau de Béhaine — best known in Vietnam as Giám mục Bá Đa Lộc (Cha Cả).

Top image: the mausoleum in 1966. Photo by Alan Beckler via Tuổi Trẻ.

A portrait of Pigneau de Béhaine, painted by Maupérin during his 1787 trip to Paris with Crown Prince Cảnh, on display at the Paris Foreign Missions Society

Monsignor Pierre Joseph Georges Pigneau de Béhaine (1741–1799) first came to Vietnam as a missionary with the Paris Foreign Missions Society in the late 1760s. In around 1775, he set up a seminary on the island of Phú Quốc. It was there that he mastered both Chinese and Vietnamese and worked with Vietnamese colleagues to compile the Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum (Vietnamese-Latin Dictionary, 1772) before his elevation to the post of Bishop of Adran and Apostolic Vicar of Cochinchina in 1774.

In 1777, Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh (later King Gia Long) arrived on the island and sought protection at Pigneau’s seminary. The sole survivor of the Đàng Trong (Huế) royal family, which had been massacred by the Tây Sơn, he was offered shelter by Pigneau and the two men quickly became close friends.

Pigneau subsequently pledged his support for the Nguyễn cause, and over the next 15 years he became Ánh’s close confidant and indefatigable champion in the war against the Tây Sơn, procuring munitions and other military supplies for his armed forces.

A portrait of Crown Prince Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh at 7, painted by Maupérin during the prince’s 1787 trip to Paris with Pigneau, on display at the Paris Foreign Missions Society

In February 1787, Pigneau left for France, taking with him Nguyễn Phúc Ánh’s young son and heir, Prince Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh. By the terms of the subsequent Treaty of Versailles, signed on November 21, 1787, the court of Louis XVI promised military support for Nguyễn Phúc Ánh in exchange for economic and territorial concessions in Vietnam. However, due to the subsequent political situation in France, the Treaty was never implemented and Pigneau was obliged instead to use funds he had raised in France to recruit a force of mercenaries.

By the time Pigneau arrived back in Vietnam in 1789, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh had retaken his old base at Gia Định. The team of French officers Pigneau had enlisted brought with them state-of-the-art weaponry and helped to train Ánh’s troops in modern infantry tactics and the use of heavy artillery. A naval workshop was set up in Bến Nghé (Saigon) to assemble a fleet of modern warships and a series of major fortifications was built, including the massive 1790 Gia Định Citadel, which became the temporary Nguyễn royal capital. In the 1790s, these military reforms enabled Ánh to launch a series of successful campaigns against Tây Sơn bases in the south-central region, paving the way for his final victory in 1801.

During the 1790s, as Nguyễn Phúc Ánh took the fight back to the Tây Sơn, Pigneau de Béhaine served as advisor at his court in Gia Định and tutor to his son Prince Cảnh.

The Dinh Tân Xá at the Archbishop’s Palace.

Writing in the 1880s, Pétrus Ký gave a fascinating account of the life and death of Pigneau de Béhaine: “Following his return from France, the Bishop of Adran lived in Saigon, in a house called the Dinh Tân Xá which Nguyễn Phúc Ánh had built for him at the outer corner of the citadel, at the spot where the gunpowder magazine is now situated [now the site of the HCMC History Museum]. The Christians of Thị Nghè also had their church close by, on the edge of the Arroyo de l’Avalanche [Thị Nghè Creek], in the parish of Tân Sơn, now the location of the bishop’s tomb.”

During this period, in addition to tutoring the young Crown Prince Cảnh, Pigneau also accompanied him on several military campaigns against the Tây Sơn, including the defence of Diên Khánh in 1794.

And it was on one of these campaigns, the seige of Quy Nhơn of 1799, that “after thirty-three years of a very rough and laborious life,” the bishop succumbed to acute dysentery.

The main gate of Diên Khánh Citadel in Khánh Hòa province where Pigneau died.

“Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh, driven by a genuine affection for the prelate who had rendered to him such eminent services, sent his best doctors and employed every possible means to conserve his life. Prince Cảnh came every day to visit his master, and Ánh himself came several times to see his benefactor, despite his concerns about the ongoing siege of Quy Nhơn, from which he tore himself away out of a sense of gratitude.”

Pierre Pigneau de Béhaine died on October 9, 1799, “in the arms of M. Lelabousse, a missionary who had accompanied him.” Having received the sad news, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh sent “a beautiful coffin, together with silk for wrapping the body.”

In 1925, one scholar cited an inscription at the Lăng Ngọc Hội, 8 kilometers from Nha Trang, which suggested that Pigneau was actually laid to rest there rather than in Gia Định. However, other French sources make no mention of this. According to Pétrus Ký, on October 10, 1799, Crown Prince Cảnh accompanied the corpse as it was placed on one of the Nguyễn ships and returned to Gia Định for burial.

Arriving in Gia Định on October 16, Pigneau’s body was placed in the Dinh Tân Xá, where it lay in state for a month. Crown Prince Cảnh “considered himself as a disciple and eldest son of his master the prelate, for whom he was in deep mourning.” Cảnh had a special temporary palace built opposite the bishop’s house and stayed there day and night, receiving many mandarins who came from all parts of the kingdom “to render illustrious funeral honors to the deceased.”

Nguyễn Phúc Ánh’s funeral elegy was transcribed onto embroidered silk.

A French architect named Barthélemy was commissioned to build a Nguyễn Dynasty-style mausoleum in Tân Sơn Village, while Crown Prince Cảnh was entrusted with the detailed arrangements for the funeral ceremony. Despite the ongoing campaign in Quy Nhơn, Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh himself made time to sail south to Gia Định to attend Pigneau’s funeral on December 16, 1799.

Pétrus Ký describes how the procession from the Dinh Tân Xá to the newly-built mausoleum set off at around 2am on December 16, 1799, led by Prince Cảnh.

“A large cross, formed from artfully-arranged lanterns, was carried at the head of the procession, followed by a series of elaborately carved red and gold portable shrines, each held aloft on an ornate dais and carried by four men.” The first housed a stele bearing the characters 皇天主宰 (Huáng tiān zhǔ zǎi or Hoàng thiên chúa tể, meaning “Sovereign Lord of Heaven”) in gold lettering. The second contained an image of St. Paul and the third an image of St. Peter, patron of the Bishop of Adran. The fourth contained an image of the guardian angel and the fifth an image of the Blessed Virgin.

Then came a great standard measuring some 15 feet in length and made from damask, on which were embroidered in gold letters the titles conferred on the Bishop of Adran by the King of France and the Lord of Đàng Trong [Nguyễn Phúc Ánh], as well as those of his episcopal office.

After this came a litter housing the insignia of the prelate, his cross and his miter, which was carried directly in front of the hearse.

A 1960s photograph of the mausoleum shrine with its embossed coat of arms of the bishop.

On either side of these shrines and litters walked “a large number of Christian young people and clergy from every church in Cochinchina.”

The hearse carrying the body of the bishop was “a beautiful litter of about 20 feet in length, carried by 80 picked men, and covered by an embroidered gold canopy.” On it was placed “the magnificent coffin….. covered with beautiful damask, set in a frame and surrounded by 25 large lit candles.”

Nguyễn Phúc Ánh’s royal guard, comprising more than 12,000 men, was arranged in two lines, with field guns at the head of each line. “One hundred and twenty war elephants with their escorts and mahouts walked on both sides. Drums, trumpets and both Annamite and Cambodian military music accompanied the mournful march, which was lit by a prodigious number of candles and torches and more than 2,000 lanterns of different shapes. At least 40,000 men, both Christians and pagans, followed the convoy.”

Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh was present, along with his mother, his sister, his queen, his children, all the ladies of the court and the mandarins of different government departments. “All wanted to express their regret at the eminent and distinguished prelate who was no more, following his remains to the grave which had been prepared to receive him.”

The Pigneau de Béhaine mausoleum pictured in 1867.

Arriving at the grave, a missionary named Father Liot performed the ceremonies of the Catholic liturgy. Once the Christian burial ceremony was finished, Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh stepped forward and gave a tearful funeral elegy which he is said to have composed himself. This elegy had been transcribed onto embroidered silk and was “presented to the late bishop in the form of a posthumous diploma.”

Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh’s elegy recounted Pigneau’s efforts to obtain official French military assistance from Louis XVI and explained how, despite being “met with adverse conditions midway through his endeavours,” he had gone on to “marvelously save the situation with his extraordinary plans.”

It described Pigneau as “a precious friend, whose character fitted so well with mine… the intimate confidant of my most secret thoughts… who came to my kingdom and never left me, even when fortune eluded me […] We were such friends and so familiar together that when my business called me out of my palace, our two horses walked abreast. We never had anything but the same heart.”

“After the funeral oration, the clergy and the Christians withdrew, Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh, alone with his mandarins, offered the sacrifices they were accustomed to make for souls of the deceased. Then Prince Cảnh and royal ministers each read out their own eulogies.”

Writing in 1884, Charles Lemire also mentioned the “curious details” of Pigneau’s funeral as recounted by an eyewitness named Father Bouillevaux, who gives us a detailed description of the mausoleum constructed over the tomb.

An image of the mausoleum from Charles Lemire’s 1884 book L’Indo-Chine, Cochinchine Française, Royaume de Cambodge, Royaume d’Annam et Tonkin.

Known locally as Lăng Cha Cả, the mausoleum in which Pigneau de Béhaine was buried was located in a large rural clearing near Tân Sơn village. Designed in the Nguyễn dynasty style, it was supported by a frame of precious wood and topped by a traditional yin-yang tiled roof. In front of the building stood a large screen (bình phong).

Inside the mausoleum, behind a kowtowing hall (bái đường), was the tomb of Pigneau de Béhaine, positioned in the center of the building and featuring a stele inscribed with Chinese characters describing the prelate’s life and work. At the rear of the building was a shrine decorated with “the embossed double coat of arms of the bishop, on whom King Louis XVI had conferred the title of count.”

At the time of the funeral, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh ordered “a guard of honor of 50 men to be posted outside the mausoleum in perpetuity.” While that order may not have been carried out for long, it is said that the mausoleum remained an important place of pilgrimage throughout the pre-colonial era.

After the arrival of the French, Pigneau continued to be honored as a great statesman, thanks to the pivotal role he had played in Franco-Vietnamese relations and the fact that the terms of the abortive Treaty of Versailles had been used in the 1850s as a basis for French claims on Vietnamese territory.

The Pigneau de Béhaine statue which stood in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral from 1902 to 1945.

As early as 1861, Admiral-Governor Léonard Charner declared the Lăng Cha Cả a national heritage site, and in 1902 a statue of Pigneau de Béhaine was installed in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral. The statue depicted Pigneau holding in his right hand the 1787 Treaty of Versailles and with the other hand guiding his student, Crown Prince Cảnh. At that time, the square, previously known simply as Place de la Cathédrale, was renamed Place Pigneau de Béhaine.

This 1968 photograph shows the mausoleum and next to it the main gate of Tân Sơn Nhất Airbase.

The Pigneau de Béhaine statue was removed during the August Revolution of 1945. The present statue of the Virgin Mary, made of Italian granite and created by sculptor G. Ciocchetti, was installed in February 1959.

During the colonial period, a cemetery for French Roman Catholic priests was established immediately behind the Lăng Cha Cả.

Towards the end of the French era, urban development began to encroach upon the land surrounding the mausoleum. By the 1960s, as the first American troops arrived, the Lăng Cha Cả was a small compound in the middle of a busy traffic roundabout, right next to the main gate of Tân Sơn Nhất Airbase. However, the South Vietnamese authorities continued to maintain the mausoleum as a national monument right down to 1975.

After reunification, discussions began regarding the repatriation of foreign graves, and in 1983 the mausoleum was earmarked for clearance, along with the old Rue de Massiges cemetery (now Lê Văn Tám Park) and several other French military graveyards.

The urn containing the ashes of Pigneau de Béhaine after they were returned to the Paris Foreign Missions Society in 1983.

Pigneau’s remains were exhumed, cremated and then delivered to the French Consul General for repatriation, along with the remains of several other priests who had been buried in the adjacent cemetery. Other graves at the site were cleared away. The mausoleum was then demolished to create a large roundabout. Today this roundabout — still known as Lăng Cha Cả — is one of the city’s busiest intersections. A flyover was installed in 2013.

Bird's-eye view of the mausoleum before and a rendering of the layover in 2013

While the Lăng Cha Cả and the statue of Pigneau de Béhaine have long been consigned to history, the Dinh Tân Xá house which Nguyễn Phúc Ánh built for his friend still stands today in the grounds of the Archbishop’s Palace at 180 Nguyễn Đình Chiểu in District 3. It was dismantled and rebuilt twice, firstly in 1870 in the grounds of the previous bishop’s palace at 6 Rue de l’Évêché [6 Alexandre de Rhodes] and 30 years later at its current location. Still used regularly as a private chapel by the Archbishop and his staff, this historic building was dismantled again in 2013–2014 and reassembled on a raised platform to provide further protection against damp and insects.

