Since the beginning of our festive history, Vietnam’s special occasions have always been closely associated with traditional dishes. Lunar New Year is the time to enjoy bánh chưng and bánh tét, while the arrival of Trung Thu is foretold by the appearance of moon cakes and bánh pía. In the case of Tết Đoan Ngọ, revelers eat bánh bá trạng and bánh ú tro to get a taste of festivity.

What is Tết Đoan Ngọ?

Tết Đoan Ngọ falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, marking the midway point of the lunar yearly calendar. It’s observed by not only Vietnam but many East Asian nations too, such as China, Japan, and North and South Korea. Each celebrates the occasion via different customs, but most involve warding off bad mojo and wishing for health and bountiful harvests.

In Vietnam, Tết Đoan Ngọ’s existence is rooted in ancient Vietnamese’s agrarian life. As researcher Trần Ngọc Thêm explains in the book Tìm về bản sắc văn hóa Việt Nam (Revisiting Vietnam’s Cultural Identity): “[Vietnam] lies across the Tropic of Cancer, so summers are sweltering and uncomfortable, negatively affecting human health. Luckily, as part of the routine of rice growers, farmers must always monitor the weather to minimize its harmful effects and make full use of natural advantages. That was how Tết Đoan Ngọ traditions formed.”

Bánh ú tro as part of an altar offering plate for Tết Đoan Ngọ.

Some Vietnamese refer to Tết Đoan Ngọ casually as Tết diệt sâu bọ (Pest Removal Festival). During the lunar May, the weather is often intensely hot, peppered by bouts of heavy rain, both conducive to the proliferation of bugs while weakening human immunity. To “remove pests,” at midday on the fifth day, families set up festive altar offerings to their ancestors to seek successful harvests, good health, and a peaceful life. Some other customs include picking medicinal herbs, bathing in water steeped with leaves, and dabbing lime water on young children to deworm, etc.

Each region in Vietnam has a slightly different offering platter, depending on local beliefs and produce. This diversity and uniqueness can be observed in the writings of authors like Phan Kế Bính, Vũ Bằng, and Nhất Thanh: “If the platter of northerners must include red watermelons, central platters from Thanh Hóa to Huế can’t leave out duck meat. Those living in the Quảng stretch often put up sticky rice, chè, and bánh ú tro. In the south, chè trôi nước and xôi gấc are a given. People from across the South-Central, South and some locations in the North eat bánh ú tro and bánh gio. It’s common to see chè kê and grilled rice paper in Huế.” Across that eclectic range of altar treats, bánh ú tro is the rare delicacy that appears all over Vietnam.

Bánh ú tro on the altar

Bánh ú tro is made from glutinous rice and wrapped in green leaves. Despite its name, the dumpling is often just the size of a child’s fist. To make it, first, the rice must be soaked in ash water for 24 hours. The soaking liquid’s slight alkalinity helps partially hydrolyze the starch in rice, so when the rice is cooked, the result is transparent like jelly, no rice grain in sight. This soaking is believed to make bánh ú tro easier to digest than other rice dumplings. Just bite into it, one can taste the faint taste of ash, but also a refreshing feeling.

Bánh ú tro (bánh gio) is eaten with molasses in Northern Vietnam.

In each locality, the dumpling manifests in a subtly different form, taste, and eating style. Northern Vietnam calls it bánh gio, bánh nẳng, or bánh âm; this version doesn’t feature a filling and is served with molasses, hence the name bánh gio mật. Via the baskets of street vendors, bánh gio mật travels across the streets of the region, bestowing its sticky, molassy, and “ashy” goodness on eaters.

Shape-wise, makers can choose to wrap it pyramidally, squarely or cylindrically like a banana. To serve, bánh gio is placed on a plate with a drizzle of molasses. Diners section off smaller pieces using a bamboo string. Sweet, refreshing, sparkling with molasses — bánh gio is something to relish slowly, so that elegant taste lingers for longer on your tongue.

Bánh ú tro can be pyramids, squares, or even cylinders.

In Central Vietnam, bánh ú tro appears as pyramids, sold in bundles of 10. Some say the pyramid shape symbolizes a mountain’s stability, but others believe that the dumpling represents elemental harmony: fire creates earth, like how the burnt ash forms the glutinous coating, shielding the rice in the middle, which was nurtured by earth. Central Vietnamese like both bánh ú with and without a filling, but children adore the chewy outer layer, especially when dipped in molasses or rock sugar grains.

Down south, bánh ú tro is best known as bánh ú lá tre. The shape is still a pyramid, but the filling is much more diverse: apart from the traditional mung bean paste, there are also durian, coconut, candied coconut, and candied winter melon. This version is already sweet on its own, so there’s no need to dip in anything. All you need to do is peel away the leaf wrapping and then go to town on them, one by one.

How to make bánh ú tro

Bánh ú tro might seem unassuming, but its preparation is a whole tedious process that often begins every year from the end of lunar April. Bánh ú bakeries often operate around the clock during this peak season to meet orders for Tết Đoan Ngọ.

Bánh ú lá tre.

Across Vietnam, many craft villages are nationally famous for their bánh ú tro, like Đình Bảng (Bắc Giang), Đắc Sở (Hoài Đức, Hanoi), Tây Đình (Vĩnh Phúc), Phú Yên (Bình Định), Hoán Mỹ (Quảng Nam), Yên Lãng (Thanh Hóa), and even Saigon has its own bánh ú neighborhood.

In the most traditional preparation, bánh ú makers must begin the process months before the midyear period. They gather firewood, leaves, and fruit peels of ideal plants. The plant matter is dried, burnt and then sieved to produce fine ash. In each locality, the plant species might vary: dền gai, xoan, pommelo peel, and banana peel in the north; Thanh Tiên Village in Huế uses the ash from brick kilns; Quảng Nam prefers the ash from mè trees, as the oil from the ash is believed to improve the texture of the dumpling’s outer layer. Some families just use the ashes from their kitchen, which come from straw and charcoal.

How to wrap a bánh ú.

The ashes are mixed with pickling lime and water, then left alone for a few days. After the sediments have settled down, the alkaline water on top is removed and used in cooking as ash water. The concentration of the ash water plays a key role in whether the texture and taste of bánh ú would be ideal. If the alkalinity is too high, the dumpling will turn out pungent and bitter. Conversely, low alkalinity will produce dumplings that are tough and grainy. Glutinous rice, when soaked, will turn different colors, like opaque grey, sienna, or even hay yellow. Once the grains get to the desired translucence, the cook will remove them and rinse them a few times to remove the ash water.

There are many choices of leaves for the wrapping, including bamboo, dong, banana, or đót. The leaves are washed then blanched in boiling water or sun-dried to make them more pliable. A few layers of leaves are folded into a funnel and then filled with rice. The filling is added in this step too. The leaves are then pinched on top into shape and tied up using grass strings. Each bundle of bánh ú has 10 dumplings. The bundles are boiled for 4–6 hours, removed and soaked in cold water to stop the cooking. Finally, the bundles are hung on bamboo canes to dry.

A sweet memory of Tết Đoan Ngọ

Although not as widely celebrated and popular as other special occasions of the year, Tết Đoan Ngọ is still a nice occasion to check in with one’s family, perhaps over a bánh ú tro or two.

“The simple joy of Tết is just seeing the block of dough appear like sparkling amber. The rice grains have completely mushed together, soft and elastic to the touch.”

