What does luxury travel mean? The center of countless hospitality conference panels, LinkedIn posts, and marketing pitch decks, this question will elicit different answers depending on who is asked. Exclusivity, indulgent comforts, unique experiences, and dedicated service surely play a part, but a visit to Banyan Tree Lăng Cô, recent recipient of Two Michelin Keys,  reveals that no matter one’s definition, true luxury travel requires an emotional connection.

Banyan Tree Lăng Cô’s collection of private villas overlooks the golden sands of a pristine private beach halfway between Huế and Đà Nẵng. The resort’s name is deceptive, however, as it’s technically located in Cảnh Dương. Lăng Cô, the small town a few kilometers away, provides the name simply because more people are familiar with it. Now associated with delicious oysters enjoyed while traveling along the coast, in 1919, Emperor Khải Định built a summer palace there thanks to its extreme serenity. The residence, unfortunately, burned down, but a remaining piece of it still contains his poem which concludes: “Looking towards the mountain, one sees strange clouds rising from cliffs, like fairies dancing in the mountains; looking down at the water, the clear wind drives the waves like thousands of returning horses. Only then does one stop the carriage and look around, blissfully look around, the fresh air, the gentle wind, the cheerful scenery, the beautiful things. After a long time spent admiring, one suddenly feels cool all over, the heat disappears, the heart feels joyful, and the scene stirs emotions.”

When gazing across the clear waters, blessed by a breeze hushed in from the nearby forests, the magical imagery of his lines makes perfect sense. 

Before Banyan Tree Lăng Cô opened 12 years ago, there wasn’t a reasonable way to reach it. The Banyan Tree Group’s decision to enter Vietnam necessitated the construction of the area’s first main road. This road, along with the resort itself, transformed life in the surrounding villages. New education and employment opportunities are now possible, so children can dream of futures that don’t involve fish nets and rice fields. Supply chains, connected economies, and infrastructure connect locals with the outside world. The drongos, bee-eaters, and sunbirds that flitter in the mountain trees inspire people from around the globe, while a sense of pride flourishes among the families that call the area home.

Design Inspired by Vietnam

This impact on the surrounding community is not the first thing you will notice when arriving at the resort, however. Rather, your eyes will be drawn to its sheer beauty and meticulous design. Majestic, forest-covered mountains tumble gracefully towards a picturesque blue sea. Scattered like precious seeds, the resort’s villas rest in this space where cliff meets coast. 

Large metallic lotus leaves and flowers greet you at the resort's entrance, with lotus blossoms gracing the handrails of the imposing entrance steps that usher you inside. It’s a fitting introduction to a motif that weaves itself through the entirety of your stay. Lotus appear in lacquer paintings in each room, lotus leaves wrap local dishes in the restaurants, and the spa uses lotus-scented Clarity oil, lotus flower baths, and lotus seeds. The resort draws from a wide array of historical elements to create its elegant aesthetic, including the large ceramic urns once used for storing rice, placed prominently on shelves in Thu Quan lounge. Meanwhile, the square and circular centers of ancient coins appear in light fixtures, windows, and wall accents.

The Lagoon Pool Villas exemplify how design creates a holistic experience that is inspired by, but not limited to, Vietnamese culture and style. Each private space is fully surrounded by vegetation with a pool overlooking a calm lotus pond. The open terrace with garden reminds one of a cozy Vietnamese home where adults lounge on backyard furniture as children run and play in the grass. While the high ceilings with slow-looping bamboo fans and wooden furniture maintain local aesthetics, the enormous windows that fill the rooms with light and fresh air noticeably do not. Guests can therefore appreciate the Vietnamese elements, whether they are sources of nostalgia or novelty, while still soaking up the full possibilities of premier, global quality. 

The Importance of Expertise

Adherence to local knowledge rests at the core of Banyan Tree Lăng Cô’s culinary offerings as well. The resort’s Vietnamese restaurant is unsurprisingly led by a Vietnamese head-chef, and áo dài-clad servers bring dishes that are faithful to Central cooking with some elevated details, such as bánh bèo served in oyster shells. An understanding that locals know best extends to Azura, a Mediterranean restaurant helmed by an Italian chef, and Saffron, the premier Thai restaurant, which is top-rated by the ThaiSelect Program for authenticity. 

A determined belief that expertise underpins luxury informs Banyan Tree Lăng Cô’s wellness services. All therapists at the spa graduate from the Banyan Spa & Wellbeing Academy, meaning they’ve had 650 hours of training before they see a single guest. They supplement this mastery with uniquely local ingredients, including lotus seeds, sugar, and red beans for their signature treatment. The standalone spa treatment villas embody the resort’s commitment to profound privacy that is also found in the Beachfront Villas, which make use of thoughtfully arranged hills and vegetation in such a way as to not be visible by any other guests while still offering unobstructed views of the ocean. Meanwhile, the Hill Pool Villas provide stunning overlooks of the sunrise over the ocean, complemented by fishing boats. 

The Power of Pride

The spa therapists, wait staff, reception team, and buggy drivers you meet at Banyan Tree Lăng Cô will be kind and helpful because they’ve been well-trained, but it's deeper than that. More than 90% of the resort’s employees are from the surrounding small villages, and the resort’s existence has provided their families with opportunities while ushering in positive, community-wide changes that they are proud to be contributing to. Whether these employees are introducing foreigners to Vietnamese culture or sharing the standards the nation’s hospitality industry can reach with a fellow-Vietnamese, there is an overwhelming sense of pride that fills the resort. Banyan Tree professes to open resorts in places with a reason that is more than making a profit. This sense of purpose is most obvious when observing staff members smiling and laughing amongst themselves as they wait for you to get in the buggy, or when a server shares an off-menu coffee drink simply because it is her favorite and she is excited to share it with as many people as she can. Being around people who are not just happy to have their jobs but proud of what the company represents is truly a luxury. 

Of course, being proud of something necessitates treating it well. Banyan Tree Lăng Cô is committed to preserving the area and the unique nature and traditions that make it so noteworthy in the first place. This is achieved via small but meaningful details, such as Banyan Tree Gallery’s sale of Bao La products, which helps preserve a community’s centuries-old tradition of bamboo knitting and items produced by the Tòhe social enterprise, with 100% of profits supporting underprivileged local individuals. Significantly, the Stay of Good program involves visits to the local fishing village to support children learning English and the elderly in need of care and attention. 

Participants in the English for Fun activity. Photo courtesy of Banyan Tree Lăng Cô.

No one wants to feel guilty after a vacation, to think our presence came at an intrinsic cost to the surrounding communities and ecosystems we enjoyed. We want to believe that by visiting, we not only embraced the area’s unique natural beauty and cultural heritage, but in doing so, helped ensure that its special charms will remain relatively the same for decades to come. Banyan Tree Lăng Cô makes this possible. 

I recently took a trip to Vũng Tàu after a long summer of cultural research, which had me traveling up and down Vietnam. It had been seven years since I’d been back to the homeland, and 19 since I’d last seen the beaches of Vũng Tàu, when I was only 16. It felt like returning to a high school crush, and it made me think of the words of Trần Thiện Thanh, who once wrote, “Nhớ lúc xa xưa mười sáu trăng tròn…” I won’t say I wasn’t looking for something familiar, poetic, and possibly even as sappy.

In some way, I was just looking to check in and take in as many of the sights as possible, but I also wanted to reconnect with a place from my teenage years.

The coastline in 1970. Photo by Barry Connors.

Going to Vũng Tàu felt like easing back into a friendship from youth, when sunburns and salted skin were prerequisites to self-discovery. I was chasing what so many seek when they make that two- or three-hour journey from Saigon: the gentle caress of the sea air, wading in warm waters, and grilled seafood among good company. It was a quick four-day escape. In the back of my mind lingered writing projects that needed attention, in what was an otherwise never-ending summer. There were a few things I craved: bánh khọt, ốc hấp sả, and a bánh bao by the beach. You can find them in Saigon, of course, but this wasn’t Saigon. This was Vũng Tàu, and here even cravings taste different, seasoned by a place seemingly unchanged.

From a tiny fishing village to an industrial hub

Vũng Tàu's history, like its flavors, lingers. Once a fishing ground for Chăm and later Kinh peoples, the coastline was notorious in the late 18^th century for piracy, until Nguyễn forces expelled them. Once pacified, the court renamed the area Tam Thắng (“Three Victories”) and encouraged settlement. As elsewhere in the south, Chinese (người Hoa) migrants, particularly Cantonese and Hainanese, arrived as traders and artisans, weaving their livelihoods into the fabric of local commerce.

Bãi Trước in the early 20^th century. Photo via Báo Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu.

For most of this early history, the town’s population lived off fishing and farming. But the outpost quickly turned into a French port and a place of immigration, with Vietnamese Christians arriving from the north. In 1929, the now-baptized Cap Saint Jacques, became a province; and, in 1934, a proper city.

After the Geneva Accords in 1954, waves of northern Vietnamese, many of whom were Catholic, resettled in southern provinces, including Vũng Tàu. At this point, the city also became a hub for the Republic of Vietnam Navy and oil-related industries, drawing internal migrants, and served as a crucial logistical and air base for allied western forces. It was also a quick getaway for Vietnamese and American GIs, as well as locals, seeking the ocean breeze.

After 1975, the city’s gaze shifted out to sea. Petrovietnam made its home here, and in 1981, the joint venture Vietsovpetro brought in thousands of Soviet engineers, Russian and Ukrainian families who built rigs and drilling platforms that glimmered on the horizon like floating cities. Their presence left its mark in apartment blocks, in vodka sold alongside local beer, and in what locals still call the “Russian village.” A Soviet past folded into a Vietnamese beach town, layered over centuries of arrivals and departures, entrances and escapes.

A busy market in Vũng Tàu, 1970. Photo by Barry Connor.

What beauty and wonder there is in being this paradox: a place that is both entrance and escape. Once a port of leisure and wartime retreat, and later a point of departure across the sea for those in search of another life, Vũng Tàu remains open-ended, its shoreline always facing elsewhere. 

And yet, for all this history, the city still feels like a small beach town. The 32-meter-high Jesus statue on Núi Nhỏ, arms wide open, makes it Vietnam’s own Rio de Janeiro. But unlike more international hubs like Đà Nẵng, the fabric of Vũng Tàu has remained largely intact. Luxury hotels exist, yes, but the town’s rhythm, the slow, unhurried pulse of a seaside community, still holds its ground.

A city clinging to contradictions

Beginning in the late 1990s, Đà Nẵng, which at the time was still a sleepy beach city, pursued a grand project of reinvention and modernization, fueled in part by World Bank support. The city recast itself as a hub for tourism, trade, logistics, tech outsourcing, education, and manufacturing. Its ambitions to become another Miami or Barcelona are plain to anyone who visits: the deep-sea ports, the gleaming international airport, the wide boulevards all signal a city with its eyes fixed firmly on the future.

A fishery on the outskirts of Vũng Tàu, 1960s. Photo by Terry Maher.

Vũng Tàu, by contrast, seems uninterested in such reinvention. It clings to its contradictions — industrial yet intimate, layered with history yet resistant to an expected pageantry. And I admit, without shame, that I prefer it this way. Like a one-time lover unwilling to change for anyone, I envy its ability to stay firm in its vision.

Each year, Vũng Tàu receives upwards of 6 million visitors, but very few are international. Only around three million stay overnight. A handful are foreigners venturing out from Saigon, but the majority are domestic travelers from nearby provinces, especially the Mekong Delta.

A regional coach would be the most common way for residents of Saigon and the Mekong Delta to reach the city in the 1960s. Photo by Terry Maher.

This stands in stark contrast to Đà Nẵng, which attracted 10.9 million visitors in 2024, including 4.1 million international. Khánh Hòa Province, home to Nha Trang, welcomed 10.8 million, with 4.7 million international.

By these measures, Vũng Tàu, despite its crowds during high season, still feels like a vacation town for Vietnamese people. Its history plays into this. Though a naval hub and port, it was never developed into an international resort. Instead, it remained regional, tied to Saigonese and Delta memories of summer days by the sea.

A search for affection

I wasn’t sure what I expected from this return. Some 19 years had passed, and in a country so eager for its future, that span can feel like a lifetime. I wanted to understand what Vũng Tàu had become, the way one tries to meet an old friend, or a past crush, again, aware their life has carried on without you, but hoping to see them clearly in the present.

