Exploring Saigon and Beyond - Saigoneer

Sạc-Lô in Hanoi: How a Pre-Industrial Vietnam Captivated Charlie Chaplin in 1936

2026-09-27T16:00:00+07:00

About 90 years ago, Modern Times was released. Its title carried a warning. The film railed against the new industrial age and the misery it inflicted on workers amid the Great Depression. Yet a film about the dangers of modernity was being told through an almost-silent medium, nearly a decade into the era of sound. Charlie Chaplin, who wrote, directed, produced, and scored the film, in addition to starring in it, was deliberately resisting Hollywood's shift into the future.

Chaplin's Tramp caught in the machinery of the factory floor, in one of the defining images of Modern Times.

By 1936, Chaplin had spent more than two decades working in an industry that had been in its infancy when he entered it. He had become one of its greatest beneficiaries while repeatedly playing a man who could not keep up with the world it was creating. It was against this backdrop of constant change that he decided to embark on a long journey. His son, Charles Chaplin Jr., wrote in his book about the trip: "His churning mind began to grope for something new and exciting upon which to fasten itself. And he settled upon a visit to the Orient, which had so impressed him when he went there on his trip around the world.”

Paulette Goddard in a publicity photograph for Modern Times, the film she starred in alongside Chaplin before travelling with him to Hanoi.

In February 1936, Modern Times premiered in New York and Los Angeles, in the midst of Hollywood's Golden Age. However, once Chaplin had finished promoting the film, he and Paulette Goddard, his co-star and soon-to-be wife, left for the trip to Asia that saw them land in southern Vietnam, before making their way north towards Hanoi.

Travelling aboard the Aramis, a ship operated by the Messageries Maritimes company, they disembarked in Saigon on the morning of April 13. From Saigon they travelled through Phnom Penh and Angkor, before continuing through Đà Lạt, Đà Nẵng and Huế towards Hanoi. Chaplin and Goddard arrived in Hanoi on the evening of April 29 and stayed at the Metropole Hotel on Ngô Quyền Street, in Hanoi's French Quarter.

Hanoi was entering its own “modern times,” though not the one Chaplin had imagined. The city was changing rapidly, with new buildings, electric trams, cinemas, newspapers, schools and railways reshaping daily life. But this was not yet the industrial world of assembly lines and mass unemployment that Chaplin was satirizing. Under French colonial rule, in the region then known as Tonkin, a new cultural identity and class was emerging along with it.

The Hôtel Métropole, where Chaplin and Paulette Goddard stayed during their visit to Hanoi in April 1936.

Much of the city Chaplin walked through is still recognisable today. St. Joseph's Cathedral, with its towers modelled on Notre-Dame, remains a major landmark in the Old Quarter, while the Hanoi Opera House sits close to the Metropole itself. Across the Red River, Long Biên Bridge still carries trains and traffic, while the red Thê Húc Bridge remains one of Hoàn Kiếm Lake's most recognisable landmarks.

Cinema arrived in Hanoi during the First World War, initially as a new form of entertainment in a city undergoing cultural change. The Metropole hotel played an important role in introducing Hanoians to this new medium. According to Tuổi Trẻ, films were first screened here from June 1916, Chaplin's among them. Four years later, in August 1920, the Pathé cinema opened next to Bà Kiệu Temple, becoming Hanoi's first purpose-built cinema. Journalist Nguyễn Ngọc Tiến, in his book Walking Across Hanoi, notes that Hanoi's first picture houses showed only silent films, with sound films not arriving until the mid-1930s, beginning with All Quiet on the Western Front.

Cinema in the city was divided by class. First-class and balcony tickets cost between 1.00 and 2.00 Indochinese piastres, several times more than the roughly 0.50 piastres the city's working class earned in a day. Second-class tickets cost around 0.50–0.80 piastres, while third-class tickets cost 0.30–0.50 piastres. At those prices, cinema was an expensive type of entertainment for Hanoi's working class, meaning many of the workers Chaplin's film was depicting may not have been able to afford to see it.