I still remember vividly the weight of bánh ú in my hands as I heave in a lungful of bamboo leaf scent, carefully peeling away the wrapping to reveal the dumpling inside. The simple joy of Tết is just seeing the block of dough appear like sparkling amber. The rice grains have completely mushed together, soft and elastic to the touch. The outer layer is jiggly and chewy, tastes of ashes — perfectly accompanied by the nutty and sweet mung bean filling. If that year my mother decided to go all out with a durian bánh ú, then that would be another layer of special fragrance. Vegetarian bánh ú is also good for dipping in table sugar, rock sugar grains, or even molasses.

Every time Tết Đoan Ngọ comes, I can’t help but yearn for the flavors of bánh ú tro, not just because of its inviting taste, but also because of everything that this humble dumpling encapsulates: the aroma of the leaf wrapping, the meaningful customs of our culture, and the bond linking generations of our family together.

This article was originally published in 2025.

After an extended investigation, the Hồ Chí Minh City Police Department has busted a major cat theft and distribution ring that operated across multiple southern provinces.

As Thanh Niên reports, the Criminal Bureau of the HCMC Police Department recently announced the result of a special campaign targeting a group of interprovincial pet kidnappers that have stolen, trapped, and trafficked cats for the past three years.

The police arrested and questioned 10 suspects with direct involvement in the ring. They allegedly organized kidnappings of pet cats and trappings of stray cats in Saigon and neighboring provinces and stored the animals at home. Once every two or three days, they would deliver the cats in cages to Lê Huỳnh Bá, a middleman at a rate of VND70,000 per kilogram.

Photo by HCMC Police via Tuổi Trẻ.

Bá then would transport the cats to a gathering point at a garage in Tây Ninh Province, northwest of Saigon, before they were distributed to other sellers. Upon investigating the Tây Ninh garage, HCMC detectives discovered about 400 cats in 45 cages and 4 styrofoam boxes containing frozen cat carcasses.

An additional 21 live cats were found after officers searched another hideout in Linh Xuân Ward. In total, the campaign discovered over 500 cats, marking the bust the biggest of its kind so far in Saigon. Unfortunately, a number of cats have passed away.

Zoo staff tagging cats to assist with searching efforts.

However, after the cat theft ring was unraveled, the remaining cats that are still alive have been temporarily sheltered at the Tăng Nhơn Phú Police Station so owners of lost cats can look for their lost kitty friends, according to Tuổi Trẻ.

Since the news broke on local media, vets and animal lovers from across the city have volunteered to help the station to take care of the hundreds of cats recovered from the ring. Saigoneers have also sent kibbles, wet food, litter, medicine, and cages to assist with the operation.

Many cats are stressed, dehydrated, and malnourished, requiring IV fluids.

According to Nguyễn Quỳnh Thiện Hảo, head of the Saigon Zoo’s veterinary department, zoo staff volunteered to help immediately after reading about the police campaign online. While other Saigon vets focus on treating vulnerable and sick cats, the zoo team has been helping with tagging, categorizing, and profiling the felines to streamline search and rehome efforts.

Congratulations to No. 103 for being united with its parents, who traveled all the way from Vĩnh Lộc, Bình Chánh to visit.

Posted on an album of on the zoo’s official Facebook page, the profiles come with ID numbers, distinctive features, and photos to help owners better recognize their furry friends. While the police have not released official data on how many have been recovered or rehomed, reports on social media show families as far as An Giang in the Mekong Delta reuniting with their lost cat, which illustrates how extensive the cat theft network was.

Photos via Facebook page Thảo Cầm Viên Saigon.

To search for your lost cat, have a look at the Saigon Zoo’s cat profile archive here and visit the Tăng Nhơn Phú Police Station at 9 Xa Lộ Hà Nội, Thủ Đức City during business hours.

When they first drew up plans for a citywide tramway network in 1894, it seemed as though the Hanoi authorities would follow Saigon’s example by opting for steam traction. Yet, by the time government approval was forthcoming in 1899, advances in technology made it possible to construct the entire system as a state-of-the-art, one-meter gauge electric tramway.

In 1900, the Compagnie des Tramways Électriques d’Hanoï et Extensions (CTEH) was to set up to build the first two tramway lines, which were jointly inaugurated in November 1901.

A CTEH Line 1 tram at the Place des Cocotiers terminus.

Setting out from the Place des Cocotiers terminus next to the Petit Lac (Hoàn Kiếm Lake), Line 1 led southward to Bạch Mai and Line 2 northeastward to Giấy village, near today’s Bưởi Market. A subsequent decision of July 20, 1905 authorized the extension of Line 1 to Chợ Mơ on the Route Circulaire (now Đại La Street).

A CTEH Line 1 tram passes the Petit Lac.

In 1904, work began on Line 3, which led east from the Petit Lac to the Pagode des Corbeaux (the Temple of Literature) and then headed southwest to Thái Hà Ấp. This line was extended to Hà Đông in 1914 and to Cầu Đơ Market in 1938.

A CTEH Line 3 tram at Hà Đông.

Construction of Line 4 got under way in 1907. Following the path of Line 3 from Place des Cocotiers to the Pagode des Corbeaux, it then branched westward to the Pont du Papier (Cầu Giấy).

In its early years, despite its apparent popularity, the Hanoi tramway network suffered continuous financial problems. Until as late as 1913, CTEH remained a deficitary operation. Thereafter, profits remained relatively modest, precluding adequate maintenance on its rolling stock, track, catenary and buildings. In 1929, the increasingly run-down network was taken over by the Compagnie des Tramways du Tonkin (CTT), which upgraded large stretches of track and catenary and ordered replacement second-generation tractor and trailer sets from France.

It was under the CTT that the final stage of network expansion was implemented. A decision of November 14, 1930 authorized the creation of Line 5, which branched off Line 3 and headed south along the Route Mandarine to Kim Liên and northward from Place Neyret to Yên Phụ on the Red River Dyke. In 1943, Line 5 was extended further south as far as the Route Circulaire, in order to serve the René Robin Hospital, the radio station and Bạch Mai airfield. With the completion of Line 5, the tramway network in Hanoi had reached approximately 30 kilometers in length.

13 CTEH Line 3 tram at Place Neyret.

In 1952, at the height of the First Indochina War, the CTT was renamed the Société des Transports en Commun de la Région d'Hanoï. However, on June 1, 1955, this company ceased operations and all track, equipment and rolling stock was transferred to the new Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

A Hanoi Line 1 tram (1927 stock) heads south along Hàng Bài towards Bạch Mai in 1960.

Unlike its Saigon counterpart, the Hanoi tramway system continued to function for nearly 30 years after independence. In fact, in 1968 the Hanoi People’s Committee even built an additional spur from the Cửa Nam junction along Cột Cờ Street (now Điện Biên Phủ) and Hùng Vương Street, rejoining Line 2 south of Trúc Bạch Lake. However by the early 1980s, track, catenary and rolling stock had deteriorated to the extent that the tramway was no longer fit for its purpose. Line 1 (Bạch Mai Phong) was closed in 1982, followed in subsequent years by Line 4 (Cầu Giấy), Line 3 (Hà Đông), Line 5 (Yên Phụ) and finally, in 1989, Line 2 (Đường Bưởi).

A Hanoi Line 2 tram (1927 stock) picture in the 1980s.

Line 4 (Cầu Giấy) was offered a brief reprieve of sorts in 1986, when the route was taken over by a small donated fleet of old trolley buses from Eastern Europe. The Hanoi-Cầu Giấy trolley bus fleet outlasted the trams, soldiering on until 1993 when it, too, fell victim to modernization.

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

In the history of architecture, rarely have we seen such a challenging movement as Vietnamese modernism. Not only does it show how a culture evolves and expresses itself across historical epochs through its building practice, from the traditional to colonial and eventually modern period, but the language of Vietnamese vernacular modernism also reveals deeper understandings of human creative potential.