Lăng Cha Cả Roundabout in the 2010s.

Tim Doling is the author of the guidebooks Exploring Huế (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2018), Exploring Saigon-Chợ Lớn (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2019) and Exploring Quảng Nam (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2020) and The Railways and Tramways of Việt Nam (White Lotus Press, 2012) For more information about Saigon history, visit his website, historicvietnam.com.

“We eat so many shrimps, I got iodine poisoning,” rapper Pimp C famously proclaimed. But how many shrimps would that require, exactly? The internet claims it would require 680 large shrimps for one to suffer iodine poisoning.

Were I going to attempt the consumption of 680 shrimps, I know exactly where I would want to do it: Quán Bến Đò Cây Me along the Đồng Nai River. The humble restaurant extends from the dead-end of a tangle of hẻms, and nearly teeters into a sediment-stained stretch of the unsophisticated river. Barges passing with loads of coal and pilfered sand and errant coils of rusted barbed wire will distract little from the main attraction here: shrimps.

Served steamed with beer, fried with tamarind or salt sauce, in a hot pot, or even raw, the shrimps can be ordered in small, medium, or large varieties at market price. Vegetables and noodles can also be provided for making rolls. Regardless of the particular preparation, it’s the plump, meaty prawns with fibrous antennae and sturdy limbs that I care about. If shrimps have souls, I posit they are located in the sweet, orange goo that oozes from their heads when ripped from their bodies.

You either lust for shrimps or you don’t. But if you do, and you don't feel like catching your own, this restaurant’s ability to bring plate after plate of steaming shrimps to your table without judgement will appeal. The freshness and high quality, a result, in part, of the volume they sell per day, is the main selling point here. But the ramshackle structure where beer cans pile under plastic chairs and flimsy tablecloths bear cigarette burns adds to the charm. There is no illusion of sophistication or expectation for polite table conversation to get in the way of consuming vast quantities of shrimps.

Such high-quality shrimpsare not cheap (VND440,000 per kilo on my visit), which means that on my visit, I unfortunately did not eat enough shrimps to experience the nausea, vomiting, swollen airways, and delirium indicative of iodine poisoning. I feel immense shame for not living up to Pimp C’s standards. However, the silver lining is that I can return to one of Saigon’s best places to consume shrimps.

To sum up:

• Opening time: 8am–8:30pm
• Parking: Parking is available inside the restaurant
• Contact: +84 93 978 99 11
• Average cost per person: $$$$ (300 - 400k per person)
• Payment: Cash, Transfer

Following the musical works of Thịnh Suy means always being on alert for sudden song drops, sometimes without even a cryptic social media status update as a harbinger. Thịnh’s latest creation, ‘Tự,’ came to be in a similar fashion: the vocal version was unveiled in August, while a few days ago, another version with a rap verse by Datmaniac came out.

Thịnh Suy is the stage name of Bình Định-based musician Đỗ Quốc Thịnh. Right from his debut song ‘Một đêm say’ (A Drunken Night) in 2018, Thịnh had already made a splash in the scene thanks to his earnest sounds that navigate the indie-pop crossover with effortless ease. Thịnh Suy’s music is characterized by simple and contemplative lyrics delivered with similarly frill-less vocals. In ‘Tự,’ Thịnh Suy and long-time producer Lazii brought to the table his staple thoughtful songwriting, but with an added layer of mesmerizing spirituality.

The song title itself is a wordplay as the word “tự” can mean independent and self-sufficient, or a temple, hinting at the track’s surprisingly theological leaning. Thịnh sings about a feeling of existential instability one often faces upon returning to their hometown after living elsewhere — something he would probably know firsthand, having moved to Saigon for college and then returned to Bình Định. Everything seems recognizable, but somehow that sense of belonging is waning.

The song's visualizer, produced by Thành.

The instrumentation begins with three reverberating strikes of temple bell, followed by rhythmic mõ (wooden fish) clanks, a flute lead-in, and finally recurring guitar. Here and there, the wooden percussion would return alongside the flute to anchor the song to its Buddhist leaning, while drums come in at the chorus with layers of other organic sounds like bamboo and temple brass. It’s also interesting to note that the song’s climax is entirely dedicated to instrumentation without vocals. It’s impossible to resist being drawn into this complex sonic ambiance.

According to Thịnh, the rap part by Datmaniac wasn’t planned at the beginning, but first came to be just as wishful comments in conversations with Lazii. They approached Đạt with the idea, and the rapper immediately wrote a verse, recorded it, and sent it back. Datmaniac is also no stranger to writing from deeply personal reflections, so his verse added depth and texture to ‘Tự.’ At the end, the instrumentation is once again taken into overdrive, this time with a sample of Buddhist chant.

Overall, while Thịnh Suy’s songwriting has always been solid and open-hearted, the arrangement and production can be sparse at times, with guitar as the only accompaniment. ‘Tự’ presents a more stylized, entrancing, and atmospheric version of Thịnh Suy’s music that might deserve further experimentation.

To sum up:

• Type: Single
• Release date: October 2026
• Lyrics: Reflective and sincere like a diary entry
• Danceable: Interpretive dance fodder
• Cryable: If you miss home enough
• Karaoke potential: Might bring the mood down but who cares

Score: 86/100

One of the most elegant means to observe the textured heft and untethered strength of otherwise-invisible wind — there is plenty one could say about the poetry of flying kites. 

I could grasp at philosophical pseudo-koans about kites, like “the same string that keeps a kite tethered to the ground, enables it to remain in the sky”; share stories of Kim Yu-sin inspiring an army by tethering a flaming sphere to a kite, to suggest a bad omen had returned to the heavens; detail Ben Franklin's first harvest of electricity by looping a key around a kite string during a storm; offer an incomplete list of governments that have banned kite flying (the Taliban, Mao's China, 18^th-century Japan, 21^st-century Egypt, etc.); and passionately argue how “kite” the predatory bird out-astounds “kite” the flying contraption in every way.

But it's better to keep it simple. Because flying a kite in Thủ Thiêm is a simple pleasure. Simply show up at dusk when the summer heat begins to lift. Plastic chairs already line the boulevards built for developments that have yet to appear. Vendors sell cold drinks and basic street snacks. You can bring a kite or buy one there. Enjoying the event is as simple as jogging a few paces while a string uncoils into the air and the kite takes flight. You don’t even need a kite; simply ease back in the chair and chat with friends and family while watching colorful swaths of fabric drift across the sky.

Kites warrant no applause. You will not hear the ooh's and aah's that fireworks or sporting matches elicit. Pleasure is measured in small talk and smiles. Pleasure comes cheap. Perhaps that is what I appreciate the most about kite flying. Saigon is not a cheap place to live, doubly so for families. Not everyone can afford restaurant visits or structured entertainment, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have opportunities to enjoy fresh air and a night out. Kite flying ignores demographics, incomes, reputations, and past sins and welcomes all. I don't have to worry about how or even if I fit in. With the city’s expansive skyline towering in the distance, kites smear the skyline like children’s names written in beautifully crude crayon strokes.

This article was originally published in 2023.

“Clip-clop, clip-clop.” So goes the sound of the water buffalo hooves pulling a wagon through the highlands against the magenta sky of an unending sunset. The wagon is guided by a nameless driver, and onboard are three travelers: a veteran referred to as “the Man” and two other younger men.

A train coasts by in the distance, but its sound is muted. On the wagon, the Man reminisces. He recalls having been on what seems to be the same wagon years ago with his father and sister. He recalls his time as a soldier during the war and the death of his comrade. He recalls other strange occurrences too, like the story of a young woman who would give birth to babies born old and the banyan tree in his village, where bodies of the dead that had died far away would magically return. Yet, other moments simply emerge to the surface, adrift, untethered to any one person’s consciousness in particular. “Clip-clop, clip-clop.” The Man wonders where he is, and where he is headed. But like the march of time, the wagon continues to voyage onward without care — except that they almost appear to be out of time altogether, timeless.

Elsewhere, in a world more akin to our own, a blind man with hypersensitive ears named Bào hears the sounds of a wagon growing louder each day. There, in Phan Village, in the mountainous province of Thái Nguyên in Northeastern Vietnam, we find the unravelling of a grand generational family feud over secret buried treasure in the hills behind the village. The patriarchs of the two rival families, Old Trường and Trình, both possess knowledge of strange instructions for what must occur for the treasure vault to open: a second comet must appear; a third grave must be dug and, with it, the death of a member of either family; as well as the final appearance of the mythical half-dog, half-lion Nghê that must ultimately be beheaded.

Nguyễn Bình Phương

Nguyễn Bình Phương’s The Young Die Old is an eerie, fantastical novel whose chapters alternate between these two ontologically distinct yet entwined worlds. Originally published in 1994, the novel was translated by Khải Q. Nguyễn and made available in English this year. The book, as with Phương’s other novels, has often been labelled as magical realist — magical realism being a novelistic tradition which fuses the surreal into the quotidian, most closely associated with Gabriel García Márquez and other Latin American writers. It is a term, however, that the author is careful to qualify, as he does in an interview with Mekong Review that was re-published to coincide with the English translation of the novel.

“The atmosphere and the supernatural haze in The Young Die Old don’t come from Latin America. Those temples and the Nghê are oriental, with their history that spans thousands of years; they didn’t come about a few decades ago, when Latin American literature was introduced into Vietnam,” Phương remarks. “The magical features in my novel are all Vietnamese.” A prominent novelist and poet, Nguyễn Bình Phương is the recipient of numerous major domestic literary awards such as the Vietnam Writers' Association Award in 2021 and the Southeast Asian Writers Award in 2022.

The Young Die Old is a novel that is greatly opaque. Despite its centrality to the plot, the feud over the buried treasure is not explicated until well into the novel, an affair that most members of either rival family too remain unaware of. It is also not clear how exactly the two worlds of the Phan Village and the buffalo wagon and its characters are related (and that they are to begin with is also unclear until well into the book). The novel is at once chaotic and meticulously crafted. Seemingly strange and arbitrary details and accounts, often having to do with the complicated tangling of relationships between the novel’s numerous sprawling characters, fall into place only retrospectively. But even then, the piecing together of fragments does not automatically crystallize but rather takes much effort, at times both tantalizing and dizzying, on the part of the reader. Readers may likely find themselves searching for a moralistic takeaway, perhaps because of how much the story of Phan village has the feel of a folktale (“Some time ago…” begins the story), yet the novel does not at all easily lend itself to allegorical readings. Perhaps in this sense, I feel that the novel’s opacity exists not as a mystery to be solved but rather to be felt. For despite the intricate inner logical workings of the novel and its almost rhizomatic plot, what is perhaps most distinctive about the novel is its quite odd, unique affective texture, one whose architecture is built and sustained by the uneasy overlay of its two para-ontological worlds.

Some titles in Nguyễn Bình Phương's bibliography

To start, it needs saying that the world of Phan Village is absurd, despite it being the world that is at least seemingly more aligned to our intuitions of time and space. Much of this absurdity, to be specific, has to do with the notable lack of psychological interiority exhibited by its characters. If interiority requires friction, the wrestling with depths of the self and the world that resist easy comprehension, there seems to be none of that in Phan Village. Rather, its characters are much too easily moved by greed, fear, anger, love, lust — their desires much too fickle. Old Trường marries his cousin after he is told to do so. A man transmits gonorrhea in order to take revenge. Old Trường’s granddaughter Loan moves on from one lover to the next with remarkable casualness. And in a particularly striking scene, a woman comes to the house of the blind man Bào with plans to murder him but instead falls in love and stays the night. The next day, Bào, who throughout his life had sulked over his inability to sleep with women, is asked by Liêm whether he had “shagged” the woman and realizes he “forgot” to do so. At no point are any of the characters particularly puzzled by their feelings and actions or the eccentric development of events — and if they are, they quickly move on. The men and women of Phan Village simply feel what they feel, think what they think, do what they do. And the result is a kind of absurdity that goes beyond merely the surrealism of magical realism.

Such absurdity, I find, is actually quite comical — though only from a step or two back. For despite all the moments of amusement and even humor of watching events unfold in bizarre ways, they quickly dissipate under none other than the weight of the Man’s grief and sorrow on the buffalo wagon. It is a sorrow that, in many ways, looms timeless: the sorrow of others, of the dead, of the land and the bruised sky made witness to the madness of mankind. As arguably the sole character in the novel that exhibits much interiority at all — for he ponders, sits with the past — the sorrow that engulfs the Man is superimposed above all, including the ludicrous drama of Phan village. The result is a deeply unsettling alloy of dissonant affective registers that is perhaps best described as bordering on tragicomic.

The book's Vietnamese cover

In the afterword, translator Khải Q. Nguyễn suggests the “Soundless” chapters be read as demonstrating “scepticism of violence, and, perhaps to another level, scepticism of the past where the collective past conflicts with the individual’s experience and memory.” He suggests that such modes of scepticism offer a “glimpse into the Vietnamese mentality in the years before and after Đổi Mới.” And indeed, there is good reason to read Phương’s work as a postwar novel: it is after all, at least in part, a novel about war written in the aftermath of four wars over the course of a century. Yet, at the same time, the themes that the novel engages with could be said to be much more existential. In The Young Die Old, we find the ever-absurd predicament of human life, perpetually propelled and hijacked by reckless forces of greed, love, lust, hatred, and more that in turn give rise to events at times head-scratching and at others outright stomach-dropping. The stuff of farce, one might even say, were it not for the timelessness of it all.