The older city center is on Bãi Trước (Front Beach), lying between Núi Lớn (Big Mountain) and Núi Nhỏ (Small Mountain). It was here the French built Villa Blanche (Bạch Dinh) between 1898 and 1902, as a retreat for colonial governors and Vietnamese royalty.

Bạch Dinh in the 1960s. Photo by Terry Maher.

But as much as I love history, that wasn’t where I stayed. I chose Bãi Sau (Back Beach), known for its leisure vibes, to find a little more isolation and focus on my writing. Though it was still calm, development was clearly underway, cranes and trucks reshaping the beachfront into another Instagrammable stretch. Even so, scattered across the map were heritage buildings, overgrown with vines and flowers, that felt as if time had stood still.

Only a week earlier I had gone to Hồ Tràm, and a few weeks before that to Mũi Né. While those towns are lovely and secluded, they feel more like exclusive resort enclaves. Vũng Tàu, by contrast, felt lived-in; its population denser, its economy more diverse.

By day, the harsh sun beams down, but shade is never hard to find. Phượng vĩ trees, or royal poincianas, line the streets alongside red powderpuff blossoms, striking against the washed-out pastels of schools and government buildings. One afternoon, I visited a book café to do some work. I sat near several locals, students (or so they seemed), hunched over homework while sipping matcha lattes. Outside, the sun poured over a plant-filled courtyard, leaves swaying gently back and forth. The day felt long, but I wasn’t complaining.

Vũng Tàu locals exercise in the morning in Bãi Sau. Photo by Khôi Phạm.

By evening, once the sun had softened to soft coral hues in the sky, and the fear of a laborer’s tan subsided, locals emerged to stroll along the beach. Children ran to and fro, drunk on their own laughter, carried by the miracle of these shores.

The following day I lounged at the northern end of Bãi Sau, journaling in the shade and listening to ‘Em hãy ngủ đi’ by Trịnh Công Sơn, the Khánh Ly version from the 1970s, of course. As I watched the light dance across the waves, I felt lulled by her voice. The song, about death, love, and fragility during wartime, uses sleep as a metaphor for escaping suffering.

The beach could be a place for meditation too. Photo by Khôi Phạm.

There was something calming in its gentle acceptance of impermanence. Khánh Ly’s tender voice, layered over simple guitar chords, stripped everything back to essentials. Here I was: warm breeze, Diet Coke, half-smoked Marlboro, contemplating my place in the world, and this place on the map. It can’t all stay the same, but by all things holy and beautiful, how I wish it could.

On that same beach, I met a local named Bình, who noticed me writing in my notebook. I must have looked odd, a Việt Kiều unmoved by the sun, scribbling trance-like in a leather-bound book, eyes cast toward the Pacific. I wasn’t a vagabond, but it was clear I wasn’t tethered to the town, either.

Reading by the beach. Photo by Khôi Phạm.

After some chatting, Bình offered to drive me around on his moped. He grew up in Vũng Tàu, then lived in Hanoi and Saigon, but returned here after his studies. This was his corner of Vietnam. That evening, he took me to his favorite spot for snails.

It wasn’t a flashy new restaurant with Wi-Fi and flat screens, just two tables on a quiet corner. What mattered were the snails, served by a gentle woman who had been there for years. Bình told me he preferred her because she sold so little she could afford to clean them carefully. He was right: they were plump, fatty, succulent, perfectly paired with spicy-sweet dipping sauce. Bliss.

Vũng Tàu residents gather at a street vendor, 1970. Photo by Barry Connor.

As cars and motorbikes passed, faint sounds of families at dinner mixed with karaoke drifted through the streets. The other locals, who were clearly regulars, sat casually, swapping stories with the vendor, teasing her that she’d lost her pizazz: “Her snails are so bad we had to order more, just to be sure!”

There was affection here, affection in knowing the person who cooked your food, and in the ease of returning again and again to share more laughter. It was what I’d been searching for: a familial warmth, a distraction, and the sense that maybe this is all that really matters, truly. Sharing a drink and some food under low light, with the ocean tide somewhere in the distance.

Vũng Tàu as it always will be

Another night, restless after hours typing in my hotel room, I walked southward along the under-construction beach promenade, stepping over stacked tiles and piles of sand. It was quiet, peaceful without trying.

Wandering in my own little world, the thoughts couldn't escape me: here it is, a getaway town, but one made by and for its own people. The next day, when a hotel staff member told me that Vietnamese guests preferred seafood for breakfast, it struck me as more than a quirky detail. It was a reminder that tourism here is not just about catering to foreign tastes, but about amplifying local rhythms. In these choices, whether grilled scallops at sunrise or crab porridge at the edge of the tide, you really get a glimpse how Vietnamese travelers themselves reshape the economy, remaking the structures of leisure in their own image.

Enjoying a drink on the beach. Photo by Khôi Phạm.

One evening, I stumbled upon a cocktail bar while looking for a quiet place to journal. From the outside, it was unassuming, just a few chairs, light music drifting inside, and two or three people at the bar. Lit well enough to write, but not so bright as to invite company. Perfect.

I ordered a Negroni. A classic, just to test the waters. By my second drink, and several cigarettes later, I trusted the bartender’s intuition. “What are you feeling?” he asked. “Something salty, spicy, sour, and a little bitter. Something pungent that clings to the tongue,” I replied.

He wrinkled his nose, winked, and set to work. After a few dashes, splashes, and an enthused shake, he placed before me a small red gin creation, topped with a trace of spiced oil. The humidity kept the frost on the rim, and I was eager. It was easy on the tongue, surprising in its balance, and lingered when I was done. He told me about his travels, his exciting life elsewhere, and how after all of it, like Bình, he too decided to “come home.” This bar was his home, literally — if you needed the bathroom, you passed through his living room. 

Hours later, when I finally bid farewell, I left convinced I’d found one of the best bars in the entire country. Quiet, discreet, but full of surprises, much like Vũng Tàu itself.

The author (right) and his father in Vũng Tàu when he was a teen. Photo courtesy of Vinh Phu Pham.

On my way back to Saigon after my four-day stint, I felt both refreshed and nostalgic. How much do we lose to the march of progress? What will this place look like 19 years from now? About 19 years ago, when I was 16 and first on these beaches, skin peeling from careless sunburn, I didn’t yet know how to love a place, how to hold onto moments before they slipped away. Like any teenage crush, I thought summer would last forever, that the wave would always return no matter how far the ocean pulled back. I let it all drift past, certain there would always be another. At 16, I hated climbing up to the Christ statue, now in my 30s, I am happy I was able to do it then, and grateful I could still do it now.

Returning with different eyes, I see that time changes everything, cities, shorelines, and selves alike. And for all the things we want to change, maybe there are others we hope to keep, preserved for that younger self still alive within us.

For many Saigon children, Vũng Tàu would likely be their first-ever trip outside of the city. Photo by Khôi Phạm.

Now that Vũng Tàu has officially become part of the greater Hồ Chí Minh City metropolitan area, more change is inevitable. I don’t mourn change. Vietnam has always been in flux, and it would be foolish to think things could remain the same forever. But not every beach town needs to become a Đà Nẵng or a Nha Trang, and that’s okay. How many other little seaside towns are there in Vietnam, layered with history, rich in local life, beautiful without even trying?

For now, I am content to witness Vũng Tàu as it is: a timestamp of our mutual re-encounter. But like that old summer crush, it brought back something in me. It remains sweet in memory, tender in the present, and tragically bitter when we must inevitably part ways in the end.

When you decide to start a family, the choice touches every corner of life. Priorities shift, responsibilities grow, sacrifices are made, and days begin to orbit around the children. Vacations change too, with self-indulgence and beach naps giving way to keeping children engaged and content. But not everything has to be a compromise, especially if you know where to go.

Asia offers thousands of resorts within a short flight of Saigon, many with family-friendly amenities, and you could do fine with most of them. Club Med stands out for its all-inclusive concept, refined over decades as the company marks its 75th anniversary this year. After previous visits to Club Meds in Hokkaido and Lijiang, Saigoneer recently visited Club Med Phuket in Thailand.

For first-timers, Club Med can reframe what a vacation means. Resorts are often judged by facilities, but here, the people are the foundation. It starts with the GOs, or Gentile Organizers. Drawn from Thailand and abroad, they are a Club Med signature. GOs do not just greet you around the grounds; they mingle, remember names, and fold themselves into your experience through genuine interactions. They are also the backbone of around-the-clock activities and performances for all ages that include: yoga, tennis, wall climbing, archery, snorkeling, circus school, arts, and Muay Thai, among others.

After the sun slips behind Kata Beach and dinner winds down, the resort’s theater comes alive. GOs switch into entertainers. Music and dance nod to Thai culture, while trapeze acts, mock Muay Thai bouts and beachside fire shows inspire awe. Daytime activities are grouped by age, but these evening performances appeal to everyone and lead into the night’s last festivities, when you and GOs can meet again for dance parties, cultural showcases, and games.

Family focus continues in the rooms. Couples and groups of friends stay on one side of the resort while families gravitate to the Family Oasis, where layouts are designed with parents and kids in mind. A curtain separates the beds to give both sides a measure of privacy and space. Thoughtful touches include children’s slippers, animal toothbrushes, and bathroom stools: details that kids notice from the moment they enter the room. The Family Oasis waterpark at the center seals the deal, with slides and splash zones that make fast friends out of strangers.

Connection is another quiet priority at Club Med. By the middle of our stay, we had befriended a Bangkok family with a daughter the same age as ours and began planning activities together. By the last day, the two girls were inseparable, and we have kept in touch, already talking about a reunion in Thailand or Vietnam.

Family relaxation and connection extend to the meals included at the resort’s restaurants which foster more time for memories. Most are served at The Mamuang, an international buffet with a menu that rotates across Western, Thai, Indian, Korean, and Japanese stations. Breakfast is a standout thanks to the pancake machine, where batter becomes fluffy disks while children watch with anticipation. For a quieter evening, you can book casual a la carte dining at The Chu-da and dress up a bit for the occasion.

Just because it’s a family experience doesn’t mean families need to spend all their time as a unit. Like all Club Meds, there are special places and activities planned for groups of kids and teenagers without their parents, providing them with some supervised freedom. This also presents parents with the opportunity to enjoy some relaxation at the resort’s jungle-wrapped spa.

At the end of our trip, I asked our seven-year-old, who has already stayed at dozens of hotels, to rate Club Med Phuket on a scale of 1 to 10. Her answer: “Ten thousand million.”

While her grasp on large numbers may be a bit fleeting, it clearly showed that she knew she wasn’t just along for the ride but that the resort offered an experience that prioritized her happiness in equal parts with her parents.

When preparing to visit Hội An’s Thanh Hà Pottery Museum, I didn’t anticipate an opportunity to reminisce. I hadn’t been to the museum dedicated to the region’s pottery traditions before, so how could it illicit fond memories?

Yet, while making my way through the hot and stuffy museum, passing dated displays accompanied by dry descriptions of pottery techniques and excavation histories, I came to the scale miniatures of Chăm towers. Six of Central Vietnam’s most impressive Chăm complexes — including Mỹ Sơn, Po Nagar, Po Klaung Yăgrai, and Phú Hải — are depicted in tabletop size with information about their construction and significance. 

Of the replicas, the ones collectively referred to as the Bình Định Complex stirred immediate emotion. Had it already been four years since the Saigoneer team took a detour from our scheduled commercial shoot in the area to cruise into the lush rice fields that appear to have been unrolled from a great bolt of green fabric? On that day, gloriously untethered from office obligations or urban clamor, we drove to the top of a mountain to take in Tháp Chăm Bánh Ít, and in doing so, were gifted a new vantage point to gaze upon the impermanence of empire and its centrality in local lives. We continued out to the Dương Long towers, which rose in a state of disrepair. And then we returned to the city’s Hưng Thạnh towers, where we sat sipping soda and snapping digital photos, the crumbling manifestations of antiquity reminding us that all modernity is temporary.  

Chăm Bánh Ít Tower (right) and the Dương Long Towers (left) in 2022.

My appreciation for the monochrome miniatures in the museum and their plain-spoken charm was simpler than the heady ruminations they brought me back to, however. That trip was simply a hell of a lot of fun, and a reminder of how lucky I am to live here. I suppose this is why people buy snowglobes on vacation and collect refrigerator magnets: to be given instant transportation for fond moments. 