A typical modernist house in Saigon.

Vietnamese modernist architecture is remarkable for its inventive use of modernist elements. Louvers, planters, pergolas, and brise-soleils — initially functional micro-climatic devices — are composed in an extremely intensive way, with elements being placed not only for functional reasons, but also seem to play a role in personal artistic expression.

Started in the mid-20^th century, during the decolonization process, modernist architecture was the language through which the Vietnamese modern state projected its identity. It reflected how Vietnamese architects had mastered the expression of industrial materials like concrete, steel, and glass, using a modernist design philosophy. Functionality and rationality was the spirit of the new architecture, refusing glamorous decorations and arbitrary rules to embrace a modern and free, optimistic and future-oriented architecture.

Saigon's V.A.R building exemplifies modernist principles on a grand scale. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Joyful composition using reinforced concrete.

Buildings like the V.A.R building, Unification Palace, VOH building, Library of General Sciences, designed by the first generation of Vietnamese modernist architects like Lê Văn Lắm, Ngô Viết Thụ, Phạm Văn Thâng, Nguyễn Quang Nhạc, Nguyễn Văn Hoa, and numerous others, had not only brought the modernist language to the public, but also rewrote it for the tropical climate. By learning from traditional architecture, rather than constraints, they harvested the movements of air, water, shade and plants to tropicalize modernism in a distinctive manner, inventing a rich glossary of louvers, overhangs, planters and brise-soleil designs.

Adoption of modernist brise-soleil in individual dwellings.

Unexpectedly, during this process, a parallel development of modernism occurred in Vietnam. For the first time, the population had acquired this new language and used it to design their houses in both urban and rural contexts, without architects. Based on generally accepted templates, the general masses crafted artworks of personal expression on the modernist façades of their houses. The micro-climatic devices mentioned above were reinvented once more.

Ordinary creative display of modernist elements by the people. Photo by Phạm Vinh.

From a widespread use of those devices, a unique language emerged. Rather than sophisticated functional calculations, architectonic elements like planters, louvers, brise-soleils are placed intuitively and spontaneously as in a poetic visual game, without losing their purposes. Ordinary people, across Vietnamese regions, using a common grammar and vocabulary built out of functional elements, crafted creative expressions of personal taste for their houses. Consequently, the language of modernist design was domesticated by the local design culture to become a completely independent creative enterprise; a parallel modernism that is popular and without authorship.

Even though Vietnamese vernacular modernism seems spontaneous, there is an underlying structure common to all designs, a kind of generative code, with its own syntax and lexicon that the population uses to create and iterate. Individual results, despite being unique pieces, are recognizable as members of a common language.

Walking through the urban landscape of Saigon today offers a spectacle of individuals who had picked and tweaked the designs of planters, louvers, brise-soleils to their whims, yet somehow always following certain common orders that automatically integrate passive shading and natural ventilation. An element, like a planter, reappears and travels within a city, or even across cities, but not one single planter is identical to the rest. These features made modernism vernacular in Vietnam, due to its intimate relation with the climatic context, as much as to its relation with the cultural characters, one inclined to the joyful play of structure, elements and their interlocking shade.

Planter design with supporting “brackets.”

The architectural landscape became a display of creative conversations. There seems to be a subconscious forum where ideas were exchanged and circulated. Modernist designs then became a collectively lived experience, yielding an unprecedented architectural current that is more spontaneous, natural, poetic and spiritual than what conventional modernist principles would normally tolerate.

Vietnamese modernism represents a distinctive moment within global modernism. For the first time, the modernist language was extracted from an institutional practice by regular people to be reinjected into their building culture. That culture then became an autonomous, yet largely anonymous modernist current.

This phenomenon sheds light on two subconscious cultural processes. First, vernacular practice can exist in modernity, contrary to the public’s generally perceived ideas about modernist movements. Vietnamese modernist architecture makes the case that culturally and environmentally sensitive architectural responses can be achieved within industrial societies. Through a collective climatic intelligence and a particular aesthetics, these structures attach themselves to the practicality and sensuality of Vietnamese living habits.

Second, it explicates a profound aspect of human nature that spans across cultural activities. Almost identical to a natural language, Vietnamese vernacular modernism exhibits the exercise of a strong collective grammar and vocabulary, with expressions embedded with personal tastes, nuances, and inflections, similar to regional accents or individual speech styles.

There seems to exist a more profound mental language of culture, one that dictates across human expressions. As a part of this creative linguistic capacity, Vietnamese vernacular modernism sheds light on how the human spiritual self manifests through physical expressions, as an individual and as a community. In this sense, architecture, beyond being a professional discipline, is a cultural act, the product of a collective conscience.

These characteristics of Vietnamese modernism invite us to reconsider how architectural value is understood. It is not only the “scholarly” architecture practiced by a few, but rather the popular practice that best reflects the built environment’s cultural and geographical codes. Contrary to a kind of formalism theorized by a private group, Vietnamese vernacular modernism is achieved by the masses, from the bottom up, growing naturally as a language system — a living cultural substance that transforms, matures, and evolves according to the community in which it is spoken, a process that gives form to ideas, styles, and tastes, reflecting that community’s singular relationship with reality.

Vernacular modernism in Vietnam also offers a different way to look at architecture history. One has to briefly forget rigid architectural principles to look at design and build as a social and cultural phenomenon. The anonymous speakers of this architectural language were also the anonymous authors of the vast majority of the built environment. Unlike institutional modernism, it gives us a break from elitist and privileged architectural currents to look at the beauty of everyday people’s ordinary “speech.” In doing so, it advocates for the unofficial and unnoticed in architectural history. It pushes us to think not only outside the “scientistic” sphere of architecture, but also beyond the commonly known modernist centers of the world, to consider architecture as an ordinary yet fundamental activity of human expression.

Too little has been said about vernacular modernism in architecture, just as too little has been said about Vietnamese modernism in relation to the world’s. Perhaps it is time to take a leave from over-theorized aesthetics and start finding poetry in ordinary languages.

Though I’ve known about momos for quite some time, it was only recently when I first visited Om Momo — a cozy little Tibetan restaurant tucked deep inside a dark nook in Thảo Điền — that I finally tried momos. Inside, one finds a world with a life of its own: at its center stands a mysterious figure, thinly veiled by a cylindrical sheath of turquoise; hung on the walls are vibrantly colored photographs and artworks; and between them sit tables of diners who gaze and converse around salt-rock lamps that warmly illuminate the room.

For those unfamiliar with the dish, the momo is a Tibetan dumpling, distinct from other dumplings in a few key ways. Importantly, the dough is thicker and thus chewier, and its meaty filling is considerably minimalist — which Om Momo’s owner Tsering Tashi Gyalthang attributes to the lack of abundance of ingredients in the mountains of Tibet. At Om Momo, one can choose between a filling of lamb, beef, or chicken, though they also serve a delicious vegetarian spinach and cheese momo. As Tsering puts it, the taste of momos are “pure” in that they emphasize and foreground the natural flavors of its ingredients.

Tsering (left) opened Om Momo in a secluded corner of a residential compound in Thảo Điền.

From producing videos to momos

The journey that brought Tsering — a man who seemingly embodies a combination of charisma and soft gentleness — to open Om Momo is a strange and fascinating one. Ever since arriving in Vietnam as a young man in the early 2000s, Tsering has worked as a filmmaker and director, mostly on boutique commercial films and advertising, though from time to time, also on artistic and documentary films. His career as an ad director took a turn two years ago, however, when he hosted some of his Tibetan friends to work on a film in the Mekong Delta as part of State of Statelessness, an anthology film exploring the Tibetan experience of statelessness that has now screened in prestigious film festivals across the world.