On a recent ritual walk around my suburb, I was held up by the sight of a middle-aged man with his “fur kid.” I introduced myself and when he heard the word “Vietnam,” his eyes lit up and with a smile as he tumbled out the words: “The Mekong Delta. Ducks.”

“It is teeming with ducks there,” he continued. “Their quacking still echoes in my mind.”

A gaggle of feathery friends. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Ducks in the yard

With canals and tributaries meandering through endless paddy fields and shady villages, the Mekong Delta is a paradise for ducks. Almost every house has ducks in their yard. So did my maternal grandma. She raised ducks for death anniversaries, for the Tết holidays, and for every other occasion. Like Mekong people, ducks excel at improvising. Her ducks usually heaped their nest with layers of dried banana leaves beneath a thick clump of banana trees. When she was tired of eating duck eggs, either hard-boiled or as omelettes, after 28 days, she would see fluffy pastel yellow ducklings waddling behind their mom to the nearby ponds for their first swimming lesson.

My mom raised ducks too in order to cut the grocery bill and earn some extra money. But her ducks never had a chance to lay eggs. As soon as they were fat, she would take them to the market. She carried them in two tight hand-woven reed bags, three on each side. They would lie quietly on top of each other with their heads sticking out and eyes wide open, seemingly resigned to their fate of being slaughtered and plucked. Those she didn’t take would end up on our table.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

One of my chores was to feed our ducks twice a day. Watching them gobble their food and then waddle away with satisfaction was like watching a sold-out event. Their diet included duckweed or finely chopped morning glory stems and leaves mixed with rice bran powder and water. But their favorite food was rice snails which they ate so fast that snails had no time to breed in the pond where my mom rounded them up. They were not allowed to wander in the yard because they’d furiously peck at anything along their way. On occasion, my father hand-picked snails for them from the rice paddies. They gobbled up as many of the shelled gastropods as they could and even fought each other for them. Then, contented, they would lie down under the thicket of banana trees by the pond. The glowing water with the promise of shrimps and insects no longer alluring to them.

Killing ducks for meat and more

Despite not building emotional bonds with her ducks, Mom would perform a ritual when slaughtering them. She would pat its head and whisper, “Come back in another life form, my dear” and then pluck a speck of feathers from the duck’s throat, just below its head, to offer a space for her to make a small incision. She would deftly cut through that featherless spot with a well-used knife she always kept sharp between butcherings.

As she made the incision, she would direct the flow of scarlet into a white ceramic rice bowl containing a smattering of sticky rice. As the last drop plopped into the basin of blood and rice, she would carry the duck carcass to the pot of boiling water that I was responsible for. The duck’s lifeless head would flop from its body of waxy white feathers.

I was distressed to witness the slaughtering of a duck that I had fed daily for months. I could clearly remember each one when they were still bundles of yellow fluff and how they happily come waddling towards me each time I approached with food.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Silence hung in the air between Mom and me in those moments. When resources are scarce there is no waste and each part of the duck was used with respect: from its heart, gizzard, liver and intestines to its feathers, head and feet, and, of course, blood. The feathers were put aside to dry in the sun and later placed in a plastic bag to be sold to ve chai buyers. Those women would tour through houses and villages on their old rustic bicycles, seemingly always during our lunch hour when we were taking naps. As they pedaled we would hear them call out: “Any recyclables and duck feathers for sale?”

Lost in the pantheon of duck cuisine

Once a year, when yellow mai flowers bloomed, Mom cooked pork belly stew with duck eggs. We would wait the entire year to savor the Tết food. She explained, “It is worth the wait. If we eat it every day, we will not cherish it and look forward to it anymore.” She would simmer hard-boiled duck eggs and pork belly in an ocean of coconut water for hours. When cooked off, the coconut water turns into a soft golden glow which is rich and sweet and makes both eggs and pork golden brown as the eggs became crunchy and the pork tender.

But other than this once-a-year speciality, Mom had an unfixed duck menu I assumed no Michelin-starred chef could imagine. Sometimes, she would cook duck curry with a generous pinch of turmeric, chunks of carrots and sweet potatoes and a sea of coconut milk. Sometimes, she would do braised duck with caramelized coconut sauce, fish sauce and a mountain of ginger. It tastes gingery, which is very pleasant. The secret of this dish is the two cuts of ginger: the thin strips for chewy texture and spicy flavor, and the minced for faster seasoning.

Duck meat is categorized as yin (tính âm) in traditional cooking for its cold properties, so it must be cooked with ginger known as yang (tính dương) ingredients for their hot properties in order to achieve hot-and-cold equilibrium. It sounds mythical. However, both are used in every home for as long as my great-great-grandmother could remember. They complement each other perfectly like the white and the black in the yin-yang symbol. Ginger must be cut on a wooden chopping board to enhance maximum flavor. This applies to garlic too. She taught me so, and I took tremendous pride in sharing it with my husband who loves to put ginger and garlic in every dish we cook.

The duck blood spilled into the uncooked sticky rice? That mixture would be boiled into blood pudding. Mom would boil the thickened blood in the broth of any dish she cooked such as congee, curry and stew. When cooked, it is firm like a pie and has a chocolate color. Duck blood pudding is mottled white with sticky rice which provides a slightly sweet flavor and chewy texture. We ate it with duck meat and fish sauce with minced ginger.

Occasionally, Mom made duck congee for a family treat. At that time, our home was a bustling hive of activity. She chased the fattest duck, butchered it in half, and submerged it in a pot of boiling water with roasted rice. Once the duck was tender, she placed it on a plate to cool and then cleaned every speck of meat off the bones. My sister and I would dash around the garden to chop a young banana stem and pick rau răm for banana stem salad. The salad would be tossed with the meat she tore earlier. It would be served with warm duck congee and the dipping sauce of fish sauce and fresh minced ginger. I polished off duck congee like a hungry wolf and wished Mom would cook it again the next day, as did other family members.

Roast duck served at a Saigon eatery. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

The dish I liked best was the roast duck which Mom only did on my paternal grandma’s death anniversary. She brought ducks she slaughtered to a nearby roasting shop. To munch the roast duck, we first waited until the incense sticks on the ancestor altar — where my grandma always offered a tight smile in a plum red velvet áo dài she never wore in her life — burnt into ashes. It was crispy and succulent with golden brown skin and pink aromatic flesh. After chomping down one big piece, I would lick my fingers so clean that they almost disappeared. The aroma of roast duck always lingered on for hours after.

Ducks on show

At the open-air markets that bustle with a rainbow of exotic fruits and vegetables and a cacophony of noises and scooter horns, the ducks’ loud whistling guide people to their world. The choices are practically unlimited, from free-range ducks to confined ducks of all kinds. There are mottled ducks, Muscovy ducks, Grass ducks, Pekin ducks, and more. People can buy fresh naked duck carcasses with all their internal organs intact lying on big trays that look like giant water lily leaves. Or people can choose a decent live duck and come back to fetch the bird at the end of the shopping trip.

As a single person in the city, half a duck suited me fine for two days. An entire duck would take me further, but, without a refrigerator in the dripping humidity, it would become a mossy frog before I could finish it! I would ask the duck lady to dismember my half into bite-sized chunks. She did so with a deft snip of her well-used but scalpel-sharp scissors. On the days I failed to ask her to butcher the bird, I would end up hacking it to pieces with my mostly unused knife.

To save time, I made braised duck too. Like my mom, I seasoned the meat with caramelized coconut sauce, fish sauce and, of course, two different types of ginger. Then I let it simmer with a lid on and went about my business. By the time I heard sizzling sounds, I knew my braised duck was cooked.

Trứng vịt lộn

Next to the duck ladies sit the egg ladies. Baskets of eggs in all shapes and colors full to the brim await fussy housewives. There are chicken eggs, duck eggs and quail eggs; freshly laid or fertilized. The latter are always duck eggs and quail eggs.

Trứng vịt lộn being prepared on a Saigon street. Photo by Brandon Coleman.

Fertilized duck eggs (trứng vịt lộn) are considered a healthy and nutritious treat. They are believed to be rich in iron, calcium and even Vitamin C. There is no scientific research on this, but the maxim is passed down from generation to generation. No young Vietnamese wants to miss out on the street delicacy on a night out.

As high school students, my friends and I usually conducted a trứng vịt lộn challenge. The winner was the one who ate the most trứng vịt lộn. The reward they received was simply our applause, a kind of appraisal that was of greater importance than that of our teachers and parents. By the time my friend, the winner, was able to bolt six, I had just started to peck at the second, which turned out to be my last. After the challenge, I thought I would not go near trứng vịt lộn for a year. Its richness and creaminess remained on my breath for hours. However, in a week, I found myself gnawing trứng vịt lộn again with my friends.

Here is how we enjoy trứng vịt lộn: first, we crack the larger end of the egg with a teaspoon. Next, we peel back the broken top, just enough, and suck the sauce gently. Then we continue to peel off the shell. The hardened yolk interlaced with cooked blood vessels appears. Scooping it out with a teaspoon, we dip it in a mystifying sauce of salt, black pepper, smashed red chilies and lime juice. We munch on it with some rau răm. A burst of flavors explodes in our mouth: the yolk is crunchy and chewy and creamy; the sauce is hot and salty and sour; the leaves are peppery and spicy and minty. Our mouths are on fire and our sinuses are clear. Now the eyes of a nearly developed duckling are staring at us. But it barely disconcerts us. We have another bite. Its developed bones are so soft.

Trứng vịt lộn eaten in Saigon. Photo by Cao Nhân.

Ducks talk

Ducks have become part of Vietnamese culture both in cuisine and figuratively. My mom is a walking dictionary of duck idioms. Before my brother popped out and "rescued" her from further pregnancy, she felt sorry for my dad for being surrounded by girls, while he felt left out by his friends who all had at least one son to carry on the name of their families. When we could not help our dad with labor that required a man’s strength, Mom would tease us with a giggle: “The house is full of vịt trời (wild ducks).”

When I consistently did not follow her advice, she moaned: “Talking to you is like pouring water over a duck’s head (nước đổ đầu vịt).” Interestingly, English people use a similar phrase: “Like water off a duck’s back.”

When she saw that I was confused by something she said she would complain that I listened to her stories “like a duck listening to a thunderstorm (như vịt nghe sấm).”

If I was slow in doing something she would scold me: “‘Come on! Don’t walk like a duck (Lạch bạch như vịt bầu).” And to encourage us kids to study hard for a better life, she announced: “I promise you, if you don’t study hard, you can only work as duck herders.”

Being duck herders is not easy. They have to move thousands of ducks from paddy fields to paddy fields which are bare after the harvest. The fields promise a paradise of crabs, rice snails, insects and grain for ducks. When the sun dips into the horizon, herders round-up happy ducks for a rest. Their feet are wet and painted in mud all the time. They sleep under the stars, or a rickety hut if lucky, beside the ducks to make sure that none get lost or sick. Plus they have to collect the eggs the ducks lay as they go. And for all that effort they receive a modicum of income. Understanding that, us siblings announced in unison that we did not want to be farmers, let alone duck herders.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

To return to the friendly passer-by who happened to bring me home, a home away from home. He told me, “I will visit the Mekong Delta again.” But he swore, “I won’t eat embryo eggs again. Never again.”

Sympathizing with his unpleasant foodie experience, I said, “In early December, Taste Atlas released a list of ten disgusting street food. Trứng vịt lộn was second in the list.”

“You see!” he smiled in agreement.

Out of the blue, I heard an incessant quacking aloft. Two Egyptian geese were flying above, probably on the way home as the curtains of silk darkness were about to close.

A wave of nostalgia enveloped me. I missed the happy Mekong ducks. And my mom.

The top graphic features a photo by Bill Yeaton via Smithsonian Magazine.

Across the rapidly modernizing urban landscape of Vietnam, Huế stands out as a bastion of traditions, not just in its city layout, rich historical wealth, and court cuisine, but also in the way the city has somehow managed to largely resist the power of rampant urbanization. This architectural project in Huế is a great example of a new structure that can quite seamlessly merge old and new into something mesmerizing.

Designed by Huế-based firm Cote Architects, Vương Đình Temple is based on the ancestral garden of the Vương Đình family in Thủy Biều Village, 5 kilometers from downtown Huế. Like many historical villages in Huế, the neighborhood is peppered with garden estates following the former capital’s distinctive architecture. While the temple was constructed in 2024, its design did a sterling job blending in with the surroundings.

As a family temple, the building’s main function is hosting the family altars while also providing space for gatherings and meals on special occasions. The layout on the ground floor is crafted for that precise purpose, featuring kitchen counters for food preparation and even a queen bed for resting.

