Scene in Saigon - Saigoneer

Street Cred: Phan Đình Phùng, My Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather

2025-10-17T10:00:00+07:00

An unassuming street named Phan Đình Phùng runs through Saigon’s Phú Nhuận District. It is named after a Vietnamese revolutionary who led rebel armies against French colonial forces in the 1880s and 1890s. He is also my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

In 2019, while on his deathbed in Nha Trang, my grandpa, Phan Dinh Dien, informed me that we were descendants of Phan Đình Phùng, and we, therefore, needed to do what we could to make Vietnam a better place for all.

I’ll start by making a little bit of history more accessible:

Phùng was descended from 12 generations of bureaucratic scholars, but while no dummy, it was his integrity and uncompromising stance against corruption that he was known for, not his scholarly abilities. He rose through the ranks under Emperor Tự Đức’s reign, calling out many incompetent and corrupt fellow bureaucratic scholars, including the viceroy of northern Vietnam and the foremost scholar of the court, Tôn Thất Thuyết (his street sits in District 4).

In 1883, the childless Emperor Tự Đức refused to appoint his most senior heir, Dục Đức, having written in his will that Dục Đức was depraved and unworthy of ruling the country. He instead named his nephew, Kiến Phúc, as his successor. Unfortunately for Emperor Tự Đức and Phan Đình Phùng, Tôn Thất Thuyết (the scholar who was previously criticized by my ancestor), was appointed administrator of the country. True to his dishonest ways, Thuyết ignored the late Emperor Tự Đức’s will and enthroned Dục Đức.

My grandfather, Phan Dinh Dien, on the right.

And, true to his principled ways, Phùng protested and refused to recognize Dục Đức’s authority. According to Hue-Tam Ho Tai’s book Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution, Phùng only narrowly escaped the death penalty for his insolent behavior because he was so widely admired by the other regents. He was, however, stripped of his titles and exiled to his native village back in what is today Hà Tĩnh Province.

Meanwhile, back at Huế's royal court, Thuyết was orchestrating plenty of turmoil: three emperors were deposed and killed in just over a year. In 1884, 12-year-old Hàm Nghi was enthroned as the Emperor of Vietnam.

Being literally a boy, he was easily and quickly dominated by Thuyết and his associate, Nguyễn Văn Tường. At this point, the French were gaining power around Vietnam, and with this latest succession, concluded that the two regents were causing too much trouble, and sought to remove them.

Tensions erupted on July 4, 1885 when Thuyết and Tường organized an attack against the French. Things didn’t go as planned, and French forces ended up capturing the imperial palace and looted it out of anger over being attacked. On the heels of the defeat, the imperial court fled Huế. Thuyết took the teenage Emperor Hàm Nghi and three empresses into hiding at a mountainous military base near Laos. From there, the regent Thuyết convinced the now-13-year-old king to issue a proclamation calling for the Vietnamese people to rise up and "aid the king" (cần vương). Thus, the Cần Vương rebellion against French colonial rule had begun.

Phan Đình Phùng Street in Đà Lạt.

This is where Phùng comes back into the picture. He was all for overthrowing French colonial rule and re-installing Hàm Nghi as emperor. He joined the Cần Vương movement by creating his own guerilla army and setting up bases in his home province of Ha Tinh.

Phùng's first notable attack targeted two nearby Catholic villages that had collaborated with French forces. Unfortunately, the attack was unsuccessful, and French forces quickly overwhelmed them, forcing a retreat. And in a crazy twist of fate, the former viceroy of northern Vietnam — the same one who had been removed from his imperial position because Phùng called him out as incompetent and corrupt — was now a French collaborator and governor of of neighboring Nghệ An Province, and ended up capturing Phùng’s brother during the attack.

The French then convinced one of Phùng’s old friends to beg him to surrender in order to save his captured brother, his ancestral tombs, and his entire village. According to Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution, the French also offered to award Phùng a high colonial government position if he agreed to work with them. His pithy response: "If anyone carves up my brother, remember to send me some of the soup."

So the French arrested his family and desecrated the tombs of his ancestors, publicly displaying their remains in Hà Tĩnh.

But Phùng had bigger things on his mind than worrying about the public violation of his ancestors’ remains. In 1888, Emperor Hàm Nghi, who Phùng still wanted to re-install, was betrayed by his bodyguard Trương Quang Ngọc, captured, and deported to Algeria. This incited Phùng to come down from the north, track down the traitor Ngọc, and personally execute him.

All this mischief-making made Phùng the target of Hoàng Cao Khải, the French-installed viceroy of Tonkin who, being of the same scholar-gentry background and village as Phùng, recognized him for the true threat he was. They exchanged a series of letters in which Khải pleaded with Phùng to surrender and end the Cần Vương rebellion in order to stop the prolonged suffering of their countrymen.

Phan Đình Phùng Street in Buôn Ma Thuột.

Khải promised he would lobby French officials to pardon Phùng if he were to surrender. Phùng refused, citing Vietnam’s impressive resistance against China, a neighboring country “a thousand times more powerful” that has “never been able to swallow it up” and put the blame for Vietnamese suffering on the French. With this refusal in hand, Khai went to French officials and called for the "destruction of this scholar gentry rebellion."

According to Oscar Chapuis’ The Last Emperors of Vietnam: from Tu Duc to Bao Dai, in July 1895, French area commanders called in 3,000 troops to crush the three remaining rebel bases. Most unfortunately, Phùng contracted dysentery. And as any of us who grew up playing Oregon Trail knows, this now very curable disease was then a death sentence. Six months later, on January 21, 1896, Phan Đình Phùng died, and in the words of the French governor general leading the attacks, "the soul of resistance to the protectorate was gone."

But the story doesn't end there. After Phùng's death, Ngô Đình Khả, a member of the French colonial administration, had his tomb exhumed, burned the corpse, and used the remains as gunpowder to execute anti-French revolutionaries, such as Phùng’s captured followers, as described in Vũ Ngự Chiêu’s The Other Side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution.

In contrast, Khải, the viceroy of Tonkin who led the take-down of Phùng, was held up by the French colonial authorities as an example of true patriotism and so died with riches and honors, according to Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution.

But today, there are no streets named after Hoàng Cao Khải, whereas practically every city and every provincial town throughout the length of Vietnam has a street named after Phan Đình Phùng. So, I guess he got the last word after all.

This article was written in memory of my grandfather Phan Dinh Dien, another great Vietnamese patriot.

Lycée Marie Curie: The High School That Has Stood the Test of Time

2025-10-01T14:00:00+07:00

Marie Curie High School, also called Lycée Marie Curie in French or Trường Trung Học Phổ Thông Marie Curie in Vietnamese, is a public high school located in Saigon’s District 3.

Madame Curie, the famous Polish-French chemist, was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, and the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes, an achievement that is all the more impressive since they were in two different areas of science.

The lycée that bears her name was established in 1918 by the French colonial government as an all-girls school. The private school taught mostly French expatriates, in addition to a few local Vietnamese. All classes were conducted in French.

Among the Vietnamese student population, most were children of wealthy families or government employees. They also often specialized in subjects that were popular in Europe but undeveloped in Vietnam. Many Vietnamese alumni shared with PhD candidate Nguyễn Thụy Phong during her research on the school that the lycée was a safe haven for free speech and creativity, a privilege they were grateful to have had.

The architecture of all eight classroom blocks is heavily influenced by French design principles. These influences are most apparent in the entrance gate, the lush gardens and the fountain. Much of the original structure remains unchanged decades later.

From 1970, the school began allowing male students. In 1975, the school was handed over to the Hồ Chí Minh City Education and Training Department, and the French teachers returned home.

In 1997, the school transitioned to a semi-public model. For a time, it was the largest co-ed high school in the country, with more than 5,000 students attending classes each year. Eventually the school reduced its enrollment to increase the quality of education.

Today it is a public high school with about 3,500 students. In 2015, it was finally recognized as a heritage site.

Though most other schools held over from colonial times have since changed their names, Marie Curie High School’s has stayed the same. Take a tour of this historic school through ages below.

[Photos via Flickr user manhhai]

Old Saigon Building of the Week: The Glitz and Glam of Tự Do Nightclub

2025-09-16T11:00:00+07:00

While today’s Đồng Khởi Street is peppered with tourist-centric shops and restaurants, just half a century ago, the downtown street was the nightlife hotspot for Saigon’s cool kids to congregate.

Among those snazzy night hangouts, Tự Do Nightclub was perhaps one of the most iconic landmarks in the minds of old Saigoneers, for a variety of reasons. Located at the corner of Tự Do and Thái Lập Thành streets (now Đồng Khởi and Đông Du, respectively), during its heyday, music lovers and social butterflies flocked to the comfortable booths of Tự Do every night to sway along with the hottest crooners of the day: Khánh Ly, Tuấn Ngọc, Khánh Hà, etc.

La Croix du Sud cafe in 1955.

Up until at least the 1950s, the building that housed Tự Do was home to La Croix du Sud (The Southern Cross), a café and nightclub that was a favorite haunt for French soldiers. The street was first named Rue Catinat during the French occupation, and was renamed to Tự Do in 1955, but most locals still referred to its French name for at least the next decade or so. Đông Du Street’s name back then was Amiral Dupré.

In his 2002 book Window on a War: An Anthropologist in the Vietnam Conflict, Gerald Hickey wrote about nightlife in the area: “As night fell, rue Catinat filled with pedicabs, which everyone called cyclo-pousses, little yellow-and-blue quatre-chavaux Renault taxis, somber black Citroens, and motor scooters.”

The club in 1968 right before the year's Tet holiday.

Hickey added, “Legionnaires seemed to favor the London Bar next to the Cinema Majestic while air force pilots crowded the Croix du Sud café and nightclub.”

In the late 60s and early 70s, the Southern Cross was turned into Tự Do Nightclub and started serving more Americans GIs as the war rolled on. Tự Do welcomed an amicable mix of American and Vietnamese patrons. Little did they realize that a shocking event would unfold in 1971, changing the face of the nightclub, both literally and figuratively.

The dreamy facade of Tự Do at night.

On Wednesday, September 15, 1971, a bomb went off inside Tự Do in the middle of a show, killing 15 and injuring 57 others, according to the Associated Press (AP). The news agency was quoted by New York-based Schenectady Gazette in an article published the following morning.

“The bomb blew out the ceiling and front of the two-story Tự Do Night Club, sent debris tumbling down on tables, scattered glass a block around and wrecked several motorbikes parked outside,” the Gazette writes.

The attack was deemed one of the worst violent incidents at the time in Saigon. The city's security situation was already precarious due to anti-American sentiments.

Today, the site at the corner of Đồng Khởi and Đông Du is now occupied by a major Trung Nguyên Cafe outlet. However, passersbys can still spot a neon sign depicting the word “Tự Do” on the front display, though we’re unsure if it actually originates from the now-defunct nightclub.

The interior of the club during the Christmas season in 1972, a year after the bombing.

Revisit the Colorful, Diverse Universe of Multinational Xe Đò in 1990s Saigon

2025-09-11T12:00:00+07:00

Saigoneers who spent their formative years in the 1990s will remember an era of secondhand products of mixed origins. This unique feature of daily life also extended into the transportation realm.

In the immediate years following the đổi mới reform, as Vietnam’s manufacturing capabilities were still lackluster, most local households turned to gently used appliances from Japan, which offered the ideal balance between affordability and endurance. Secondhand clothing was provided by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) in bulk. In the universe of public buses, however, the models in use were a mixed bag from various nationalities.

This album of Saigon buses, compiled by Flickr user Ian Lynas, gives us some glimpses into the colorful and diverse world of public transport back in the 1990s. These include Isuzu from Japan, DeSoto from the US, DAF MB200 from the Netherlands, Renault Goélette from France, and more.

A DeSoto model in Saigon.

A DeSoto bus belonging to Rạng Đông Co-op in Chợ Lớn.

The term “public transport” is used loosely here, as the bus service known as “xe đò” by its users wasn’t fully operated by the government, but small co-ops (hợp tác xã). Each co-op was free to create bus routes, hire drivers, and manage its finances; routes included both intracity transport and interprovince coaches.

To maximize profits, owners often procured used vehicles from overseas, buying whatever other countries were willing to offload no matter how old or patched-up they were, resulting in a truly chaotic bus experience for riders. Depending on the route and co-op, one could be sitting on plush leather seats or rickety deathtraps on four wheels. In Japan's case, for example, buses operated under a strict turnover system where vehicles must be retired after 10–15 years of use, even if they were still in good conditions, so many of these ended up in Southeast Asia.