The former Pathé cinema, rebranded 'Le Variétés' by 1933, on the corner of Boulevard Francis Garnier — the same street where Chaplin would later stop for drinks at the Taverne Royale.

By 1936, Chaplin needed no introduction in Hanoi. He was known as Charlot (Sác-lô in Vietnamese) across Indochina, after the French nickname for his character The Tramp. Chaplin and his travel group stopped for drinks at the Taverne Royale on the then Francis Garnier Street, which is now Đinh Tiên Hoàng Street, next to Hoàn Kiếm Lake. Hà Thành Ngọ Báo reported that he was signing autographs for fans there, an early glimpse of celebrity culture in the city. On another occasion, he and Paulette Goddard visited the Tây Hồ dye shop on 46 Hàng Trống Street to buy silk, clothes and souvenirs. The street remains a popular destination for tourists looking for similar items more than ninety years later.

Chaplin developed the idea that machinery driven by profit could create misery, after a conversation with Gandhi, and placed it within his own concerns about a changing world. He turned that sentiment into the central conflict of Modern Times, taking aim at industrialization, unemployment and a system in which efficiency and profit came at the expense of workers. His Tramp character was still the familiar figure of hardship from Chaplin’s earlier films, but in Modern Times, the struggle felt more layered. The changing world around Chaplin was becoming part of the character too, giving the Tramp a sense of uncertainty that had not been as visible before.

In an interview, Thạch Lam recalled Chaplin describing the plight of the hero in Modern Times, explaining how a production line worker was reduced to a twitching, traumatized state. Thạch Lam's reply cut straight through it: “In our land, there's no machinery, no factories at all.” The exchange exposed the distance between Chaplin's industrial world and the one he had encountered in Hanoi.

A 'Procession du Génie' passes through Hanoi's Old Quarter, goods carried entirely by hand, in a city still without the machinery Thạch Lam described to Chaplin.

Yet the parallels between the film and the city may run deeper than Thạch Lam suggests. Hanoi satirist Vũ Trọng Phụng published Số đỏ (Dumb Luck) that same year, a book that shows starkly contrasting sides of the city, from the “emergent Francophile northern upper classes” to the “filthy sidewalks of Hanoi's old commercial quarter.” Its protagonist, Red-Haired Xuân, rises through this world not because of who he is, but because of what people believe him to represent. In Modern Times, the machinery of modern life has become so dominant that the individual is forced to perform his role within it, whether he belongs there or not. Both works find comedy in societies trying to manufacture the appearance of progress while revealing how easily the people caught inside the illusion can be discarded.

Saigon newspaper L'Impartial, a conservative publication, described Chaplin's visit to Hanoi as “quiet, serious, slow-speaking and touched by sadness.” It's a description that sits oddly against the Tramp's slapstick, but not against the man who played him. Chaplin's characters often bore the hardships of the world, reflecting some of the difficulties of his own upbringing. The Tramp's vulnerability was therefore not entirely separate from the man playing him, even if Modern Times gave it a new social dimension.

Chaplin (centre, in white) photographed with a group in Hanoi, inscribed to him from the newspaper Đông Pháp and dated April 29, 1936 — the day he arrived in the city.

Vietnam left a profound impression on Chaplin, who said: “In my eyes, this land is vastly different from the places I have previously visited.” In Hanoi, he found himself in a city where that industrial world had not yet arrived in the same form. On May 5, the couple visited Hạ Long Bay, concluding their stay in Northern Vietnam, before boarding a ship bound for Hong Kong via Hải Phòng, continuing on afterwards to Canton, China. It was around this time that the two were reportedly married in secret, though neither ever publicly confirmed it, and no marriage certificate was ever produced.

Chaplin with child actor Jackie Coogan in The Kid (1921), one of his early iconic roles.

