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The other co-founder of Saigoneer, irremediably drawn to balance, an introvert at heart who speaks through photography, filmmaking, and coding. I capture life with the same passion I live it.
613 stories
Travel
You might miss it if you were driving past, but once you walk down a small hẻm off Quy Nhơn’s main Tây Sơn Street, the massive cemetery sprawls in all directions.
Saigon Hẻm Gems
A bowl full of noodles is one of the things that make me feel lucky to be alive, and alive in Saigon in particular.
Architecture
Completed in 1973, the V.A.R building at 9 Nguyễn Công Trứ Street in Nguyễn Thái Binh Ward, District 1, is a prominent example of Vietnamese mid-20 th -century modernist architecture designed by architect Lê Văn Lắm. It not only represents the Vietnamese architectural identity in post-colonial eras, but also exemplifies its cultural autonomy.
Saigon
From inside the workshop, artisans carry bundle after bundle of freshly made incense sticks into the courtyard amid the morning mist. A gentle scent of spices linger in the air.
Development
Authorities in Gia Lai Province have approved plans to relocate the Quy Hoà leprosy village from its current ocean-side setting in Quy Nhơn to make room for an ambitious real estate and tourism project.
Saigon
To me, my trip to Cư xá Thanh Đa in summer 1982 was a serendipitous encounter. It was Saigon’s largest-scale residential complex in the first half of the 1970s, with nearly 4,000 separate units housing about 50,000 inhabitants. Cư xá refers to a residential quarter reserved for gainfully employed citizens, with a vision to establish a model community with a high quality of life. Here, in their three-bedroom apartments, civil servants, professors, doctors, and military leaders ranked major or higher lived in pride of being a part of a cư xá like that.
Eat & Drink
Separated by a vast ocean and home to an unrelated language, culture, and history, Japan would seemingly have minimal interaction with Peru. But a close relationship between the two nations goes back centuries.
Saigon Hẻm Gems
Before the existence of Sara Ethiopian Restaurant in Saigon, my knowledge about the African country could fit squarely in a child’s palm: its capital, Addis Ababa; the tragic Ethiopian Airlines crash in March; and its national dish, injera .
Saigon
As part of Saigon’s latest initiative to increase green space coverage in the city, a number of abandoned land plots were converted into public parks, including a Covid Memorial Park that’s become a beloved destination for Saigoneers seeking a space to jog, reflect, or just simply touch grass.
Music & Arts
It’s been hidden right there in the heart of Saigon for over half a decade.
Saigon
“Cute” doesn’t seem like a fitting descriptor for any mode of public transport, but a bus in Saigon is driving straight into the heart of Saigoneers for being the quintessence of “smotheringly adorable.”
Saigon Hẻm Gems
Looking back at my days in Japan, I cherish most the moments I decided to get lost in yokochos — small and narrow alleys filled with shops, often bars — and push on a random door, not knowing what could await me behind it. It could be a wooden stall illuminated by blinding lights, its noisy customers showered with beer; or a 19 th -century-style Manhattan bar, where the only movements come from trails of smoke off the customers’ cigarettes and streams of light going through bottles of whisky behind the counter.
Eat & Drink
Saigon’s streets snarl with hot, sticky knots of traffic every evening. As people finish their workdays and look ahead to quality time with families at home, precious hours pursuing hobbies and meeting with friends around the city, they must first contend with horrific congestion. This rush hour period, when movement is slow and frustrating, coincides with peak skyline beauty.
Saigon
Recently, I visited Saigon’s newly inaugurated COVID-19 memorial park . Located at 1 Lý Thái Tổ, Vườn Lài Ward, the park opened in February as a part of the city’s efforts to expand its green spaces. The centerpiece of the park is its teardrop-shaped sculpture, a monument commemorating the solidarity and care that carried the city through the hardships of the pandemic.
Saigon Hẻm Gems
Ever since I was a kid, I have had a general dislike towards vegetables, but green onion has always been an exception. I regard green onion as a garnish that can lighten up the whole dish, and it seems like whenever it’s absent from my cơm tấm or xôi mặn, I will instantly lose my enthusiasm to eat. But during my teenage years, my affection for scallion was challenged for the first time, when I encountered a photo of Phú Yên’s bánh canh hẹ online.
Travel
At 3am, Hội An’s streets resemble dog-gnawed pork bones, licked clean of all scent and viscera. No light, no noise, no movement. But that’s the time you must venture out to witness the Duy Hải Fish Market in action.
Vietnam Hẻm Gems
As a Đà Nẵng native, I often get asked where and what to eat and drink by friends who are in town. The tried-and-true list of places in my mind always includes Góc Nhà Tụi Mình, which I’ve frequented nearly constantly for the past six years.
Music & Arts
“Điển is like a flower; there is no question of growing or not growing.”
Culture
"In the early 2000s, the market experienced an exodus of painters due to the shift to digital; it was difficult to retain customers otherwise. I didn't want my craft to be forgotten, so I started everything all over,” Nguyễn Hoài Bảo told me in Vietnamese when I visited his studio.
Travel
Last year marked an impressive year for tourism in Vietnam. A record number of 21.17 million international tourists visited the country in 2025, a 20.4% increase compared to 2024. This far exceeded the global average growth rate of around 5%, as well as that of the Asian Pacific region of roughly 8%.
Saigon Hẻm Gems
Every time I depart from Vietnam to study abroad or travel, on the way to Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport, I stop by the Bàu Cát area in Tân Bình to stuff myself with at least two bowls of bún mắm nêm heo quay .
Culture
Growing up in America, Christmas meant arriving at my grandmother's house and immediately devouring a handmade gingerbread cookie drenched in sugar; driving with my Dad to “candy cane lane,” where homeowners took particular pride in stringing colorful lights on their gutters, windows and frontyard pines; and sneaking to our living room’s Christmas tree at 5am to sit in the dark staring at the presents, waiting until my mom said we were allowed to wake up and open them. Christmas began when Mannheim Steamroller’s Christmas songs played on the long ride home from Thanksgiving with relatives and continued through snowy Christmas tree lots, studies paused for classroom parties with pizza and soda pop, and the 1966 Grinch cartoon played on repeat.
Saigon
You just have to mention the “pink church” and everyone knows which one you mean. But few are aware that the building in question — Tân Định Church — is one of Saigon’s oldest and most important Roman Catholic institutions.
Saigoneer Getaways
What lies between Đà Nẵng and Huế?