In 2001, the city decided to step in to straighten out the bus scene by limiting the age of vehicles in use to just 20 years and offering bus owners subsidies to buy new vehicles. Nearly 90% of buses operating at the time became “expired.”

Reacquaint with some of Saigon’s most iconic vintage buses from the 1990s below:

An inter-city DeSoto bus linking Chợ Lớn and Bến Lức (Long An).

Another DeSoto bearing a “Ford” name running between Chợ Lớn and Đức Hòa (Long An).

A Karosa bus (Czechoslovakia).

An ISUZU BU40 bus (Japan).

ISUZU bus leaving the 23/9 Park Depot in District 1.

ISUZU BU10 serving a domestic tourism company.

Nissan FHI serving as a company bus for workers.

A rare IFA W50L (East Germany) owned by the Giải Phóng Film Studio.

An IFA linking Hậu Nghĩa Township and Chợ Lớn.

A Mekong Star serving as a city bus in 1996. Mekong Star was produced by Mekong Auto, Vietnam's first bus manufacturer, and a joint venture between Vietnam, South Korea and Japan.

A DAF MB200 (Netherlands) running between Bến Thành and the Eastern Bus Station.

Another DAF in action.

A Mitsubishi Fuso (Japan) that still had its original Japanese that says “Via Kusumi, Umezu Depot.”

A Hino RE-100 (Japan) operated by the Quyết Tiến Co-op.

Another Hino vehicle.

A Renault Goélette (France) in Chợ Lớn.

A Fuso-Kureha bus (Japan). The label says エドモンズ大学 (Edmonds College). This vehicle was likely from the Kobe campus of the Edmonds College (Washington) that opened in 1990.

An ISUZU Kawasaki (Japan).

A Fuso-Kureha bus parked in the Independence Palace.

A Tân Hóa–Chợ Lớn bus.

Photos by Ian Lynas via RedsVN.

The Double-Edged Allure of Indochic in Postcolonial Vietnam

2025-09-10T10:00:00+07:00

Bordering the Temple of Literature in Hanoi is Nguyễn Thái Học Boulevard, where a number of art shops sit side by side. Among them, tourists and visitors can find an endless supply of varying iterations of socialist iconography, gold-plated replicas of Đông Sơn drums, and faux-impressionist paintings of colonial Indochina. In Mũi Né, a 127-room resort unironically called The Anam Mui Ne boasts its Indochine allure with “Indochine Charm. Modern Luxury” on its home page. Throughout the resort are paintings depicting women in traditional áo dài and scenes of tranquil fishing villages, gesturing toward the bucolic past of Vietnam. In Saigon, numerous cafes and eateries are decorated in encaustic cement tiles with intricate floral, pastel designs, while brandishing French names and wrought iron railings on their balconies.

Tourists walking on Hanoi's Hàng Gai Street, famous for its range of arts and crafts shop. Photo via Expedia.

If you live in Vietnam, none of this comes as a surprise. In fact, it might even be expected, understood as an homage to a bygone era. But if you’ve never been to Vietnam, such imagery might evoke scenes from Régis Wargnier’s Indochine (1992) or Jean-Jacques Annaud’s adaptation of Marguerite Duras’s L’Amant (1992), films that have long captured the imagination of foreign audiences and helped shape a sanitized vision of Indochine, now repackaged and romanticized as Indochic. While these films didn’t invent the Indochinese style, they certainly helped in propagating it to a larger audience. And it is evident that throughout the country, such conjurings of this aesthetic language are part of a longer repertoire of codes that don’t only refer to a certain time period, but also to class stratification, self image, and cultural heritage. The pervasiveness of this aesthetic, and the aura around its revival, prompts a critical inquiry into how postcolonial Vietnam negotiates a visual regime inherited from colonial rule, one that continues to structure artistic production, shape market expectations, and mediate the nation’s cultural self-representation in a global context.

The roots and expressions of the Indochinese style

On the right is an ad for the Foire de Hanoi in 1932, trade fair highlighting local enterprises.

To explore the origins of this phenomenon, it is necessary to examine the roots of the Indochinese style itself. Broadly categorized as French colonial style, this aesthetic extended beyond architecture into studio art, interior design, and colonial cultural sensibilities more generally. Its foundations were intricately linked to French colonial policies, notably Albert Sarraut’s mise en valeur initiative. Sarraut, Governor-General of French Indochina from 1912 to 1914, actively promoted the preservation and development of “indigenous arts.” For example, he supported French art scholar George Groslier’s initiatives aimed at safeguarding Cambodian cultural traditions, including the establishment of the National Museum of Cambodia.

In 1921, Ernest Hébrard (1875–1933) was appointed the head of the Indochina Architecture and Town Planning Service, and would become the central figure in the architectural formulation of French Indochina. Hébrard’s aspiration to devise a distinctly “local” style for the colony resulted in a fundamentally syncretic approach, structurally inspired by various Asian architectural traditions rather than directly replicating any specific Indochinese vernacular. Completed in 1928, one of the finest examples of this style is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Hanoi, which vividly illustrates Hébrard's synthesis of architectural elements. Nevertheless, this methodological approach drew criticism for its perceived lack of authenticity.

The building that currently houses the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was built in 1928. Photo via Visit Ba Đình.

Parallel to these architectural developments was the founding of L'École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine (EBAI) in 1925, under the directorship of French painter Victor Tardieu. Established along similar lines to the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts d’Alger (founded in 1843), EBAI cultivated a cohort of Vietnamese artists who would profoundly shape local artistic discourses. Prominent French figures also included artists such as Paul Jouve (1878–1973), designer of the Indochine 1000 piastre note, and writers such as Pierre Loti (1850–1923), author of Un Pélerin d'Angkor (1912), while Vietnamese artists, who graduated from the EBAI included: Bùi Xuân Phái (1920–1988), most known for his scenes of Hanoi’s old quarters; Tô Ngọc Vân (1906–1954), whose seminal work ‘Thiếu nữ bên hoa huệ’ (1943) exemplified Indochinese sensibilities; Mai Trung Thứ (1906–1980), whose “Mona Lisa” is now well beloved; and Lê Thị Lựu (1911–1988), one of the first female graduates of the school most recognized for her portraitures; and more. These were just some of the early key figures who introduced and established the visual and cultural lexicon, which would later be labeled, “chim, hoa, cá, gái” (birds, flowers, fish, women), or the prominent subject matter emblematic of this style.

The Indochine style utilized locally sourced natural materials such as wood, lacquer, rattan, bamboo, and baked bricks, and incorporated motifs like dragons, turtles, phoenixes, cranes, and diverse floral patterns. The color palette — characterized by neutral and warm hues, beige, cream, yellow, orange, black, brown, and white — embodied a nostalgic aesthetic tailored to accommodate tropical climatic conditions. Architectural features such as wide eaves, screened balconies, and strategic window and ventilation placements facilitated climate control and comfort. In Saigon, the Phương Nam Mansion is among one of the best examples with its tiled roof, colonnaded façade, covered balconies, and wrought iron balustrades.

Phương Nam Mansion in HCMC in 2019 before being greenlit for conservation works. Photo via Người Lao Động.

Nearing the mid-century, this style was no longer seen as new, but as Vietnamese. For the ordinary person, aside from shophouses in the city, or traditional wooden houses in more rural areas, this simply was how official buildings and upscale private residences looked. It was often used in villas, like the ones found in Đà Lạt and Nha Trang. This feeling of heritage was doubly enforced by the fact that, from the 1940s, modernist architecture arrived in Vietnam, producing an entirely different conversation about novelty and contemporary sensibilities. This was especially true in the south where there was a rapid expansion of modernist construction after the first Indochina War and World War II. Architects, both local and foreign, adapted modernist principles with climate-conscious innovations. Iconic buildings such as the Independence Palace (formerly Norodom Palace), rebuilt in 1962, epitomized this modernist aesthetic and moment of transition, thereby positioning Indochinese style as charmingly historical rather than contemporary.

From Indochinese to Indochic, a performable social signal

The resurgence of Indochinese style, now Indochic, as an aspirational style emerged prominently in the early 2000s, correlating with Vietnam’s rapid economic growth and easing of post-war austerity measures. With economic reforms initiated in 1986, transitioning Vietnam towards a socialist-oriented market economy, GDP per capita rose dramatically, from just US$235.65 in 1985 to US$430.19 in 1986 and US$585.30 in 1987. The trend continued upward throughout the 2011–2024 period, reaching US$4,346.77 in 2023 and around US$4,649 in 2024. This economic shift not only transformed material living standards but also gave rise to a new aesthetic consciousness among the burgeoning middle and upper classes. No longer was the austerity of Neubau sentimentality the lingo du jour, but it was the intentional return to old world charm in the form of colonial minimalist decadence.

Indochic, therefore, re-emerged not merely as an architectural style but as a form of self-fashioning, a visual assertion of cultivated taste and social mobility, made possible only by the temporal distance between its initial conception and its later absence. It offered the newly affluent a sanitized version of history, absent of colonial exploitation and labor regimes, one that evoked heritage without consequence. Space and light were still important considerations for buildings, but so were paintings of bucolic rice paddy scenes, populated with women in domestic spaces, and wooden fishing boats that also serve as family homes. And we can’t forget the heritage vases and courtyard bonsai. As the style re-emerged, its meanings also shifted. It became retro, even aspirational, undeniably chic, and now, air-conditioned.

Bucolic embroidery works inside a store in Hanoi. Photo via Expedia.

More than a revival of aesthetic motifs, this new Indochic marked a transformation in class performance. With newfound prosperity, Vietnam’s rising middle class eagerly signaled their upward mobility by adopting what appeared to be markers of inherited taste. The look of “old money” became performable, accessible, and desirable — even if few could claim direct lineage to the colonial elite. Indochic, thus, asserted a “tasteful” nod to cultural sophistication and continuity with an idealized past, which more often than not results in an aimless parody of ahistorical amnesia. Sure, you might not have been a wealthy heiress of businessmen or plantation owners like Éliane in Indochine, but you can certainly dress and decorate your house as if you were.

Aesthetic cues extended beyond architecture to vintage áo dài silhouettes, mid-century design elements, and brand identity, all feeding into a curated performance of taste, discernment, and nostalgic authenticity, but done ironically without that direct lineage. It is a performance, in other words, of a form of self-fashioned social belonging, which, if done successfully, can separate the gaudy from the simplistic, or conversely, muddle tradition with off-sighted experimentation. Truly, we can’t all be the queen of Saigon. In some cases, it is hard to tell if one execution is a cultivated homage to history or merely a decontextualized mimicry of hollowed-out orientalist motifs.

The private estate where Éliane (Catherine Deneuve) lives with her foster daughter Camille (Phạm Linh Đan) in Indochine (1992). Image via Sài Gòn Vi Vu.

Regardless, contemporary interior design companies and luxury businesses frequently deploy these visual codes, perpetuating Indochic as an aesthetic synonymous with luxury, and cultural heritage as a brand. Part of the issue here is that, historically, the development of Indochine style coincided with profound societal transformations within Vietnam, marking a transitional period from feudal traditions towards modernity, underscored by the expansion of educational and healthcare infrastructures. Thus, in some ways, it was rather revolutionary to the extent that it challenged pre-existing norms not by way of visual violence, but through mediation between idealism and material reality.

Much like the myth of a more balanced colonial hybridity, the insidiousness of the style’s revival has less to do with its purported harmony than with the logic of subordination of aesthetic norms, vis-à-vis the deficiency of indigenous sensibilities that needed intervention and renovation in the first place. Put differently, its drive toward harmony is achieved only through the framework of recognizable European forms, meanwhile, subjecting its unresolved tensions into the decorative elements, such as dragon mosaics, and lotus flowers in the crown molding.

Indochic in quotidian life and the art market

In miền Tây, where I am from, it is common to encounter newly constructed homes adorned with tiled verandas, Corinthian columns, Greco-style pediments, arched windows with decorative keystones, and occasionally even faux-mansard roofs. For locals, prolonged exposure and cultural sedimentation have rendered this architectural vocabulary part of the everyday vernacular. There are, of course, more contemporary-looking houses in the region and throughout the country. However, the trend tends to lean in this direction of more heritage-looking houses, and it is quite easy to spot the nouveau riche, where many of the mentioned elements are overstated and mixed with neo-Baroque motifs, bordering on camp. In many of these places, rather than performing an imagined fantasy derived from a colonial mindset, Indochinese motifs have genuinely become heritage, fully vernacularized, and not disparagingly so.