The Vương Đình family altars are housed on the second floor, connecting to a gorgeous veranda decked out in wooden motifs overlooking the garden of pomelo trees below — thanh trà pomelo is Huế’s nationally renowned cultivar. At the entrance below, two stone guardian dogs are placed on the sides, in line with building traditions in Huế.

While the interior is predominantly furnished with traditional materials like bare bricks and dark wood tones, the temple is enveloped in a cubic reinforced concrete shell, lending the building its contemporary influence. The shell is balanced on two concrete beams below, making the whole structure look as if it’s “floating.”

It’s also interesting to note that many design decisions behind Vương Đình Temple were made to adapt to Huế’s unique environs, where flooding frequently occurs during the last quarter of the year. These include balancing the concrete shell on the beams and placing the important altars high up on the floor above.

Have a closer look at Vương Đình Temple below:

Photos by Hoàng Lê via ArchDaily.

After a decade writing and gathering materials, Hien recently published her debut album, “Trăng Qua.”

“Trăng Qua” is a record that was 10 years in the making. Some initial song ideas came up in 2015, while other new songs were started in 2025. The album wasn’t constructed from a fully formed concept right from the beginning. Instead, Hien wrote the tracks one by one, polished them across different times in her life, and only came to realize their common thread after a while.

During the creation of the album, there have been many changes in the life and musical artistry of Hien. Born Nguyễn Thanh Hiền in Budapest into a Vietnamese family, Hien moved to New York a few years ago. Her life experiences pass through three languages and cultures. Vietnamese is the language of family and heritage; Hungarian is closely connected to her formative years in Budapest; and English has become the language of daily life and creativity while she lives in the US.

The album cover.

To Hien, the extended period making “Trăng Qua” also gave some old compositions a chance to revisit a past version of herself.

Hien describes her songwriting process as “quite simple”: she begins with the sound, then the melody, and finally the lyrics. Still, over the decade, the person behind that process has changed.

“‘Trăng Qua’ has had more time to mature,” Hien shares. She mentions “Bloom,” the EP she released in 2021, as a stepping stone before she transitioned to the full-length album. “I’ve matured — I became a mature woman and a mature artist,” she explains. “I’m very glad to have put some of these songs down for a while, as once I return to them, I could listen to them with a fresher perspective. I’m also much bolder in my creative choices. I stopped chasing perfection and let the production be more rustic and authentic.”

Hien describes her songwriting process: starting with the sound, then the melody, and finally the lyrics.

For songs that have been kept on the back burner for years, taking them out for polishing does not mean retaining how they were first created. Hien believes that letting go of one’s older versions is a natural part of growth.

“Letting go of my old selves is really not difficult, because I simply have grown out of them. It’s a part of growth, of creating a space for someone you’re becoming.”

Those changes are clearly shown in Hien's treatment of her musical materials. “Trăng Qua” swings between electronic, ambient, and pop, employing elements from different influences, specifically bolero, chèo, cải lương, Hungarian Romani folk music, Latin bolero, Bulgarian choral music, R&B, and hip-hop.

Hien wasn’t hung up on recreating traditional elements as is, but picked those that she feels a pull towards, including melody, vocal technique, arrangement, rhythm, and emotivity. She then incorporated them into her own music-making process.

‘Trăng tàn trên hè phố’ (lit: the moon wanes on the street) is Hien’s first-ever release in Vietnamese, which made over a composition by Phạm Thế Mỹ using bolero, drum and bass. In ‘next to you,’ she integrated a sample from ‘Xa mối tình đầu’ (lit: away from my first love), also known as ‘Đoạn tái bút 2’ (lit: postscript no. 2) composed by Tú Nhi and Bằng Giang. In ‘through this phase,’ another segment from ‘Tình thư hạ vị’ (a chèo classic) performed by Minh Thu and Khắc Tư becomes part of an electronic track.

At the photoshoot for “Trăng Qua.”

Hien’s own relationship with Vietnam was formed in a similar way. She grew up in Hungary in a Vietnamese family instead of spending her formative years in Vietnam. This background resulted in a certain distance that always exists in how she connects to Vietnamese culture and music.

The music video for ‘Bloom’ documents the life of young girls in the matriarchal community of M’Nông people. Stories about family, roots, culture, and nature continue to be crucial themes in Hien’s music.

“I will never experience Vietnamese culture exactly like someone who was born and grew up there, speaking Vietnamese as a native tongue,” she explains. “But that distance also gives me an alternative perspective. It lets me realize, respect, and appreciate things that someone who grew up in Vietnam might deem obvious.”

Hien doesn’t see this distance as something to hide in her music. On the contrary, it’s become a part of how she explores her heritage: “I still have many things to learn about Vietnam, and I think that constant discovery is also a part of my music.”

One aspect of this journey comes from her family, especially her grandfather Trần Tượng Tư, a cải lương performer hailing from Bạc Liêu in the Mekong Delta. He could play đàn nguyệt, đàn nhị, guitar, and violin and worked at the Trần Hữu Trang Cải lương Theater in Saigon, and then the National Cải lương Theater in Hanoi.

In her childhood, she spent summers with her grandparents, so she can remember how he spontaneously played cải lương on the guitar. Years later, Hien hunted down some of his old recordings and added a segment of his guitar work into ‘trăng ơi,’ a track on the album. Hien sees this as a way to continue making music with her grandpa, even though they come from different musical periods.

The music video for ‘Jetplants’ is constructed from VHS footage of Hien’s family archive, spanning three locations and multiple generations.

Her family story also directly appears in ‘Jetplanes,’ the 15th track of the album. It reflects the journey to find new homes and the experiences of someone living away from home, a reference to how her family left Vietnam for Hungary and how she left Budapest for Brooklyn.

The music video is constructed from old VHS footage of her family, filmed in Vietnam and Hungary. 1992 scenes in a small town near Hải Phòng show her father’s side of the family, while those in Hanoi chronicle family meals, Tết celebrations, birthday karaoke sessions, and her maternal grandparents. The footage in Budapest shows a small family and Hien’s childhood friends.

These video snapshots not only help illustrate the song’s visual side, but also tell the story of places and people that have a role in Hien’s personal narrative, from Vietnam to Hungary and then the US.

“Trăng Qua” features lyrics in Vietnamese, Hungarian, and English, sometimes in one song. For Hien, each language is connected to a different part of her life, but they coexist in one album formed in Brooklyn.

Singing in Vietnamese was a skill she had to relearn. She used to feel self-conscious about singing in Vietnamese before deciding to bring it to her music. The track ‘Trăng tàn trên hè phố’ is the first step in that journey, followed by many other instances where Vietnamese shows up across the album.

Hien doesn’t look at Vietnam as someone who has learned everything about the place they belong. It’s a continual process of discovery via family, language, music, and inherited memories.

“Trăng Qua” pieces together songs from different periods of Hien’s life. Some had their start when she was still in Budapest; others were finished when she moved to America. In between them were many shifts in living arrangements, language, music, and even the self.

Following the album release, Hien hopes to return to Vietnam for a month during Tết to perform.

“Trăng Qua” is available on Bandcamp on major streaming platforms.

“Echoes of Tonkin: Vietnamese Modern Art” opens in Hong Kong to challenge reductive narratives and clichés about 20^th-century Vietnamese art.

“Modern Vietnamese art cannot be traced to a single origin, nor reduced to a simple story of influence,” write exhibition co-curators Trần Đình Thục Đoan and Leah Đỗ in the catalogue’s opening. Spanning 1905 to 1960 and including works by Albert Cézard, Victor Tardieu, Léa Lafugie, Joseph Inguimberty, Alix Aymé, Lê Phổ, Vũ Cao Đàm, Mai Trung Thứ, Phạm Hậu, and Nguyễn Gia Trí, the exhibition is arranged chronologically not to suggest a linear progression but rather to showcase a collection of individual artists working independently in a collaborative atmosphere of adoption and adaptation. 

Notably, the exhibition begins before the 1924 founding of the École des Beaux-Arts, the French-led school in Hanoi that produced some of Vietnam’s most well-known 20^th-century artists. In doing so, “Echoes of Tonkin” stresses that while the school precipitated a dramatic shift in the country’s artwork, there already existed a rich visual culture with talented artists across mediums. Moreover, while the school formalized training and offered resources, there had long been exchanges between French and Vietnamese artists as exemplified by Albert Cézard’s 1905 work, ‘Scène du Vietnam’ (Scene in Vietnam).

‘Scène du Vietnam’ (Scene in Vietnam) by Albert Cézard.

Adding more complexity to the established narratives of art development in Vietnam is the exhibition’s inclusion of two Chăm statues dating back to the 9^th and 10^th centuries. They serve as reminders that long before the French or even the Kinh occupied parts of Vietnam, another culture with a rich and meaningful relationship with art thrived. 

Chăm sculptures (artist unknown). 

The statue of Ganesha reveals the deviations of religious traditions amongst cultures in the region. The Buddha, meanwhile, points to overlap, as does Lê Phổ’s ‘L’illumination de Bouddha’ (Buddha's Enlightenment), which applies creative interpretation of traditional imagery. Painted on silk in 1947 in the wake of World War II and personal hardships, the curators explain that it is “not merely an illustration of religious history but a message of  hope amid the world’s escalating political turmoil.” 

Lê Phổ’s ‘L’illumination de Bouddha’ (Buddha's Enlightenment)

In addition to silk and sandstone, the exhibition includes oil paint on canvas, terracotta and lacquer. This later medium allows for particularly interesting rumination on the changes in art at the time. Nguyễn Gia Trí’s 1960 ‘Bateaux dans la baie d'Halong’ (Fishing Boats in Ha Long Bay) presents the transition of the medium from a decorative craft to one of ambitious painting. Created seven years into his exile from his home in Northern Vietnam, Nguyễn Gia Trí’s work is one of deep emotion rendered with subtlety and technical ambition.

Nguyễn Gia Trí’s 1960 ‘Bateaux dans la baie d'Halong’ (Fishing Boats in Ha Long Bay)

Similar technical skill is forefronted by Vũ Cao Đàm’s ‘Tête de femme’ (Head of a Woman). Uniquely talented in both sculpture and painting, Vũ Cao Đàm produced works that introduce the familiar theme of idealized female figures. The sculpture was created while in exile, and the act of idealizing a female face with pristine features and headdress represents “not an aesthetic choice but memory made visual,” as described in the illuminating catalogue, which relies on significant research to describe, date, and situate the pieces in the artist’s individual lives as well as the cultural and political developments of the time.  

Vũ Cao Đàm’s ‘Tête de femme’ (Head of a Woman)

While limited in number of pieces, “Echoes of Tonkin: Vietnamese Modern Art” is expansive in its aims to reconsider and redefine people’s understanding of the nature of influence and advancement at the time, alongside interests. When asked to elaborate on what “familiar assumptions” the exhibition challenges, Pascal de Sarthe, who founded the gallery in Paris in 1977, explains, “The idea that Vietnamese modern art is essentially decorative: graceful young women in áo dài on silk, made to please a French and later an international clientele. The market has encouraged this image, because those works sell well. But it hides the ambition, the variety and the intellectual seriousness of these artists. A second assumption, closely related, is that the story belongs to a handful of painters who settled in France. The reality is much richer, and much of it happened in Vietnam.”

Photos courtesy of De Sarthe Gallery.

“Echoes of Tonkin: Vietnamese Modern Art” is open from now until November 21 at de Sarthe Gallery in Hong Kong.

It was early in the day. I opened my window to let in the very first rays of the morning sun, just to catch a waft of that distinctive floral aroma lingering in the cold air. This year, autumn came early, and hoa sữa has started blooming where I live.

People often refer to hoa sữa as the “muse” of the Hanoian autumn, coating city streets in a layer of pristine white blossoms. Its fragrance is the most pungent element capital residents' collective memory. Every autumn, there are two ways Hanoians would talk about hoa sữa: one shrouded in eager anticipation and dreamy romanticism, and the other is pretty much “I can’t stand it, it’s so annoying.”

Hoa sữa appears frequently in evocations of autumn, in between romanticisms and laments about its concurrently sweet and dizzying smell. No matter how one feels about that, it’s impossible to deny that the flower has become a unique harbinger of the season — an aroma that reminds locals of nostalgia, something that many hold dear.

Hoa sữa, the unofficial muse of the Hanoian autumn. Photo via Tiền Phong.

A familiar flower

Milkwood’s scientific name is Alstonia scholaris, known in some regions as mò cua, but it’s perhaps nationally famous by the name hoa sữa. The name arose because the plant emits an abundant white sap just like milk. It possesses a distinctively powerful fragrance that fills the air every time the northern autumn arrives.

Hoa sữa is an evergreen tropical tree belonging to the dogbane family, with a lifespan averaging a few hundred years old. The tree has a sizable trunk growing upright, reaching a height of 10–20 meters, though a few have grown to 50 meters. Trees produce wide canopies so the species is often planted along streets, in parks and residential enclaves to provide shade. Milkwood likes tropical climates and ample sunlight, and grows fast, so it has been widely planted across Vietnam, especially in Nha Trang, Quy Nhơn and Hà Nội, where hoa sữa is the most densely distributed.