Prayer flags above the al fresco area at Om Momo.

During their visit, he and his friends frequently made and shared food together, including, above all, momos — as Tsering explains, momos are a dish that is communal by nature due to the incredible amount of work that goes into each stage of making them. Such an experience was not anything new, as he was used to frequently hosting Tibetans passing by the city as Tibet’s “unofficial ambassador” to Vietnam, as he jokingly calls himself. Yet, this time, the communal experience of making and sharing momos left him craving for more. “All these years making advertisements as a director, it was never mine, no matter how beautiful I made it,” he recalled reflecting afterwards. “I was feeling at the time I wanted to do something very human. I wanted to do something by hand, something I could hold.” He decided that, whatever happens, he wanted his next project to be related to food.

Mastering how to make dumplings was the owner's personal project in 2024.

The following year in 2024, he thus embarked on a project to devote the year to learning just one thing: making the perfect dumpling. He first went back to his hometown to learn from his friends and mom, frequenting old favorite places to get inspiration. When he returned to Saigon with the new knowledge and insights he gained, he started making dumplings at home every day. With the oversupply of dumplings, he offered his cooking to his friends, who tasted all versions, beginning with what Tsering describes as “really terrible” first trials all the way to the momos that one can now find at Om Momo.

The cozy interior of the restaurant.

Though his friends frequently floated the idea of selling his dumplings, Tsering had always been resistant to it. “I was still very uncomfortable about selling,” he explained. “I've been an artist my whole life… and as artists, we always have a kind of shyness about selling our work.” Yet, by the end of his year of making momos, Tsering felt like he was not only more patient, but also braver to tackle new things than ever before.

Thus, when his neighbor who ran a cafe asked if he wanted to take over their spot, he surprisingly said yes. “If somebody had asked me this a year before, I would have said hell no. But because of a year of meditating while making momos, I thought: Why not? Let’s do it. I called up Anto, my best friend back home, to come right away to give me a hand. And that’s how we started.”

A home in Saigon for momos and other Tibetan treats

The striking grace and beauty of Om Momo’s momos are perhaps a testament to the incredible amount of time and effort that Tsering put into mastering their form and taste. Traditionally, momos are had plain, often dipped into a fermented Tibetan chili sauce. Om Momo offers three different house-made condiments at three different levels of spice, all delicious with their own unique flavor profiles, the spiciest bringing with it quite the punch and tingle.

Guess which one of these chili sauces is the spiciest.

But though Om Momo offers momos plain, they also serve momos on a bed of Indian-style curry sauce with an assortment of spices — each type of momo paired with a different type of sauce. As Tsering explains, momos have become quite popular in India, where it is often served along Indian-spiced sauces as street food. Following the 1959 Tibetan Uprising, tens of thousands of Tibetans, including the 14^th Dalai Lama, fled Tibet to seek refuge in India, a country which has since become home to the largest community of Tibetan exiles. Thus, for Tsering, served this way, the dish serves as an homage to India, where he too grew up as a Tibetan refugee in the country’s Northern outskirts.

It is perhaps hard to think of a bite more perfect than a beautifully folded dumpling: a culinary Trojan horse that brings with it a burst of flavor that floods the mouth. Smothered in sauce, the momos become doubly explosive. Much as one reaches for bread to soak up a good sauce, the momo’s chewy dough works wonderfully to accompany the rich gravy and savory filling. I find that there is something extremely satisfying about eating each momo in a single, albeit not so easy to fit, bite, so as to experience its gush of flavor in a single mouthful.

Beef momo

Spinach and cheese momo in green sauce

Chicken momo in yellow sauce

Aside from the specialty momos, the restaurant serves other Tibetan dishes as well. Shapta is a stir-fry dish served with tender beef or chicken with bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes — quite spicy, though its spice works well with the tingmo served on the side, a fluffy Tibetan steamed bun. Other dishes include chicken shamdey, a chicken and potato stew served with rice that Tsering describes as Tibetan comfort food, and kewa datshi, soft potatoes in a rich chili and cheese sauce.

Tibetan bread

Chicken shamdey

Beef shapta

Om Momo’s desserts are also worth trying. Interestingly, Tsering explains that Om Momo’s desserts are inspired by and dedicated to people in this world for whom he cares deeply. The pear poached in red wine and spices atop of the pulp of house-made Tibetan rice wine — the shape of which resembles a lama sitting in meditation — is named the “Drunken Lama,” dedicated to the Bhutanese lama and filmmaker Dzongsar Khyentse Riponche. The chocolate lava cake is dedicated to Tsering’s daughter, who loves chocolate, and the Tibetan rose panna cotta was made to satiate his girlfriend’s seemingly insatiable love for panna cotta.

The ethos of Om Momo is grounded in Tsering’s belief that “food is storytelling.”

After our meal, the Saigoneer team also tried Tibetan butter tea: a kind of fermented black tea mixed with a spoonful of butter. Almost every aspect of the tea comes as a surprise. Firstly, the tea is served in what is best described as a wooden bowl, huge in contrast to what one normally expects of a “cup” of tea. But perhaps what is more surprising is that the tea is salty — and as a result, the tea tastes somewhat like melted, salty hot ice cream. The mix of tea, salt, and butter, Tsering explains, offers Tibetans the boost they need to power through the day. While the butter used at Om Momo is cow butter, traditionally, the tea is made with yak butter, the taste of which Tsering describes as “rancid,” a word which admittedly piqued my curiosity. While butter tea may not be for everyone — myself included, somewhat shamefully — it is worth trying at least once for the experience alone.

The ethos of Om Momo is grounded in Tsering’s impassioned belief that “food is storytelling.” This manifests in the way that the dishes at Om Momo are carefully crafted as embodiments and expressions of certain stories from Tsering’s own life. But more broadly, Tsering views Om Momo as a storytelling project also in that, through it, he hopes to incite curiosity in his guests that might in turn set them on a journey to learn more about Tibet: its history, culture, and people, about whom many people in Saigon know nothing about. “For many people, our food is their first introduction to Tibet,” Tsering explains. “The goal is for everything — the art, the music, the food — to make people curious.”

He hopes to incite curiosity in his guests that might, in turn, set them on a journey to learn more about Tibet.

To sum up:

• Opening time: 12pm–9:30 weekdays, 11:30am–10pm weekends
• Parking: Cars and motorbikes
• Contact: 0918 699 697
• Average cost per person: $$ (around VND200,000 VND)
• Payment: All forms accepted
• Delivery App: N/A

“Tenderly, fondly, Xuân Diệu held on to my wrist, caressing it up and down. Our eyes locked in affection…Xuân Diệu loved me.”

This emotive sentence is an excerpt from writer Tô Hoài’s memoir Cát Bụi Chân Ai, published in 1992. Most well-known for the children’s book Diary of a Cricket, Hoài is one of Vietnam’s most prolific writers, with over 100 literary works in a range of genres. During the First Indochina War, Tô Hoài and Xuân Diệu were stationed in the remote border areas, where they formed a close bond that might have blossomed into something more, according to Hoài’s recollection in the memoir.

Xuân Diệu.

Across modern history, there are accounts and written records that show Tô Hoài wasn’t Xuân Diệu’s only romantic interest. He also has a relationship with poet Hoàng Cát. Through his tender stanzas, Diệu has professed his love for a number of male contemporaries, despite homosexuality being deemed a deviant illness by much of society at the time. Perhaps that’s a major factor why his poetry is drenched in longing and a hopeless sense of loneliness.