Hanoi offered a brief pause from the machinery and noise that Chaplin had spent years putting on screen. Modern Times had imagined a man escaping the factory; in Hanoi, Chaplin found himself in a city that had yet to fully enter the industrial world the film depicted. The irony ran deeper than simple contrast. Chaplin's wealth came from the Hollywood system, itself built on industrialization and mass production, the same machinery he mocked and critiqued onscreen. He had become incredibly wealthy playing a figure left behind by society and modernity, and it was that wealth which now afforded him this peace, in a city only beginning to experience the changes he had turned into comedy. The very system he was going against had paid his way to escape it.

According to Thạch Lam, when asked about Hanoi, Chaplin said “Hanoi is peaceful, very peaceful.”

Saigon's Weather Dude Is Dedicated to Keeping Saigoneers Dry This Rainy Season

2026-09-27T10:00:00+07:00

Why is it raining in Saigon? Because it’s the rainy season. Sure, but if you want to be more specific, you can cite conditions in the Bay of Bengal, more than 2,500 kilometers away. It’s there that the wind conditions form that flow across the Gulf of Thailand, sucking up the moisture that drenches Vietnam’s southern metropolis.

Any Saigoneers who have been caught in a downpour long for a way to know the precise times storms will start and stop. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Such insight about where “the bullet is loaded” for the storms that strike Saigon comes from Del Elson, the Australian man behind the Saigon Weather Facebook page and recently launched Instagram account. The long-awaited answer to Hanoi’s Weatherdude, Del has spent the past several years sharing charts that detail wind speeds and directions along with expected rainfall and interpretations of what effect they will have on the city. While Vietnamese speakers have some choices, such as Đài Khí tượng Thuỷ văn Nam Bộ (Southern Vietnam Meteorological and Hydrological Station), Saigon Weather has emerged as a go-to place for anglophone followers to get answers to what Del says they most want to know: “Is my laundry going to get wet? Do I need to pack an umbrella?”

Visuals that Del shares on Saigon Weather's social media.

With Saigon’s relatively stable year-round temperatures, residents may not be in the habit of checking weather reports. But, particularly during the rainy season and for those in neighborhoods prone to flooding, there is a need for reliable predictions about downpours and tidal levels, especially when phone apps frequently prove inaccurate. Del fills this niche while also offering some fascinating details about weather for science nerds.

Del is himself one such nerd. A mathematician by training and software engineer by occupation, his interest in weather developed naturally. Born and raised near Sydney Harbor, like many of his peers, he grew up sailing. Major yacht races would begin with weather reports, including the opinion of a local expert, which instilled in him a trust and admiration for those able to advise on future wind and rain. After graduating from university in Western Australia, Del returned to the Sydney area where he continued to sail, even purchasing his own boat and joining a local yacht club he described as “a drinking club with a sailing problem.”

Del aboard his boat. Photo via Del Elson

During these years of sailing in Australia, the financial company he worked for outsourced a project to Vietnam, where he met his future wife, a fellow engineer. Before they got engaged, she even joined him for a portion of the year he spent on a sailboat at sea. During those months on the ocean, Del’s safety depended on accessing and understanding weather data. Once he moved to Vietnam to get married and start a family, that ability to turn data points regarding wind speed and direction, surface barometric pressure, and rainfall into reliable guesses about weather conditions proved useful. He explained: “I got more into looking at the local weather forecasts because sometimes when you're in a city, you need to know where it's going to rain tomorrow. And for a city where the weather is very much governed by the monsoon winds, you wouldn’t think it would be that hard to predict the weather.” It wasn’t long until he launched the Saigon Weather page to share his predictions with anyone who might be interested.

Enough of a community of followers has now developed that Del recently held an in-person presentation. He stunned attendees, Saigoneer included, with the fact that monsoons aren’t, in fact, periods of heavy rainfall, but rather heavy winds. It just so happens that the winds often bring with them downpours. And perhaps even more astounding: it's not accurate to say Saigon has two seasons (wet and dry) but rather three. From May through October, Saigon experiences the southwest monsoon, which leaves the city hot and wet, while November through April is the northeast monsoon, which brings cool, dry air. Less known, however, is the southeast monsoon. Not occurring every year and arriving during random months — sometimes April, sometimes November — it brings short, sudden rainstorms in the mid-morning.