Milkwood has wide canopies, fan-shaped leaf arrangements, and a strong smell. Photo via Wikimedia.

Hoa sữa bloom in clusters with each tube-shaped flower consisting of five petals and five sepals. Flowers are arranged in circular formations that, from afar, look like bouquets  standing out on the green bed of leathery leaves. The sight of these white bouquets swaying in the soft sunlight of an autumn morning is something especially poetic to me. Just one look and I can immediately feel the tender embrace of a new season that’s weaving itself in between the pulses of the city.

Maybe it is that unique, unmistakable scent that has entered the collective memory of the people. It’s formidably strong, reminiscent of lily, but also quite different as it spreads in the cold air of autumn. It can be pleasant to occasionally detect when one’s not paying attention but is suffocating when living right next to it, especially at night.

Hoa sữa bloom in clusters in the Hanoian autumn. Photo via Dân Trí.

Those who grew up in Hanoi and even those who’ve fallen in love with the capital have probably experienced periods of yearning for a moment of relaxing quietude when you sit on the sidewalk sipping milk coffee, munching on green cốm, and sniffing hoa sữa in the atmosphere. Because of this yearning, everytime I hear ‘Nhớ mùa thu Hà Nội’ (On missing Hanoi’s autumns), an unnamed emotion swells within me:

Since when has hoa sữa taken root in Vietnam?

This question was answered by journalist and writer Nguyễn Ngọc Tiến in an essay: “The French planted the first milkwood tree on Quán Thánh Street. They noticed its tall trunk and luxuriant canopies, great to help shade local streets from the searing sun of northern Vietnam. The following years, more hoa sữa were planted along streets like Nguyễn Du. As the trunks often spawn tough protrusions, people used to call it vú trâu [buffalo boob] tree. In the beginning of the 20^th century, hoa sữa were planted sparingly with a gap of 10–15 meters between trees, so when the flowers bloomed at the end of September to October, the fragrance was only gentle, not pungent.”

Since then, hoa sữa has spread across Hanoi’s major streets; Nguyễn Du Street became the unofficial “hoa sữa street,” to the point that many believe that only by being on Nguyễn Du can one grasp how breathtaking (literally) the flowers are. In recent years, the municipal government has cultivated hoa sữa all over town and Nguyễn Du is no longer the sole owner of that title. On Thụy Khuê, Quán Thanh, Cửa Bắc or Đào Tấn streets, one can easily recognize that scent every fall. For a crop of young Hanoians, taking a stroll on the bank of Hoàn Kiếm Lake to catch a touch of monsoon wind mixed with hoa sữa aroma is a yearly ritual.

Rows of milkwood trees in Thái Bình City. Photo via Sài Gòn Tiếp Thị.

Departing from Hanoi, hoa sữa embarked on a cross-country trail to pepper alongside streets in the south. Around October, a stretch of Nguyễn Lương Bằng Street in District 7 of Saigon where it cuts Trần Văn Trà Street is perfumed with the sweet smell of hoa sữa. There are around 20 milkwood trees here, all planted in 1997. Hoa sữa might not be as prevalent in the city as in Hanoi, but if you know where to look, there are spots to relish its distinctive scent. There are a few hoa sữa trees on Hoàng Sa and Trường Sa streets, one in Vĩnh Lộc Industrial Park, and some individual trees in residential areas across town.

Outside of Vietnam’s colder regions or metropolises, I also bumped into hoa sữa during my trips to the Mekong Delta in autumn, like in An Giang. A friend once told me that to get from Ngã Ba Lộ Tẻ in Châu Thành District to Ngã Tư Đèn 4 Ngọn in Long Xuyên City, there are six hoa sữa “checkpoints.” The aroma is most intense around the area of Hoàng Diệu Bridge and Nguyễn Trãi Street. Though the tree and blossoms still look the same, somehow in my mind, it doesn’t have the same grace like those people often rave about in Hanoi. Perhaps it’s because you can take an icon out of its homeland, but you can’t separate the land from the icon.

Hoa sữa and an indictment: guilty or not?

Hoa sữa only does what it evolved to do in nature, but its existence has become victim to much censure by the public.

Fascinatingly, there were quite a number of legal suits involving hoa sữa in history, as those living near flowering trees cannot stand its head-splittingly intense scent. In 2004, locals in Tam Kỳ City, Quảng Nam filed a complaint against the flower, alleging that its pungent smell caused constant bouts of allergy, asthma, and migraine. Residents of Trà Vinh City in the Mekong Delta also once threatened to sue the local people’s committee as the city’s illogical hoa sữa density caused much inconvenience to their livelihood.

Following the uproars in many cities across Vietnam, localities started removing milkwood trees and replacing the plots with other non-flowering trees to reduce the concentration of hoa sữa. Via these incidences, I learned that this is not just a problem unique to Vietnam, but also in a number of other Asian countries where the plant is endemic.

As an evergreen tropical species, hoa sữa shows up in other Southeast Asian nations as well. The newspaper Bangkok Post once wrote a piece suggesting the use of hoa sữa to combat unpleasant smells in the neighborhood. In Indian, local opinions about the tree are also just as polarizing: some think that it’s so aromatic that “no matter how busy one is, they must stop to enjoy it,” but others believe that its intense smell causes a lot of troubles in their daily lives.

Hoa sữa lining local streets. Photo via ivivu.

A government directive from Noida, a city in northern India, reads: “If asthma sufferers stand under a milkwood tree for too long, they can have respiratory problems.” The city has since replaced hoa sữa with purple jarul trees. In Taiwan, over two-thirds of milkwood trees at Chihcheng Secondary School were axed as their scent negatively affected students.

Preserving the fragrance of the Hanoian autumn

Above all, whether they love, hate, or threaten to chop all the trees down, I know that deep inside their hearts, Hanoians still value their role in the city landscape and the memories they’ve built with hoa sữa. In the collective subconscious, there’s always a sense of anticipation before the first blossoms show up, signaling an impending autumn.

To conserve that elegance and ease the people’s discomfort, I think there needs to be deliberate efforts to space out hoa sữa trees to a manageable distance like 50 meters. In reality, some localities went too hard on the planting with just 2–3 meters between trees. By relocating or removing some trees in central areas, the city can still protect one of Hanoi’s most iconic autumn features while ensuring the health of its people.

Released in 1971, Vietnam Inc. by Philip Jones Griffiths was a career-defining work for the Welsh photographer, whose candid, sympathetic images of Vietnam during the American War showed a much different side of the country to a global audience.

Griffiths didn’t have formal photography training, as he studied pharmacy. His part-time job as a photographer for the Manchester Guardian introduced him to the craft, which became his life-long passion. In 1961, Griffiths freelanced for the London-based Observer, covering the Algerian War and then the conflict in Vietnam from 1966 to 1971.

This selection of pictures, however, took place nearly a decade after the publishing of the book, in 1980. Five years after the war ended, life in Vietnam was returning to some semblance of normalcy, though the ramifications of violence were pronounced, from physical deformities on veterans to villages devoid of adults.

Have a look at some standout shots below:

Inside a general store in central Hanoi.

A rural school in northern Vietnam, whose yard is still filled with drenches once used as shelters during bombings.

Farmers dig irrigation canals together in a field.

Residents in Huế section off an area of the moat surrounding the Imperial Palace to rear fish.

Youths in Saigon during an illegal bike race at night.

Homeless people outside Hanoi's St. Joseph's Cathedral.

A public tenement in Hải Phòng.

The Mekong Delta.

Young queer people in Saigon on a night out.

Visitors listen to a presentation at the Vietnam Military History Museum in Hanoi.

Children in Sơn Mỹ Village, where the Mỹ Lai Massacre took place.

Xuân Lộc, Đồng Nai Province.

A street vendor selling magazines and novels.

Knick-knacks for sale on the streets of Saigon after local families escaped overseas.

A class in rural Vietnam in a half-open classroom after the school was bombed.

A rare drinks stall.

Inside a kindergarten.

War veterans watch a football match at a rehabilitation center in Hanoi.

An arts and crafts class inside a center for former sex workers.

[Photos by Philip Jones Griffiths via Redsvn]

My favorite genre of Saigon food places is most definitely address-less street vendors. With no name, no fixed location, no menu, no contact information, before Google Maps and smartphones, whether you can satisfy your craving for their food purely depended on the strength of your memory (to find them again) and the level of luck the universe bestowed on you that day.

While Gỏi khô bò Lê Văn Tám’s schedule is a little more dependable than the average street vendor, a tiny jolt of delight still swells in me whenever I turn the corner at Hai Bà Trưng Street to find their usual glass display filled with shredded papaya there. Also known as xắp xắp or xấp xấp — an onomatopoeia for the clanking of scissors cutting pieces of beef jerky — gỏi khô bò is one of Saigon’s oldest street snacks.

According to dì Sáu, the main proprietor of this cart, she started working here as a young lass about half a century ago, when it was run by her aunt and a plate was 50 xu (VND0.5) — this currency denomination doesn’t even exist anymore, just to show how historic the place is. After the aunt retired, she took over and has been serving countless papaya salad portions since, right at the same spot on Hai Bà Trưng Street overlooking the lush foliage of Lê Văn Tám Park.

The cart’s longevity has turned it into a rare culinary intersection of generations of Saigoneers: my Gen X dentist knows it, my Gen Y friends know it, and my Gen Z coworkers have also shared plates with her classmates. Everybody went through the exact same experience: settle down on the park sidewalk across the street, yell out your orders, and someone will cross the traffic to deliver your food.

Today, the operation has been upgraded to include a park-side satellite serving station run by her relatives for dine-in guests, and dì Sáu’s original cart is only for takeaways. The “dining area,” however, is still the raised cement edges of the street trees, and the “seats” are cut-out pieces of linoleum. Less than five minutes after we order, the gỏi khô bò arrives on iconic aluminum plates, as timeless as the operation itself.

Gỏi khô bò comprises finely shredded young papaya, chunks of black five-spiced marinated beef, a heap of golden shrimp crackers, a sweet-and-sour soy dressing, and optional chili sauce. At VND28,000 a plate in 2026, it’s not meant to be a full meal, but a refreshing snack to quell the summer heat. Here, the papaya is shredded more thoroughly, allowing it to soak up the sauce wonderfully — an excuse to consume a somewhat excessive amount of lip-smackingly umami dressing.

We finish our plates just in time for a bout of drizzle to sweep through the area. The street is suddenly filled with a rainbow of raincoats. Metallic plates of leftover sauces clank under the trees. This is the quintessential Saigon street food scene unfolding right before our eyes, like a carefully reconstructed museum diorama.

To sum up:

• Opening time: 12pm–8pm
• Parking: Use the park's parking lot
• Contact: N/A
• Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
• Payment: Cash, Transfer
• Delivery app: ShopeeFood

Vé số ticket number 984430 yields a magenta fish contorting atop a ghostly image of an apartment high-rise in Tân Phú in “The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen,” an art project by photographer Christian Berg. The experimental project, available to view in full online, employs computer technology to combine photography, numerology, and mythology and playfully reimagine how one visualizes Saigon.

The image produced by lottery ticket No. 984430

The process to achieve the surreal images is relatively straightforward. Berg purchased 100 vé số tickets from local vendors and created an algorithm to randomly assign a fixed and repeatable number to coordinates on a map of Saigon, the city he has called home for nearly 20 years. He then traveled to the locations and took photos with the rule that he wasn’t to get off his motorbike. The last two digits of each lottery ticket would determine an AI-generated creature inspired by Albrecht Dürer's famous 16^th-century works.

“The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen” online interface.

Selecting Dürer, a fellow German, was meaningful to Berg for several reasons. While he first considered using Đông Hồ paintings, he said being mindful of cultural appropriation and his positioning as an outsider was important. Moreover, Dürer was one of the first artists to produce and sell prints of his work, providing a fruitful entry point for the discussions of art, commerce, technology, and ownership that exist at the forefront of current-day discussions of creative production. In addition to selecting an animal, the algorithm Berg designed uses the vé số number to select a color and 3D spatial orientation after pixilation. The resulting images aim to offer aesthetic intrigue while suggesting the overlap of the spiritual world and the tangible one via vé số's relationship with numerology and cosmic beliefs. 

Images corresponding to lottery numbers 359927, 521951, 233240 and 485496 (from left to right).

“Once you make the game, you can make your own house rules,” Berg told Saigoneer of the two-year project. He thus skipped tickets that yielded coordinates that would send him into the middle of the ocean. Similarly, he weighted certain locations to ensure that the visually diverse center of the city would receive more attention than the somewhat homogeneous outskirts. 

“The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams” comes as a logical next step after Berg’s “All the Places I have Lived” project. For that one, he trained AI on photographs he had taken of all the Saigon neighborhoods he has called home and then had the computer generate images for each. The glitches and errors, including impossible shadows, nonsense signage, and illogical physics, speak to the fallibility of memories as well as falsehood’s place in feelings of nostalgia. 