Ninh Hiệp Village in Gia Lâm, Hanoi, whose urban center is decked out in rows of new European-style villas and sculptures. Photo via Dân Trí.

Yet, authenticity remains a pertinent concern. While indulging in colonial aesthetics, this saveur indochinois, is not inherently problematic, but a critical perspective must recognize the complex historical and social implications associated with such representations, including parallels with the romanticization of American southern plantation architecture — a troubling analogy, yet illustrative of the underlying cultural violence inherent in such aesthetic codes. This is perhaps where one might find some dark humor in the onslaught of Indochic as a desirable measure for social and cultural stability. As the style emerged not merely as an aesthetic indulgence, but as a complex interplay between colonial imposition and local reinterpretation. More precisely, it is emblematic of the reassurance of class and aesthetic stratification, however in a context where that is very much praised and applauded, and at a time when inequality is ever more concerning.

Colorful travel posters showcasing different tourism locations, 20th century.

Elsewhere, this humor extends in far more impactful ways. In Vietnam’s contemporary art market, for example, early 20^th-century masters continue to overshadow contemporary Vietnamese artists, simply because their visual languages have already been well rehearsed. International auction houses frequently spotlight Vietnamese ceramics and lacquer works, reinforcing colonial tendencies to valorize these objects as artifacts rather than recognizing ongoing artistic innovation. Between April to August of this year alone, there have been no fewer than twenty contemporary art show openings, just in Saigon. At the same time, little attention has been given to these shows, with buyers privileging works that “look” more stereotypically Vietnamese, by which, more often than not, means Indochinese. This continued perception inadvertently positions Vietnamese creative capacity as suspended within a Euro-American cinematic narrative, in which an object must seemingly have been produced by some unnamed master in a hidden village specializing in lacquer of, say, Quảng Trị, rather than an MFA-trained artist in residence at the Guggenheim, as an example. Surely there is a form of existence that lies beyond chinoiserie à la Vietnamienne.

‘Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong’ by Mai Trung Thứ was sold in an auction in 2021 for US$3.1 million.

‘Mère et enfant’ by Lê Thị Lựu fetched EUR529,200 in 2022.

From personal interviews with local contemporary artists and gallery visits, it’s evident that many are fed up with the particular demand to perform this kind of Indochinese craft-like art making. To some of these artists, it reduces their individual practice to that of a nameless coolie, performing traditional roles and producing traditional wares. There is no doubt that Vietnamese traditional craft has had a storied past, but one can only play so much with the codes of Bát Tràng ceramics in contemporary art before the entire endeavor falls back into kitsch. In my view, the reluctance of these artists to fall into these ethnic-art labor paradigms has less to do with their individual egos than it does about the broader pervasiveness and power which the Indochinese aesthetic regime has on Vietnam cultural tastes and production — a power that is undeniable, but too arrestingly captive for it to offer aesthetic novelty, for those who are seeking expressive liberation rather than sedimentation. At the same time, because of how well-received this style is to both foreigners and Vietnamese people, it cannot simply be ignored or cast off as though it does not exist, even if, to some, the style signals a kind of cultural stagnation or lack of futural imagination.

The complexities behind engaging with Indochic

So, what can be done? If heritage styles allow individuals to fashion themselves as discerning consumer subjects with a particular attunement to personality and sense of judgement, what really is the problem? Surely, a discerning consumer, even if it is just a style, is better than a non-discerning one, no? But here is precisely where we encounter the dilemma: the Indochic style is less about the reconstruction of a style than a re-enactment of it. To that end, the idea of the possibility of reclaiming a colonial aesthetic as purely one’s own is no less than a consumerist fantasy. That is, unless it can somehow be radically re-imagined to accommodate the realities that currently exist within contemporary Vietnamese society.

Personally, I find the discourse of “reclaiming” these aesthetics is equally fraught, since such terminology would imply a dispossession and appropriation inconsistent with Vietnam’s historical adaptation and negotiation of these styles. There is nothing to “reclaim.” The style was never “taken” away from the Vietnamese, in any sense, but it was more so the case that the country simply had moved on to other forms of self-expression.

Inside a cafe in central Saigon, where the theme is Indochinese-inspired.

Vietnam is a country like any other, in the sense that its consumptive practices were well in-line with global developments, particularly during the second half of the 20^th century. The country’s liberation from French control gave way to an onslaught of novel values, which were later disseminated within its larger cultural sphere, and the arrival of modernism was overwhelmingly welcomed, and undoubtedly prolific in Vietnam. Because of this, rather than “reclaim,” I would like to pose if it may be possible to, instead, “retro-fit” the Indochinese style, as a formal renovation?

I pose this question not only in response to the persistence of the style, as evidenced by its fad-like return, but also in relation to the bearing it has on our capacity to critically visualize the future image of Vietnam. After all, this aesthetic emerged directly from complex historical interactions, despite unequal colonial conditions, and to use it as part of the country’s promotional image can’t (and probably won’t) entirely harm its future earning potential in the tourism sector, right? Still, the persistence of Indochic as a cultural marker today extends beyond surface aesthetics, embedding itself deeply within class identities and social structures. All told, “French colonial style” does indeed sound much better than “tropical plantation-core.”

French travel posters of the 3 territories under French rule, Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchine.

With tourism surging by a record-breaking 6 million visitors in the first quarter of 2025 alone, that image of “France’s former eastern territory” is not negligible, as mere self-promotion. Vietnamese people are proud of their history of anti-colonial resistance, but they are also equally proud of the material culture that was produced during the colonial period. Listen, I am not here to take away anyone’s rêve d’Asie. I think it is possibly one of the most intentional and functional design conventions of the 20^th century. Not to mention, tourists will, unhesitantly, continue to want to experience that romanticized perle d’orient, to revel in their fantasy of a Chinese junk sailing through the emerald waters of Hạ Long Bay, while sporting in white linen and giant sun hats. And who am I to stop them?

Vincent Pérez as Jean-Baptiste on a sampan in Hạ Long Bay in Indochine (1992). Image via Sài Gòn Vi Vu.

At a certain point, there are only so many ways to insist that in relation to national identity, even something so seemingly inconsequential as hotel designs or souvenir trinkets is not, well, so inconsequential. Furthermore, it may even be necessary to consider how the same cultural apparatuses that have allowed for the ideals of Vietnamese feminized beauty in the 1920s French travel posters, may not be so separate from the fashioning of the female body in major airline advertisements. Today’s Vietnam is much more futuristic than many would believe, but it is not certain that this modern Vietnam is well understood, especially against the prevalence of Indochic’s apparent charm. Southeast Asia as a whole can’t indefinitely remain the antithetical untamed wilderness of East Asia.

All hope is not lost, however. There are signs of what I consider thoughtful reconsiderations — not of Indochinese motifs per se, but of its core tenets: air-flow, natural light, usage of local materials, and a minimalist sensibility rooted in ecological responsiveness rather than decorative excess. Contemporary Vietnamese architects are increasingly revisiting traditional building techniques and indigenous materials, not as a return to heritage for heritage’s sake, but as part of broader conversations around sustainability, climate adaptation, and cultural continuity. Names like Thanh Hà Nguyễn, Võ Trọng Nghĩa, and Phạm Thị Mỹ An come to mind. Their projects, often situated in both urban and rural contexts, offer compelling alternatives to the commercialized Indochic revival. The homage, in these cases, emerges not through codified pastiche or nostalgic mimicry, but through abstraction, restraint, and environmental intelligence. These architects reinterpret climatic logic, overhangs for shade, cross-ventilation for airflow, and porous boundaries between inside and outside, while sidestepping the heavy-handed romanticism that characterizes so much of the Indochic visual regime. In doing so, they point to a future where tradition informs innovation, and where architectural memory is engaged not as spectacle, but as living practice.

“Urban Farming Office” by Võ Trọng Nghĩa Architects. Photo via Kiến Việt.

“Tropical Suburb House” by MM++ Architects. Photo via MM++ Architects.

Elsewhere, contemporary artists are becoming increasingly vocal about their uneasy relationship to the Indochina tropes that continue to dominate expectations, particularly when such expectations are tethered to commercial viability. For some, the decision to conform is strategic rather than aspirational, made under the unrelenting pressure to sell to both domestic and international buyers whose taste remains conditioned by a colonial gaze. Others resist altogether, refusing to participate in a system that demands they package their identity through a retro-Orientalist frame. Popular contemporary art institutions in Saigon are emblematic of this tension, often staging exhibitions that walk the line between market appeal and conceptual critique. The stakes are not merely aesthetic, but structural: who gets visibility, who receives institutional support, and which narratives get elevated in the global circulation of Vietnamese art.

Ultimately, while Indochine-era travel posters may rightfully inhabit souvenir shops near Hồ Chí Minh City's central post office, small boutiques in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, or the exposed brick walls of a coffee shop in Hội An, there remains a need to draw a clear distinction between nostalgic marketing and genuine historical engagement. The challenge is not in disavowing the visual language wholesale, but in learning how to mine it critically, unpacking its ideological underpinnings while embracing the possibilities for artistic evolution, cultural agency, and sustainable reinterpretation. To engage with Indochic today is not to revive the past uncritically, but to imagine how its forms might be retooled ethically, and with attention to the histories they contain.

Vinh Phu Pham, PhD, is an artist, literary scholar, and cultural critic based in New York City. His work explores Vietnamese contemporary art, the musical legacies of the Republic of Vietnam, and Asian American literature in diaspora. His writing has appeared in The Journal of Vietnamese Studies (JVS), Republican Vietnam, 1963–1975: War, Society, Diaspora, Rising Asia Journal, BBC Vietnam, Of Peninsulas and Archipelagos, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN), Cultbytes, Impulse, and Art & Market.

A Slice of Life in Coupon-Era Hanoi via Colorful Vintage Lottery Tickets

2025-08-18T15:00:00+07:00

What can tiny sheets of paper reveal about a whole time period?

Xổ số kiến thiết Hà Nội, which could be loosely translated as the “Hanoi Development Lottery,” came to be during a time when northern Vietnam was rebuilding itself from the rubble of the resistance war against the French and establishing a socialist society. From the illustrations to the way it was promoted, the lottery exemplifies Vietnam’s coupon era.

At the time, while the government was still trying to make ends meet, there was great demand for infrastructure projects and amenities to improve the quality of life of the people, such as roads, schools, healthcare facilities, factories, and other public projects. Northern Vietnam was also saving money to channel revolutionary efforts in the southern region. In that economic climate, Hanoi was searching for a way to secure financial contributions that could both promote the collective spirit and appeal to the people. Thus, for the first time, during the Tết holiday of 1962, the state issued its first lottery tickets named “cần kiệm kiến thiết” (frugal development) as a lunar new year gift to Hanoians. These tickets became the initial foundation for a future lottery program that expanded to the entirety of northern and, later, the whole of Vietnam.

The lottery operation shared some similarities with its counterparts in the Soviet Union and other communist nations at the time. In the USSR, for example, the lottery was wholly state-run and tickets were distributed via official platforms like local workers’ unions, youth unions, kiosks, and state-owned stores; the government also strongly encouraged civil servants to buy tickets. This model was generally adopted by Hanoi: xổ số was both sold at physical locations and sent to state agencies so workers could purchase them at their workplaces.

The way the state promoted the lottery program in its early days displayed a strong sense of collectivist mobilization and socialist messaging. Tickets were often depicted with poetry excerpts and slogans like “Lottery purchase benefits both the state and the household” or “First, [we] build the capital / Then, [we] strengthen the nation’s future” to spread the maxim that buying these tickets was a way for the individual to play a part in developing the nation.

Overall, lottery design during this period wasn’t too elaborate, as the material and technology to produce them remained quite primitive. Both the subject matters and text on the tickets were displayed simply, using bright, eye-catching palettes and straightforward layouts, evoking propaganda posters or illustrations in old textbooks from the 1980s and 1990s. Tickets usually highlighted public buildings, Hanoi’s famous landmarks, or scenes showing Hanoians going through daily activities.

As this was viewed as a key state project, xổ số kiến thiết was run quite seriously. The lottery draw was conducted under the supervision of municipal officials at live events, most famously at the Đoàn Kết Club near Tràng Tiền Street. During the decades of a planned economy, when most commodities were tightly controlled by the state using coupons, the lottery was among the few goods that the people could buy freely. Hence, the lottery was warmly welcomed by Hanoians as a form of state-sanctioned gambling.

Đoàn Kết Club. Photo via Báo Tri thức & Cuộc sống.