A slide Del shared during a presentation to reinforce typhoon's inability to hit Saigon.

Even more shocking than knowing you’ve gotten the number of seasons wrong would be thinking Saigon is at risk of typhoons. It is not. Tropical cyclones are unable to cross the equator, and Saigon is close enough to be protected by the latitudinal safety band. So if you ever see a report suggesting a typhoon is coming up from Singapore, you know not to trust it. Such fake news is occasionally spread online, and sharing it now puts people in danger of government punishment.

Within this atmosphere of pervasive misinformation, Del shares basic, straightforward prognostications: where it might rain, how much, and when, as well as what areas might flood. Ascertaining such seemingly simple information requires synthesizing a massive amount of data produced by weather models that compare current conditions with historical records to make predictions. Complicating the process is that the foremost inference engines are operated by the US, Canada, and Europe, and optimized for temperate latitudes. This means they are less effective for tropical areas, like Vietnam, where wind behaves differently. Thankfully, the models can be supplemented with information provided by weather scientists in Brunei, Singapore, Fiji, and Hong Kong. Doing so allows Del to make localized predictions, something major weather apps do not, which is why whatever your phone says is dubious at best.

An example of a climate model produced by the United State's NOAA via Climate.gov.

Even more problematic than applying weather models designed for cool climates in equatorial locations is a recent degradation of reliable data due to climate change. To have enough historic understanding to base guesses on, “you need like 10 years of good data, usable good data, and it's questionable at the moment,” Del explained. Unfortunately, amidst warming seas and erratic winds, past patterns no longer portend what will happen today, making meteorologists around the world less accurate than before.

In addition to good data, to best predict weather, one needs a high-powered computer. Such processing power filled entire rooms just a few years ago, but can now fit on a tabletop. Unfortunately, that hardware is also valued by AI practitioners, and crypto-miners before them. A desire to churn out videos of people posing in an '80s aesthetic or rapping cats is now driving the cost of such devices upwards of US$16,000. Still, Del plans to purchase one soon, which will allow him to run full models as opposed to piecing together information from select data sets.

Left: Previous computing hardware needed to run weather models. Photo via Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
Right: Hardware required today. Photo via NVIDIANews.

By running these models, as well as looking at the local tide charts put out by the local port service, Del will be able to post daily reports. And in the meantime, he will continue analyzing portions of the larger data sets for updates several times a week, work which is already proving helpful. A local astronomy club relies on his information to know which nights will be clear enough for stargazing. Some Saigon cricket clubs also consult him about when they should start their games to ensure they are done before it starts to pour.

A soggy Saigoneer is an unhappy Saigoneer. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

On my way to meet for a coffee with Del, perhaps ironically, it started pouring. As we both sat in the moderately damp state one finds themselves in every September, I asked if he knew it was going to rain. “I did,” he said with a big grin. This ability to remain in good spirits amidst the unavoidable realities of weather seems central to his approach. When asked what we can expect for the rest of the year, he noted that the coming dry season will bring drought to the Mekong Delta; record high temperatures to Saigon in the spring and probably a late start to next year’s wet season. Or as he put it: “A lack of swimming opportunities for boofheads in Bùi Viện.”

Heartfelt, Queer and Wickedly Witty: How Poetry Collection 'Come Clean' Sparks Joy

2026-09-25T15:00:00+07:00

Joshua Nguyen lists himself as many things on his Instagram bio — a writer, a PhD student, a boba snob. He received his MFA from the University of Mississippi, where he is currently studying for his PhD.

He has been widely published and won the prestigious 2021 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry for his debut collection of poetry, Come Clean. Like his Instagram bio, the collection is multi-faceted. Traditional poetic forms exist alongside a poem about a post-flaming hot Cheeto trip to the bathroom, for example. Yet, it all fits together in a way that is resonant and profound.