Two photographs from “All the Places I have Lived.”

“Stop playing it safe,” Berg’s supervisor advised as he was formulating the project as part of his PhD coursework at RMIT Melbourne’s School of Art. For the majority of Berg’s time in Saigon, he has practiced conventional photography as a documentary photographer, commercial photographer, and lecturer at RMIT Vietnam. This PhD program allowed him to go beyond his comfort zone and discover what he could learn via experimentation and adoption of new, sometimes radical techniques and schemes. Particularly, the system he devised forced him to act counterintuitively and put together ideas and images that he normally wouldn’t, and in the process discover new means of creative convergence. 

In its application of AI, the project reflects Berg’s larger approach to technology. While an ardent supporter of human creativity and credit, he says one cannot just shut themselves off from the existence of new technologies. He explains to his students that “The hardest and most important lesson is to be curious about the world,” and that “saying no outright is not the approach of a curious mind.”

“The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen” as featured at the RMIT's Vietnam Festival of Creativity & Design.

The place of AI in art is and will continue to be the subject of intense debates. Projects like “The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen” serve as not only examples of what can be done, but also how curiosity is driving artists to play with it. 

While Saigoneer’s Natural Selection series has already covered a number of iconic species and types of animals, including the tiger, Asian elephant, dogs and cats, there’s a good chance most of the people reading this haven’t heard of today’s critter. 

Cầy vằn bắc (Chrotogale owstoni), or Owston’s civet, is a member of the civet family, which spans over a dozen species across tropical Africa and Asia, with Southeast Asia accounting for most of this diversity. This particular civet is named after Alan Owston, a British wildlife collector who lived from 1853 to 1915. The cầy is identified by four black-and-white stripes on its back, and they feed on earthworms, sweet fruits, small animals and insects. 

Civets are small, omnivorous mammals that are largely nocturnal, and in Southeast Asia they are best-known for their link to civet coffee, which is largely produced in Indonesia as kopi luwak, the Philippines under different regional names, and here in Vietnam as cà phê chồn — sometimes you may see it sold simply as “weasel coffee.”

To create this coffee, an Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) is fed coffee cherries, which they partially digest and then poop out. The cherries are fermented during this process, and then turned into coffee. This practice — which raises serious ethical questions in its modern form — began in the 19th century amongst locals who resorted to them after not being able to afford the beans they harvested for the Dutch.

But we’ll return to that later, as the Owston’s civet isn’t actually used for cà phê chồn.

To create cà phê chồn, an Asian palm civet is fed coffee cherries, which they partially digest and then poop out. The cherries are fermented during this process, and then turned into coffee.

According to a report titled “Conservation Strategy for Owston’s Civet 2019-2029” compiled by five major conservation organizations, this species was listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2016, and has among the smallest distribution area of any omnivore in Asia. Vietnam accounts for most of its natural range, though Laos and a section of southern China also host Owston’s civets. 

Trinh Thi Mai, Owston's Civet Programme Coordinator at Save Vietnam’s Wildlife (SVW), tells Saigoneer in a call that there is discussion of whether the species should be upgraded to Critically Endangered, as experts estimate that their population has declined by 50% over the last 15 years thanks to habitat loss and indiscriminate hunting and poaching. 

“In 2020, we set camera traps in four national parks, and we only found Owston’s civets in Pù Mát [in Nghệ An Province], though there is recorded history in Cúc Phương,” she says. “We got seven pictures in Pù Mát, but this is an elusive species that is hard to capture by image.”

An Owston’s civet (Chrotogale owstoni) photographed in captivity at Cúc Phương National Park, a major partner in the international cầy vằn bắc breeding program. Photos by Robert Marc Lehmann.

Mai adds that there have been recent reports of cầy vằn bắc in Kon Plong, a district in Kon Tum Province that is an emerging biodiversity hotspot, which is a positive sign, but more research is needed as a population in the area has not been confirmed yet. 

“This means there are still some surviving habitats we don’t know about, and we haven’t estimated their population, but it seems there are some animals there,” she says. 

Sadly, the species is a victim of extremely bad luck. Unlike the pangolin, it is not specifically targeted for meat or medicinal practices with zero scientific backing; and unlike the Asian palm civet, it is not targeted for coffee production: but it is caught in the deadly crossfire of these trades.

The coffee threat

“Because civet farming operations depend on wild civets to restock, and because the most common hunting method is snaring, we can assume that this supply chain will impact all ground-dwelling civet species, including species which are not used in civet coffee production,” explained Daniel Wilcox, Chair of the IUCN Small Carnivore Specialist Group, in an email.

Snares are cheap traps that close around an animal’s leg and either hold it in place until it dies from dehydration or starvation, or leave it mortally wounded even after escaping. They are a huge driver of wildlife loss in Southeast Asia.

According to Wilcox, most endangered wildlife species in Vietnam have almost no presence outside of protected areas, so hunters largely focus on these spaces, and there is no precise targeting when it comes to a snare: if one was set in order to supply palm civets to a civet coffee farm, it will still close around the leg of an unwitting Owston’s civet. Civet coffee farms don’t need the Owston’s since they are difficult to raise, but there is still a connection.

“Civet meat is another commodity in the country, so it is easy to imagine hunters illegally snaring inside protected areas and then selling civets that produce civet coffee, with all the other non-coffee eating species being sold for their to meat to restaurants, or possibly to civet farms,” Wilcox says. 

“In 2020, we conducted research focusing on coffee farms in order to search for the Owston’s, and we found that among 57 farms in Lam Dong and Dak Lak, none had this species, but people from at least two farms said they had seen them in other provinces,” Mai recalls. 

In 2019, SVW rescued three Owston’s civets from a farm in Lâm Đồng. This incidental link between the civet coffee industry and the Owston’s civet is deadly for the latter, but it’s worth taking a moment to highlight the sector’s impact on the civets it does use as well. According to Mai, the conditions at civet coffee farms are generally poor, with the animals kept together in very small enclosures.

“These are solitary animals, except during mating season, so it’s very stressful for them and they can attack each other,” she warns. “They are also fed industrial food, and are force-fed coffee fruit during coffee harvesting season, which can be poisonous when they are fed continually.” A common palm civet may naturally eat some coffee fruit in the wild, but only as a nutritional supplement to its normal diet: “When they are force-fed coffee, it’s not good for their health at all,” Mai adds.

Experts’ message for anyone considering civet coffee, either in Vietnam or elsewhere, is simple: “Don’t buy it!”

Given this, Wilcox’s message for anyone considering civet coffee, either in Vietnam or elsewhere, is simple: “Don’t buy it! We know it impacts wild civets, and the conditions that civets are kept in are horrendous…Even if one can close their eyes to the conservation and animal welfare impacts, then the public health risks that this industry poses are enormous.” 

Mai notes this last aspect as well, explaining that a virus at one civet farm in southern Vietnam killed every civet there, and viruses can easily jump to other species — including humans, as we have all been made well-aware of over the last two years. 

The future of the Owston’s

Given the complex nature of the threats facing this species, conservationists are pushing for a concerted effort largely within Vietnam to prevent it from extinction.

The most prominent angle of this is the creation of a sustainable breeding program. In fact, an ex-situ program does exist through cooperation between Cúc Phương National Park and several zoos in Europe, including the Newquay Zoo in the United Kingdom, but the involved population is too small.

As the 2019 conservation strategy report notes, reducing demand for wild meat and strengthening protection from hunting would greatly benefit the Owston’s civet, in addition to countless other species, but these are incredibly difficult tasks that will take decades to accomplish.

Mai explains that breeding is a major focal point of SVW moving forward, and they are already working with the Saigon Zoo — which has seven cầy vằn bắc — to eventually move the individuals to Cúc Phương for breeding. “We are planning to work with other zoos across Vietnam so that when they receive an Owston’s, they contact us and work on the breeding program,” she says. “We’re also working with wildlife farms to raise awareness.”

A cầy vằn bắc at the Saigon Zoo. Photos by Michael Tatarski.

This includes a website called NoCivetCoffee.com and a Facebook page called "No Civet coffee - Không sử dụng Cà phê chồn" that “raise awareness of civet coffee consumers on civet conservation problems, as well as civet welfare and zoonotic diseases that might associate with civet (coffee) farms in Vietnam.”   

SVW has also come across some evidence of Owston’s civets being sold online as pets, though the extent of this — as with so many aspects of the wildlife trade, both legal and illegal — is unknown. 

Breeding is seen as the most viable path forward, with Mai explaining that conservationists want to start now, instead of waiting until the species nears extinction — an outcome that is plausible given ongoing levels of hunting in its range and the fact that we don’t know how many cầy vằn bắc remain in the wild. 

While the conservation report features a number of specific goals for the next decade that will require intense work from both the public and private sectors, there are two simple steps to help the Owston’s civet, and other species, that anyone reading this can take: don’t buy cà phê chồn, and tell other people why they shouldn’t consume it either.

Unless you visit the Saigon Zoo, you may never see a cầy vằn bắc in person, but know that the small, uniquely striped-and-spotted animals will thank you for doing so.

Graphics by Hannah Hoàng, Phan Nhi and Simona Nguyễn.
Photos by Matthew Maran, Newquay Zoo, Shaldon Wildlife Trust, Curriculum Nacional, Michael Tatarski, Zoochat.com, iucnredlist.org.

When I used to live in Hanoi, I always knew that if an eatery only opens for half a day, the food is probably certified, at least by the locals, to be not only good, but excellent. There is something written in the local traditions that specific dishes should be served at particular times of the day.

Editor's note (2026): Hủ tiếu cá Anh Mai has relocated to 153 Lê Thị Riêng, the photos in this article depict the eatery's previous location.

For example, in every Hanoian’s consciousness, cháo sườn is strictly quà chiều, a cozy snack for the afternoon, although guests still come at any time of the day whenever their hearts desire. In some cases, perhaps the restaurant's reputation has built up so well over the years that the turnout is so consistently immense that they simply run out of stock in half a day. Therefore, you always have to put a certain amount of effort into scheduling, almost as if the meal itself is a special occasion.

Waking up late runs the risk of having no fish for your noodle bowl at Anh Mai.

Now, to a person whose concept of hủ tiếu cá was completely foreign until last Sunday, I do not know if this is a dish for which certain temporal rules apply. I have only discovered recently that a hundred ingredients could be combined with the chewy noodles — pork, shrimp, squid, satay, beef meatballs, even bones, and the list goes on including either with-broth or dry variations. However, there was something about a plain and earthy bowl of fish hủ tiếu that piqued my interest. Hủ Tiếu Cá Anh Mai, which served this dish specifically, came highly recommended online.

The Sunday breakfast crowd.

Online reviews specify that the store would close at around 12pm, so I was determined to pick myself out of bed and get there by 10am, hoping it would not be unbearably crowded. Anh Mai is located on Lê Thị Riêng, one of those rare streets in District 1 that is neither riddled with traffic nor high-rise buildings. Every table was filled, but the great thing was that the owners never seemed particularly frazzled during our visit. Like every good restaurant that has been in operation for over ten years, Anh Mai has their regulars. The woman in Table 4, for example, briefly mentioned to the smiling owner how she was running late that morning and did not have the time to drop by earlier. It was a familiar sight: families with small kids, office workers, and teenagers came in and out every 40 minutes or so.

A big portion (VND75,000) gets you a substantial amount of fish fillet.

After a short wait, our order of three hủ tiếu cá with broth and one dry hủ tiếu were served to Table 0 where we sat. With a generous amount of flaky white snakehead meat, garnished with scallion, pickled radish chopped into minuscule speckles, some bean sprouts, and a splash of soy sauce, my hủ tiếu bowl held the piping-hot soup within like a secret. Upon the very first bite, the fish let me know that it was the star of the dish — firm and moderately sweet in a tenderly seasoned broth.

Dry versus broth versions.

I learned from locals that this snakehead’s freshness was almost unparalleled across Saigon. As my chopsticks sank beneath, ample noodle layers were unveiled. The chewy texture of hủ tiếu seemed to take a step back to let other ingredients shine. No sooner had I thought that was the extent of the experience than a jolt of saltiness touched my palate in the most pleasant way imaginable. Was it from the pepper? I am still not quite sure, but the hide-and-seek game of flavor persisted until the last bite.

For your slurping pleasures.

We finished our meal at 11am and nodded our heads in contentment, even with the VND75,000 per person bill. It was simply worth it. As new customers started to flood in, we quickly parted ways so as not to overstay our welcome. Like every good meal, hủ tiếu at Anh Mai requires one to take their time — waiting, enjoying, and collecting themselves from that enjoyment. It's thus a good thing we waited until Sunday instead of going on Friday like the original plan. While there’s more for me to learn about the customs of eating hủ tiếu from Saigoneers, hú tiếu cá is now for me, perpetually, without debate, a Sunday dish.