Trần Minh Hải, a writer who lived through the prime years of xổ số, shared that he used to watch the lottery draw every afternoon because he “liked chum change, tiny prizes — whatever seems within reach tends to draw people in.” True lottery-heads back then even developed strategies to maximize their luck. The set price was just VND2 for a ticket, but a set with auspicious numbers can fetch VND22–24 on the black market.

The atmosphere at live lottery events could be compared to that of football matches. Fans arrived early to find the best, closest seats to the stage to watch the numeral balls spin in the case and the winning sequence on the blackboard; this was because the events took place in the evening and the electricity grid was unreliable, so one needed to stay close to the stage to read the numbers. Every spin was closely followed by hundreds of spectators eagerly waiting for the host to read out the numbers.

Lottery ticket booths. Photo by John Vink.

Hải recounts the sense of palpable disappointment in the air when the sequence was finalized: “1,001 participants simultaneously morphed their faces into a rainbow of emotions — very few of joy and most were of chagrin and regret. Shoe-clad legs stomped on the ground like a percussive symphony, harmonizing with a choir of woeful groans and thundering kneecap slaps [...], leaving behind their seats a white blanket of torn tickets and strewn shreds of hope.” Still, Hải adopted a rather sanguine outlook, reminding us of the true purpose of the lottery: “Losses also meant my beloved capital might gain a few additional bricks to build.”

In the following decades, as Vietnam’s economic model and situation shifted, the lottery operation also changed accordingly: on each ticket, socialist slogans and pastoral scenes were gone, replaced by flashy motorbikes, color TVs, and even the faces of celebrities enticing passersby to pick up a few tickets. Crowds of capital residents gathering around lottery draw events, once a highlight of the local social calendar, disappeared too. Albeit still run by the state, xổ số today is much more commercialized, and much less about fostering a sense of collective nation-building. Still, it remains a unique facet of Hanoi’s cultural history worth remembering.

Images courtesy of Lê Khanh.

Tàu Cánh Ngầm: The Curious Case of Saigon’s Lost Soviet Hydrofoils

2025-08-07T10:00:00+07:00

Not long ago, hulking “creatures” glided atop the waters between Saigon and Vũng Tàu. Like the dinosaurs that came before them, they slowly disappeared, until all that was left were their skeletons.

As the sun began to set on the Soviet Union in 1990, a run of hydrofoils, dubbed “Design 352,” began to emerge from Feodosiya, USSR’s Morye shipbuilding plant. Designed to roam within rivers and reservoirs, these vessels found themselves with what some might consider a more palatable moniker — “Voskhod” — better known in Vietnam as tàu cánh ngầm.

In their infancy, Voskhods proved themselves up to the task of coastal migratory routes and in 1995, at least 21 of the finned vessels were transferred to Vietnam where they were put into daily use across numerous localities, including Cát Bà and Hải Phòng, but could be found in their greatest numbers in southern Vietnam.

At their peak, they annually ferried some 500,000 passengers between Saigon and the oil-stained beaches of Vũng Tàu at the confluence of the Saigon River and the East Sea, with tickets priced at around VND200,000.

However, as more roads were built and the once-spry Voskhods aged, their numbers began to dwindle and, by 2014, signs of decline were obvious and they became accident-prone.

After a number of service suspensions, including a major fire in January 2014, the Voskhods were removed from service and their lifecycle officially came to an end in December 2016, when their operating permits weren’t renewed by authorities.

But as is often the case, a new type of vessel appeared on Saigon’s waterways not long after to appease traveler’s seafaring appetites. The Saigon-Vũng Tàu route is currently served by a new fleet of catamarans, amongst others, that have been operating since 2017.

Remnants of the Voskhods endured on dry docks around Saigon; the dilapidated carcass of one was still visible along the right side of the Saigon Bridge, when traveling from Bình Thạnh to District 2. It was removed in late 2018, putting an end to the Voskhod's existence in Saigon.

Image by Brian Letwin.

Though the current services are a safer option than their Soviet genus, what we’ve gained in security and stability, we’ve lost in mystique and thrill.

Watch this video from Rusty Compass, filmed about seven years ago, to witness a nostalgic first-hand experience of traveling on these historical relics shortly before they were pulled from service:

The Surprisingly Recent History Behind Bình Thạnh's Lonely 'Gia-Đinh' Gate

2025-08-01T10:00:00+07:00

It’s claimed by several tourism websites that a gateway from one of the ancient Gia Định citadels has survived and may be viewed on the Lê Văn Duyệt-Phan Đăng Lưu intersection in Bình Thạnh District, close to the Lê Văn Duyệt Mausoleum. However, a little research into the history of that area reveals that the gateway in question has more recent origins.

The gateway, popularly known as the “Gia Định Citadel Gate” (Cổng thành Gia Định), is built into the outer wall of Trương Công Định Secondary School and does bear a very superficial resemblance to the east gate of the 1837 Gia Định Citadel as depicted in the famous drawing of the French attack of 1859, although clearly it was conceived on a significantly smaller scale.

A 1966 map of what is now the Lê Văn Duyệt-Phan Đăng Lưu junction.

In fact, since neither the Lũy Bán Bích city walls of 1772 nor the two citadels of 1790 and 1837 (see “The Citadels of Gia Định”) were located anywhere near this neighborhood, the idea that it ever formed part of those structures may be ruled out.

Old maps reveal that the secondary school stands on the site formerly occupied by the historic Gia Định School of Drawing (École de Dessin Gia-Dinh), an applied arts school set up by the French in 1913 to provide continuing studies for graduates of the Thủ Dầu Một School of Indigenous Arts (École d’Art Indigène de Thu-Dau-Mot, teaching mainly woodwork and lacquerware) and the Biên Hòa School of Arts (École d’Art de Bien-Hoa, teaching mainly ceramics and bronzecasting).

The École de Dessin Gia-Dinh, pictured in the 1920s.

An important training ground for many pioneering southern painters and sculptors, it was renamed the Gia Định School of Applied Arts (École des Arts Décoratifs de Gia-Dinh) in 1940, and after 1954 it became the Gia Định Secondary School of Decorative Arts (Trường Trung học Trang trí Mỹ thuật Gia Định).

In 1955, the Saigon National College of Fine Art (Trường Quốc gia Cao đảng Mỹ thuật Sài Gòn) was opened right next door to the secondary school to teach painting and sculpture. After reunification in 1975, the two schools merged to become the Hồ Chí Minh City College of Fine Art (Trường Cao đảng Mỹ thuật Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh), and when this institution was upgraded to the status of a university in 1981, all teaching was confined to the 1954 building.

The facade of the Gia Định Secondary School of Decorative Arts, picutred in 1960.

The original École de Dessin Gia-Dinh building of 1913 was subsequently demolished to make way for the Trương Công Định Secondary School, but its attractive gateway bearing the name “Gia-Đinh” clearly caught the eye of city planners, who had it preserved as part of the school wall.

As of 2025, although the gate still exists, its facade has been completely painted over to match the white-beige color palette of the secondary school, making it harder to spot compared to its previous shade of bright yellow, as shown in the top image taken in 2016.

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.

The Legends of Thăng Long Tứ Trấn, the 4 Guardian Temples Protecting Hanoi

2025-07-25T15:00:00+07:00

In the edict to move Vietnam’s capital to Hanoi, Emperor Lý Thái Tổ described this land as the middle of heaven and earth, the center of the four directions. Such a place would bring peace and prosperity, he believed, and deserved sacred protection.

Over the course of the Lý Dynasty, the tradition of worshiping Thăng Long Tứ Trấn, or the Four Sentries of Thăng Long, emerged. These are the four temples dedicated to four deities guarding the cardinal directions of the citadel.

The Eastern Sentry: Bạch Mã Temple

Located in the heart of the Old Quarter, Bạch Mã Temple is the sentry of the east. It was built in the 9^th century — the oldest temple of Tứ Trấn — to honor the god Long Đỗ, literally the Belly of the Dragon.

The entrance.

The god Long Đỗ.

Legend has it that when Lý Thái Tổ moved the court to Thăng Long in 1010, he failed to construct a fortress many times. One day, he sent people to pray to the god Long Đỗ, and they saw a white horse walking out from the temple. By tracing the horse’s footsteps and building the fortress accordingly, they finally succeeded. Deeply grateful, the king changed the name of the temple to Bạch Mã, or White Horse, and declared Long Đỗ as the Thành Hoàng, or the One to Bring Abundance, of Thăng Long.

The White Horse with a sun amulet on its side. In Vietnam and many other cultures, worshiping the east is also worshiping the sunrise.

The temple has four main structures. First is a courtyard featuring huge ironwood columns with stunning carvings. The front shrine is dedicated to the White Horse, followed by the mid and back shrine where Long Đỗ himself is honored.

The courtyard and dedicated carvings.

The front shrine of the White Horse.

The shrines of Long Đỗ.

The Southern Sentry: Kim Liên Temple

Kim Liên is the sacred temple defending the south, here, the god Cao Sơn is worshiped. Cao Sơn was one of the 100 children of Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ — the founding legend of the Vietnamese people. He was among the 50 who followed mother Âu Cơ up to the highlands, and he helped Sơn Tinh, the God of the Mountains, defeat Thuỷ Tinh, the God of the Water, and brought peace to the people.

The entrance within Kim Liên temple with the sign "Southern Sentry."

The temple was built in the 16–17^th century after the capital relocation, making it the youngest of the four. Over time, the people of Kim Liên Village built a cổng tam quan, or a three-entrance gate, right next to the Kim Liên pond. They also added some buildings and turned the temple into a đình, or a communal house, of the village.

The three-entrance gate of the đình.

The pond in front of the temple.

The most important relic of the temple is a stone epitaph erected in 1510, which was carved with legends of the god Cao Sơn, along with 39 imperial edicts of the Lê and Nguyễn dynasties.

The stone epitaph.

The Western Sentry: Voi Phục Temple

Under the peaceful green canopy of Thủ Lệ Park lies Voi Phục temple, the western sentry. The temple is dedicated to Prince Hoàng Chân, the son of Emperor Lý Thái Tông. He fought against Tống invaders in the 11^th century and died in the battle. To honor him, the king ordered residents to build the Voi Phục Temple, which was named after the two kneeling elephants in front of the temple.

The design of the roof is in line with the traditional style of ancient pagodas with the tail curved up to the sky, furnished with carvings of spiritual creatures like dragons, unicorns, and phoenixes, etc.

The Northern Sentry: Quán Thánh Temple

Next to West Lake is the sentry of the north: Quán Thánh Temple. Here lies the seat of the god Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ, who is an important Taoist figure representing the North star.

The gate of Quán Thánh Temple.

As legends go, once there was a nine-tailed fox terrorizing the people. So the god Trấn Vũ came down from heaven and killed the fox. Its body sank to the ground and created West Lake as it is today; this narrative is also why the lake is sometimes called the Xác Cáo (Fox Corpse) Lake.

An altar with a Tang poem in the background.

The temple has many invaluable relics, including around 40 wood carvings of Tang poems dating back to the 7^th century. There is also a magnificent copper sculpture portraying life activities from the three interlinked worlds: Thiên (sky), Địa (earth), and Thủy (water).

The copper sculpture hanging from the rafters.

Perhaps most impressive of all, however, is the four-ton, 3.96-meter black copper statue of Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ at the main altar. According to legend, the statue presents the Taoist god precisely when he reached the highest enlightenment.

The statue of Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ.

As befits a place worshiping a god of great martial power, the temple courtyard becomes a dojo in the afternoon.

People honing their martial arts skills at Quán Thánh.

More than 1,000 years have passed since the relocation of the capital, and still the legend of Tứ Trấn remains an iconic part of the city. As long as their stories are still being told, the sentries continue to stand tall to protect this land.

This article was originally published in 2022.

Feel the Pulse of a Fast-Changing Vietnam in the 1990s via This Lively Photo Album

2025-07-18T10:00:00+07:00

By the mid-1990's, Vietnam's astounding economic transformation was well underway.

Markets crowded with crops, vast flocks of poultry ready to be sold, and kids sitting down to full bowls of food as shown in these photos by Japanese photographer Hiroji Kubota make visually clear what fiscal growth looks like on a local level.

Inside a shrimp processing facility in Cái Răng, Cần Thơ in 1996.

Shot between 1995 and 1999, they depict a country at the nexus of globalized modernity and tradition. Locals roast coconuts with brick ovens in Bến Tre, while employees processing shrimp for export at a plant in Cần Thơ adhere to strict safety standards. In Sapa, H’Mông wear traditional, handmade clothing while motorbikes sneak onto streets overwhelmed with bicycles.