Of course, the miniatures still hold great value even if they don’t tug you back into happy memories. They might encourage you to take a trip to any one of them in person, discovering a great variety of experiences and fascinations en route. Or perhaps, their focus on a distant time and group of people that now live on as a minority group in the nation will provide a richer and more nuanced consideration of history, particularly in light of all the recent parades and anniversaries. 

And once you’ve looked at the Chăm miniatures, you can head outside to the clay replicas of global monuments, including China’s Forbidden Palace, London’s Big Ben, Australia’s Opera House, India's Taj Mahal, and others. It’s exciting to consider all the memories that have been conjured in a shabby garden on the outskirts of Hội An.

Traveling south through central Vietnam by train can bring you to the familiar or the obscure: the Disney-fication of Hội An, the peaceful bays of Quy Nhơn, or the thrill of derelict spaces in Huế.

In any case, that journey often begins in the latter city. The area’s abandoned waterpark has, for many, already been seen. Yet in these images, we witness what’s often unobserved: curious, palm-leaf-hidden boys sneaking up old slides, their intrigue an echo of those enjoying the claustrophilia of infiltrating the park’s gigantic dragon head.

Exploring the abandoned water park.

Further south, the train hugs and then crosses highways, its open windows framing portraits of everyday life. Visiting Hội An, one sees arranged rows of uniform xích lô drivers, all seated in gleaming vehicles and wearing matching blue shirts and white hats. One is usual, two is coincidental; three is a consciously formed pattern.

Three drivers in Hội An.

More genuine scenes can be found in Quy Nhơn. During the golden hours, a lady hangs her washing in an alley beside Nhơn Hải Bay. The beach takes numerous forms: football pitch, playground, harbor, fisherman’s workplace.

Soft sand, bobbing coracles and the detritus of a community with almost nowhere to place their trash all feature. Yet even among the litter, there is a kind of lyricism — undulating fishing nets find their rhyme in the sea and sunlight moves in shallow water like fish scales.  

Everyday life as seen through the window of a slow-moving train.

Entering the dragon's head in Hue's abandoned waterpark.

A train crosses a road before Hai Van Pass.

Curving Nhơn Hải Bay.

After school football on the beach.

Intense road rage.

Hung out to dry.

Coiled fishing nets.

Tangled teal nets.

A coracle-bobbing sea.

This article was originally published in 2019.

A soft breeze skims across the calm waves and golden sand while you soak up summer sunlight with hardly another soul in sight. A private beach with plenty of space to stretch out alongside loved ones represents the ideal vacation destination for many. Angsana Lăng Cô takes beach resorts in Vietnam to another level with its surprisingly affordable opportunities to savor Central Vietnam’s longest private beach in comfort.

Golden Sands All for You

Vietnam’s central coast has some spectacular beaches that boast warm, shallow waters, soft sand, and brilliant sunsets that seem to stretch into the heavens. This, understandably, makes them quite popular, and public beaches in and around cities such as Đà Nẵng, Nha Trang and Mũi Né fill up with noisy crowds. It can be difficult to truly unwind beside the ocean when surrounded by people blaring songs from Bluetooth speakers, fishing boats unloading the morning’s catch, and crowds cramming into every open stretch of sand and sea. This is where Angsana Lăng Cô truly stands out.

Located in Lăng Cô, a pristine bay tucked between the sea and mountains halfway between Huế and Đà Nẵng, the resort’s remote, three-kilometer stretch of coast is far removed from the nearest fishing village. Such seclusion means the golden sands are only accessible by guests from Angsana and its sister-property, Banyan Tree Lăng Cô. Such seclusion brings not only peace and quiet but an extreme sense of privacy. You can truly experience what it feels like to have access to a private beach.

A Wide Range of Activities

Taking in the splendorous views of the open ocean as it meets the pristine sand, the sky erupting in voluminous pinks and yellows at dawn, is priority number one for most Angsana guests, especially because it feels like the extravagant show is being performed for you alone. But in addition to simply enjoying the fresh air and nature, Angsana has many ways to appreciate the setting.

A wide array of sports and games for people of all ages takes place right on the sand and in the waves. From banana boats to jet skis to stand-up paddleboards to water skiing, you can get your pulse racing as the placid scenery makes for postcard-worthy backdrops. Meanwhile, the bellowing hum of an ATV engine as you zip along past pine trees offers speed for adrenaline junkies eager to rev the throttle and let it rip.

The activities don’t end along the ocean, however. A 300-meter-long pool meanders through the resort, offering opportunities to swim, float, sip cocktails, and zoom effortlessly ahead with a waterscooter. Firmly on land, you can enjoy tennis, bocce ball, badminton, archery, croquet, and video games. The Sir Nick Faldo-designed 18-hole Laguna Golf Lăng Cô course offers further entertainment. Such diversity of experience supplements and expands one's connection with nature and appreciation for the blessings of a private beach holiday.

If you want an immersive trip into nature, you can also arrange a guided tour of nearby Bạch Mã National Park. From where Huế’s famed Perfume River begins, currents flow and surge over waterfalls while cicadas sing in the distance beside historic French villas. While we didn’t see many birds on our visit, we were extremely fortunate to spot a large family of endangered douc langurs. Seeing mothers carry their babies across tree limbs, occasionally pausing to make eye contact, left us in awe of nature and our role in preserving its fragile existence. Thankfully, through park fees and responsible visiting, we left feeling as if we’d done a small part to ensure future guests can have similarly profound sightings.

An Extra Touch in Every Room to Accompany the Views

When you plan a beach vacation, you want to experience the ocean as much as possible, which extends to where you rest your head after a day in the sun. Amongst the resort’s various accommodation types with direct access to the beach, the Beachfront Pool Suite with up to two bedrooms is a true stand-out. A private balcony pool appears to merge seamlessly with the bay just beyond the sand, and a shaded patio area is perfect for watching the sun as it rises and sets. Meanwhile, spacious bedrooms allow for some quiet alone time for family members, so your group vacation can include both bonding and re-energizing.

Photos courtesy Angsana Lăng Cô.

Beyond the views, all of Angasna’s rooms benefit from subtle touches of care and local style that go a long way in making your stay memorable. From the square design patterns inspired by bánh chưng cake on the walls to the soothing photos of fishing villages and Ðông Hồ paintings to the cheerful orange flower-patterned robes and sandals, the rooms’ inviting aesthetic feels distinctly suited for an endless summer holiday at the beach. When you reflect back via photos and stories, a certain shade of sunlight will surely accompany your fond reminiscing.

A variety of room types caters to large, multi-generational families, groups of friends, and couples, while the expansive, empty beach with a plethora of sports and games naturally makes Angsana a popular destination for M.I.C.E travel as well. Meeting spaces with the most up-to-date equipment allow companies and organizations to host getaways that afford their teams some fun time to relax and bond while also reaching goals. Combined with seamless transfer to the international airports and attractive group rates, Angsana underscores how the concept of a quintessential beach holiday can even accommodate workplaces.

What it Means to Stay for Good

While time spent at a private beach can constitute a great holiday alone, the trip becomes even more meaningful when you know your stay has made a positive impact on the world around you. An important part of the Banyan Group to which Angsana belongs, is their commitment to supporting the people, environment, and culture of each resort’s surroundings via the Stay for Good program. Numerous opportunities are embedded in your Angsana stay that allow you to feel more deeply connected to the area and confident that you’ve left it better than when you arrived.

Prismatic orange-bellied leafbirds, playful red-whiskered bulbul, and black drongo, whose tails split into two graceful arcs, all call Angsana and its biome home. You can see a full gallery of the birds at the resort’s photo gallery, and then book space on a complimentary bird watching adventure. An experienced guide will take you around the resort, peeking up at tree limbs and peering into bushes, to reveal how bountiful the natural ecosystem is and how Angsana’s careful maintenance is mindful of keeping these original inhabitants safe and healthy.

Supporting humans is also central to Angsana’s Stay for Good Program. Thus, one can meet and help the local community via a variety of initiatives, including venturing to the Soul Healing Corner to take part in a recycled handicraft workshop led by Ms. Tuyền, a special artisan from the local Hope Center, or purchasing items produced by the Tòhe social enterprise that empowers disadvantaged and disabled children. It’s easy for a resort to claim they are making a difference, but by actually meeting the people whose lives are made better and hearing their stories, you can actually feel the positive impact.

Angsana’s presence, and by extension your visit, uplifts entire communities as well, as made clear via a visit to the nearby fishing village. Over 90% of the staff at Angsana come from there and other similar nearby towns, and the changes brought are profound. In addition to infrastructure developments, including the construction of the only road into the area, Angsana’s establishment more than a decade ago has ushered in a level of economic freedom that means children can go to school and adults have opportunities other than fishing or farming. On our morning visit, we saw an older gentleman proudly wearing an Angsana hat, likely gifted to him by a child or family member who works there. This small sight was perhaps the most affecting moment of our stay. It helped us understand that the community was happy we were there, and the time we spent blissfully appreciating the sunrise was, in an indirect way, making their mornings a little better as well.

You have a lot of options for where to spend your holiday, and there are many correct choices. If private enjoyment of the beach is your priority alone, Angasna should be at the top of your list. Combine that with unique chances to connect with nature and opportunities to experience a genuinely positive impact on the people who live there, and you’ll discover a special place waits in little-known Lăng Cô. at one of the best beach vacations in Vietnam.

Signs are like voices.

They can be bold or meek, enticing or off-putting, warm or cold, welcoming or threatening. Both voices and signage have the primary purpose of transmitting information via language, but they also have aesthetics that impact that message. 

One cannot help but consider the effect of a sign’s style when gazing at the lettering found on buildings in Sa Đéc. The Mekong Delta city is home to an arresting assortment of typography scrawled across dazzlingly pastel buildings. 

Vietnamese modernist architecture shares some design elements with mid-20^th-century structures around the world, but Vietnamese architects concocted their own version of the style, thanks in part to the bright colors most suitable to the tropics. Striking blues, reds, and greens used on storefronts and banners counteract the brutalism that typifies many buildings in other locations. This is apparent when viewing the homes and shops in Đồng Tháp Province.

From Nhựt Tân to Kỳ Xương, the signs are not announcing anything out of the ordinary, yet they catch one’s attention and demand appreciation the same way a grocery list might if it were sung by Nina Simone.

Sa Đéc might not be on the top of many people’s desired tourism destinations, yet a morning ambling around and stopping by the side of the road to admire the signs and colorful fronts they adorn serves as a great reminder that travel is what one makes of it. If you approach the mundane surroundings with curiosity and a keen eye, you’re likely to find something extraordinary.

Of course, Sa Đéc is home to at least one conventional tourism site. The Lover (L'amant), an autobiographical novel written in French by Marguerite Duras, takes place in the city. The story details the romance between a 15-year-old French girl and an older, wealthy Chinese businessman that began in 1929. Her older lover lived at an impressive wooden home that his father had built in 1895. It features a unique confluence of European and East Asian architectural elements. After the house's descendants emigrated abroad, it was briefly used as a local police station before opening for tourists. 

The ostentatious home and other modernist buildings in the city with creative signage exemplify southern Vietnam’s eclectic style that takes inspiration from bits and pieces of outside influences to craft something wholly original, not unlike a sparrow constructing a nest out of materials pilfered from a scrapyard. And while we rightfully bemoan the loss of such artifacts in the face of cheaper, global trend-conforming constructions, some gems like these in Sa Đéc remain. 

Take a look below:

We began our journey in front of a bank where the street Trần Nhật Duật turned into Chợ Gạo.

We started here because about 200 years ago, this area was called Hà Khẩu, or the Mouth of the River. The wide street of Trần Nhật Duật used to be the Red River, and the part turning into Chợ Gạo was where it split into Tô Lịch River. That day, Nguyễn Vũ Hải led us on a walking tour titled Dấu sông hồn phố — a journey tracing the vestige of Tô Lịch.

Trần Nhật Duật nowadays and the confluence of the Red River and Tô Lịch river back then, as drawn by artist Thành Phong.

When I was young, I’d often pass by the portion of the river on Thụy Khuê Street while riding my bike to school. The rancid smell from the blackened water always made me wonder: Why did people call it a river? Clearly it was a sewer. But the stories told during Hải’s tour taught me that the river’s life was a legend.

Hải said that the name Tô Lịch was mentioned in history books thousands of years ago. When Vietnam was still a part of China, Cao Biền, a famous Chinese geomancer, had a magical battle with Long Đỗ — the dragon god of Tô Lịch River. Cao Biền drove stakes into the river to subdue the god, but the stakes all shot right back up. Cao Biền realized he was outmatched, so he built a temple for the deity, and then raised Đại La citadel. Because the citadel ran along Long Đỗ’s river, it was also called Long Biên, or the Dragon Border.

