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Paul Christiansen is a Saigon-based writer and editor.
254 stories
Loạt Soạt
“When you’ve lived to a certain age, you don’t ask whether or not something is true, you ask which truth it is.”
Vietnam
“If you know, you know.”
Parks & Rec
One by one, motorbikes arrived, carrying the tell-tale cages covered with cloth and parked in the gravel lot beside the coffee shop where Saigoneer sat listening to the caged birds suspended above a patch of scrabbly grass.
Saigon
It’s not hard to find snippets of America in Saigon.
Culture
They say a person dies twice: once when their heart stops beating and a second time when people stop mentioning their name. If we alter this phrase a bit to include the last time one’s image is seen, Saigon’s beloved cô Mía may soon be receiving last rites.
Dishcovery
It started with tamarind, and ended with crab.
Culture
An enormous chim Lạc snatches Mai from her school library in the present day and lifts her high above Sa Pa more than 2,000 years ago.
Natural Selection
America has been losing its shit over snakeheads. All summer long my algorithm-led newsfeed has been alerting me to ominous headlines including “‘Horror movie’ snakehead fish that can slither on land invading Missouri amid fourth sighting,” “Voracious, invasive ‘frankenfish’ reeled in from Delaware River at Easton,” and “Snakehead Fish Found in Georgia: ‘Kill It Immediately.’”
Environment
Worms live in the ground, birds live in the air, cá lóc live in lakes and octopuses live in the ocean, right? Wrong! Octopus can also live in the river.
Environment
A row of impenetrable watchtowers tasked with inflicting ruthless law and order upon a dystopian borderland seething with marauders, bandits and brigands? No. Sluice gates.
Food Culture
The highway eases into sand and gravel the way history descends into myth and legend when traveling towards Long An. A mere 27 kilometers outside of Saigon, the province feels a world away: the difference between a cocktail made with 18-year-old scotch, jackfruit-infused rum, seven types of bitters and brandy-soaked organic cherries and a plastic water bottle of homemade rượu nếp . The latter was the reason we were going there: for information, interviews and anecdotes to complete Saigoneer ’s two-part investigation of the history of rice wine .
Architecture
“We need the sweet pain of anticipation to tell us we are really alive.”
Ton-sur-Ton
A sparrow swooping across a special-edition can of Coca-Cola, the illustrations featured in the artworks of Ngọt's Grammy-nominated album boxset, or perhaps even the tattoo on a stranger you pass on the street: you have probably seen the work of Khim Đặng, the man behind Saigon fashion brand easybadwork, without knowing it. His graphic designs have graced a variety of commercial and collaborative works in Saigon, but easybadwork is his hobby business. “A true business makes you money, a hobby business makes you happy,” he told Saigoneer.
Vietnam
Did you know that several Vietnamese cities have coats of arms?
Music & Arts
“This is not a tour, remove that word from your minds. This is an interacting and exploring journey,” explained Angeline Gong, an experienced art host known by Saigon’s artists and galleries as Z-Gong.
Literature
Fruit and poetry: the two things I love most.
Food Culture
Line up all the world’s fruits, best to worst, taking into account every rateable aspect imaginable including taste, appearance, price, reliability and seasonality — the banana rests at the exact middle. So I've personally used it as the ideal threshold to rank every fruit I've ever eaten.
Dishcovery
The mangosteen salad trend hit TikTok in 2023, creating a demand that led locals to quit their jobs and take on more lucrative full-time fruit-peeling duties.
Travel
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.
Loạt Soạt
Where are all the female writers?
Culture
How can photo booths be a new trend if they’ve been around forever?
Loạt Soạt
Nguyễn Quang Thân passed away on March 4, 2017, several weeks before I moved to Saigon. So of course I never met him, but I feel like I know him. My first introduction was via An Insignificant Family , the fictionalized memoir written by his wife, writer Dạ Ngân, which includes a description of the 10 years they spent apart, writing letters to one another from opposite ends of the nation, followed by their life together. In the years since I first interviewed her about that novel, I’ve been blessed to be adopted as her son; one of the greatest gifts of my life. No visit with her goes past without him being mentioned. For years, Nguyễn Quang Thân has simply been Ba Thân.
Music & Arts
Contemporary art can intimidate viewers. People often think they need familiarity with certain histories, theories, philosophies and biographies to appreciate a painting. I have friends who do not have a formal art education or extensive art background and thus think visual art is not for them.
Environment
When I fall in love with an album, I seek out the artist's first mixtapes and demos. When I come to admire a poet, I hunt down their early poems and chapbooks. I even linger over the old highlight reels of my favorite football players' college games. Understanding where something starts allows me appreciate it more. So it is with the Nhiêu Lộc–Thị Nghè Canal.