No culture or country ever exists as a static concept, but there are moments of accelerated flux. Truly, Vietnam did not saunter towards the 21^st century, but hurled ahead driven by a manic hunger to grow, expand and change for the sake of people's prosperity.

Have a look at these frantic years below:

Making candied coconut for Tet.

A market in session under Long Bien Bridge in Hanoi.

The morning rush in Hanoi.

A parade celebrating reunification in Saigon in 1995.

That doesn't look comfortable for the quackers.

A monk and his apprentice at a Hue pagoda.

A sculptor with his artworks in Saigon.

A floating market in Phung Hiep, Can Tho.

Fresh produce ready for shoppers in the Mekong Delta.

Bundles of sugar canes for sale in Ha Long Bay.

A farmer works on his terrace field.

H'Mong children in a mountainous area.

Helmet, pants, and cool dép tổ ong.

Buying a steamy market snack.

[Photos via RedsVN]

Street Cred: Dauntless Antiwar Icon Nguyễn Thái Bình and His Tragic Death

2025-07-11T10:00:00+07:00

If one were to see the streets of Vietnam as a tangled network of people whose names they took, every city would resemble a messy collection of historical fragments.

Saigon's streets occasionally remind one that to ride around a city is also to move within a nation's history, to engage with a geographical past and glide through the events of collective memory. In Saigon, the Trưng sisters, Võ Thị Sáu, Phạm Ngọc Thạch and Sương Nguyệt Anh all take residence at a certain location perceived to be part of modern-day Vietnam. The history behind the namesake of Nguyễn Thái Bình streets in District 1 and Tân Bình District, however, takes place on a whole different continent.

Born in Cần Giuộc, Long An Province in 1948 to Lê Thị Anh and Nguyễn Văn Hai, Nguyễn Thái Bình had eight siblings and moved to Saigon after finishing primary school to attend secondary school at Petrus Ký, today's Lê Hồng Phong High School For The Gifted. In March 1968, not long after the Tet Offensive began, Bình got a scholarship from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to go to the US for his undergraduate studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Vietnamese Students' Revolts

Established in 1961 by John F. Kennedy and a successor of the Development Loan Fund and the International Cooperation Administration, USAID oversees all American aid programs, including technical, economic and military training, in foreign countries, including Vietnam. USAID’s main role during the American War, according to a report from the agency, was to aid US counterinsurgency efforts and later the Vietnamization policy while developing a nation-building program in the country.

Besides military training and economic assistance, the agency also sponsors grants and scholarships. According to Ngô Thanh Nhàn, who received a scholarship at the same time as Bình and is now a professor at New York University, there were several USAID student groups who came for different purposes and lengths of time.

The first group (USAID Group I) mostly included personnel from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, although there were some exceptions. Bình and Nhàn were part of USAID Group II whose members were selected based on exemplary academic achievement and involvement in extracurricular activities. Bình studied at the University of Washington's Department of Fisheries.

According to an article on the experience of Vietnamese students in the US published in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars in 1971, Ngô Vinh Long notes that when one accepted a USAID scholarship, there was an obligation that lasted from about five to ten years requiring the student to work in positions sponsored by the American government after they graduate. On top of these requirements, Vietnamese studying at American universities received very limited academic freedom or freedom of speech, as they were subject to deportation if they expressed opinions that were deemed against the “national interest.”

This particular circumstance didn’t stop these students from expressing their voices against the war, Washington’s policies and the nature of USAID itself. Nhàn notes in “Many Bridges, One River: Organizing for Justice in Vietnamese American communities”: “By the time we got to the United States, we started to oppose the war, immediately after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. We participated in antiwar activities locally, and exchanged ideas through zines in Vietnamese.”

Nguyễn Thái Bình was no exception. While he didn’t express political opinions while still in Saigon, Bình became more frustrated and anguished at what the American government was doing in Vietnam after his arrival in the US. In an open letter addressing his resistance, Bình wrote that during his time in the country, he had studied the damage the war was having on the people of Vietnam. In the summer of 1970, Bình took an opportunity to travel across southern Vietnam, and what he witnessed had strengthened his antiwar stance.

Nguyễn Thái Bình. Photo via University of Washington.

On February 10, 1972, Bình participated in an antiwar protest with nine other Vietnamese students, a majority of whom were also on the USAID scholarship. The sit-in lasted for three hours, and every member of the group was later arrested on charges of criminal trespassing. In the following months, Bình gave a series of speeches in an auditorium, federal court, churches, halls and coffee houses.

A flyer for an event in February organized by Bình and friends and a list of Bình's activities from February to April in 1972. Photos via University of Washington.

In the process of learning more about the role of US imperialism, Bình had also realized the nature of the very program that had brought him to the country in the first place. On April 24 of the same year, Bình, together with 15 other Vietnamese, staged a “Vietnamese Invasion of Carbondale” at Southern Illinois University (SIU) to protest against the policies of Saigon and Washington, USAID and the Vietnam Studies Center at SIU. The establishment of the center was funded by USAID to provide consultant and training services to US corporations and government agencies, and offer technical assistance and support in postwar reconstruction projects.

SIU’s involvement in the war had become a controversial issue within Asian academic circles, such as the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) and Association for Asian Studies (AAS), for its complicity in Washington’s neocolonial efforts and resemblance to the earlier Vietnam Advisory Group project at Michigan State University (MSU) when Diệm was still in power. The MSU advisory helped build the then-puppet government police force and trained secret police for political policing.

Poster for the event. Photo replicated from the Douglas Allen article “Universities and the Vietnam War: a Case Study of a Successful Struggle.”

Douglas Allen, a member of the CCAS, wrote in an article that, while resistance among academics helped shut down the center, it was this group of Vietnamese and local antiwar activists that played the most important role in making “the issues of neocolonial technical assistance and postwar reconstruction projects moot.” These Vietnamese include “Nguyen Thai Binh, Le Anh Tu, Nguyen Huu An, Tran Khanh Tuyet, David Truong, Doan Hong Hai, Tran Vu Dung, Ngo Vinh Long, Vu Ngoc Con, Vu Quang Viet, Do Hoang Khanh and Nguyen Trieu Phu.”

“The Vietnamese, most of whom were in the U.S. on AID scholarships, came at great personal risk; several were visited by immigration officials shortly before their trip to Carbondale,” writes Allen in “Universities and the Vietnam War: a Case Study of a Successful Struggle.”

The event at Carbondale was led by Ngo Vinh Long, who was among the USAID Group I students and was a major Vietnamese anti-imperialist radical and activist. Both Long and Bình are the co-founders of Thời Báo Gà, a monthly newsletter that published analysis, literature and essays on the peace movement. The Vietnam Studies Center at Carbondale ended up closing for three days during the sit-in.

Deportation, Death and Legacy

Bình planned future activism, though he was aware of the risks he was facing and even predicted his own death in four letters: one addressed to the “peace and justice-loving people in the world,” another to US President Richard Nixon, one to his friend Nguyen Hữu An and the last to his family.

In June 10, 1972, Bình officially graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle with honors. At the ceremony, he turned his graduation into a one-man protest by handing out leaflets and attempting to grab the microphone to speak. On Bình's graduation gown, white tape spelled out “Blood Debts” and “US in Vietnam Immoral.” On the skull of his academic mortarboard, “Viet Nam” was written.

Nguyễn Thái Bình at his graduation. Photo via Flickr user manhhai.

Three days before his graduation, the New York Times reported, Bình and three other USAID scholarship Vietnamese students received phone calls from the aid agency to inform them of the termination of their program under USAID sponsorship, and that their tickets to return to Vietnam were available. The students included Nguyễn Tăng Huyền from the University of California, Berkeley and Nguyễn Hữu An and Vũ Ngọc Côn from the Northrop Institute of Technology. The latter two also participated in the Carbondale incident and all three students, including Huyền, were among those arrested at the consulate sit-in back in February. However, the students refused to go home, fearing that the Thiệu-led government would prosecute and torture them for their views.

Bình’s visa was also revoked on that day and his flight home was scheduled for July 2, 1972 on Pan Am flight 841 departing from San Francisco for Saigon through stops in Honolulu, Guam and Manila. After the aircraft took off from Manila, Bình, carrying a knife and a package that he claimed contain bombs, took stewardess May Yuen hostage.

Through her, he passed a note to Captain Gene Vaughn demanding that the plane fly to Hanoi instead, where it would be shot down, according to the New York Times. When the captain didn’t comply, Bình passed up another note, this time written in his blood, emphasizing how serious he was about being taken to Hanoi. Vaughn then went to meet Bình after the plane touched down at Tân Sơn Nhứt Airport. Bình threatened the captain with his “bombs,” which were later found to be two lemons. Vaughn had guessed that Bình was bluffing, so he told Bình to come closer and found an opportunity to grab him and pin him down, with the help of several passengers.

The captain then shouted “Kill that son of a bitch!” to a passenger on the plane who was believed to be an ex-cop flying to Saigon for a security guard position and had a gun. Bình was then shot five times while Vaughn held him by the throat, according to Vaughn’s statements. The captain then threw Bình’s body out of the plane.

A snippet of reports on Bình's death in the Bangor Daily News. Photo replicated from Bangor Daily News.

“A lot of time and effort has been spent on trying to prevent hijackings, but the only thing that will be effective is a mandatory death penalty, without any loopholes,” said Vaughn at an event honoring him for killing the unarmed hijacker. The shooter, who was never publicly identified, even gave Vaughn the cartridge from the gun used to kill Bình as “souvenir,” and Vaughn showed it to reporters from the Bangor Daily News like it was a trophy.

May Yuen, the stewardess who was taken hostage, didn’t share this celebratory spirit. In an interview with the Bangor Daily News, she said she felt “sorry for him [Bình] because he ended in such a disastrous way” and that “he was very nice to me and he did not mean to do anything rough.”

“Bình's death hit the front pages of all major newspapers. The clips were a startling contrast to how his friends describe him. His college professors and friends knew Bình as a peace activist. He was the one always seen on campus carrying a ‘Stop the War’ sign. An honors student at the College of Fisheries, he wrote poetry, but he could also box and play soccer,” wrote Lily Eng in the Seattle Times in 1992.

A report by the Airport Security Committee was filed and led to a preliminary investigation by the local authorities. According to a Tuổi Trẻ article series investigating the files of the incident in the National Archive in Saigon, both reports from the Airport Security Committee and the police conclude that Bình didn't intend to blow up the plane, and further investigation should be conducted to determine whether it was illegal or just to apply deadly force in such a situation.

Report from the Airport Security Com (top) and the police report. Photos via Tuổi Trẻ.

However, the investigation mysteriously ended and the shooter immediately returned to the US and canceled his plans to work in Saigon. Though never publicly identified, according to the confidential documents that Tuổi Trẻ gathered, he was revealed to be William H. Mills, an ex-cop in California who was flying to Saigon to work for the Federal Electric Corporation.

The ambiguity surrounding the investigation also led Bình’s mother, Lê Thị Anh, to write a letter to the US president, to no avail.

To read the letter in full, visit the University of Washington.

Among activists, Bình’s death led to anger and mourning. Ngô Thanh Nhàn writes in the book Many Bridges, One River that the assassination prompted the formation of the first leftist union of Vietnamese in the US: “As soon as we learned Nguyễn Thái Bình was secretly extradited and later on killed on the tarmac of Tân Sơn Nhất airport, all the groups joined together to form the Union of Vietnamese in the United States.”

This group started out with 2,000 to 3,000 people, who were mostly from USAID group II, and were later joined by more members from more backgrounds and perspectives, such as the anti-colonial Vietnamese refugees who arrived in New York in the 1940s as French “coolies” during the World War II, as well as anti-war wives of GI and army trainees.

The union’s first joint action was a memorial for Bình, conducted with the help of the Black Panther Party in Oakland. From that point on, the group formed alliances with other activist groups in different communities, such as Asian Americans, African Americans, Iranians, Palestinians and Latinos.

Photo via Many Bridges, One River (top) and the University of Washington (bottom).

Bình’s name was also taken to name the Thái Bình Brigade that marched in Nisei Week, an annual Japanese American cultural festival, to oppose Japan’s militarism and advocate for peace. One month after Bình’s death, the Thái Bình Brigade, along with the Văn Trỗi Brigade, took to the streets where Nisei Week was held and burned the Rising Sun flag as a demonstration against militarism and Japanese corporations profiting from the war.

The brigades in Gidra, a revolutionary Asian-American newspaper-magazine. Photo via Densho Digital Collection.