The citadel following the Tô Lịch River, as seen in the Atlas of Hồng Đức (1490).

When was Long Biên raised?
Neither tall nor short.
Beautiful on the outskirts.
Strong water flows below.

I read that poem a while ago. Only now did I understand the mighty flow was Tô Lịch River, though that section was filled in a long time ago. But people can still feel the “neither short nor tall” height these days. Using a couple of old maps, Hải showed us how to re-trace the ancient citadel walls. I was surprised to see how big it must have been when drawing lines across Yên Phụ, Hoàng Hoa Thám, Bưởi, Đê La Thành — all the streets that you must go uphill to reach.

Tracing with citadel wall and the past river flow based on an old map.

The river’s legend continued once Vietnam escaped northern domination. In 1010, King Lý Thái Tổ moved the court to Thăng Long. The king wanted to fortify the citadel, but the walls kept collapsing. The king ordered people to pray to Long Đỗ, upon which they witnessed a white horse walking out from the temple. The king followed the horse’s footsteps to build the wall, and it became sturdy. And thus the king renamed the temple Bạch Mã, or White Horse Temple, the Eastern Sentry of Hanoi. He also declared Long Đỗ to be Thành Hoàng of Thăng Long — the tutelary deity of this land.

A map of Hanoi in 1873.

With the blessing of Long Đỗ, Thăng Long flourished. Goods and merchandise from the north flowed down the Red River, and Tô Lịch River became an important urban trading route. Hải said that there were many markets along the river. “At the confluence, there was chợ Gạo, then chợ Bạch Mã, chợ Cầu Đông, chợ Bưởi, chợ Cầu Giấy, chợ Ngọc Hà, chợ Dừa…” The Old Quarter back then was called Kẻ Chợ, or the Market People. And it was so prosperous that there was a saying: “Giàu thú quê không bằng ngồi lê Kẻ Chợ,” or “being rich in the countryside is no match for being a beggar in Kẻ Chợ.”

Chợ Cầu Đông Street, named after a bridge market lying across the river on the eastern side of the citadel.

But then a day came when human weapons eclipsed even the gods. In 1882, the French fully colonized Vietnam and turned Hanoi into the capital of Indochina. During their rule, the French dismantled the Thăng Long Citadel to build bridges, roads, and an underground sewage system.

Hải said: “Tô Lịch river was once an important trade route, a physical representation of the god. But now, after the French came and applied their urban planning, the river became a culvert.”

Hàng Đậu Water Tower, the harbinger of the era when Tô Lịch becomes a sewer instead of a major waterway.

And once the underground sewer opened, a particular species flourished: the rat. They spread the Black Plague all over the city, forcing the French to try to kill them. They hired Vietnamese to kill the rats, requesting catchers to turn in rat tails as proof. Each tail was worth four Indochinese piastres.

“With such a good price,” Hải continued, “locals began to catch rats, cut the tails off, then release them so they can keep breeding. Then rat farms emerged around the city, as well as a network to deliver rats here from the countryside.”

One day, a French official saw a tail-less rat running on the street. From then on, rat hunters had to turn in a whole rat. But business continued to boom until the price was cut so low — from four piastres for one rat to one piastre for five rats — that nobody bothered killing rats anymore. The French also shifted their plague-controlling efforts to medical measures rather than eliminating the species.

Thăng Long's Northern Gate on Phan Đình Phùng Street. 

Hải said the rat story was just one example of how people live with the world around them. From a life in harmony with nature to one of management, exploitation, and discard. Tô Lịch has remained a sewage channel to this day.

We ended our tour at the Northern Gate, the last remnant of the old citadel. When they ordered its demolition, the French kept the gate because it contained the imprinted cannonball holes making the day the citadel fell. As I stood there, looking at the heavy traffic on Phan Đình Phùng, it was hard to imagine that Tô Lịch river used to run through here. Suddenly I felt incredibly sad, as if the city had lost its roots.

Phan Đình Phùng Street today.

One morning after the trip with Hải, as I was lighting an incense stick on the altar, I thought of the god Long Đỗ. Instead of praying to my ancestor as usual, I said gratitude to the god for protecting this city, and asked that he keep looking out for my family, my friends, and all the souls who lived here. The name Tô Lịch for me had transformed from something filthy to something sacred. I heard there had been talks recently about restoring the river to its past glory. Hopefully, one day it will regain its place as the life force of Hanoi.

This article was originally published in 2023.

Hidden within the compound of the Saigon St. Joseph’s Seminary is a historic chapel that has withstood the test of time.

A seminary’s two centuries of turmoil

Driving past Tôn Đức Thắng Street in District 1, Saigoneers would probably come across a tall gate that’s often closed, obscuring the views into the structures inside. This gate belongs to the Saigon St. Joseph’s Seminary (Đại chủng viện thánh Giu-se Sài Gòn), one of the most long-enduring witnesses to the ebbs and flows of Sài Gòn-Gia Định.

In the middle of Saigon, a corner for quiet reflection.

Starting from the 16^th century, the Roman Catholic Church has emphasized the role of local seminaries established across the world, not only to train excellent priests but also promote important knowledge in theology, spirituality, economics, pedagogy, and other humanistic fields important to the organization and operation of our society.

Alas, due to the instability brought about by the Trịnh-Nguyễn civil wars, Vietnam’s economic and social climate at the time was not ideal for the founding of a local seminary. Thus, a predecessor of the St. Joseph’s Seminary was first built in Ayutthaya, Thailand in 1665 to stay away from the conflicts. There, from 1665 to 1765, the institution thrived. However, from June to November 1765, when the Burmese-Siamese War raged on, the seminary had to relocate from Thailand to Hòn Đất, an island near Hà Tiên, as a temporary stop.

The exterior of the seminary.

From then until 1863, the seminary faced numerous difficulties and even had to cease operation for some periods because of various conflicts in Vietnam, such as Đàng Trong-Đàng Ngoài uprisings, the Tây Sơn Rebellion, and the Nguyễn-Dynasty’s anti-Catholic regulations. It took until the Treaty of Nhâm Tuất, signed on June 5, 1862, when the French administration granted Father Théodore Louis Wibaux a 7-hectare plot of land to construct and develop the Saigon St. Joseph’s Cathedral, putting a stop to the seminary’s two centuries of upheavals. In the following years, even after the seminary had to evacuate several times due to the wars, they always came back to the Saigon compound.

A 160-year-old chapel

The seminary was broken ground in 1863 and completed in 1866, designed in a Gothic style that evokes European cathedrals. A year after, Father Wibaux followed up with constructing the chapel, which spanned four years and officially finished in 1871. The structure is 30 meters long, 10 meters wide and 10 meters tall, including a cavernous vaulted ceiling and various stained-glass windows featuring embossed details.

The chapel in the 19^th century.

The chapel in the 2020s.

Once the chapel was built, it became the central venue for the seminary’s major ceremonies as well as spiritual activities for both the seminarians and the Catholic community living in the vicinity. Even though Saigon’s political and religious climate was significantly affected by Đàng Trong’s anti-Catholic decrees, the seminary’s presence in Saigon was seen as a mark of reassurance for the city’s Catholic congregations. Over the years, a number of other smaller seminaries were established in Huế, Nha Trang, Quy Nhơn, etc.

Across 160 years and a plethora of conflicts, the fundamental structure of the chapel remains mostly intact compared to historical photos from the French era, such as the tiled roof, reliefs, and decorative motifs. Still, the front facade and its tiled entrance are gone. Behind the chapel is also the resting place of the institution’s founder, Father Wibaux. A small garden and water feature were added to the tomb in recent years.

Father Wibaux’s tomb and the surrounding garden.

Father Wibaux’s ashes are still kept within the chapel as a nod to his crucial role in the development and maintenance of the seminary from the 18th century until now. Besides, the chapel also reserves a reverent corner for the ashes of Bishop Pierre Lambert de la Motte (1624–1679), the first bishop of the Diocese of Đàng Trong.

Above the altar are three burial sites, interred underground, of Paul Bùi Văn Đọc and Paul Nguyễn Văn Bình, two former archbishops; and of Louis Phạm Văn Nẫm, a former bishop. Every year, on November 1 (All Saints’ Day), the chapel commemorates the deaths of the French missionaries who played a part in the establishment of the seminary and who passed away here. Additionally, the chapel holds a collection of rare artifacts from the history of Saigon’s Catholic community, like the confessional, the ancient pulpit donated by the Cầu Kho Parish to the seminary, as well as 14 relief sculptures installed on pillars across the chapel portraying the Passion of Christ.

The seminary is still an educational institution for local seminarians today.

According to chị Vân, the chapel’s groundskeeper, over the years, the seminary has undergone a few rounds of renovations, mostly inside to accommodate growing daily usage. Currently, the chapel floor has been entirely outfitted with granite to make it easier to clean. The seminary has also built an elevated platform to facilitate services instead of a simple pulpit like before.

“To me and other seminarians studying here, this place is not just a chapel, but a living reminder of the hardships of the past, those that were paid for by the blood and bones of previous generations of priests,” Vân explained.

Apart from its usual functions as a gathering place for Catholic Saigoneers during major occasions like Christmas and ordination ceremonies, the Saigon St. Joseph’s Seminary is also an archive of many historical artifacts, manuscripts, and documents relating to theology, archaeology, and spirituality.

Thư viện Đại chủng viện.

Visitors can drop by the chapel and seminary library on weekdays from 8am to 5pm.

Whether we choose to participate or not, most of us are fascinated by Vietnam’s motorbike culture.

The pace, the innovative spirit, and the casualness of people who perform in each day’s tightly choreographed traffic dances make for a thrilling phenomenon. So you can imagine my enchantment when I discovered what motorbike culture looks like on Tà Năng Mountain and the hills of Lâm Đồng Province. It takes about a six-hour drive and half a day’s hike from Saigon to reach the entrance to this other “planet.” It’s a place that makes me feel a million miles away from any city, and comfortably isolated from the rest of the world. And once you’re there, it’s easy to see why the people that know it are always going back.

The men and motos of Tà Năng

The complete Tà Năng-Phan Dũng trail stretches more than 55 kilometers across the hilltops and valleys of three provinces: Lâm Đồng, Ninh Thuận, and Bình Thuận. People have been walking these ridges forever, so it was inevitable that eventually Vietnam’s famous motorbikes would make it to the mountains too.

Xe độ are often needed to scale the rough textures of Tà Năng.

The unique machines that ride over these ridges are called xe đi rừng, meaning “motorbikes used in the forest,” or xe độ, which translates to “motorbike that’s been changed from the manufacturer version,” a hint at their distinguishable nature. The young men who drive them are known as người khuân vác or “porters,” with their custom rigs doubling as convenient — and, might I add, super slick — nicknames for the exclusive group.

As with so many good things, the longer you peer at these amazing machines, the more you see. Some of my favorite features were the free and detached stick-for-kick-stand strategy that seemed to be invariably adopted, the custom welded made-to-size holders and racks that carry bottles of engine fluids and extra gas, and the complete (although initially subtle) and utter lack of foot...anything. Eventually you’ll notice the chain on the rear wheel and the extra sets of shocks. After having the pleasure of riding as the third of three passengers on one of these skeleton rigs as it ripped over a flat portion of trail, I surmise they “beefed up” the engines as well. 

One of the handful of trail vendors, a lovely man named Anh Heo, shared that anyone could buy a basic version of one of the bikes for a reasonable price, but the porters mostly build and customize their own. One bike had a variety of its parts painted green to match its green shocks, while another had the skinniest exhaust pipe I have ever seen; no more than a couple centimeters wide all the way down. 

As it turns out, not all porters are transporting camping supplies — consider the cooler that resembles the ones you see all over Saigon, containing cold soda, water, and beer strapped to the back of Anh Heo’s rather simple-looking bike. He drives 40 kilometers a day to sell cold beverages to weary hikers along the trail.

Yes, that’s right! That means, as you trek into this magical land, around each bend or at the top of a long climb, there very well may be ice-cold beer waiting for purchase. As soon as the initial excitement wore off, I giggled that I could be shocked at all. We are in Vietnam after all, “cold beer can be delivered anywhere,” my friend graciously reminded me. I should have been shocked he hadn’t found us sooner.