It has been almost four decades since Xuân Diệu passed away, and we can only learn of his life and relationships via poems and anecdotes. A significant portion of Xuân Diệu’s oeuvre belongs to the love poetry genre, so it’s natural that the fragments we can now glean from his life might help soothe a new generation of Vietnamese experiencing love the same way Diệu once did.

The king of love poetry

Ngô Xuân Diệu was born in 1916 in Bình Định. His literary talent flourished early. When he was 21 years old, he became the youngest member of Tự Lực Văn Đoàn, or the Self-Reliant Literary Group in English, a collective of distinguished writers in the mid-20^th century. Diệu was introduced to the public by earlier member Thế Lữ as a “wunderkind” with “a radiant and ardent soul living in gentle yet sensual, passionate yet impulsive verses.”

Xuân Diệu is the only member of Tự Lực Văn Đoàn who was honored with a street in Vietnam. Photos by Linh Phạm.

And what did that “radiant soul” imbue in his poetry? According to Associate Professor Trần Văn Toàn of the Modern Vietnam Literature department at the Hanoi National University of Education, there is ample evidence of same-sex romance in Xuân Diệu’s poems.

Toàn explains: “For example, in the poem ‘Với bàn tay ấy’ [lit: With that hand] dedicated to Huy Cận, the couplet ‘with your hand holding mine / the pain of my days subsides’ has the sentiments of a lover’s sweet nothings. An intimate atmosphere permeates the poem.”

He also quotes a handful of other doting lines such as “On a dark night, full of clouds / a tree seeks a flower, bending down / the flower seeks the grass, while the grass / leans on the moss, night enshrouds” — as if the entire universe is in love, folding in within itself. The passion reaches a crescendo in the last two lines: “Beneath the joyous moon, my gaze still seeking / the trace of that hand within mine.”

It is widely believed that Xuân Diệu (left) and Huy Cận (right) shared something more than friendship. Later on, Huy Cận married Ngô Xuân Như (middle), Diệu's sister.

Professor Toàn shares another example of Xuân Diệu, in the poem ‘Tương tư, chiều…’ [lit: Afternoon longing…], there are lines like:

One might easily interpret this as the love profession of a heterosexual relationship, but in Xuân Diệu’s first poetry collection Thơ thơ (Poésies), this poem is positioned right before ‘Với bàn tay ấy.’ The last line of ‘Tương tư, chiều…’ seems to have a smooth connection with the first line of ‘Với bàn tay ấy’:

Toàn believes that there could be a thematic progression that reflects a same-sex subtext quite clearly. When Thơ thơ was published in 1938, Xuân Diệu was also writing Chàng với chàng, or Man and Man. Unfortunately, this collection was never published.

When Thơ thơ was published in 1938, Xuân Diệu was also writing Chàng với chàng, or Man and Man. Unfortunately, this collection was never published.

However, these traces of same-sex affection were not mentioned when Xuân Diệu was alive. They were only recognized later on after stories of the poet’s private relationships were publicized. According to Professor Toàn, this obfuscation could be explained by the societal context of the time, as for an extended period of time the mindset of Vietnamese readers was entrenched in the depths of heteronormative culture.

A view from education

Each reader can form their own interpretation when faced with literary texts, but in the context of Vietnam’s public institutions, a “standardized” viewpoint is often imposed on students. That perspective can alienate some students who might not belong to the norm.

Trần Nhật Quang, an officer in charge of the LGBTI rights program at the Institute for Studies of Society, Economics and Environment (iSEE), says of his own experience learning about Xuân Diệu in school: “When we were taught his poetry, I heard talk that Xuân Diệu might not be straight. So when my teacher went through the lesson and mentioned how Xuân Diệu was into some lady, I felt a little annoyed inside. Because I thought that it was an incorrect literary interpretation, especially rendered through the teacher’s lens of male-female heterosexuality. Everyone was taught that love is just something between a man and a woman, but to me, love is so much more than that.”

In 2018, Quang collaborated with Hà Nội Queer, a group of young people passionate about changing the public perception of the LGBTQ community in Vietnam. Quang created scripts for the project’s informative videos on Vietnam’s queer history. He explains that after he could hear more stories about his community through history including that of Xuân Diệu, that childhood frustration turns into contentment.

Xuân Diệu (right) and Huy Cận (left).

“I was very happy to learn about such episodes of history, knowing that in actuality, there are many figures in the literature syllabus or elsewhere that were not as heterosexual as the teachers were saying,” Quang recalls. “I could somehow see myself in those lessons in class because they have always referred to heterosexual love when teaching about love, so I never felt myself in those lectures, I didn’t feel that I belonged to whatever was being taught.”

Regarding the vague discussion of Xuân Diệu’s orientation in a pedagogical setting, Professor Toàn says that he could understand the teachers’ reservation in alluding to same-sex love because it still generates polarizing views in the community. But personally, Toàn actively encourages his students to research and discuss this aspect of Xuân Diệu’s life when teaching his poetry.

“When I teach, I myself do mention it [Xuân Diệu’s same-sex relationships],” he shares. “Because I think it’s a factor that will help us gain a deeper understanding into the realm of emotions encapsulated in Xuân Diệu’s poetry.”

“Moreover, this discussion will also help students learn how to behave in an environment with diversity. How we treat people who are different from us defines our culture.”

From forbidden to accepted

During Xuân Diệu’s era, homosexual relationships were marginalized, even demonized. Phạm Khánh Bình, Hà Nội Queer’s co-founder, explains: “Before, the word ‘same sex’ didn’t exist, they [homosexual people] were referred to as ái nam, ái nữ [lit: hermaphrodite]. And it’s in my understanding that people view it as something unscrupulous, deviant, debauched, or even perverted. So there’s no doubt that LGBT people back then would feel suffocated, especially when your own identity is seen as something sick, something sinful.”

In the memoir Cát Bụi Chân Ai, Tô Hoài writes that, for two nights in a row, Xuân Diệu was disciplined for fraternization. He was heavily chastised, and not a single soul, not even his friends or alleged lovers, stood up for him. Xuân Diệu didn’t deny the charges, just “said through his tears 'that’s my man love… my man love…!' At once, he couldn’t speak anymore, tears filled his eyes, but he resolutely did not make any promise to stop.”

The villa at 24 Cột Cờ (now Điện Biên Phủ street) in Hanoi where Xuân Diệu and Huy Cận used to stay.

Perhaps, living through those hardships, to Xuân Diệu, “to love, is to die a little bit inside.” But even then, he continued to love, and to spread that love in his poetry. Such self-honesty turns his story into priceless materials for people like Quang and Bình to share with their community. 

“When I learned that there are queer, non-conforming people in our books, in our history, I felt represented, and I realized that Vietnam is actually very diverse,” Quang says. “And when members of our community know that somewhere in our history, there are people who were like them, those who differed from the labels out there, people will feel that they belong — it’s a time-transcending connection.”

This article was originally published in 2023.

The alarm goes off at 3am. By 3:30am, scooters laden with empty crates and baskets are already moving through the dark lanes and sandy passages towards Hội An's coast. Long before the old town wakes, the beaches along the shore are coming alive with engines, head torches, waves, and fishermen preparing to return to land. Thankfully, coffee is readily available almost anywhere.

A woman walks the shoreline before sunrise as fishing boats wait offshore near Hội An.

This is a different side of Hội An and its surrounding region, away from the lanterns and Instagram cafés, from the topless tourists and coconut boat rides. Here, the coastline wakes early. Boats return through rough surf, while buyers wait eagerly in the water, ready to pull the morning catch onto the sand.

Local fishermen arriving on shore and are pretty pleased about it.

Fishermen haul a coracle through heavy surf at sunrise on the coast.