In his letter to “the peace and justice loving people around the world,” Bình writes:

Going home to stand in the line of the Vietnamese people in the struggle of national salvation, to take part in the resistance against the U.S. aggression, to confirm the justness of our cause,to dedicate to the freedom fighters of Vietnam, living and dead, to strengthen the confidence in the eluctable victory of our people, I direct Pan Am 841 to Hanoi.

I promise myself I shall not hurt any innocent person.

This article was originally published in 2020.

Street Cred: Pháo Đài Láng, Home of Ông Voi and Where the War Began

2025-07-01T10:00:00+07:00

More often than not, a country’s independence is won with guns. The location where the first shots were fired for Vietnam is memorialized to this day.

Tucked at the end of a small alleyway, Pháo đài Láng, or Fort of Láng, is surrounded by houses and apartment buildings. With no venerable battlement, the only structures here are a small memorial hall and a nondescript artillery mount.

The artillery, a 75mm anti-aircraft gun, is set in concrete at the center of a hollow mount where a stone plaque reads: “At 20:03 on December 19, 1946, Pháo đài Láng fired the first shots at the French army in the Hanoi Imperial Citadel, beginning the nationwide Resistance War. This was one of the two guns of the fort back then — a memorial for the ‘Brave Death for the survival of the Fatherland’ spirit of the people of Hanoi.”

The last gun at Pháo đài Láng. Photo by Linh Phạm.

The place that heralded Vietnam’s Resistance War was built by the French in 1940. Upon taking the land from the people of Láng Trung Village (now Láng Thượng, Đống Đa District), they erected the pháo đài to ward off Japanese air attacks. After the August Revolution in 1945, the Việt Minh, or League for the Independence of Vietnam, claimed the fort.

On June 29, 1946, the Pháo đài Láng platoon was formed, led by Nguyễn Ứng Gia. However, they lacked equipment. Though a place meant to specialize in long-range artillery, they did not have a sighting device, binoculars, or even a radio. Gia had to borrow things like a tapeline from a tailor and a compass from a geomancer.

The compass used at the fort. Photo by Linh Phạm.

One day, General Võ Nguyên Giáp came to visit the fort. Lieutenant Gia reported: “Without sighting equipment, we drew a circle on cardboard and marked the degrees. Then we put the cardboard on a map to find firing directions.” General Giáp replied, “Comrades, you must be more creative. When needed, you can lower the barrel and fire directly at the incoming enemies. But always remember to maintain and protect the weapon.”

Between 1945 and 1946, Vietnam and France struggled to redefine their relationship. The former wanted its independence recognized, while the latter wanted to protect its interests in Indochina. Tensions built with events like the Hải Phòng incident, which left 6,000 Vietnamese civilians dead and eventually, all negotiations failed, leading to the inevitable war.

On the morning of December 19, 1946, France's General Morlière issued an ultimatum — the third one within two days — demanding Vietnamese forces disarm and concede Hanoi. The Vietnamese rejected the ultimatum and decided that the time had come for open conflict. That afternoon, the fort received the order: “Tonight, Pháo đài Láng will fire first. Order from above: at 20:00, our forces will bomb the Yên Phụ power plant, lights will go out in the city.”

Caption: Artillery formation in Láng, Hanoi ready to fire on French troops. Photo by Linh Phạm.

In an interview with An Ninh Thủ Đô, Đỗ Văn Đa, a member of the Pháo đài Láng platoon, reminisced about that day when the war began. “I still remember clearly, the afternoon of December 19, 1946, Gia told us, ‘Comrades, have early dinner tonight, afterward, get to your positions and await orders.’ It was a freezing winter night. We, the village boys from outside of Hanoi, more used to planting rice than holding guns, were so nervous. We could not imagine what battle would be like. At 20:03, the city plunged into darkness, Gia commanded: ‘Fire!’ For the first time, I got to hear the furious roar of ông Voi (Mr. Elephant, the gun’s nickname). My ears were numb but I didn’t stop reloading. Three bouts, six rounds, soared away. It was so cold but we sweated like pigs.”

The fort’s target was the French command complex in the Hanoi Imperial Citadel. But without a radio, they didn’t know if their rounds found their mark or not. It wasn’t until noon the next day that reports came in. “We were like kids,” Đa said. “Overwhelmed with joy when the scouts reported that we hit the targets in the citadel. The mothers and sisters bringing us food were also happy.”

“The next night, the French fired at us,” Đa continued. “Shells hit the village, houses were burnt, people died and were wounded. But the supply squad still brought food to the fort. The steaming rice was warm with the love of the people. On December 21, we shot down a plane. Comrade Võ Nguyên Giáp sent a letter of compliment: ‘To praise the spirit of the soldiers at the fort.’ Contributing to the feat of ông Voi are the people of Láng Trung Village, feeding us and maintaining the guns.”

People of Láng Trung supporting Pháo đài Láng, oil on canvas. Photo by Linh Phạm.

The conflict that Mr. Elephant started would become known as the Battle of Hanoi, the opening salvo of the anti-French Resistance War. This battle would also be his last. After 60 days of fighting, the Việt Minh withdrew from the city and prepared for a prolonged war. On January 11, 1947, Đa’s platoon received orders to disable the guns and retreat to Hà Đông.

More than 70 years have passed since those days of smoke and shells. Now, the only things falling on Pháo đài Láng are autumn leaves. Đỗ Đức Thành, the caretaker, tells Saigoneer that sometimes he has to sweep 40 kilograms of leaves a day. And in this time of peace, the fort faces a new kind of foe: poor urban planning. A road construction project is threatening to cut this national historic site in half. Hopefully, ông Voi will be protected this time.

This article was originally published on Urbanist Hanoi in 2020.

Buôn Ma Thuột's Thriving Elephant Culture in 1957

2025-06-23T13:13:23+07:00

In the not-too-distant past, elephants were an important part of highland lifestyles, including use in cultural activities, agriculture.

Before they had achieved their current position of closely guarded endangered creatures, elephants had many roles in Vietnamese society. As glorified by the Trung sisters and Bà Triệu, two hundred years later, they were once important war machines. The Nguyễn lords in Huế even built a large arena to watch them battle tigers to the death. They have also been used for more peaceful, but certainly not stress-free, purposes. As the VND1,000 bill pays homage to, they were instrumental in 20th-century forestry efforts. Meanwhile, hundreds of domesticated elephants tamed from wild populations were adopted into highland communities to assist with agriculture and take part in important cultural activities.

Elephants were used for routine transportation along the dirt roadways.

Seasoned photographer John Dominis (1921 - 2013) documented this later use for LIFE magazine. These photos from 1957 reveal how elephants were an everyday occurrence in an Ê Đê community in Buôn Ma Thuột. Saddled with baskets and chairs, they transported people and materials in the remote village while taking part in celebrations and gatherings. Tended to trainers and accustomed to the rhythms of daily life, they appear little different from domestic cats or dogs.

Elephants grow to great sizes but never outgrow their curiosity.

Economic development, as well as technological, ecological, and societal change, in tandem with evolving understandings of human-animal relations, have all made these scenes one sof the past. But viewing them allows us to more deeply understand the gentle giants that acted as intermediaries between the wild and developing world.

An elephant arriving at a traditional Ê Đê stilt house.

Elephants at work would have been a familiar sight in this village, little different than a buffalo set to plow.

Elephants were enlisted in cultural performances.

The few hundred elephants that remain in Vietnam are now allowed off the roads and out of the chains to stomp around in the forests freely.

[Photos via RedsVN]

A Collection of Scenes in 1964 Saigon, Bến Tre, Biên Hòa on Film

2025-06-19T13:00:00+07:00

In 1964, Saigon’s Phù Đổng Roundabout didn’t feature the towering bronze statue of folk hero Thánh Gióng. Instead of the congestion hot spot the intersection is known as today, it was actually spacious and airy, with nary a shop or bubble tea parlor in sight.

These film shots, taken by American serviceman Chris Newlon Green, are perhaps some of the most well-preserved and –composed images of 1960s Vietnam that we’ve come across: arty night shots with light painting, intimate portraits, and expansive landscapes: Green shows a knack for photography, aided by the roll of film’s incredible colors.

Follow the chronicles of Green’s stay in Vietnam through the photos below:

Phù Đổng Roundabout.

The intersection between Trần Hưng Đạo (right) and Trần Phú (left).

Downtown Saigon from above.

The Đề Thám-Trần Hưng Đạo intersection.

Mekong Delta children.

The holiday home of Madame Trần Lệ Xuân in Bến Tre.

A villa in Bến Tre.

A bird's-eye view of Vũng Tàu.

A Vietnamese lady in Long Hải.

An inter-province bus in the Mekong Delta.

A ferry taking commuters from Mỹ Tho to Bến Tre.

Biên Hòa from above.

A rubber plantation in Biên Hòa.

The central roundabout of Bến Tre.

A railroad bridge in Bến Tre.

Vĩnh Kim Market in Châu Thành, Tiền Giang Province.

Going across towns by boat was and still is a common aspect of life in the Mekong Delta.

[Top photo: Phù Đổng Roundabout at night/Photos vis Redsvn]

Vauban Architecture: The Foundation of Central and Northern Vietnam's Citadels

2025-06-11T15:00:00+07:00

In our previous article on Vietnam’s southern citadels, we covered a mix of ancient structures and those constructed just before the dawn of French colonization of Indochina. In particular, we focused on Gia Định Citadel, a hulking structure that once stood in what would become Saigon’s city center. Undertaking a similar exercise for Vietnam’s central and northern regions is less practical, given the sheer quantity and variety of citadels in those regions. So, for the second part of our citadel series, we instead will focus on a unifying feature across such fortifications — Vauban architecture.

The style is the brainchild of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, a Frenchman described as one of the most prominent and influential military strategists during the reign of Louis XIV. His designs, strategies, and principles remained in use until the early 20^th century. The development of Vauban architecture emerged against the backdrop of the turbulent geo-political and religious strife which engulfed Europe in the 17^th century, which involved major siege warfare. At this point in military history, it was accepted that even the strongest fortifications would eventually fall, so their ultimate function was to absorb the attacker's energy to take the wind out of the larger offensive at hand.

The fortress Neuf-Brisach in France, Vauban's final work and the culmination of his "Third System." Completed in the early 18^th century after Vauban’s death. Photo via Forte Cultura.

With this in mind, Vauban improved upon previous designs by using specific shapes, including pentagonal and hexagonal outer walls and layers in his fortifications. They would sometimes include residential and commercial districts within a fortification’s walls. Therefore, Vauban theory went beyond simply military strategy, architecture and construction, but also extended to civil engineering and economic and social organization.

Fortifications of this style which, per UNESCO, “bears witness to the peak of classic bastioned fortification, typical of western military architecture of modern times.” Some of them endure long after Vauban’s death in 1707. During his prolific career, he personally oversaw the construction of 300 such structures across the globe, from the Americas to what is now Vietnam, where French engineers helped construct such fortifications for the Nguyễn Dynasty.

Pigneau de Béhaine, painted by Maupérin during his 1787 trip to Paris with Crown Prince Cảnh, on display at the Paris Foreign Missions Society. Image via Wikipedia.

According to a research paper by Frederic Mantienne, the influx of European military technology coming in to Vietnam arose out of the need to overpower the Tay Son army after their victory against the Nguyen dynasty in 1773. Four years later, Nguyễn Ánh, the Nguyễn family survivor, became acquainted with a French missionary named Pierre Pigneaux de Béhaine — whose mausoleum was replaced by a roundabout near Tân Sơn Nhất Airport in 1983, better known by the name Lăng Cha Cả — more commonly known in Vietnam through his Vietnamese name Bá Đa Lộc. Bá Đa Lộc became Nguyễn Ánh’s advisor and the individual that persuaded him to seek military support from France, a major reason for Nguyễn Ánh’s rise to power.

Five years after Nguyễn Ánh proclaimed himself king in 1780, Bá Đa Lộc was sent to Pondicherry, in modern India, and then France to lobby for French military assistance for the Nguyễn army. The trip resulted in the Versailles military treaty (Traité de Versailles de 1787) between France and Cochinchina. While the treaty ultimately wasn’t enacted, Bá Đa Lộc managed to create enough French commercial interest to bring ammunition and a number of French naval officers, including two army specialists, to Cochinchina. These specialists were trained in fortification and artillery techniques.

With this new assistance, Nguyễn Ánh, who went by Emperor Gia Long at that point, ordered the first citadel to be built using the Vauban technique — Saigon’s Gia Định. According to Mantienne, French engineer Theodore Le Brun was tasked with the design for the citadel, and Oliver de Puymanel and the king would oversee the construction.