To get a feel for Joshua’s poetry, check out one of the many videos of him reading poetry on YouTube. His start in writing began in Houston through the Meta-Four Houston Youth Slam Team which comes across in the rhythm of his poetry. A 2015 video from Button Poetry of Joshua performing his poem 'Christ-like' really embodies this. There are waves of chaotic crescendo in the performance, matched by moments of slowness and intentional silence.

The poetry in his debut collection begins on the title page: "Come Clean." There is a line break between the words which are, perhaps, an invitation to come over and clean something. Or they are a confession, the author coming clean about some secret. Maybe it is instructions for a sexual act, come first, then clean later. Reading the collection reveals the title can be all of these and more. It is just where Joshua’s eye for poetry and pun begins to shine.

The collection is divided into three sections. Each begins with bracketed quotes from songs by Japanese American singer-songwriter Mitski. The song quotes are accompanied by Polaroids of the author, wearing only underwear and engaging in cleaning rituals — kneeling as if in prayer before the bathtub, sweeping a floor with a white dustpan on the ground, kneeling while cleaning a toilet. These photos are somehow simultaneously spiritual, domestic, erotic, and silly. They fit well within the collection. Marie Kondo makes similar repeated appearances throughout the collection.

When pop culture meets lục bát

Joshua's work explores a lot of themes. There is trauma. There is humor. There is food. And perhaps most prominently, there is family. The dedication reads, "for my family," and family is a constant. Even before the table of contents, there is a poem, 'Save Me, Marie Kondo.' It depicts a family gathered around a dying relative. The images are beautiful and haunting. “My father cries a sound / I will never hear again.” There is real grief in this poem. There are other family poems as well. 'My Brother Explains Driving,' 'My Father Explains Unemployment,' 'My Mother Explains Universal Healthcare,' 'My Sister Listens to Run River North for the First Time.' Family members appear in poems even when not referenced in the titles and they are one of the constant refrains the poems return back to.

Another constant is American lục bát, a poetry form of Joshua’s invention. Lục bát is a poetry form most certainly familiar to a Vietnamese audience. It is most famously represented in The Tale of Kiều. The name of the form gives us insight into its rules. Lục is the Sino-Vietnamese word for the number six. Bát is the Sino-Vietnamese word for eight. Thus, lục bát are created with alternating six and eight-syllable lines.

In the notes section of Comes Clean, Joshua sets out the rules for his American lục bát. After clearly explaining the rules, he cheekily adds, “of course, these rules may be adhered to as tightly or as loosely as one would like.” This non-strict adherence to form is what makes reading his American lục bát especially fun. Take for example, the first stanza of 'American Lục Bát for Peeling Eggs':

When you are six or eight,

come in the kitchen, take the spot

to the left of the pots—

still warm from those eggs: bought, boiled

& cooled.

The first four lines alternate between six and eight syllables like one expects in a lục bát. They follow the expected rhyme scheme as well. The sixth syllable of the first line (“eight)” rhymes with the sixth syllable of the second line (“take”). Then the eighth syllable of the second line (“spot”) rhymes with the sixth syllable of the third line (“pots). In the notes, the author notes that it is this “[the] internal rhyme that helps to drive the poem forward.”

What makes Joshua's American lục bát so wonderful to read is the spots where the poem breaks from the form in unexpected ways. In the stanza above, the last line is clearly not six or eight syllables. Yet it feels complete and right. Through breaking form, the poet has created something new, fresh, and delightful.

There are poems that feel like they hark back to Joshua’s beginnings in poetic performance. 'Marie Kondo Is My Hero: A Lesson on Clothing' feels like a poem aching for performance.

this does not spark

joy but more so this

is the only shirt i have where the sleeves

are shorter

The poem continues, spreading out across the page, some words massively spaced out, guiding the reader on the pace of the poem and where to let the words breathe. Then, in the poem’s final section, a paragraph beginning:

"& & & 2010 a a again all an angeles are as as as as be be black blue board boxers brother bunk bed but but but can can can can’t carpet circuit coach collapse…."