The sea controls everything here. Timing is everything. Boats wait beyond the breakwaters before committing smaller coracles to the shore. Crews and buyers alike jump into the surf to steady them, rushing the catch in baskets and sacks to the shoreline.

Women await the arrival of the fishing boats from deeper waters offshore.

For photographers, that unpredictability and almost constant action is what makes mornings like these so rewarding. No two mornings are the same, and the conditions change minute by minute as the light slowly illuminates the sky before it reaches the shoreline.

Buyers rush into the water as boats arrive with the morning catch.

A woman carries the squid she has purchased to sell at market.

As daylight reaches the beach, the shoreline becomes a temporary seafood market. People crowd round and jostle for position as impromptu auctions take place. Fish are sorted directly beside the water while traders move quickly between boats, baskets, and waiting scooters. There is no performance to it. People are working against time, tide, and heat before the sun fully rises.

Local vendors crowd around the morning catch as simultaneous auctions hurriedly take place.

Crates arrive at market.

Unloading the fresh catch at the market.

One of the things I enjoy most about photographing these mornings is how connected everything feels to the people around you and the sea itself. The surf shapes the pace of the market, the movement of the boats, and the rhythm of everyone working along the shoreline. Just be ready to get into the waves. It helps. I promise.

Sardines brought ashore.

Keeping the books correct as the market begins to slow.

Further along the coast and river mouths, the morning continues as catches are unloaded and sorted before heading inland towards local markets and restaurants across the region.

Negotiations tend to ramp up in intensity as the morning gets lighter.

Ongoing negotiations over the fresh catch.

Preparing squid for transport to market.

Freshly caught sardines.

For visitors wanting to experience a more local side of Hội An, these fishing beaches offer something entirely different from the old town. The mornings are raw, fast-moving, and shaped entirely by offshore conditions.

Fishermen return to shore after a night at sea.

Pete Walls is a Hội An-based photographer. To learn more about his photography practice and tours, visit his website here.

“Cooped up in my apartment-cage in Tân Định, I created, with scissors and glue, dummy after dummy of a cosmopolitan rag positively pumping with scandals and half-truths. I was having a lot of fun dreaming of a magazine that I would never be able to do. And buried somewhere in that detritus on the floor—advertising cutouts and newspaper clippings—was Yellow … Once I knew I had the name, the magazine more or less made itself, as though the name determined the rest, ie, form and content,” writes Minh Bui of the birth of Yellow, his “what-do-I-do-after-Mekong Review magazine.”

Mekong Review holds a special place in the hearts of many Saigoneers. Filled with insightful reportage, book reviews, photography, and a smattering of fiction and poetry, the full size newwprint magazine focused on the Mekong Region. Since its founding in 2015, it provided a platform to writers and topics that are otherwise overlooked, particularly in a large, delightfully tactical format. For a variety of reasons, it has been much harder to find new issues of the Mekong Review in Vietnam during the past few years, and Minh sold it in 2022, leaving avid supporters to wonder what he would do next. Yellow is the answer.

Minh Bui Jones opens the Mekong Review a month before the idea for Yellow. Photo by Vi Nguyen via Yellow's Substack.

Modelled on Granta and Freeman's, Yellow, which will be published twice a year, made its debut in early May. Each issue will feature fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors and emerging writers from Southeast Asia and beyond, centered around a theme as announced by each title. The first issue is “Parents.” 

In the first issue’s Letter from the editor, Minh shares a heartwarming experience of finding comfort on an impromptu visit to his mom’s favorite city, and concludes: “That’s one of my ‘parent stories.’ We all have one, or more. Not all of them are happy, as some of the stories in this collection attest. But, for better or worse, as Anjan Sundaram writes, they make us who we are. Welcome to Yellow. I hope the magazine speaks for itself. And I hope it speaks to you, dear reader.”

“Parents” contains 11 stories and one photo essay with a diversity of styles, voices, and topics, as is characteristic of the literary magazine format. Best absorbed slowly, piece by piece, some stories might not connect with you while others strike a deep chord; that hodgepodge nature is one of the particular joys of the genre. Inherent in that diversity is the sense that each entry on the table of contents shimmers with the unknown, and nothing in one piece will clue you in as to what follows. In this way, reading a literary magazine is a bit like opening packages. 

Saigoneer won’t spoil the experience by offering any greater detail about what awaits in stories about Indonesia’s last dugong hunters, a son who connects with his mother via old recordings of Vietnamese theatre plays, and one of the architects of Malaysia’s modern history education. Or, as Minh offered in typically self-deprecating fashion, on the journal’s Substack as “Sweet, sad and poignant stories about parents. Like I said, boring, predictable lit mag.”

More information about Yellow, including how to subscribe and find copies, is available on the journal’s website.

It all started with a sparkle on the horizon, a beam of solar brilliance bouncing off a garish metallic surface.

Scanning the skyline from my Biên Hòa home, I notice a golden spire glimmering in the midday sun. Could my vision be deceiving me, I wonder, forcing my eyes to focus on the distant object, or am I, in fact, looking at something completely ordinary — perhaps a feature of the industrial landscape which surrounds the city?

It can only be one thing, I conclude, after brief deliberation: a stupa, and one of ambitious proportions. The enormous bell shaped tower dominates the vista. But you don't get these in Vietnam, I recall. Thailand, Cambodia, or Myanmar, yes, but surely not here. It turns out there is one here, and I had just found it, a mere 40-minute drive from downtown Saigon.

Bửu Long Pagoda is an idiosyncratic hodgepodge of pan-Southeast Asian architecture, and the bold vision of one man — Lê Văn Giảng — a doctor, civil servant and first abbot of the sanctuary. Established in 1942, the temple complex incorporates sacral forms seldom found in Vietnam.

It is most likely Giảng's extended stay in Phnom Penh that inspired the structure's unique design. The Cambodian doctor, as he is known by the monks, is also widely believed to be responsible for the most recent reintroduction into Vietnam of Theravada Buddhism — the most ancient doctrine of the philosophy, also referred to as Southern Buddhism due to its popularity in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Burma and Myanmar.

Located in District 9 on the banks of the Đồng Nai River, the temple complex offers a tranquil getaway from the hustle and bustle of the big city. Surrounded by a thick, shady grove, the site is a perfect place to escape the chaos of Saigon, unwind, meditate, and explore the many meandering paths and contained temples.

A monastery found on the site houses ten monks and 30 nuns. They spend their days meditating, chanting and maintaining the 10-hectare property. Typically, those involved in the Buddhist monastic order will renounce meat, intoxicants and earthly possessions, in addition to vowing to remain chaste for the duration of their service.

Devotees come to the pagoda to participate in meditation sessions and chanting led by the monks. These visits are particularly important, as those living in the monastery rely on the daily food donations made by the congregation.

Tuệ Quang, a senior monk at the temple, said the pagoda is open to anyone, regardless of their background or spiritual beliefs. “Pagodas are made to be visited,” he said. “Lê Văn Giảng would not have it any other way.”

Planted in 1959, the enormous tree found behind the main temple was brought to the complex as a sapling by a Sri Lankan monk named Nanda. The tree is thought to be a direct descendant of the Bodhi Tree that once grew at the Mahabodhi Temple in India, believed to be the site of Guatama Buddha's spiritual enlightenment.

Chameleon-shaped dragon heads are among the many foreign elements incorporated into the temple's design. Others include intricately patterned metal features, ubiquitous dharma wheels and, of course, the characteristic gilded towers.

I was told the peaceful atmosphere found at Bửu Long Pagoda is the result of two main factors: the temple's cool, shaded location, and the energy produced by its resident monks during chanting and meditation.