Another whole new world

As you trek deeper down the Tà Năng-Phan Dũng trail, the landscape starts to unwrap itself. Lowlands become sparsely covered hilltops covered in patches of young forest or dotted with a lone tree. Eventually, the route took us through a bamboo forest and up the back of a long, last, steep hill. And as we cleared the treeline and came around the side of the giant bulbous mound of earth we had just scaled, the scene and sky grew before our eyes. We had arrived, safely transported to another world. 

Boldly and graciously, the landscape evolves with the seasons here. The sparsely camouflaged ridges are sometimes covered in patches of dense, deep green, and sometimes they are bald. Underneath the ground growth, the hills are covered in a type of basaltic soil that, when pounded by Vietnam’s iconic rains, turns a vibrant orangey-tan, gets thick and slick and dries like potter’s clay. 

By the time you come up to your second or third incline, you would notice the deep grooves the machines cut into the side of each pitch, and it becomes clear why the bikes are as rugged and souped-up as they are. Their revving motors and altered anatomies produce a loud chug-chug-chug that announces their arrival before they can be seen. And then watching them is a joy: chain suddenly crucial, power plainly obvious, operator’s command of the situation — relaxed and masterful. Sometimes an extra passenger sits atop the cargo, sometimes three men straddle the long frame, but they always smiles; half-smoked cigarettes occupy the corners of their mouths. 

Chang Adventure

Both of my trips were made possible through the guidance and support of the enthusiastic trekking group, Chang Adventure, a team of young, local nature lovers who have made a business out of taking fellow hikers on unique, remote adventures throughout the central and southern regions of Vietnam. With an everything-included model, they make it easy for hikers to sign up and go; no equipment or extensive preparation necessary.

Chang Adventure's commitment to sustainability further sets them apart. Each customer who signs up for one of their treks donates five trees to the Forest Garden Project, a project dedicated to respecting, reforesting, and educating about Vietnam’s Central Highlands, in partnership with local farmers. 

Since the organizers opt to keep group numbers small and treat all their guests as old friends, they are able to create an instant and intimate comradery within their teams, an aspect that makes it hard not to fall into new, fast friendships. The hike will get you on your first trip, but the people and the moments this experience fosters will keep you coming back. 

A sunrise worth going back for

I woke up as the sky was already changing. My body was moving before my brain caught up. I crawled out of my tent, put on my shoes, and roused my friends. As I pulled myself up and out into the dawn air, the scene beyond our little mound of planet gobbled me up from the top down. I closed my eyes and let myself to be taken away by the beauty of what was unfolding before me. Behind my lids lay a background of dusty, lavender blue, streaked with neon pink and fire bursts of orange.

The air was cool but not cold, the best word for it is probably “fresh,” a word we rarely get to use when describing the weather in southern Vietnam. With my eyes shut, I allowed myself to tune into the gentle choir of different songs — monkeys, cicadas, and a chorus of bird calls. Each note was unique and vibrant against the soft quiet of dawn. I felt a hand on my shoulder. It brought me back to my feet, bare on the wild grass, still dewy from the night.

Voices and the sounds of breakfast started to fade in against the jungle’s pleasant cacophony. I opened my eyes and in front of me was an expansive valley of receding hills smothered in layers of whipped, white morning mist. Each row a deeper shade of blue-ish gray; each row an extra barrier between us and the real world. It took us both an extra beat before we bid adieu to the moment and turned back towards the smell of fresh campfire-brewed coffee. 

If this moment appeals to you, find Chang Adventure and sign up for their next trek. Hồng Trang, who often uses the English name Kate, one of the founding members, and the rest of the crew are even greater gems than the utterly breathtaking vistas they will lead you too. It doesn’t happen often that you stumble upon one of those great fleeting things — be it a place, a group, or a tradition — before it becomes a “was.” And in my humble opinion, hiking Tà Năng is one of those very rare things. Don’t wait, because as we all know, a thing so great surely doesn’t last forever.

This article was originally published in 2022.

As tourists, it's in our built-in compass to seek out novelties and excitements, if anything, to remind us that our daily humdrum is not everything, and there exists a world out there with multitudes to explore.

A promenade on the south bank of the Hương River.

Which makes it all the more astonishing to me that I was able to feel immediately at home with the sleepiness of Huế. I guess, in a way, the languid pace of life in the central Vietnam city is a novelty compared to Saigon’s pandemonium.

Built in 1901, the Morin Hotel was one of Vietnam's oldest, and once housed Charlie Chaplin and Empress Nam Phương.

With merely around 1.5 million residents, Huế is the least populous municipality of Vietnam’s six, but what it might lack in adrenaline, it more than makes up for in historical wealth, cultural artifacts, quietude, and breathable urban sprawl.

Hue University of Education on the other side of the street.

Coming from a place where both conservation and green spaces are a luxury, I found this level of urban planning to be completely foreign. They have expansive old tombs and riverfront real estate, but gave them to the people instead of condotels? Unthinkable.

Trường Tiền Bridge.

Four main bridges link both sides of the river: the historic Trường Tiền, Phú Xuân, Dã Viên, and most recently, the modern and flashy Nguyễn Hoàng. All are connectedly exceptionally well with walking paths so those wishing to face the majesty of the Hương River head-on could do so with ease.

Trường Tiền got its name from a mint directly facing it on the south side.

The Hương River flows through the heart of Huế and flowing along with it are two strips of expansive public spaces that are fully appreciated by local inhabitants, from dawn to dusk. Under the towering canopies of heritage trees, Huế residents stroll leisurely, banter with friends, and take kids out for bike rides.

Morning at local riverside parks.

Huế has the best parks in this country: clean walkways, many public bathrooms and good interconnectivity. Paved paths wide enough for runners, bikers, walkers and children on electric Barbie cars to co-exist? Unheard of in Saigon. As a runner, I felt strangely jealous just walking on these world-class paths.

Time to settle down and relax.

And yet, just as I was busy daydreaming about an alternative existence here, 7am hit and the heat made itself known. The Central Vietnam summer comes with a level of solar power that seems especially powerful. You might be tempted to whip out one of those tiny handheld Chinese electric fans, but they won't help, because even the wind they emit would be searing. Huế during this season is an air-fryer and your fantasies about indulging in its ample green spaces will be quickly cooked like crispy chicken wings.

The south entrance of Trường Tiền Bridge.

Crossing the river on foot is a thrilling experience in itself.

A handful of pedestrians choose to cross the bridge on foot.

Clean and wide walkways.

A morning market session behind Đông Ba Market.

The building in the distance used to be a mint, but is now a bookstore.

Street flower vendors.

On the northen side of the river.

Public bike services are available as part of a trial program.

Thượng Tứ Entrance to the Imperial City.

A public gym with exercise machines.

Phú Xuân Bridge.

On my last full day in Khon Kaen, Thailand, I was on a mission to catch the sunset, although the cloudy and gloomy sky didn’t give me much hope. Instead, I randomly stumbled upon a gate with signs written in Vietnamese. Out of curiosity, I decided to walk in, and the farther I walked, the more clearly I spotted a familiar image from afar: a one-pillar pagoda standing right on the edge of the reservoir.

Prior to my overnight train journey from Bangkok to Khon Kaen in May 2023, I had vaguely heard of the Vietnamese diaspora in the Isan region (Northeastern Thailand) near the Mekong River, but I never expected to randomly stumble upon Chùa Một Cột (One-Pillar Pagoda) during my return exactly two years later. 

Built on the east side of the Bueng Kaen Nakhon Reservoir of Khon Kaen City, the replica of Chùa Một Cột (Thai: วัดเสาเดียว, pronounced as “wat sao diao”) was opened to public on March 14, 2008, and matches the same dimensions of the original pagoda in Hanoi. A renovation project was launched by the Consulate General of Vietnam in 2023, with funding from the Khon Kaen City Council and generous contributions from former Vice President Nguyễn Thị Doan and the Vietnamese diaspora community in Thailand. The presence of the pagoda itself reflects an effort not only to preserve Vietnamese culture abroad, but also to maintain Thai-Vietnamese friendship through shared cultural space and community connection.

Entrance to the Thai-Vietnamese Friendship Park and Bueng Kaen Nakhon Reservoir (Khon Kaen, Thailand).

I stopped at the pagoda to pay respect and pray to Guanyin, then spent some time observing and appreciating the scenery. The pagoda is surrounded by open space and renovated walkways, and from here, you can easily spot the other temples of Khon Kaen across the reservoir. I noticed buckets of wet soil neatly placed near the walls, suggesting that there might be some renovation going on.

When I turned around, I saw two uncles looking in my direction. They smiled at me and said in Thai: “You can take photos from here.” For some reason, my instinct told me to ask them in my broken Thai: “Hello, can you speak Vietnamese?” To my surprise, they replied in Thai: “Can! You can speak Vietnamese too?”

I ended up talking to the uncles for about 30 minutes. They told me they were volunteers, taking turns to look after the pagoda. At that moment, they were preparing to plant lotus flowers in the small lake around the pagoda, and getting ready for a big event celebrating the 135^th birth anniversary of President Hồ Chí Minh. They expected to welcome many Vietnamese community members from Khon Kaen and other provinces, along with officials from the Vietnamese embassy.

Chùa Một Cột in Khon Kaen, Thailand.

What amazed me the most wasn’t just their dedication, but how fluently they spoke Vietnamese in a central Vietnamese accent, despite being born and raised in this region. Especially considering the long history of “Thaification” — a part of the nationalist policies reinforced by the Thai state in the early 20^th century, in which immigrants and people of ethnic groups, including Vietnamese who fled the Indochina War and arrived between 1945 and 1946, were expected to assimilate into dominant Central Thai culture and society. 

Open area of Bueng Kaen Nakhon Reservoir (Khon Kaen, Thailand).

After saying goodbye, I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting by the lakeside, people-watching and appreciating the view. It was drizzling a bit, so the sunset never appeared. Among the people and families jogging and walking by, quite a lot of them paused at the pagoda to pay respect to Guanyin. We don’t know whether they are Vietnamese descendants, but perhaps that’s not the main point. The pagoda itself feels like a meeting point for the Vietnamese community, cultural exchanges, random encounters for anyone passing through. Through what might seem like small gestures by the volunteers and community members, it reflects a bigger effort of preserving the Vietnamese culture abroad, which coexists in harmony with the surrounding mainstream culture.

Chùa Một Cột in Khon Kaen, Thailand.

I couldn’t stay for long, as I had to continue my own journey heading northeast towards the Mekong River at the Thai-Lao border. But in the midst of uncertainty about the future, as someone who has been living life on the move for more than a decade, the encounter by the pagoda was a gentle reminder: home isn’t always a physical place, sometimes it’s a language spoken with kindness, in the middle of somewhere unfamiliar.

From the town to the depths of the misty mountains of Sapa, Bạch Nam Hải embarked on a documentary photographic journey, capturing the essence of local life, the intimate connections between people and nature, and the contrast between the natural landscape and rapid urban development fueled by tourism expansion.

“TRÊN ĐỈNH ĐỔI THAY” (MOUNTAINS OF CHANGE) is a documentary photo series by photographer Bạch Nam Hải, developed over seven years from 2017 to 2024. The photo series captures the transformation of Sapa — a small town and also a tourist destination known for its misty mountains, chilling weather, and vibrant ethnic cultures — amidst the inevitable force of urbanization and tourism development. Images of hotel construction along the hillside, intimate portraits in town and from the mountains, or landscape photos featuring daily lives of the villagers, the photo series captures the reality that the photographer has witnessed, and offers a glimpse into what lies beneath the surface of what tourists usually see — both hidden but also visible all at once.

What began as a 10-day visit unexpectedly turned into a three-week stay. After spending weeks wandering from the town through the mountains, encountering local people and witnessing rapid changes happening across the hillsides, Hải was filled with mixed emotions and thoughts. He decided to revisit Sapa again to continue this photo series, which eventually developed into a seven-year photographic journey. He felt that there was a bigger story to be told about this land and its people, and he captured everything through documentary photography, with the aim of documenting real moments happening in front of his eyes.

Even before the rise of social media marketing and large-scale tourism today, Sapa had already become a tourist destination dating back to the early 20^th century during French colonization. Since then until now, the town has witnessed massive waves of developments, new immigrants, businesses, and large-scale investments. Home to the ethnic minority communities and its misty mountains and cool weather, Sapa has been known for its photogenic destination for visitors who come in search of serenity and a sense of healing in nature, with iconic sites such as Sapa’s central square (Quảng trường Sa Pa), the Sun Plaza clock tower, Mường Hoa Valley, and Cát Cát Village, etc.