The second and last citadel with French involvement in Vietnam was Diên Khánh, located in Khánh Hòa Province near Nha Trang, which was built in 1793 after Nguyễn A!nh succeeded in leading a campaign there against the Tây Sơn. It was constructed under the command of Bá Đa Lộc, Puymanel and Gia Long’s eldest son, Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh.

Portraits of Gia Long. Images via Disan Vietnam.

The Diên Khánh Citadel witnessed many battles between the Nguyễn army and the Tây Sơn. One of particular importance is a 1795 attack on the citadel led by Tây Sơn General Trần Quang Diệu. The Tây Sơn army managed to win the battle, however, they could not take the citadel. In this way, Diên Khánh proved to the Nguyen leaders the effectiveness of Vauban fortifications in their tactics.

Left: Diên Khánh citadel plans. Image via Wikipedia. Right: Present-day Diên Khánh Citadel in Khánh Hòa Province. Image via Google Maps.

French scholarship points to Oliver de Puymanel as the mastermind behind the Diên Khánh Citadel, and that it was Le Brun and Puymandel who also designed and built the Saigon citadel. However, Vietnamese intellectuals continue to debate Puymanel’s roles in the construction. Some, such as critic and journalist Thụy Khuê, in her collection of research essays, suggests that French colonial scholars might have exaggerated the two Frenchmen’s importance in the construction thanks to a reliance on flimsy sources. The inflated claims were published in Vietnamese texts as facts and became a myth.

Regardless of whether it was via direct or indirect transfer of French technologies, there is no denying that the Vauban style made its way into the design of fortifications in Vietnam and continued to exist and influenced fortifications under Gia Long, Minh Mạng and Thiệu Trị.

The third citadel that has Vauban influence after Diên Khánh was the famous Huế imperial city, which was built in 1802 when Gia Long (Nguyễn Ánh) moved the capital to Huế. From 1802 until 1844, 32 new citadels with a design resembling Vauban architecture were built in Vietnam, their placement and location obeying feng shui principles. Some also featured details reflecting traditional Vietnamese architecture elements.

Under the rule of the Gia Long emperors, many citadels were polygonal, with a few exceptions. In the north, Bắc Ninh Citadel was the first fortification to be built with a hexagonal shape. The citadel was built in 1805 under Gia Long using soil. Under the sixth Minh Mạng ruler, the citadel was rebuilt using laterite (a metal-rich clay), and in 1841 under Emperor Thiệu Trị, the fortification was rebuilt again with bricks.

Left: Turcos and fusiliers-marins at Bắc Ninh, 12 March 1884. Image via Wikipedia. Right: Present-day Bắc Ninh Citadel. Image via Google Maps.

The Hạc Thành Citadel, or Thọ Hạc, is another example of a hexagonal citadel. It was built in 1804 and marks the birth of Thanh Hóa Province as the geographical area as we know today.

Right: Hạc Thành Citadel seen on a French 1909 map. Image via Wikipedia. Left: Present-day Hạc Thành Citadel. Image via Google Maps.

In his paper, Mantienne mentioned that pentagonal citadels, a hallmark of the Vauban style, also appeared during Gia Long’s rule, including ones built in Quảng Ngãi and Hải Dương in 1807. However it’s unclear if this is indeed true, as the remaining outline of the Quảng Ngãi Citadel today has a square form with eight protruding corners. As for the citadel in Hải Dương, Vietnamese sources suggest it had a hexagonal shape instead. While the citadel in Hải Dương was left in ruin by French colonialists and the Second Indochina War, a search on Google Maps reveals its remaining outline.

Left: Present-day Quảng Ngãi Citadel. Image via Google Maps. Right: Present-day Hải Dương Citadel. Image via Google Maps.

Citadels built under Minh Mạng emperors no longer saw an abundance of polygonal shapes. Instead, square or rectangular forts were used more often. While this may seem like a simplification of the design of earlier citadels due to lack of French assistance, Mantienne and Cong Phuong Khuong argue that these citadels followed some of the latest fortification innovations in Europe at the time.

An example of a citadel that exemplifies Minh Mạng-era fortifications is the Đồng Hới Citadel, which comes in a generic quadrangle shape with an additional four corners, each sticking out from the center of each side. The citadel was originally built by Emperor Gia Long using soil in 1812. However, in 1824, under the reign of Minh Mạng, the citadel was redesigned and rebuilt using bricks. It is located in Đồng Hới, Quảng Bình Province.

Present-day Đồng Hới Citadel. Image via Google Maps.

Another example of a citadel that underwent reconstruction during the Minh Mạng era is the old Quảng Trị Citadel, located in Quảng Trị Province. It was first constructed in 1809 with soil and rebuilt using bricks in 1837. Square in shape, with four bastions extending from four corners, the citadel shape is more similar to some inner layers of Vauban structures in France, such as the fort of Saint-Martin-de-Ré built by Vauban himself in 1681. Under French colonial rule, a prison, along with other buildings, were erected inside the citadel (seen in map below). Today, the citadel is known as a “cemetery without headstones,” due to the death toll during a 1972 battle that occurred there.

Left: Quảng Trị Citadel seen on a 1889 French map. Right: Present-day Quảng Trị Citadel. Image via Google Maps.

New citadels built under Minh Mạng existed too, such as the Sơn Tây Citadel. Its square shape, with four round protrusions on four sides, differs slightly from others. It was one of the earliest built after Minh Mạng became emperor in 1820. Erected in 1822 with laterite and located in Sơn Tây, 40 kilometers outside of Hanoi, the structure is currently known for its octagonal 18-meter high flag post, which also doubles as an observation center. On the top of the post, a transmitter was installed for emergency communication.

Left: Sơn Tây Citadel seen on an old British map. Right: Present-day Sơn Tây Citadel. Image via Google Maps.

While Gia Long and Minh Mạng hold an impressive Vauban fortification portfolio, only one citadel is credited to Emperor Thiệu Trị, perhaps because of his relatively short reign of just six years, from 1841 to 1847. This is compared to Gia Long’s 18 years of rule (1802–1820) and Minh Mạng’s 21-year rule (1820–1840). The citadel in question is located in Tuyên Quang Province. Though not originally built under Thiệu Trị, the emperor conducted a massive reconstruction of the structure, which was first erected during the Mạc dynasty in the late 16^th century with a square shape.

Thiệu Trị was also involved in another large reconstruction project at Điện Hải Citadel in Đà Nẵng. According to historian Tim Doling, it was first built by Gia Long as a fortress. The Vauban architectural elements spotted in the remains of the citadel today are courtesy of Thiệu Trị’s reconstruction in 1847, which is also the year that he died.

Left: The current entrance to Điện Hải Citadel. Photo via People's Army Newspaper. Right: Present-day Điện Hải Citadel. Image via Google Maps.

A deeper understanding of these structures, some of which have faded from view, and others prominent symbols of Vietnam’s heritage, gives one a deeper appreciation of their roles in the country’s history. They also show that many of humanity’s best ideas often migrate, across constructs including borders and time, like humans themselves.

Read the first part of Unearthed, our series on Vietnam's past citadels here.

Unearthed: Tracing the Past Citadels of Southern Vietnam

2025-06-03T13:00:00+07:00

Although the forces of modernization encourage constant progress and leaving behind the pre-modern past, the trails of yesterday never fail to leave our presence.

Old citadels in southern Vietnam are a testament to the above remark. Unlike their northern and central counterparts, which are preserved as heritage sites, citadels built in southern Vietnam no longer have their total physical presence seen and felt by most residents living near them. However, their remnants are still somehow present: the area where the Gia Định Citadel once stood now forms Saigon’s center and encloses government buildings representing the centralization of power; the remainders of a citadel wall in Biên Hòa can still be spotted; and the round vestiges of ancient lives in Bình Phước Province yearn to be studied and explored.

Saigon Citadels

Lũy Bán Bích

Before Saigon had a true fortress or citadel, a city wall called Lũy Bán Bích was erected by the Nguyễn Dynasty general Nguyễn Cửu Đàm to ward off Siamese invasions in 1772, when the city carried the name Gia Định. Though, like much of Saigon’s feudal fabric, no physical remnants of the wall exist, it did help to inform the trajectory of Lý Chính Thắng and Trần Quang Khải streets. The name Lũy Bán Bích is also used for a street in modern Tân Phú District.

The Lũy Bán Bích wall (red line). The map was drawn by Trần Văn Học in 1815 and republished in a 1987 geography book on Saigon. Photo via Wikipedia.

Gia Định Citadel

Saigon’s first true citadel was constructed by 30,000 laborers under the auspices of Nguyễn Phúc Ánh with French technical support in 1790. Meant to act as a temporary royal capital during the Tây Sơn rebellion, the polyhedron-shaped citadel was made of Biên Hòa granite. The fortification — which sat in the middle of today's Lê Thánh Tôn, Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa, Nguyễn Đình Chiểu and Đinh Tiên Hoàng streets — featured five-meter-tall walls and a deep moat, with its main entrance located at the intersection of modern-day Đồng Khởi and Lý Tự Trọng streets.

The citadel had royal housing, military support structures and medical facilities; it acted as an interchange for the Thiên Lý road, which linked the city to the Mekong Delta, Huế and Hanoi.

Following the Nguyễn Lord's victory over Tây Sơn rebels, the capital was moved back to Huế, and Gia Định was officially downgraded to a provincial capital. In addition, following a separatist uprisings in the south which occurred in 1832–1835, the grand Gia Định citadel was demolished and replaced by a smaller “Phoenix Citadel” (thành Phụng) constructed in 1837 in the area now bound by Nguyễn Đình Chiểu, Nguyễn Du, Mạc Đĩnh Chi and Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm streets in Vauban style, similar to its predecessor.

The outlines of the Gia Định (in red) and Phoenix (in blue) citadels superimposed over a map of colonial Saigon. Photo via Flickr user manhhai.

The Phoenix Citadel’s lifespan was a short 22 years, as French forces razed the structure in 1859 and replaced it with a military compound (Caserne de l’infanterie), though the area retained its “citadelle” moniker through the colonial period.

French forces attack the Phoenix Citadel. Photo via Wikipedia.

This military complex served as a barracks until 1945, when, under Japanese control, it was used to intern French officers. Following independence from France, the compound was again a historical focal point during the 1963 coup against Ngô Đình Diệm and suffered extensive damage.

The site was then redeveloped with educational and telecommunications facilities and today is occupied by the Hồ Chí Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities and the headquarter of local TV network HCMC Television (HTV).

Today, all that ties the location to the long line of citadels and military facilities are the two colonial buildings that stand where the Gia Định citadel’s main gate was.

Gates of the Caserne de l’infanterie seen in the colonial period. The buildings to the left and right are still standing today at the intersection of Lê Duẩn and Đinh Tiên Hoàng streets. Photo via Flickr user manhhai.

Photo by Brandon Coleman.

Biên Hòa Citadel

While Saigon’s citadel might be the most well-known, the Biên Hòa Citadel, also known as the Kèn Citadel or Cựu Citadel, is believed to be the oldest fortress in southern Vietnam. In his work on the history of the area, Biên Hòa Sử Lược, Lê Văn Lương mentions that the citadel was first built by the Chenla Empire during the 15^th and 16^th centuries using soil.

Under the 15^th Minh Mạng ruler in 1834, the citadel was reconstructed by 1,000 laborers who were paid in money and rice for their work, according to the verified records of the Nguyễn Dynasty, Đại Nam Thực Lục. Three years later, under the 18^th Minh Mạng ruler, the citadel was renovated using laterite as the main construction material. The citadel had four gates and a flag post and covered an area of 18 hectares, making it the second-largest citadel in southern Vietnam after Gia Định.

An old map illustrating the Biên Hòa Citadel. Photo via Thanh Niên.

The citadel would have retained its original scale if not for the infamous French capture of Biên Hòa, a battle that was part of the Cochinchina Campaign which brought French colonialism to the country. In December 1861, allied French and Spanish troops led by Louis-Adolphe Bonard and Diego Domenech captured Bien Hoa and seized the citadel. The French destroyed most of the structure, and only an eighth of it remained. The east side of the fort was re-purposed for new residential areas, military camps, hospitals and mansions preserved for high-level French officials and military personnel.

Biên Hòa being captured by the French and the Spanish. Painting via Flickr user manhhai.

The only remnants of the Biên Hòa Citadel today are part of the wall made of laterite, two French colonial buildings and several blockhouses located inside the area at 129 Phan Chu Trinh, Quang Vinh Ward. The wall is up to three meter in height. Lê Văn Lương notes that before 1940, two cannons were buried under the main gate. However, when the Japanese captured the area, they were dug up and relocated.