To sum up:

• Opening time: 6am–11:30am
• Parking: Bike only
• Contact: 0906783242
• Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
• Payment: Cash, Transfer
• Delivery App: ShopeeFood, Grab Food

The joy of reading, for most of my life, had been primarily grounded in the joy of learning, feeling, and thinking through words, independent of medium. That is, until college, when I found myself repeatedly longing for Thursday mornings, when the week’s freshly printed student newspaper would arrive neatly folded and stacked, ready to be spread over the dining-hall table like wrapping paper. I came to realize then that the joy of reading was not simply about words; it was also about the tactile touch of paper and of the inexplicable satisfaction of flipping through pages bigger than my hands could reasonably manage.

When it comes to the pleasures of the tactile, material dimensions of reading, nothing, in my opinion, surpasses print magazines. Reading a print book offers the soft touch and the wafting scent of paper that digital versions cannot replicate, but even books with the most beautiful covers are inevitably too wordy (or most often, exclusively so) on the inside. Magazines, however, swirl ideas, illustrations, and images alongside the words, all brought together to life by the beat of color. As we become ever more subsumed by a digital world increasingly cannibalized by AI, print mediums like magazines can only become more precious.

Excerpt from Issue 2, where the focus is Vietnam and Singapore.

For such reasons, I was elated to recently find out about the existence of MARG1N, a print-only Southeast Asian film magazine based in Cambodia — the discovery of novel magazines in the region is always a delight! For cinephiles in Vietnam and across Southeast Asia in particular, MARG1N will surely be a treasured find, for there exists nothing quite like it for devoted filmheads. Supported by the Cambodian film production company Anti-Archive, the project is envisioned to consist of five issues, with each issue focused on a pairing of two or three countries in the region under a particular theme. The upcoming third issue, titled “Cosmos,” is set to release later this year, exploring the titular theme across the regions of Brunei, Thailand, and Timor-Leste.

The core team behind the magazine consists of three members: filmmaker and editor-in-chief Savunthara Seng (Thara), based in Cambodia; Alyssandra Maxine (Max), based in the Philippines; and graphic designer Sonich Touch, who was previously based in Cambodia but has recently relocated to Spain. As Max recounts in an interview with Minh Nguyen on Public Parking, the origins of the project trace back to when Max and Thara first connected on Letterboxd, where Max corresponded with Thara about how to pirate Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s eleven-hour film Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004).

Excerpt from Issue 2, where the focus is Vietnam and Singapore.

Given this history, it was perhaps natural that the theme of the first issue, published in 2024, would be piracy, focused on Cambodia and the Philippines. Titled “pirate.lov3r.2024.mkv,” Issue 1 brings together a cacophony of voices and perspectives, from filmmakers, artists, critics, and mourners of DVD stores, presenting piracy as something more than simply “an open secret” — tabooed, given its unlawfulness and illegitimacy; yet open, given its ubiquity. “Name me one Filipino filmmaker whose film education did not involve piracy,” writes Khavn De La Cruz in the opening piece, who describes piracy as “a form of film preservation.” The theme of piracy highlights well MARG1N's general approach to engaging with film not simply as a form of art that exists in the abstract, but as one lives and breathes through dynamic social formations, like piracy markets and DVD stores for instance, for which Phnom Penh, as with the Philippines, is a “notorious haven,” as Thara writes in the introduction.

Issue 2, titled “Traces,” focuses on Vietnam and Singapore. The subjects covered in the second issue are diverse, but all possess qualities shared with that of the trace: spectral, fleeting, fragmentary. In “Regarding Latent Cinema,” Daryl Chong reflects upon unfinished films within the context of Singapore. In “Minor Observations of Trần Anh Hùng’s Trilogy,” Lanah Chu offers fragmentary, bullet-pointed reflections of Hùng’s widely celebrated films, perhaps more aptly described as poetry than prose. In “Cinemas Are Battlefields,” TN Đan goes through public archives in Singapore to present the history of cinema bombings in Vietnam from the 1940s through the 1970s. In “Microbecinema,” Grace Song writes of the parallels between microscopy and cinema as a means to reflect more broadly on microcinemas and independent film screenings. The issue also contains a visual script, a letter, and a comic strip.

Excerpt from Issue 2, where the focus is Vietnam and Singapore.

Readers may find the specific combinations presented in each issue as surprising. But as the editors described in their interview with Saigoneer, the pairings are an intentional choice. Rather than pursuing what might be clichéd pairings — such as Thailand and Cambodia, for instance, given the geopolitical context — the MARG1N team tries to bring together countries without significant shared histories in order to “force” histories together in surprisingly productive ways. “When the countries are unified under a theme, we expose how similar we all are, despite very different forms of government and culture,” Thara remarked.

The idea of marginality behind the name of the magazine is core to the identity of the magazine. I sometimes find the notion of marginality to be somewhat tricky. If what is considered marginal cannot but be relational — namely, marginal to some other center or core — who is to say what constitutes such a core or center? To what and to whom, to be concrete, is Southeast Asian film marginal? As the MARG1N team points out, certainly to the “West” — especially given the sheer difference in available resources for the film industry and culture across geographies — but also to the “Asian” canon. As Thara explains, “When the West refers to Asian cinema, it’s only a couple of countries talked about as if representative of the whole of Asia.”

Excerpt from Issue 2, where the focus is Vietnam and Singapore.

But even within Southeast Asia and within specific countries, there exist internal dynamics of centers and peripheries, given Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines’ status as the “powerhouses” of the film industry within their region. But zooming in even further, Thara explained: “Even in the festival circuit, when the art house crowd refers to Thai cinema, for example, they think of only one name or representative… but it’s not just Apitchapong. The margin is spread throughout.” 

Importantly, the magazine also conceptualizes marginality as a mode within film criticism as well. “When we imagine film criticism, we think of a kind of serious academia. We try not to do that because film criticism is also an amalgamation of other things, like poetry, visual essays, photography, collages,” Thara commented. “When combined together, they create dissonances and discourses that make a film magazine a film magazine. What is film criticism? It’s not just The New Yorker or MUBI. It can be more.” Remarkably, in reading the magazine, marginality does not feel as though it merely exists on the margins, but rather as permeating and dispersed across multiple layers, through and through, like dense rings of trees. Key to this quality is the magazine’s sustained attention to marginality in its various forms without, necessarily, the kind of self-marginalization often found in discourses on the subject.

Excerpt from Issue 2, where the focus is Vietnam and Singapore.

During our chat, Max described MARG1N also as a project to produce “cinematic memorabilia.” As one might expect from this vision, MARG1N’s magazines are gorgeous, with a distinctive style that I would characterize as simultaneously eclectic and dreamy. The MARG1N team emphasized that the visuality and materiality of their magazines are a huge part of their identity and the reading experience they try to emulate, via unconventional formatting of texts, play with fonts, as well as the scattering of images, textured and granular. Indeed, some of my favorite pieces were those that were heavily visual, including Nguyên Lê’s “Season of Changes” in Issue 2, in which he writes about re-tracing scenes from Tony Bui’s Three Seasons (Ba mùa, 1999) in present-day Saigon. Accompanying his commentary are pairs of photographs for each location re-traced: a still shot from the film alongside a photograph of the same place in the present day, taken at a similar angle. 

I read MARG1N’s issues in the form of digital review copies, and I can only imagine what it must be like to hold and read the magazines in print, a feeling I dearly miss living in a city where English-language print magazines are difficult to come by. The element of print “completely changes what is written,” Thara remarked, reflecting upon the place of print in the age of AI. As he astutely put it, “the digital almost becomes dated when you really touch the pages.”

Images courtesy of MARG1N.

The MARG1N team have told Saigoneer that a limited number of copies of Issues 1 & 2 will be available at Dogma Collection in Saigon, beginning mid-October. One can find more detailed information about the availability of copies in other parts of Southeast Asia on their website.

The glossy menus, sleek decor, and iconic logos of international hotel restaurants often obscure the human stories behind each dish. While catering to global guests, these restaurants often serve meals with origins in family kitchens and regional culinary traditions. Young, local chefs balance nostalgic associations with contemporary techniques and creative expression to create these menus. Returning for its second year this past September, Ngon Challenge continued to celebrate and nurture Vietnamese culinary talent across Marriott International’s hotels and resorts in Vietnam.

Reflective of Marriott’s commitment to showcasing authentic experiences, Ngon Challenge’s most important criterion was that entrants revive a traditional dish with thoughtful use of preserved and fermented elements. Similarly, dishes were judged based on sustainability and local sourcing, as well as culinary execution and creativity.

The contestants were eager to impress the celebrity chefs on hand.

From 76 entries across Marriott International hotels in Vietnam, 11 finalists gathered at JW Marriott Hotel & Suites Saigon for the September 25 Final Round, following a menu creation workshop to refine their dishes and presentations. Amid an audience of foodies and industry luminaries, each chef arrived honored to compete and determined to win. Only three could be named Ngon Masters.

“Honestly, Hanoi cold snail noodle soup is gradually being forgotten. I want to bring it back so that people can enjoy it and rediscover it, after all the changes and adaptations it has gone through from one person to another,” shared Top 3 Ngon Master Phạm Xuân Thắng of Sheraton Hanoi Hotel, of his Hương Ốc – Ký Ức Hà Nội. He elevated his beloved grandmother’s snail noodle dish by replacing traditional noodles with handmade rice rolls and a delicate consommé that balanced fermented rice vinegar and lá lốt-wrapped snail sausages.

Phạm Xuân Thắng's Hương Ốc – Ký Ức Hà Nội's flavors were as precise as its presentation.

While his creation may not resemble the humble bowls his grandmother prepared for him growing up, her love and passion are in each bite. He noted, “It has been with me from my childhood through adulthood, and even now, it continues to bring me success. I’m very grateful to my grandmother.”

Hương Ốc – Ký Ức Hà Nội allowed Phạm Xuân Thắng to honor his grandmother while meeting expectations of contemporary diners.

While Thắng looked to personal memory to revive a disappearing Hanoi dish, Top 2 Ngon Master Trần Minh Phụng of The Westin Resort & Spa Cam Ranh turned to his family’s culinary tradition and the fermentation practices found across Vietnam.

Phụng’s bánh xèo tacos with Bình Ba lobster reinterpretation gracefully reimagined Central Vietnam’s iconic street food dish via impressive creativity. Instead of serving the dish only with nước mắm chua ngọt, he accompanied it with a small amount of concentrated caramelized fish sauce with chili that united sour, sweet, salty, and rich flavors. This was paired with a reinterpretation of a family favorite, cá um cà. The threadfin bream fish was transformed into a succulent filling and brilliantly returned to its own skin for an ingenious presentation atop fermented tomato juice that honored home-cooked flavors.

Trần Minh Phụng's bánh xèo tacos achieved a balance of creativity and tradition.

While relying on novel techniques for the dishes, Phụng said that “Vietnamese people, and anyone who knows about these techniques, understand that fermentation has existed in Vietnam for a very long time, along with many other traditional techniques. Whether you’re in the North, Central, or South of Vietnam, people across the country use some form of this technique.”

For Top 1 Ngon Master Nguyễn Xuân Hiển of Sheraton Saigon Grand Opera Hotel, the relationship between tradition and innovation was expressed through local ingredients, resourcefulness and a low-waste approach rooted in Mekong Delta cooking.

Nguyễn Xuân Hiển's medley of Mekong Delta flavors won him the contest's top spot.

Sustainable ingenuity was on full display in Hiển’s southern Vietnamese sour soup with fermented rice. He explained: “Back in the countryside, people used whatever ingredients they had available. For example, when cooking rice, we would save the leftover rice and the rice water instead of letting it go to waste. We could combine the leftover rice with the rice water to make cơm mẻ, which could then be used when cooking fish. As for the fish, in the past, when we caught fish from the canals and rivers, we would simply clean it, cut it into pieces, and put it into the soup. We would combine it with local vegetables that grew around the house or along the canals, such as điên điển flowers, water lilies, lotus flowers, and typical Southern Vietnamese herbs.”

Local ingredients brings hometown flavors for Nguyễn Xuân Hiển while being mindful of sustainability.

While he elevated his winning version by using grouper and crab, he also relied on familiar, locally grown vegetables and herbs. “For example, water spinach, green bananas, and ngò gai. I use green chuối xiêm because it gives the dish a slightly crunchy and chewy texture, which is really interesting to eat. These are ingredients that we can grow at home, or that naturally grow around us, so we don’t need to transport them long distances and consume extra energy.”

The dish’s low-waste approach was further established by using fish bones and crab shells to build the broth, allowing Hiển to share the Mekong Delta’s flavors and memories without losing the soul of the original dish.

Trần Duy Quang's rice cake was praised for its delicate handling of bold flavors.

Beyond the three Ngon Masters, the judges also recognized Trần Duy Quang of Renaissance Danang Hoi An Resort & Spa with the Best Dessert Award for his contemporary interpretation of Hoi An rice cake. Inspired by a childhood memory of the rice cake his grandmother would buy, Quang preserved its fermented flavor and characteristic airy texture while introducing coconut, mango and contrasting contemporary textures.Now in its second year, Ngon Challenge is continuing to build a longer-term platform for Vietnamese culinary talent, carrying the chefs’ stories from the competition into dining experiences for guests across the country. Each dish will connect diners with the culinary legacies of Vietnamese families and regional traditions, while revealing the passion and creativity of the chefs working across Marriott International’s hotels and resorts in Vietnam.