To meet the ever-growing demand from domestic and international tourists, new hotels and homestays are continuously being built, stretching beyond the town and reaching the untouched hillsides. In Bạch Nam Hải’s black-and-white photographs, the contrast between the vast landscape against the tough structures of concrete and steel reflects the reality of rapid urbanization and investment. This visual tension brings out a fragile in-between state — neither past nor future, but a present caught in transition and filled with uncertainties — of a town undergoing “work in progress” with nostalgia, and conveying a sense of melancholy for the disappearing natural landscapes.

Anyone who has visited Sapa at least once has likely encountered young children or people dressed in traditional thổ cẩm brocade attire, approaching tourists to sell handmade souvenirs. While many tourists find themselves fascinated and curious, often pulling out their phones to capture the moments, Bạch Nam Hải’s photographs unfold a deeper narrative behind those interactions. It shows that the children are not only selling goods in touristy areas, but they are also navigating a world where tourism has become a central part of their lives. Through both candid scenes and intimate portraits, it feels like the children are compelled to grow up quickly against the rapid changes of urbanization and development. With modern western-looking buildings and natural landscapes in the background, the photographs subtly question the cost of progress and draw attention to the often-overlooked realities of people’s quality of life in this town.

Moving beyond the town, the photographer ventured deep into the mountains, where he found himself immersed in vast natural landscapes and the quiet and intimate rhythms of village life. To capture such close-up and personal images, he spent time walking alongside the locals, engaging in conversations, and quietly observing their daily routines. His photographs captured on the mountains reveal tender and unguarded moments of children smiling into the camera, standing beside their pets, carrying younger siblings, or women carrying large bundles of vegetables on their backs. These scenes evoke a profound sense of nostalgia, a glimpse into a way of life deeply connected to nature. Perhaps, the nostalgia arises from the rarity of honest and genuine human interactions today, creating a sense of timelessness in these portraits that feels both fleeting and enduring.

Developing a long-term documentary project requires a deep commitment, especially when a photographer must return to the same place over time. When asked about how to sustain such a process, Bạch Nam Hải reflects on it from both professional and personal standpoints. Beyond his skills as a professional photographer, he emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning and staying engaged with a community of fellow photographers. He believes the world is full of fascinating moments unfolding every day, but only a few stories we are fortunate enough to encounter, and even fewer carry the weight and message of their time, deserving to be told and shared more widely. For him, it’s about following instinct and documenting reality through the language of photography.

“I noticed that most of the ethnic minority locals mainly move around on foot, so I also made a habit of walking. I wandered everywhere, from the town center deep into the villages. Along the way, I would initiate conversations with the locals, picking up a few phrases in H’Mông and Red Dao languages to chat. Many conversations actually began when street vendors approached me to sell souvenirs. I would gently decline, then casually chat with them — just like how strangers sitting next to each other on a train or bus, end up talking about everything in life,” Bạch Nam Hải told Saigoneer in Vietnamese.

The documentary photo series highlights the ongoing tension between Sapa’s traditional local lifestyle and the rapid expansion of tourism and large-scale investment. Yet, there exists a tender intimacy: moments of daily life, human interactions, and portraits of locals that offer a human counterpoint to the larger narrative of change. The innocent eyes of the mountain children, captured in Hải’s photographs, evoke a sense of happiness at the moment. But as the viewer lingers and places these images within the broader context of Sapa’s rapid development, a subtle sense of concern about the future of this land begins to surface: how can urbanization and economic growth align with the preservation of culture and nature? And more urgently, how can sustainable tourism evolve in ways that genuinely improve the lives of local communities?

More information on Bạch Nam Hải’s “MOUNTAINS OF CHANGE” and his upcoming publication on the photo series can be found on this website.

Is there a photographic format more suitable for capturing Hanoi's abundantly complex and alluring culture than the crystalline clarity of medium format film?

For many of us, images of rice paddies and conical hats have grown insipid as a consequence of overuse. Yet in the following collection, French photographer Joseph Gobin trains his lens on what's often unobserved — an artist, caked in plaster, creates a mold of himself just as Gobin forms his own image of the young man; a couple watch a film in the shade of their umbrella, the most intimate of theaters; in a school playground, onlookers appear like film directors while enjoying the subtle tension of a volleyball tournament. 

As Ansel Adams once said, even in a landscape photo “there are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.” In Gobin's images, his gaze focuses on endearing or touching aspects of Vietnamese culture with affection, a caring antithesis to the likes of Vietnamese Cursed Image.

Stripped of visual clichés and taken on an atypical camera, the images gain a tender vitality and quirky appreciation for contemporary Vietnam. Not all were taken in the capital, but all cherish the earnestness of Vietnam. And yes, that includes the swan boats in Vinhomes Riverside. 

Take a look below:

A couple watches a laptop video on the street, beneath an umbrella. 

Butchering a pig while it's still drooped over a Honda Dream. Also known as “slow-smoking meat.”

A contemporary artist makes a mold of his body for an upcoming exhibition. 

Motorbike traffic couples in the French Quarter. 

Ladies dressed in áo dài stay in the shade. 

An archetypal Hanoian street ninja with long-sleeved top, sunglasses and mask for camouflage. 

For these discarded fans, an occasional breeze gently spinning their blades is the only reminder of their former life. 

Spectators watch a volleyball tournament in Vũ Yên Village in a scene reminiscent of a film set. 

The worst-ever attempt at hiding a motorbike? Photo taken in Hòa Bình Province. 

Waiting to catch a train back to Hanoi from Đà Nẵng. 

A gang of brothers in the far north. 

Traditional style meets modernism at Pà Cò Market.

Waiting. 

Boris Zuliani creating images using 50x50 wet plates between Da Nang and Hoi An. 

A swan boat lingers beside the grandiloquence of a Vinhomes Riverside villa. 

A portrait from Gobin's face mask series. 

A contemporary dancer poses for a photoshoot. 

It's never too late to get fit. 

Guess who won the most games?

Contemporary Hanoi in disco hues. 

This article was originally published on Urbanist Hanoi in 2019.

When I pitched a review of Hanoi’s massive new Vietnam Military History Museum to the Saigoneer editorial staff, I expected to find the museum somewhat boring. After all, although I am a historian, I am not really that interested in military stuff, and I’d been to the original location on Điện Biên Phủ Street several times — how could this new museum improve on the old one? What could this new museum say that the old one didn’t? What could I learn here that I haven’t already learned at Saigon’s War Remnants Museum and Hồ Chí Minh Campaign Museum, at Điện Biên Phủ’s war museum, at Hải Phòng’s naval museum, and at the countless other shrines to Vietnamese martial prowess across the country? Quite a lot, it turns out.

Opened in early November 2024, the museum covers 386,600 square meters and cost approximately VND2.5 trillion (US$98.5 million) to build. Within the severe concrete walls are 150,000 objects related to several thousand years of conflict in Vietnam. Construction, hampered by COVID-19 delays, took almost five years. The opening roughly coincided with the 80^th anniversary of the People’s Army of Vietnam, which was founded on December 22, 1944.

The museum campus’s architecture is something one must experience in person. The main building and the Victory Tower soar higher than they look in pictures; cameras can’t capture the scale of the new campus’s courtyards and hallways. The main building rises from the plains of Hanoi’s southern suburbs like nothing else nearby. The only other structure close to the museum is a Vincom Megamall, which is hidden behind an elevated highway. The museum is a symphony in concrete, so far beyond Soviet-style brutalism that it becomes almost neo-Neolithic, a cement Uluru in dull grey. The museum is more than half an hour’s drive from Hanoi’s city center, and it is worth taking the journey just to marvel at the building. As many of the north’s old socialist brutalist buildings fall to the wrecking ball, there is something heartwarming in seeing new constructions taking those classic design principles to new heights. It seems especially fitting that the military museum’s architecture and its contents both owe so much to the ghost of the Soviet Union.

The next thing that hit me, quite literally, was the crowd. On a Wednesday morning, the museum’s courtyard had more than a thousand guests already, all Vietnamese, milling about and marveling at aircraft, tanks, and artillery pieces. Many of them were school groups on field trips. I was invited to join several photos — I stopped counting after 30 — and told a hundred kids that my name was David, I was from America and that I loved Vietnam very much. I was soon overwhelmed and had to take refuge behind a mask and a pair of sunglasses. This did not help much, but I was able to float around the rest of the outdoor exhibits mostly unbothered. 

In front of the museum are two large collections of vehicles: the western courtyard holding French, American, and RVN equipment; with the DRV, Soviet, and Chinese in the eastern courtyard. Highlights in the west include a Chinook twin-rotor helicopter, a Lockheed Martin C-130, and the amazingly sculpted tower of French and American aircraft debris that used to rise above the old military museum. To the east are some T-34 and T-54 tanks, Soviet aircraft like the AN-26 and some MiG fighters, and various SAM missiles. The Victory Tower, 45 meters tall, looms over the whole space. Though I’d seen the photos and heard the reports of unruly crowds climbing over everything when the museum first opened, that behavior seems to have stopped. The visitors I saw were well-behaved and respectful, though perhaps that was due to the watchful eyes of the many museum guards in full military uniform sitting around every major exhibit.

Moving inside the main building, it was clear to me that despite having opened a few months ago, the museum is still very much a work in progress. Stairs and hallways were cordoned off with caution tape. Plywood and construction tools lay piled around dusty corners of rooms filled with empty display cases. Half of the exhibit halls on the map were not yet open. Because of this confusion, I ended up looping around through several hallways, wandering in search of an exit or an exhibit, before I finally found where I was supposed to go. The crowds of schoolkids and army officers did not make navigation any easier, though being a head taller than anyone else sure helped me keep my bearings in the sea of uniforms. I ended up going through the main historical exhibit halls backward, just because it was not clear where I should start my tour. 

The museum exhibits are laid out in chronological order in four main halls, beginning with 900 BCE and ending in the present day. All the exhibitions’ messages are variations on a theme: for thousands of years, the Vietnamese people have fought to remain free. This message is neither new nor surprising; it was the main theme of the older military museum in the center of Hanoi, and it is an important element of modern Vietnam’s foundational mythos. In its previous incarnation, the military museum showcased many objects but often neglected to contextualize them within the broader arc of Vietnamese history or explain their use. The new museum does not make this mistake: the informational panels, videos, and audio guides are a big improvement to the way that this museum tells its stories. 

To keep history personal, every gallery is full of small panels about individual heroes throughout history who were committed to the Vietnamese cause, many of whom sacrificed their lives for the nation. I stopped to read as many of their stories as I could, but I would have run out of time trying to read them all. Even people with the loosest grasp of Vietnamese history can follow along and, hopefully, learn something new. Around me, plenty of other people were. Though the museum had its share of the ever-present TikTok selfie squads, the diverse group of Vietnamese visitors around me — elementary school kids on field trips, teenagers in their trendy jackets, military service members in uniform, older aunties and uncles, and grandparents — were all engaged in reading the signage and marveling solemnly at the martial artifacts imprisoned in glass displays. 

The first exhibit hall focuses on ancient, medieval, and early modern Vietnamese history. Through interactive displays and little cartoon shorts, I learned about several important battles in early Vietnamese history. Display cases along the wall held rusty spearpoints and sword blades, sharpened stakes pulled up from northern riverbeds and Đông Sơn bronze drums, long entombed and oxidized beneath paddy fields. Larger artifacts include a crossbow and some cannons. As a scale modeler myself, I loved exploring the intricate models of Cổ Loa Citadel (3^rd Century BCE) and the Battle of Bạch Đằng River (938 CE). Naturally, the common thread running through these exhibits is Vietnamese resistance to various Chinese dynasties’ invasions; though some attention is given to inter-Vietnamese conflicts like the Period of the Twelve Warlords (965–968 CE) and the Tây Sơn Wars (1771–1802 CE), there is little information on Vietnamese military interventions into Khmer, Chăm, or Highland spaces, which I was interested in learning more about.