In 2014, the citadel's remnants were renovated by the Biên Hòa Central Fine Arts Company.

Bình Phước’s Round “Citadels”

While most of the fortresses and citadels in southern Vietnam were constructed during the Nguyễn Dynasty, following Vaubanesque military architecture, the mysterious thành tròn in Bình Phước are a different story.

Also known as circular earthworks in archaeology papers, each citadel typically has a diameter of about 200 meters, while larger ones can reach 330 meters. Many of these earthworks have been discovered by archaeologists in Bình Phước and Tây Ninh provinces in Vietnam, and Kampong Cham in Cambodia.

The existence of these round citadels was first mentioned in writing in 1930 in a volume of the Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. The text mentions the discovery of two earthworks that the author called forteresses moï, or mọi fortress (mọi is a derogatory term to refer to people living in the highlands and Khmer people), in two areas of Quản Lợi and Lộc Ninh, which housed two huge rubber plantations in Bình Phước at the time. According to Nguyễn Khải Quỳnh, by 1959, another 11 sites were discovered by Louis Malleret, a French archaeologist at the French School of The Far East. More sites were discovered and studied by Vietnamese archaeologists after 1975, while the ones in Cambodia also received attention in the country.

A typical thành tròn has two walls with the same center, separated by a ditch. However, others only have either one outer wall or inner wall. Underneath the inner platform of these sites, stone tools, weapons and ceramics were found.

A 3D image of the Hourn Khim circular earthwork in Cambodia. Photo via Memot Center for Archeology.

Archaeologists have yet to reach a conclusion on the function of these circular earthworks. The existence of artifacts in the inner platform indicates they might have been a habitation area of an ancient community. However, no artifacts have been found in the ditches of these thành tròn. Some have argued that the ditches were used as a water reservoir, but this theory doesn't make sense to some, as red soil is very permeable. Some argue that besides habitation, the sites could have also provided protection against enemies and wild animals, although some of the ditches are not deep enough to serve as a moat. Another theory is that the ditches served as a place to keep animals.

The outline of some identified circular earthwork sites in Bình Phước can be spotted via Google Maps below:

Long Hà Circular Earthwork 3.

Lộc Ninh Circular Earthwork.

Read the second part of Unearthed, our series on Vietnam's past citadels here.

10 Rare Illustrations Offer Glimpses Into Life in Tonkin in 1923

2025-05-29T14:00:00+07:00

What’s your typical Sunday routine? If your answer includes grabbing some noodles on the street, getting your earwax removed and mustache shaved, and maybe smoking some opium to take the edge off, congratulations, you might be living in 1923 Tonkin.

This collection of 10 colored sketches, whose author remains unknown, is titled “10 peintures annamites représentant les métiers au Tonkin, don 1923” (10 Annam paintings representing trades in Tonkin, donated in 1923). Digitized in 2019 by Gallica, the digital archive of the National Library of France, the illustrations depict a range of activities and careers of northern Vietnamese living in the early 20th century under French colonization.

From a jeweler, a barber to two female cobblers hard at work, it seems that grooming and fashion remain a timeless concern for Vietnamese in any century. Scenes of carpenters and farmers also showcase a number of traditional working methods that predate today’s mechanized work conditions — just people hard at work, not a smartphone in sight! Curiously, the author decided to include two opium smokers in languid poses as a demonstration of a “traditional trade.”

Have a closer look at the illustrations below:

Two jewelers hammering away.

Earwax removal was popular even 100 years ago.

Ploughing the field.

Irrigating the rice field.

A servant milling rice.

Cobblers making shoe soles.

Smoking opium.

Carpentry.

Tirailleurs (lính tập) having lunch. They are local militants organized by the colonial government.

Facial hair shaving.

[Images via RedsVN/Gallica]

Revisit 1990s Saigon in 'L’Amant,' the Film Adaptation of Marguerite Duras' Famous Novel

2025-05-20T10:00:00+07:00

When filming the movie adaptation of Marguerite Duras’ 1984 autobiographical novel The Lover, French director Jean-Jacques Annaud made extensive use of Saigon locations. Here’s a run-down of the local landmarks to watch out for when you view the movie.

Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1992 film of Marguerite Duras’ Prix Goncourt-winning novel L’Amant (The Lover) was one of the first western films to be shot in Vietnam after reunification.

Based on Duras’ own experiences as a teenager in French Cochinchina, it depicted a forbidden interracial romance between a 15-year-old French girl (played by British actress Jane March) and a 32-year-old Chinese businessman (played by Hong Kong actor Tony Leung). Neither main character is named, and is only known as “The Young Girl” and “The Man.” The film featured narration by Jeanne Moreau and a haunting César Award-winning score by Gabriel Yared, but, despite its impressive performance at the box office, it garnered mixed reviews from the critics.

The Lover film poster.

Unlike Régis Wargnier’s 1992 film Indochine, which used Butterworth in Malaysia as a substitute for Saigon, The Lover made extensive use of historic locations in and around Hồ Chí Minh City, Sa Đéc and Vĩnh Long. A Paris studio was used to film most of the interior shots.

The Mekong Delta's bustling riverine life.

The Mekong Delta sequences all used locations which, at the time of filming, had changed little since the colonial era. These include the opening scene in which the girl meets the man on a ferry, the École de Sa Đéc and “the horror of the Sa Đéc house” where she lives with her dysfunctional family.

Those sequences filmed in Saigon also made extensive use of its then still relatively abundant colonial heritage, affording fascinating glimpses of parts of the city which have since been completely redeveloped.

Most of these bridges have been demolished.

One early sequence follows the man’s car as it makes its way toward Saigon, passing rows of old colonial shophouses near the Xóm Chỉ Bridge over the Arroyo Chinois (Tàu Hủ-Bến Nghé Creek) in Chợ Lớn. The bridge and most of the shophouses in this area have long since disappeared.

The bandstand installed at the Tôn Đức Thắng-Nguyễn Huệ junction.

As the car enters Saigon, we’re treated to several views of the river port, where the filmmakers even went to the trouble of installing a bandstand in the middle of the junction where Nguyễn Huệ Boulevard meets the waterfront.

To represent the exterior of the Pensionnat Lyautey, the boarding house where the girl stays while studying in Saigon, Annaud chose the former St. Paul’s Convent building on the corner of Tôn Đức Thắng and Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh Streets.

This particular building was taken over by the government after 1975 and has functioned ever since as the Nursery School Teacher Training Faculty of Saigon University. The film also treats us to several shots of a leafy and peaceful Tôn Đức Thắng Street outside the Pensionnat, then still lined with colonial buildings and a world away from the busy traffic artery of today.

The former St. Paul’s Convent building on the corner of Tôn Đức Thắng and Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh streets was used as the Pensionnat Lyautey.

Marguerite Duras herself studied at the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat (now the Lê Quý Đôn Secondary School at 110 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai in District 1), and on several occasions the film shows the girl entering and leaving a colonial school compound marked Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat.

However, if you look closely you’ll see that the compound filmed by Annaud was not the Lê Quý Đôn Secondary School, but rather the former Lycée Pétrus Ký, the only work in the city by urbanist Ernest Hébrard and now the Lê Hồng Phong High School for the Gifted at 235 Nguyễn Văn Cừ in District 5.

The former Lycée Pétrus Ký was used instead of the former Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat.

For a subsequent shot in which the car heads out to Chợ Lớn, Annaud set up a cafe next to the great banyan tree in Lý Tự Trọng Park, opposite the former Lieutenant Governor’s Palace (now the HCMC Museum).

This sets the scene as the car passes — traveling the wrong way along a one-way street!

A café was set up in Bách Tùng Diệp Park, opposite the former Lieutenant Governor’s Palace.

On the way to Chợ Lớn, the car takes something of a detour, crossing one of the six bridges which once spanned the former Canal Bonard before depositing the couple at the Chinaman’s garçonnière (bachelor pad).

The exterior of the garçonnière itself was represented in the film by 7 Phú Định in District 5 while, needless to say, the X-rated interior shots were all filmed in France.

Annaud also filmed his restaurant exteriors in Chợ Lớn, selecting the two blocks between Phạm Đôn and Phan Phú Tiên Streets which Joseph L. Mankiewicz had used 34 years earlier for crowd sequences in his much-maligned 1958 version of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.

The man later goes to see his father in an unsuccessful attempt to be released from his arranged marriage to a Chinese heiress, so that he can be with the girl.

The Dương family residence in Cần Thơ stood in for the real family home of Duras’ “North China Lover” in Sa Đéc. Photo via Thanh Niên.

At the time of filming, the former family house of Duras’ real “North China Lover” Léo Huỳnh Thủy Lê, located at 255A Nguyễn Huệ in Sa Đéc, had been transformed into a government office and could not be used for filming. After scouring the area for a suitable location, Annaud chose instead the old Dương family house at 26/1A Bùi Hữu Nghĩa in Cần Thơ.

The 1920 ocean liner called the Alexandre Dumas.

Toward the end of the film, we see the departure by ship of the girl’s troubled elder brother and subsequently of the girl herself. Annaud arranged for a 1920 ocean liner called the Alexandre Dumas to be brought from Cyprus to film these two key sequences, which both feature panoramic views of the old Messageries Maritimes port area.

A rare panoramic view of the Bạch Đằng Wharf.

Like the 1958 version of The Quiet American, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1992 film of The Lover affords us a fascinating glimpse of Saigon before its transformation in the 1990s.

Vibrant Watercolor Paintings Take Us Back to Northern Vietnam in 1890

2025-05-13T12:00:00+07:00

Way before colored photography appeared, generations of our ancestors had to rely on the finesse of painters to create visuals records of their everyday routines. This collection of watercolor paintings from the 1890s is a particularly vivid example of that, depicting lively scenes of Vietnam two centuries ago that are full of humor and personality.

The illustrations below are part of a set of 21 watercolor paintings on paper listed by British art broker Sotheby’s. Little is known about the album’s origins and author, save for the number “1890” which can be found on the back side of one painting. Some of the artworks belong to different museums and private collectors.

Each of the artwork portrays a daily scene in late 19th-century Nam Định, shortly after the French started colonizing Vietnam. The use of color is playful, especially in details like the patterns on the back of lion dancers or ceremonial flags. While the author is unknown, viewers can see their tongue-in-cheek humor in sketching out the scenes, like how one fisherman is shown with a fallen loincloth and has to cover his private parts.

Have a closer look at the illustrations below:

A procession accompanying a mandarin, who's being carried in the palanquin.

A ceremonial procession during a festive parade.

A group of lion dance performers on the way to perform.

A local monk leads a family through important rituals.

A groom (under the umbrella shade) and his family on the way to his bride-to-be's homestead for the dạm ngõ ritual.

Young men and women catch fish using different traditional tools.

Village men catch fish using dậm, a traditional crescent-shaped basket. One of them lost his loincloth and is trying desperately to cover himself.

A rudimentary tea stand at the village entrance.

A busy morning market in session.

A rickshaw driver relieves himself after gettting a noblewoman to her destination.

At a lumber mill.

[Images via RedsVN/Sotheby’s]

From North to South: Memories of 1990s Vietnam via the Lens of a French Photographer

2025-05-05T14:40:13+07:00

What do you miss most about the 1990s?

Just barely a decade after opening its market to the world, Vietnam in the 1990s was still riddled with hardships and scarcity, but there was much hope from everyone about a brighter future. Vietnam joined the ASEAN block in 1995; the first KFC in the country opened in Saigon in 1997; and South Korean TV series brought in the first inklings of Hallyu in the same decade as well.

French photographer Michel Troncy captured some glimpses of Vietnam during his 1990s visit, from north to south, presenting a collage of multifaceted local cultures. Nature and ethnic minority members, urban street styles, and wildlife captures — these handfuls of shots showcase a diverse Vietnam full of life and intrigue.

Have a look below:

Mê Linh Square in Saigon from across the Saigon River.

A H'Mông family in Hà Giang.

Plucking silver hair on the sidewalk.

Freshly baked bánh mì in Chợ Lớn.

Traveling by xích lô in Hanoi.

Captive wild animals in a market in Phụng Hiệp, Cần Thơ.

Jars of snake wine in Cần Thơ.

Young Mekong men at a neighborhood cock fight.

Saigon high school students going to school by bike.

After a full harvest day.

A traditional junk in Hạ Long Bay.

A Dao woman weaves dividers out of bamboo strips.

Selling nón lá in Điện Biên, Lai Châu Province.

A woman from the Dao ethnic minority.

[Photos by Michel Troncy via Reds VN/Getty Images]