The lush greenery which surrounds the temple complex is particularly striking during the wet season, when daily precipitation fuels plant growth and floral blooms, attracting a multitude of colorful butterflies to the area.

A visit to the area would not be complete without taking a short ferry trip to the nearby Phước Long Temple, located on an island on the Đồng Nai River.

The short ferry ride provides spectacular views of the stupa, framed by the rapidly industrializing banks of the Đồng Nai River.

The gaudy, traditionally Vietnamese Phước Long temple complex, filled with Chinese influences and various deities derived from local folklore, offers a stark contrast to the relatively austere interiors of the buildings found at Bửu Long, where only the Buddha is venerated.

Packed with stalls selling a multitude of offerings, the island is a popular pilgrimage destination for the region's devotees.

The island's vendors sell souvenirs, jewelry and talismans, which can be injected with additional powers through a monk's blessing.

A fortuneteller offers her powers of foresight. Unfortunately, even genuine clairvoyance isn't able to bypass the language barrier, and my fate remains a mystery.

Before leaving the island I'm talked into buying a cage filled with house sparrows — the act of expressing mercy by releasing captive animals is a common practice throughout Asia. Mere minutes later, walking back to the ferry, I slip in a puddle of primordial slime, bruising my tailbone and scraping my ankle — blood and parasitic sludge mixing before my eyes. I'm not sure I buy the whole karma thing.

This article was originally published in 2018.

Having always been a little brother, I had to learn to be a big one when I was 10 years old. In the midst of the confusion of this new role, I found myself pressing my nose to this newborn’s head and inhaling as hard as I could. This “sniff kiss” was not an action I invented. Rather, it was an instinct forged through mimicry: I started noticing from this point that my father and grandmother both did the same thing to me.

As a kid from the diaspora, I lost myself in thoughts over one poem I could relate to within my deepest senses. It's written by renowned Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong, titled ‘Kissing in Vietnamese.’ I felt for the first time that there might be something bigger than me behind this peculiar habit that I thought was idiosyncratic. Vuong shares his experience with those sniff kisses, which he contrasts with western ones and their flashier display of affection. But this modesty makes the intimacy not less intense, as described in this part of the poem:

In researching my heritage to get to root of this habit, I have found that those kisses seem to be typical of Vietnamese people, anchored in the culture. Another aspect of the kiss that is shown here is that it’s usually done by family elders. There are similar customs in many Southeast Asia, according to a study that uses lexical semantic typology through “smell/kiss colexification” to demonstrate that the practice is unique to this region. It actually was a culture shock for European colonizers when they came to Southeast Asia, and many mentioned the quirk in their writings.

The entry for “hôn” (kissing) in the Annamite-French dictionary by Jean Bonet (1899). The description reads: “The olfactory kiss (by inhaling strongly through the nostrils as the Annamites do).”

For me it was never really about my cultural background; rather, it was a vital tool to feel and express affection in my own way. My feelings for it were straightforward: I liked the purity of inhaling the scent of my loved ones, as a way to sense them over and over. At the same time, as Vuong captures in his poem, the kiss could be fierce, born from an endless worry for those dearest to me that can only be soothed by this reassurance of life.

The sniff kiss had become so visceral for me that its cultural implication wasn't clear to me for a long time. It turned into a blurry concept in my mind, midway between an expression of love and a physical scent. The eccentricity of the quirk convinced me it was something my family and I made up, regardless of any country’s traditions. Even now, each time I tilt my head towards my grandmother, so she can sniff my forehead, I am reminded that in all of us there are dormant customs whose existence is beyond us.

Lê Phổ, ‘La Maternité,’ circa 1940s. 

It is up to us to uncover these hidden parts of our heritage by noticing that, be it over time or from a significant event, it is actually an inherited behavior. It might be hard, or even futile, but I find it beautiful that through an autoethnographic process, we can dig out an ancestral link from within each of us about how we love.

Tattoo Therapist, dr.99hz, cd.cadao, goc.viet, Solarist and Baby Nepotism: listing the artists that call Th.ink Room home feels like shouting out the members of a rap clique. Indeed, tattoo artists, more than any other visual artists, are akin to rappers in their use of pseudonyms, so to employ a common hip-hop refrain, Saigoneer became interested in Th.ink Room because “game recognize game.”

Like Saigoneer, the studio, or “art hub for art lovers from all over the world” as they describe it, is dedicated to gathering inspiration from Vietnamese architecture, design motifs, flora, fauna, and history; preserving traditional artwork; telling stories about and through niche passions and forefronting creative expression, united by, as Phi (@tattoo.therapist) puts it, “the ethos of an ever-curious observer, and an ever-diligent maker.”

For such a permanent end result, tattooing too frequently involves an impulsive or careless process and experience. Phi founded Th.ink Room in 2023 to actively work against both, emphasizing, “we care about the whole experience, starting from your connection to the tattoo you are getting and its origins to your artist to how you feel after you leave.”  

Phi (tattoo.therapist) and their designs.

I experienced the studio’s thoughtful approach first-hand last year after seeking out Phi’s detailed black line work. Having grown up in Russia, they were heavily influenced by Europe's golden age of illustration (circa 1880s–1930s). With that inspiration in mind, they developed their signature style while studying art in the UK, but upon graduation, they encountered a market that had little interest in it; clients had moved from print books to websites and wanted color and full images without backgrounds and/or animation. Fortuitously timed requests from friends for tattoo designs introduced the possibility of becoming a tattoo artist. 

Golden age of illustration examples: ‘Then There Came a Wind So Strong that it Blew Off Curdken's Hat’ by Jennie Harbour (left) and ‘Reigning Death’ by Robert Montenegro (right).

During that visit, Phi explained the carefully curated design of the District 1 space. Situated in a classic, low-slung residential block partially repurposed for commercial use, the lobby’s raw clay color calls to mind pottery and the shaping of inspiration into tactile ideas. Clients then proceed to the stark red interior room, where those ideas are metaphorically fired and become permanent. The back garden — where artists and clients hang out before, during, and after sessions — meanwhile, embodies the calm and welcoming vibe that transcends the space. Tattoo artists, with their impressive talent in an art form that, despite increasing mainstream acceptance, continues to carry a hint of rebellion or danger, can be intimidating, but everyone at Th.ink Room is a sweetheart, which contributes to an effortlessly relaxed vibe.

The Th.ink Room lobby and studio space.

So much work; that's Vietnam

A man catching a dragonfly in a tree, a physician checking for a pulse, a hand-pulled wedding procession, a rural notice-board demanding “commit no nuisance,” and 15 types of shoes: these are amongst the thousands of woodblock images produced by 19^th-century French ethnographer Henri Oger and his local team. Saigoneer had written about the work several years ago and recently noticed selected images appearing on Th.ink Room’s Instagram page as available tattoos. 

Original Henri Oger images (top) and Vũ's (@goc.viet) tattoo designs (bottom).

“This is what started it all. I really liked it and was like, who did this?” Phi noted while showing some Oger illustrations that they had come across in an artwork anthology. Inspired to find more, they sought out a tattered copy of his work at a local book shop. “Actually, I nerd it out so hard on this,” Phi said while flipping through illustrations. “Look at that guy, he's wonderful!” they continued while pointing to one of the images and explaining how the single slim volume contained hundreds of illustrations and thus inspiration “So much work; this is just Vietnam,” they concluded. 

Some of the books kept at Th.ink Room.

While online resources help the Th.ink Room team explore their interests and sources of inspiration that range far beyond Vietnam, when it comes to local topics, antique shops have been a part of their process since the beginning. “We used to drive Trần Nhân Tôn Street, which is an antique street, and they have books there as well. We'd look through things that we thought would make good tattoos, and it sort of became a tradition,” Phi explained of early field trips with Trung (@dr.99hz).