After that came the struggle against the French. The exhibits breezed through some of Imperial Vietnam’s early defeats and instead cast a spotlight on various resistance movements after the French colonial takeover in the latter half of the 19^th century, most of which were unsuccessful. The part of the exhibition on the First Indochina War from 1945 to Điện Biên Phủ covered the creation of an independent Vietnam, and the successes of the People’s Army against the French colonial forces. Most of the exhibit space in this hall is filled with display cases holding rusted guns, but the signage is interesting, and I learned more about some lesser-known revolutionary heroes like Đội Cấn (for whom my home street is named) and highlander Đinh Núp. One spot that I found particularly affective was a life-size recreation of a barricaded street during the 1946 Battle of Hanoi, in which almost a third of the city was leveled, the event dramatized in last year’s hit film Đào, phở và piano. I was also interested in an exhibit on the “Deer Team,” a group of American spies with the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) who parachuted into northern Vietnam towards the end of WWII to assist Hồ Chí Minh in fighting the Japanese occupation. At the end of the hall is a semi-circular mini-theater with a scale model of Điện Biên Phủ and an audiovisual light show that goes through the definitive battle of the First Indochina War, which was a beloved fixture of the old museum campus. I was delighted to see that it had survived the move.

Then came the Second Indochina War, variously called the American War and the Vietnam War. I’ll admit I didn’t really pay close attention here. As an American and a historian who has lived in Vietnam for a while, I am getting tired of being asked about this conflict. Nonetheless, I suspect that ongoing domestic and international fascination with this tumultuous period of Vietnamese history will make it a favorite hall for many visitors. Different subsections of this hall covered the usual main points: Ấp Bắc, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the Tết Offensive, the war for the Central Highlands, the Hồ Chí Minh Campaign, and the Liberation of Saigon. Within this hall are plenty of guns and uniforms, as well as larger and more notable objects like a SAM missile launcher from Hanoi’s air defenses, a Renault Juvaquatre car, a MiG 21 fighter plane, and T-54B tank number 843, which played a critical role in the liberation of several southern cities during the Hồ Chí Minh campaign in 1975.

The final hall, which covered the period from 1975 to today, was more interesting to me. The two major sections here explored the border wars with China in 1979, with Cambodia from 1979 to 1989, and the ongoing troubles in Vietnam’s East Sea islands, delving into the rationale and method behind the literal nation-building projects in the Hoàng Sa and Trường Sa archipelagoes. At the end of the hall, a coda explains how the People’s Army of Vietnam is not just for fighting wars but also is ready to assist the public in case of natural disasters. This is the smallest of the historical exhibit rooms and has fewer artifacts than the preceding three halls, but I was engrossed in reading many of the panels here because I am less familiar with the history of the recent border wars than I am with the older anti-colonial conflicts.

The map I had showed several other exhibit halls, most of which were still under construction. The only other one I was able to see was a gallery featuring military-themed artwork. The gallery was seemingly unfinished — the floor was just exposed concrete and dust hung in the air, swirling around the spotlights — but the art was interesting. Like the rest of the museum’s exhibits, subjects ranged from ancient Vietnamese history to the modern day, and materials varied from painted canvases to sculptures. My favorite painting here was one depicting the Vietnamese victory at Điện Biên Phủ in 1945, with three scared-looking Frenchmen surrendering in the center of the canvas.

The one inconvenience — besides the fact that the museum is more than 20 kilometers from downtown Hanoi — is that, like many of Vietnam’s other museums, this one closes from 11:30am to 2pm for lunch. I don’t usually mind these long lunchtime closures, since so many of Vietnam’s museums are located in semi-urban areas where it’s easy to find a meal and a café to wait out the siesta, but this museum is truly in the middle of nowhere. It’s also so expansive that it takes several hours just to walk briskly through the exhibits, way more if you want to actually stop and read the signage or sit and watch some of the many videos playing throughout the halls in small semi-circular cinema rooms. I had to cross several lanes of busy highway to get to an overpriced but air-conditioned lunch at the Vincom Megamall nearby, though there were a handful of carts selling trà đá and various other refreshments by the museum entrance. The museum map said that there was a café on site somewhere (allegedly in the basement), but I never found it or the souvenir store. 

Having finally visited the museum, I understand the hype. Though parts of it are still under construction, I can tell that a lot of care went into every step of the exhibits’ designs. These are not the dusty halls and wonky translations that characterized a visit to the old museum. There are 3D interactive models, exhibits that utilize light and sound, searchable touch screens, and more than sixty different videos, both animated and live-action. With a phone and mobile data (only one of the exhibit halls has free WiFi), a visitor can access a whole extra layer of multimedia experience. There are QR codes and audio guides available to stream for those who wish to dig deeper. 

Despite my general disinterest in military history, this massive stone cathedral to steel and gunpowder is now my favorite museum in Hanoi. Although I liked the charm of the old military museum on Điện Biên Phủ Street in the old pale-yellow French colonial office building, this museum has weight and presence in a way that hits deep in my brutalism-loving heart. It would have been so easy for the government to just build some generic glass-and-steel museum full of airy, well-lit atria. I am glad that they did not. I’ll be back.

I never pass up an opportunity to reflect on chò nâu and its dipterocarp relative, cây sao. The massive trees that gracefully drag bare limbs upwards to unfurl canopies far above our heads were brought from their native highland terrains by the French in the 19^th century and grown in Thảo Cầm Viên Sài Gòn. From there, they were distributed throughout colonial developments, including Trà Vinh. Today, they not only provide shade and beauty but invite ruminations on legacies of nature's place in subjugation and self-determination.

Image via VnExpress.

Upon first approach, the rows of sao encircling Ao Bà Om call to mind the curtain wall of a fortified castle. But the imposing lines of trees are simply meant to beautify the surroundings as conceptualized by French aesthetics. 

The manmade pond long predates the trees or French colonialists, however, with Khmer legends explaining it was the work of a group of women besting a contingency of men in an ancient competition to establish marital traditions or naming conventions. In an inspiring fable about female work ethic, they succeeded through diligence while the men got drunk and frittered away the night. 

Photos by Paul Christiansen.

While many Khmer remain in the area, the locality is Vietnamese territory, as it was once French. The sao trees here, of course, have no concept of this, just as they have no awareness that they were not “designed” for miền Tây. The gnarled roots that swell, angle above the soil and make them so popular for social media photos underscore the fact that they did not evolve for these conditions. Such growth in their native land would result in them getting blown down in a windstorm.

Yet, the trees thrive here in Trà Vinh, and add immense value to the city, while instilling pride in its citizens. Their treasured place in the community is exemplified by what is happening now that many of the trees are growing old and dying. The government is planting new ones. Fragile saplings supported by wires and junk wood braces now grow beside the towering trunks.

Photo by Paul Christiansen.

During my visit last week, I observed a group of Khmer having a picnic beneath the old trees; a site that their descendants will hopefully enjoy too thanks to these new trees. The nationality of the hands who planted the sao trees should make no difference to the comfort offered by their shade. I wonder if the Vietnamese enjoyed them the same way when the French controlled the area. Perhaps it is true that we must defeat our oppressors before we can appreciate their art without guilt or anger, but the art crafted by nature far exceeds what humans can create. 

[Top image via Lao Động]

People often think that art is distant and difficult to appreciate, but a garden is different; everyone knows how to admire a flower.

Visitors to Lebadang Memory Space on the outskirts of Huế will see flowers before any of the paintings, sculptures, or installations created by Vietnamese artist Lebadang (Lê Bá Đảng). But it’s incorrect to separate the two. Rather, the large garden that leads up from the gates towards the impressive museum building is part of the art one encounters. To hear the soft flutter of leaves in the breeze, smell the sweet oils emitted by flowers, and feel the sun on your face is to experience the museum and its artwork as Lebadang intended. It is, in his own words, “an immense artwork, a cosmic landscape, a life in harmony with nature and towards eternity.”

One won’t find themselves at the impressive gates of the Memory Space by accident. Located nearly 10 kilometers from the city center, it's situated at the end of a rudimentary road that winds past expensive private homes and valuable land. Be warned, if you take a Grab out there, make arrangements for your return, because no ride-hailing app will work once you’re ready to leave. But trust us, whatever price your driver may request to sit in the shade playing cellphone games while waiting for you will be more than worth it.

Who is Lebadang?

The Lebadang Memory Space, simply put, is easily one of Vietnam’s most impressive museums. The 16,000-square-meter complex on the outskirts of Huế is devoted entirely to the life and work of Lebadang, an artist who is perhaps not as well-known as he should be. Despite his relative obscurity in Vietnam, much has been written about him and one could spend days falling down the rabbit hole of biographical essays, exhibition reviews, and artistic examinations. The museum itself contains a good overview of his life story and insights into his artistic vision, and while there is a certain joy in approaching it with no previous knowledge, a brief overview could be helpful, as well as hearing his perspective: “My artwork is often strange but simple. So everyone can hopefully feel happy and relaxed, and that’s why they like them.”

Born in 1921 in Quảng Trị to a wealthy family, he yearned for adventure, writing in 2005: “I have always wanted to escape from the weather-beaten paddy fields ever since I was a child.” Thus, despite his father's attempts to stop him, he volunteered to work as an Indochine laborer for the French military effort in Europe during WW2. Captured by Germans, he attempted three prison escapes before finally residing in France after the war and embarking on his artistic journey.

Portrait of Lebadang via the official Lebadang website.

After the war, Lebadang studied at the Toulouse Academy of Arts where he received a foundational art education across mediums including painting and sculpture. Enamored with French culture, he found a home within Paris’ artist communities. It was there that he met French-born Myshu (real name Micheline Nguyen Haï), whom he married in 1950; they had a son, Fabrice, also known as “Touty,” in 1951.

His formal studies were followed by poverty and hardships in line with the romantic stereotypes of a “starving artist.” He sold paintings of cats on the street.

As his depictions evolved from the hyper-realistic to more stylized and metaphorical, he drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including the Bodiaer poem, ‘Le Chat’ (The Cat), translated here by Roy Campbell:

Come, my fine cat, against my loving heart;
Sheathe your sharp claws, and settle.
And let my eyes into your pupils dart
Where agate sparks with metal.

Now while my fingertips caress at leisure
Your head and wiry curves,
And that my hand's elated with the pleasure
Of your electric nerves,

I think about my woman — how her glances
Like yours, dear beast, deep-down
And cold, can cut and wound one as with lances;

Then, too, she has that vagrant
And subtle air of danger that makes fragrant
Her body, lithe and brown.

In addition to cats, Lebadang’s early work focused on horses, nude figures and landscapes, often with singular strong lines creating bold and powerful representations. While frequently evoking scenes and themes from his childhood in Vietnam, his early work was conventionally western in style and tradition. Following a visit to Vietnam after 1975, he noted that Vietnam was quite behind the west in artistic development, so, rather than try to innovate from within western traditions, it should rely on its unique cultural identity that stands out on the international stage.

Galleries within Europe took notice of Lebadang early in his career and his exhibitions drew increasingly high-profile coverage with collectors beginning to buy his paintings. An incredibly prolific artist, he was also restless with his mediums and frequently shifted his attention drastically to new materials, such as stacked paper that he would meticulously cut into three-dimensional statues. Over his many decades of restless creation, he worked with calligraphy, engraving and embossed print-making, watercolors, bronze sculptures, wood carvings and even jewelry-making, amongst others.

1980 ushered in a tragedy that had a profound impact on Lebadang’s life and work. His son tragically passed away. His art took on a deep ache and longing that alternated between rage and immense sorrow. “I had to suffer a mental crisis, with a dark mind and a dark soul. It started attacking,” he explained. Touty’s spirit and image became inseparable from Lebadang’s craft, even appearing as the child between parents in the seal that he used as his signature for the remainder of his life.

Upon reaching the roof of the museum, one encounters a devastatingly tender testament to Touty. A mirrored silhouette of a man and woman has a child-sized hole cut out of where one’s heart would be. Through it, visitors can gaze out upon the verdant trees in the distance. A touching tribute to the irreplaceable existence of his only child, the statue also underscores Lebadang’s belief that “beauty is not enough” and all scenery and art should tell a story.

Museum history

Lush lighting lavishing each piece from the precisely perfect angle; thick doors that close with an audible seal keeping in the cool air; elegantly curved walls made with expensive materials mindful of acoustics that cast an introspective hush across the large main room: the museum is a world-class structure that sharply contrasts most other art museums around the country. If the sunlight is falling just so, guests can fully assess the masterful design via the shadows cast on the floor by the sunlight silhouette version of his seal.

Creating the museum was a lifelong dream — “an immense artwork, a cosmic landscape, a life in harmony with nature and towards eternity,” as he described it — realized after his passing in 2015 at the age of 96. Lê Cẩm Tế, a friend and student of Lebadang later in his life, was devoted to making it become a reality. With the blessing of Lebadang’s widow, Myshu, and detailed plans left by the artist himself, construction of the museum began on the land in 2016, Officially opened on April 21, 2019, it contains prized pieces from Lê Cẩm Tế’s personal collection as well as those provided by Myshu.