The Ngon Challenge finalists, judges and VIP.

Lê Quý Đôn High School (Trường Trung học Phổ thông Lê Quý Đôn) at 110 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai Street is the city’s oldest surviving educational establishment.

The origins of Lê Quý Đôn High School may be traced back to the École normale indigène, established by a decree on July 10, 1871, but the first school to be established on the current site was the Collège indigène de Saïgon, founded in place of the École normale by a decree of November 14, 1874.

Work began immediately on the construction of the school campus near the junction of rue Chasseloup-Laubat (Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai) and rue de l’Impératrice (Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa), and during the two-year construction period, the school was accommodated temporarily “in the Pagode Barbé and its dependencies,” which once stood on the site of the War Remnants Museum.

Led by its founder Director Honoré Wattebled and a staff of European and Vietnamese teachers, the school initially offered a three-year program for “young Annamites from good families,” the aim being “to provide interpreters and clerks for government offices, machinists for the Roads and Bridges Department, and employees for the Cadastre and Telegraph Office.”

Students who graduated with distinction could be eligible for a generous overseas study scholarship, and accordingly, “every year, a number of the smartest young Annamites were sent to Marseille at the expense of the colony, in order to complete their studies.”

In 1877, the Collège Indigène was named, like the street on which it stood, after the French general and military engineer François, Marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat (1754–1833). By 1879, the Collège Chasseloup-Laubat had 83 students.

Following the closure of the La Salle Christian Brothers’ Collège d’Adran in 1879, the Collège Chasseloup-Laubat was transformed into a secondary school of similar status to the Collège de Mytho. The first French children were admitted in 1880. Soon after this, the buildings were upgraded so that European and local pupils could be segregated in two distinct areas — a “Quartier Européen” for French children and a “Quartier Indigène” for local children, separated by “kitchens, courtyards, covered walkways, washrooms and pools.”

The current school buildings date from this period and feature a design typical of late-19^th-century French lycée architecture, with little attempt at adaptation to the tropical climate other than the peripheric gallery on the ground floor and the overhanging roofs.

The Collège Chasseloup-Laubat in the early 20^th century.

In subsequent years, the number of pupils grew steadily in size, increasing from 180 in 1884 to 200 in 1903, and 290 by 1924. However, by the early 1920s, there were still fewer than 50 European students at the Collège, since “the secondary syllabus it offered was incomplete and young French and Annamites had to travel to Tonkin to complete their secondary studies and take the baccalauréat.”

The absence of a “proper education for European children” in Cochinchina was remarked upon as early as 1903 by Governor General Paul Beau (October 1902–February 1908). “This question deserves our solicitude,” he said, “because it concerns the future of our colonisation.” However, not until 1924 was the teaching syllabus of the Collège Chasseloup-Laubat upgraded to permit the baccalauréat exams to be taken in Saigon.

Another view of the Collège Chasseloup-Laubat from early 20^th century.

In that year, the school also began admitting gifted French and Vietnamese children aged 9–12 by entrance examination to a course of pre-secondary studies at the Collège.

Young educated Vietnamese took an active role in the anti-colonial protests of 1926 and the Collège Chasseloup-Laubat in particular became something of a hotbed of activity. Things came to a head on April 4, 1926, the day of patriot Phan Châu Trinh’s funeral, when students of the Collège wrote ABLF — À Bas Les Français (down with the French) — on blackboards and participated in what subsequently became a nationwide school boycott. “It is unfortunate that our brilliant Franco-indigenous educational secondary institutions have suffered a serious blow,” intoned the newspaper L'Eveil économique de l'Indochine solemnly later that year. “School indiscipline, a basic form of social indiscipline, is completely intolerable.”

Students gather outside the Lycée Chasseloup Laubat in 1947.

In 1927, the Collège Chasseloup-Laubat was formally upgraded to become a full secondary school named the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat. In November of that year, over 200 local pupils were relocated to the new Collège de Cho-Quan, which was initially established as an annex of the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat. However, in August 1928, the Collège de Cho-Quan became a secondary school in its own right, named the Lycée Petrus Ký. The first intake of new students at Saigon’s two new Lycées took place in September 1928.

During the later colonial period, the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat became known as one of the most prestigious in the region and trained many famous individuals, including Vietnamese revolutionary leader Trần Văn Giàu (1911–2010), French novelist Marguerite Duras (1914–1996), last South Vietnamese president General Dương Văn Minh (1916–2001), King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia (1922–2012) and historian Vương Hồng Sển (1926–1996).

During the Japanese occupation, the school served briefly as a center for refugees.

Two Vietnamese teachers pictured outside the Lycée Chasseloup Laubat in 1947.

After the departure of the French, the school continued to operate under French management, but in 1958, its name was changed to Lycée Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Thereafter, the student intake was overwhelmingly Vietnamese.

In 1967, the school was transferred to the South Vietnamese Education Ministry and became the Lê Quý Đôn Education Center (Trung tâm giáo dục Lê Quý Đôn), named in honor of 18^th-century Vietnamese mandarin, philosopher and poet Lê Quý Đôn (1726–1784).

Known since 1975 as the Lê Quý Đôn High School, the school remains today one of the principal scholarly establishments of the city.

The former Lycée Pétrus Ký (now the Lê Hồng Phong High School) at 235 Nguyễn Văn Cừ in District 5 stood in for the former Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat in French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1992 film version of Marguerite Duras’ The Lover.

The former Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat was featured in French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1992 film version of Marguerite Duras’ The Lover. However, if you watch the film closely, you will see that the school used as a location is in fact not the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat at all, but the former Lycée Pétrus Ký (now Lê Hồng Phong High School) at 235 Nguyễn Văn Cừ in District 5.

Top photo by Le Quy Don Photography Club via Facebook page Trường THPT Lê Quý Đôn - Phường Xuân Hòa, TP.HCM.

Tim Doling is the author of the guidebooks Exploring Huế (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2018), Exploring Saigon-Chợ Lớn (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2019) and Exploring Quảng Nam (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2020) and The Railways and Tramways of Việt Nam (White Lotus Press, 2012) For more information about Saigon history, visit his website, historicvietnam.com.

On the pastures of slow cinema where Andrei Tarkovsky, Tsai Ming-liang and Theo Angelopoulos reside, Phạm Thiên Ân's debut feature, Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng (Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell), has made its mark as a notable entry for its distinctly Vietnamese vistas, tones and essence.

To see myself crying while watching Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng — which Ân is credited as director, writer and editor — is something I never thought was possible. When the film's lead, Thiện (Lê Phong Vũ), indulges an elderly woman (NSƯT Phi Điểu) in a chat about presence and reincarnation, all I could do was let the tears run. Maybe it was because of Madame Điểu's delivery, a perfect balance between impassioned and dignified that convinced me that everything is more reality than senility. Maybe it was because she echoed my late bà ngoại's belief that a person's return to this harsh plane after they have exited it, should that happen, could be a chance to save others from hardship.

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is an expansion of Phạm Thiên Ân's previous award-winning short.

In a way, the newest Caméra d'Or winner Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng is a return. The expansion of the 2019 short film Ân made, 14-minute Hãy Tỉnh Thức Và Sẵn Sàng (Stay Awake, Be Ready) won an award at Cannes as well. Yet, in the Bảo Lộc native's second and lengthier exploration of his world, more details are available. This version of the motorbike crash now specifies who has died, Thiện's sister-in-law Hạnh, and who has survived, Hạnh's young son Đạo (Nguyễn Thịnh). This version now has a proper central perspective, introduced in a tragicomic manner embedded in so many of life's designs — Thiện has to stop his massage session short of its “happy ending” because of the call about the accident.

Phạm Thiên Ân (middle) is a Bảo Lộc native, so he decided to base the story in his home province.

I must admit, explaining this film is not easy. Attempts to simplify and provide clarity can also be means to reduce and demystify it. There's a flow, simultaneously factly and divine, across all these following points, but I have to break it up so it might make sense: Thiện's journey from Saigon to Lâm Đồng Province to return Hạnh's ashes prompts him to relive matters that can make, or even have made, him somewhat aimless and reserved. He finds himself in an environment where faith is strong and the people's investment in it is unwavering. He again sees his girlfriend, Thảo (Nguyễn Thị Trúc Quỳnh), but in the robes of a nun. He also finds out where his brother, Đạo's father, is located.

It's best to enter Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng equipped with the connotations behind the transformation a cocoon undergoes, as well as Ân's implication behind the imagery; he told French newspaper RFI in Vietnamese that the pupa within is “similar to a person's soul.” This is because Ân has really focused on the searching aspect of Thiện's soul-searching. This, in turn, validates how the endpoints of plot threads can be absent or undefinable. It even embeds time's immunity to manipulation to the runtime. Through Ân's vision, I get to see that, while Thiện and Đạo are the film's emotional hooks and the setting's enlargers, its anchor is in the navigating of concepts that humans have understood or have yet to. Perhaps that would explain why when Đạo asks Thiện where his mother is now, Đinh Duy Hưng's camera doesn't focus on nephew and uncle but instead the luminous hands of the alarm clock.

Thiện (Lê Phong Vũ) embarks on a journey to deliver his sister-in-law's ashes from Saigon to Lâm Đồng.

Speaking of the camera, I'm of the opinion that it also does more than its brethren in more conventional films. It doesn't just observe, but also gathers life. Per foreign critics and previews abroad, Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng is an Eden of long takes, some featuring the most delicate tracks or pans as if they are imitating the winds of Vietnam's ethereal highlands. But even if the camera prefers to be stationary, it understands that dynamism and energy still exist through other bystanders, sounds and naturalism. Hưng's cinematography seems to be capturing existence as opposed to scenes.

Consequently, it feels apt to call everything that makes up Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng — from technical aspects to its narrative themes — as “vessels” more than “components,” as they seem so willing to become secondary to grander, yet-established concepts. This seems to correspond better with the film's vision and an awareness of a higher power that, the closer to the end of the 182 minutes, I stop rationalizing and just accept. It's not that I have given up, but instead, I'm listening to the film. It seems to be advising me to be humbled by greater forces, named and unnamed or seen and unseen.

Catholic paraphernalia is often spotted in the movie, even though Yellow Cocoon focuses more on spirituality and faith than religion.

Does this necessarily make the film religious in design? Not necessarily, even when figures of Mary, Jesus and crosses are prevalent. In a memorable shot that might also be a nod to Tarkovsky's also nature-rich Solaris, a son of God figurine, submerged, is seen resting beneath brushing grass blades. There's also the feeling that, despite heavenly presences on walls at ceremonies, on shelves, above doors and the like, none of our characters has an overt or devoted connection to them.

This “giving in” nature also allows the illusory to cohabit and gain prominence. In one stunning sequence that epitomizes Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng's dedication to aural excellence, Thiện rouses himself from sleep and wanders around under the heavy rain and darkness. Is this still Lâm Đồng, or a drenched purgatory? A camera that normally stays or trails now moves as if sentient. Is it as confused and exhausted as Thiện? Then comes respite, assuming the form of a tree with white butterflies as its leaves and flowers. Is this a variant of the unburnt bush that Moses comes across? The film doesn't answer this, it just moves on. 

Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng might not appeal to casual viewers due to its long running time and slow pace.

Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng will alienate viewers because of its respectful ambiguity. They might wonder why Ân seems to adore the bumps and sounds along the road that surround Thiện's Honda Astrea more than the ride's point or resolution. They might register the elderly lady's words as, as Thiện was warned, elderly speak. I can't fault them for these interpretations, as the film does not ease itself into the deeper matters that the footage truly represents. Unlike the also lengthy Japanese Oscar winner Drive My Car, that also deals with deciphering one's place in life, everything in Yellow Cocoon, but especially its characterization, starts out as deep and naturally contemplative. In his performance as Thiện, I feel that Vũ shifts between uncertain and passive, as if it's the result of him being ever-prepared for the moment the camera and narrative focus on something else besides him. But when I pick up on the idea that Thiện is meant to be an avatar of Ân, Vũ's acting makes sense. As mentioned earlier, Thiện has been on a search, and not once has life stopped to confirm, deny, explain or guide him after he has gained or lost a thing. With that in mind, what gets portrayed is more human being than dramatic character.

Overall, Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng gives me more confidence to interpret the gray that characterizes life. I hope its appreciators will feel the same, even if they might be hard to find. Aside from being a captivating and heartfelt experience, the film allows me to feel fine to never know where a stream starts and ends; I can just lie in it, with both ears underwater — just like Thiện — and know that there is a flow. Sometimes it's enough, the ability to view much of the world free from absolutes, from what one “do know” and “don't know.” Seeing as reality has yet to open itself to this notion, could this be the hardship my bà ngoại was referring to? If I do return, let me be your hero and break you out of the limitations that are cocooning you.

Photos courtesy of JK Film.

This article was originally published in 2023.