Designs and final work by Trung (@dr.99hz).

Those books now get handed over to Vũ (@goc.viet), a young artist whom Phi had mentored at the studio. “I have materials available from books, and I take designs out of them to make tattoos. I research the contexts: which time period they belong to and how the characters are drawn,” Vũ explained of the works he makes and shares on the Instagram account goc.viet, a name that he explained as “here ‘goc’ means both ‘perspective/corner’ and ‘roots/origin,’ so that people will know who we are — we are people born here and we are Vietnamese. And most of the designs I explore are from within Vietnam, even just a certain corner of Vietnam is fine.”

Vũ at work.

Works by Oger and his team, those collected by Nguyễn Thị Thu Hòa, various unfortunately uncredited drawings, such as ones in the margins of revolutionary South Vietnam: the Struggle newspapers from the 1960s and 1970s, or classic Đông Hồ prints — all require alterations to become suitable tattoo designs. Because of their age and printing methods, details are often lost, so Vũ needs to research the image’s purpose, background, and the conventions of the time it was produced to fill in details such as facial expressions and hand positions while making adjustments for line widths to suit the tattoo medium. Within the laborious examination of what to adjust and how, there is also room to include some personal touches. For example, I had requested a portion of the classic Thầy Đồ Cóc (toad teacher) đông hồ and Vũ adjusted its skin texture while Phi advocated for it to have a bigger butt and more impressive steam coming off the tea kettle. Comparing the original and the finished tattoo makes the final product feel like both a matter of preservation and a conversation between artists across time. 

Example of full Thầy Đồ Cóc đông hồ and Vũ's completed tattoo.

More than simply creating works that he hopes will attract customers, Vũ’s recycling of past artists is a matter of pride. “I am Vietnamese, so when I see those images, they remind me of the things my grandparents or parents told me — things I had only heard about before. But today, seeing them in these books, I find them very interesting, yet no one had [made tattoos from them] before. This style of imagery has also been around for a very long time, but no one has developed it further; people just let it be forgotten. Over time, I want to convey it and let everyone know more about the activities of Vietnamese people in the past; these are things that will remain and continue to exist.”

Vũ's designs based on collected đông hồ illustrations.

In addition to his goc.viet account, Vũ operates the vznary account where he posts original artwork that shares some resemblance to his archival pieces but also allows him to explore other impulses. Th.ink Room considers it important to differentiate between tattoo artists (nghệ sĩ xăm) who design original pieces and tattoo technicians (thợ xăm) who execute already existent designs, while emphasizing that one is not better or more valuable than the other, and they both require mastery of different, difficult skills. 

Sample issue of South Vietnam in Struggle newspaper (left) and Vũ's tattoo designs based on the periodical (right).

When using outside images, technicians must be extremely careful, though. Phi has noticed that many in Vietnam and abroad are eager to follow trends and fads and will thus steal ideas and exact designs from living artists who are still around and able to make a living from creations that are incontestably theirs. Not only is such behavior unethical, it's also unneeded. “Here lies an enormous, beautiful graveyard of past illustrators and printmakers whose work is brilliant but lost. Many of these can be reworked into tattoos as a humble nod to our past masters, giving them a second life in a world that is getting further and further away from print,” they conclude. In such instances, the Th.ink Room team makes every effort to provide citations, including source, date, and artist when possible, that they include on their Instagram and share with the clients along with assurance they will never repeat the design on anyone else. Of course, this material cannot be included in the tattoo itself, and thus it’s up to each individual to share the story behind their ink.

Finding inspiration for styles vast yet distinct 

Ngọc feeds goats, the team hangs out in the zoo, Vũ holds a flower, and Trang imitates a statue in Tao Đàn Park.

Fostering warm, memorable experiences, a core mission of Th.ink Room, requires members of the team to genuinely like and appreciate one another, a truth attested to by how frequently they gather outside of the studio. “We spend days together,” Phi said of their routine field trips. “We sit in the same space, but are drawn to different things in those spaces and the different textures.”

Examples of photos the team sends one another.

In addition to these trips to the park, the zoo, interesting buildings, and corners of the city with particular energies, they are frequently sending photos and links to one another, serving as “each other's eyes.” Animals, ducks, and dogs get sent to Trung; prints and illustrations on vases or ceramics go to Vũ; and Vietnamese architectural elements, patterns, and motifs go to Trang (@cd.cadao).

Trang at work.

“At first, [my style] stemmed from the fact that I just liked ethnic patterns because I spent some time going to the highlands and saw the people there embroidering very beautiful patterns on their clothing. Later on, as I worked and learned about the meaning of these patterns and about the different ethnic groups, I found it very interesting, and I could learn a lot more about the culture, and about the specific techniques,” explained Trang of her handpoke designs. Her method of engaging with past artwork is less one of ethnographic preservation and more a matter of finding inspiration. Ethnic minority embroideries and motifs mingle with organic elements, typography and architecture to become wholly original works. “I draw inspiration from everything — I could listen to a song, read a poem, or read a newspaper… Then it comes along with my memories, my emotions, my own thoughts, and inadvertently, it becomes relatable to everyone.” 

Able to offer explanations and academic sources for many of her influences, Trang creates work that is, according to Phi, “very well researched; she can speak about it in a lot of detail.” Of course, no one needs to know the context, details and story behind an image to appreciate it, let alone permanently put it on one’s body, but Th.ink Room believes there is intrinsic value in knowing more. It’s a matter of curiosity about the world. “I don't think there's anything wrong with not being curious, but I think it just makes things better; you just end up learning more,” Phi explained. 

Trang's (@cd.cadao) flash designs surrounded by finished pieces.

One of Saigoneer’s illustrators can surely speak on the story behind the tattoo she got from Trang, having selected one based on our logo, which was meticulously scouted before being selected several years ago. And while currently Saigoneer only boasts three tattoos from Th.ink Room artists, there is a trend amongst clients for more. As Vy (@babynepotism) explained, some regular guests have gotten work from each Th.ink Room artist and many that come for guest residencies. Members of the team have also begun experimenting with collaboration on single works. The first piece Vy had done, for example, involves Trang’s patterns and vegetation alongside Trung’s butterflies and bees. Meanwhile, Vũ and Ngọc have begun collaborating on ideas that combine his archival pieces with her coloring. 

Vy's collaborative tattoo from Trang and Trung (left) and a collaborative design from Vu and Ngọc (right).

This collaborative ethos extends to Th.ink Room’s lobby, where, alongside the collection of archival texts and various books and zines, are products from local creators for sale. Dyed fabrics, buttons, prints, and photos, as well as random items that members of Th.ink Room make, are available, as well as pro-Palestine fundraiser pieces. The eclectic shop space reflects Th.ink Room’s desire not to be seen as only a tattoo studio, which is underscored by its name. While it includes “ink” it doesn’t explicitly say “tattoo,” and the large Thinker statue at the entrance suggests a different way to interpret it. Such versatility coincides with the space hosting art, music, and community events. 

The Th.ink Room team.

Th.ink Room’s perspective on art, originality, and creativity seems particularly relevant today when AI is upending not just how artists make money, but society’s relationship with creativity in general. It seems to me that too many people are eager to outsource their creativity to computers that gobble up sources for commodification while individuals abandon the curiosity that compelled them to make or appreciate art in the first place. While Phi may have concerns about AI, they are not worried about creativity. “Our collective culture is unimaginably rich. I do not personally believe that creativity is dead or ever will be; you can see how vast yet distinct it has always been, by looking back.”