Amongst the 293 works including elements of his masterpiece ‘Comédie Humaine’ (The Human Comedy), which borrows from writer Honoré de Balzac and represents his own understanding of the human condition. Spread across drawings, watercolors, etchings, collages, sculptures, and lithographs, it is a narration of all the feelings he experienced and perhaps all that humans, in general, could experience, narrated via thousands of faces, each with a unique perspective.

Also prominently featured are several political statues. An outspoken pacifist, Lebadang asked Lê Đức Thọ, the chief negotiator with Henry Kissinger at the 1973 Paris Peace Accord negotiations, to bring him back debris from the B-52s used in the war. Transforming them into painted sculptures of horse heads, human profiles, hands, and birds, they were a call for peace.

More than a beautiful garden, collection of artworks, and presentation of his life and his aristic vision, Lebadang Memory Space is an opportunity to experience an outlook on life. The on-site cafe features some of the simple but indulgent items he would have appreciated. Additionally, an adjacent homestay provides artistic solitude and quiet to soak in the ambiance and slowly take in the stories that Lebadang believed must accompany any natural scenes. While not yet open during our visits in 2022 and 2023, Saigoneer has bookmarked the location for further exploration. If they are anything like the museum, they surely warrant a stay.

Having failed to make arrangements for my return to the city center last year, I walked aimlessly away from the Memory Space. Huế’s relentless heat, the crunch of gravel beneath my feet and the horizon of pine trees in the distance allowed me to reflect on what was a most exceptional visit. Seekers of peace, quiet, a cool climate and, an abundance of nature will certainly consider the couple hours spent pacing the museum worthwhile. Local art lovers will appreciate “discovering” an artist whose creative talents seem under-discussed in his native country while some international devotees of Lebadang schedule globe-trotting pilgrimages to see it. Truly there is no wrong way to enjoy one’s time there as long as you enjoy it. As he said himself: “Man finds sustenance and spiritual nourishment in every source.”

With a total population hardly larger than some Saigon districts and limited tourism development, Phú Yên province doesn’t get much consideration when people are planning their next vacation.

Photo by Frederik Wissink.

Such overlook is a great shame, however, as the province features a spectacular stretch of beaches beset by mountains and untrammeled nature as well as friendly folk eager to share charming traditions. The food is fabulous as well.

View of the sea and Zannier Hotels Bãi San Hô. Photo by Frederik Wissink.

The Routes to Phú Yên are Half the Pleasure

Photo by Frederik Wissink.

530km by road from Saigon, directly below Bình Định and to the east of Gia Lai and Đắk Lắk, the coastal province takes some time to reach. Saigoneer will forever advocate time on the train, and the North-South railway (Reunification Express) stops in Phú Yên. Idyllic rice fields, placid ocean overlooks and imposing mountains in the distance: the trip is an endless series of scenic delights. However, the ride from Saigon to Tuy Hòa station lasts between nine and ten and a half hours, making it a challenge for shorter vacations. Thus, direct flights to Bình Định are a great option.

Photo by Saigoneer.

Phù Cát airport rests 30km outside Quy Nhơn, but you will need to pass through the city en route to Phú Yên. In Saigoneer’s experience, it's highly worthwhile to have some extra time in your schedule to spend in and around the gem of a city. One of the nation’s best history museums; imposing Chăm towers reminding visitors that a foreign empire once claimed southern Vietnam; a touching monument to a brilliantly bizarre poet held within a surreal leprosy colony filled with remarkable architecture; and a new science museum that is particularly thrilling for families are all worthy of a visit. 

Photos by Saigoneer.

When you finally do pass from Bình Định into Phú Yên, you might not be aware. The transition occurs in a rural area that typifies the entire province. Small fishing villages and idyllic rice and vegetable fields surrounding shrimp ponds occupy the spaces between small towns and villages. The existential crisis of tradition and modernity metaphorically exemplified by the battle between tạp hóa and foreign convenience stores, feels decades away in Phú Yên. 

Nature Flourishing in Every Direction

From the reflections of con cò gliding across flooded rice paddies and the haunting cries of thạch sùng at midnight to colorful blooms of wildflowers rioting freely on cliffs and forests, rural nature is Phú Yên’s greatest gift. 

Photo by Adaras Blogazine.

Phú Yên’s relative isolation and sparse population should be particularly welcome by beach lovers. The vast stretches of empty sand cloistered by rocky outcroppings allow for calm sunbathing and vigorous backstrokes alike. Depending on which part of the province you venture to, there are different beaches to access, with lesser-known ones available via the advice of locals. One of our favorites is undoubtedly Hòn Yến. Every summer, favorable tides transform the coral reefs into a stunning landscape that calls into question whether forests should be most associated with land or sea.

Photos by Trương Hoài Vũ for Saigoneer.

Fresh Seafood and Some More Peculiar Dishes

In addition to providing beachgoers with picturesque views, the ocean has helped shape Phú Yên’s cuisine. A bevy of fresh seafood is available throughout the region, with a particular focus on tuna. Because many of the fishermen that go deep into the sea to catch these giant fish depart from the region, tuna is found in restaurants and markets and even frozen in convenient “to go” packaging at thePhù Cát airport. Tuna’s meaty, tough-textured eyes are particularly treasured and sold fresh at restaurants.

Photo of bánh hỏi cháo lòng by Saigoneer.

While giant tuna eyes may sound unusual, Phú Yên’s most unique dish is probably chả dông. Resembling a fried spring roll, you might find anywhere in the country, the meat inside the crispy rice paper wrapping is harvested from wild monitor lizards during their late spring through early summer breeding season. The subtly smoky, gamey reptile flavors blend into the local herbs, vegetables and fish sauce. Fish sauce is also traditionally used in Phú Yên for grilled corn, another twist on a nationwide dish. And even if you consider tuna eyes and lizard flesh too adventurous, there are many new dishes to experience, such as bánh hỏi cháo lòng, which pairs porridge with delicate rice noodle mats. 

Photo by Zannier Hotels Bãi San Hô.

Trendy fusion spots, familiar chains and upscale restaurants are largely non-existent in the province, so meals reinforce Saigoneer’s beliefs that the best food is often served at the most unassuming venues. From market-adjacent mom-and-pop stalls to humble seafood joints along coastal roads, the freshness and careful attention to each dish cannot be surpassed.

Exploring Rural Charms and Timeless Industries 

Photos by Frederik Wissink.

Instead of chintzy theme parks and overpriced attractions, Phú Yên contains more valuable opportunities to observe unique traditions and experience the generosity of locals who are not hardened to the transactional qualities of the tourism industry. Simply getting out and driving around the surroundings or strolling through towns and markets often yields invitations to witness small industries such as making fishing traps from wood foraged from nearby forests and massive flats of drying salt that resemble an impossible gathering of stars in the night sky. 

Photos of salt fields by Frederik Wissink for Zannier Hotels.

A highlight of a recent Saigoneer trip included visiting a home that had perfected a family recipe for producing rice paper. Explaining each step before inviting us to sit beside the fire stoked with rice fibers and trying it ourselves revealed the attention paid to the simplest items we take for granted on a daily basis. 

Photos by Ash James.

A World-Class Hotel that Offers Immersion into Phú Yên's Charms

Photo by Zannier Hotels Bãi San Hô.

Given Phú Yên’s rural charms, you could reasonably assume all available lodgings would be local and basic. However, the province is home to a world-class hotel that provides unparalleled service and amenities that help one experience the area. Needing no introduction amongst luxury hotel enthusiasts, Zannier Hotels Bãi San Hô occupies 245-acres of pristine nature and beachfront on a secluded peninsula in central Phú Yên. 73 free-standing villas pays homage to the region’s early cultural aesthetics with different architecutral legacies embraced for views of verdant rice paddy fields, majestic hilltops or a mile-long stretch of white sand beach. The property's sprawling forests filled with birds and butterflies, panoramic views of the ocean, and generous staff all help make it simply one of the most impressive and enjoyable hotels Saigoneer has ever visited in Vietnam.

Photos by James Campbell (left) and Frederik Wissink (right).

But more than just a place to pamper one’s senses, Zannier Hotels Bãi San Hô helps you get a true feel for the area. The on-site restaurant, for example, serves local specialties that take advantage of freshly caught seafood, while experienced chefs can help you gather ingredients from the on-site organic garden to learn how to make local dishes. Watersport equipment and bicycles are available to rent and a calming spa cater to days of rest and wellness one should intersperse with adventures off the property. A hiking trail just beyond the pool leads to phenomenal views before ambling down into a small village. The hotel also offers guided excursions further into the area to witness the locals making rice paper and fish traps and can arrange a meal in a home in a floating community. A stay at Zannier Hotels Bãi San Hô is thus a great way to balance desires for pampering oneself with responsible and intimate discovery of people and lifestyles.

Photos by Frederik Wissink.

There is no telling precisely how long Phú Yên will retain its rustic charms and awe-shucks sensibilities. As developers arrive to transform the coast with resorts and industry develops in the interior, the natural serenity will slowly slip away. But for now, it remains a wondrously calm area for wistful jaunts to make sepia-toned memories.

[Top image by Frederik Wissink for Zannier Hotels]

The punishing mid-day sun dictates the pace of life in the corridor between Phan Rang and Cam Ranh, where locals escape to their living rooms or hammocks, and tourists seek the cooling breeze of the beach, seafood restaurants or resort pools. Perhaps one of the most underrated ways to take refuge from the heat is to duck into one of the nearby grape vineyards where winding vines create a natural oasis.

The canopy of grape vines is the perfect hiding place.

These working orchards dot the roadsides in Mỹ Hòa and double as showrooms with spartan seating. They are, however, a welcoming hideaway for me as each table is topped with a plate of red and white grapes, raisins, refreshing containers of cold juice from grape concentrate and freshly squeezed tắc, and bottles of sweet grape wine of an unspecified ABV — all complimentary.

All of these grapes and their byproducts seem popular, particularly with local tourists who can be seen loading boxes of these goods into their vehicles, no doubt to share their bounty with friends and family in the cities from which they came.

While we picked up a few things to bring back to Saigon, the real enjoyment of this experience was the vineyard itself, sitting under sagging clusters of grapes, some perfectly lit by rays of sunshine peeking through the zigzagging roof of vines.

A delightfully bizarre place, Quy Nhơn’s Quy Hoà leprosy colony deserves exploration in full, but clustered in a grove of trees on its outskirts in Nhân Ái Park stands a particularly peculiar assemblage of more than 50 cement busts atop podiums. Who are they? One must walk closer to find out.

Hippocrates, Ivan Pavlov, and Alexander Fleming hold solemn expressions beside Khắc Quảng, Nguyễn Như Bằng, Trương Công Quyền and others along with brief descriptions. The entire park is devoted to individuals associated with some of the world’s most important scientific and medical breakthroughs, as well as notable Vietnamese involved in the nation’s hospitals, health institutes and laboratories. Officially inaugurated in 2010, the project was envisioned and implemented by directors of Quy Nhơn’s leprosy hospital in the 1980s to honor individuals who contributed to science and medicine. 

Statues as a concept have recently come under scrutiny, especially in the west where depictions of men whose behavior modern society has taken a more critical view of, have been torn down. But beyond removing statues of colonizers, racists and genocidal maniacs, there are debates about the value of statues altogether. By elevating a singular person for their role in collective accomplishments, the contributions of many people essential to the effort are ignored. For example, Doctor Calmette may have helped develop a rabies vaccine while in Saigon, but what about the assistants who risked death to ferry rabid rabbits across the sea for him? On the other hand, having Vietnamese professionals among international luminaries can be a source of national pride, helping inspire locals with the truth they are capable of contributing on the world stage.

Some opponents of statues decry that they are taking up valuable space that could be used for more important things. This, at least, doesn’t apply to Nhân Ái’s statue garden as a large stretch of idyllic beachfront exists just beyond the treeline surrounded by an ample amount of open land. During Saigoneer’s visit, a group of karaoke-warbling nhậu revelers were on that nearby sand. Had they sauntered over to the statue garden, would they have reflected on the fact that the majority of them wouldn’t have made it to middle age were it not for the scientific breakthroughs honored by the individuals memorialized there? And if so, would their beer have tasted a bit cooler, and their songs come out a little more passionately?