This section works through most of the letters of the alphabet, building to utter cacophony until the words fade from black to gray on the page. Then, only two columns remain on the page, one on the left, one on the right. The left one, a list of colors. The one on the right, people. These, too, are in alphabetical order.

Many of the poems deal with sexual trauma. Many also deal with humor. This seems right. It fits more with how trauma persists throughout life, how it isn’t just limited to the event. And similarly, how a life with trauma is not only a life of trauma. There are also moments of joy and curiosity. The collection portrays a well-rounded view on life as a whole.

Some of the poems are hard to read because of their rawness. However, it is their beauty that makes them worth visiting. 'Wisconsin Has a Place in My Heart & I Just Want It to Let Go' addresses trauma directly:

Thomas tells me that trauma is trite.

That to open up wounds is to bleed yourself out.

Snow, in Wisconsin, blocks the front door of my cousin’s house.

The poem goes on to show the speaker pinned underneath their cousin. It collapses until a singular bracket before opening back up again, slowly building up. The poem is quiet and solemn.

'Bunk Bed,' a prose poem, depicts the speaker, thirteen years old, receiving oral sex from a much older girl. The pain and discomfort of the speaker is clear. The collection’s titular poem, 'Come Clean,' calls back to these incidents. It re-examines them through memory and addresses a new incident — an unwanted happy ending massage paid for by an uncle while in Vietnam.

The author also intersperses this conversation of sexual trauma with Asian identity and Asian American identity. 'After I Was Mistaken for the Stripper while Delivering Barbecue to an All-White Bachelorette Party' is one such instance and an example of how Joshua often adds humor to terrible experiences. It starts: "If I had a stripper name, it would be pork loins. Marinated in my mother’s seasoning, I am mostly bone, but my butt is meaty. My neck is long, but you can still love me, if you want to brisket."

The simple act of verbing “brisket” allows for the continuation of the meat metaphor and a hilarious play on words with the word “risk it.” It’s hard not to laugh reading it. The poem ends:

Is this what being a sacrifice smells like?

Twenty-six jewel-studded cowboy boots circle me,

tongues glistening in the spur of heat.

The concrete imagery here at the end of the poem is also wonderful. The focus on the boots brings us into the speaker’s eye, showing us their head is down. It makes the reader feel the discomfort of being unfairly and unwantingly objectified. The fact that the cowboy boots are jewel-studded is an all too perfect detail placing us clearly in the South, perhaps Texas.

'Exhaustion [But Every Time Leela Rose Kisses a Random Asian Man in the Street, a New Stanza Begins & the Amount of Words between the Boxes Increase by One]' is another example of a poem dealing with sexual assault and Asian identity. This poem directly references a disgusting incident where Leela Rose, a white Internet personality, forces herself upon Asian men in Japan. She believes she is somehow helping them by showing a white woman that finds them attractive. The incident rightfully was heavily criticized online and even spurred the writing of a HuffPost think piece.

There is an understandable and justified anger in the poem about the incident. This is amplified by being in a collection dealing with the ramifications of sexual trauma. As the title says, the words between the boxes in each stanza grow. Like many of Joshua's poems, this allows the language to grow in volume.

This is one of the most powerful poems in the collection in the way it cries out in rage and pain. The poem itself is like a reaction video. It is so intimate and raw it feels as if the reader is sitting next to the speaker, listening to their pain, witnessing a relived trauma, only able to watch.

Joshua also seems interested in the more banal parts of life. 'Speak Quotidian to Me' is a list of aphorisms — some funny, some sad. Each one is a fascinating meditation on its own, but as a list they vibrate off each other, leading the reader through a journey of highs and lows. Here are three:

Threesomes are only allowed in the kitchen with permission from Táo Quân.

Pack underwear for a trip like you’re going to have diarrhea everyday.

The amount of empty cognac bottles in the house determines how many ghosts return your calls.

'Self-Portrait as the Hand Towel Which Hangs Above the Toilet' also examines the seemingly normal or quotidian. It does something magical that is true art. It takes the simplest of objects and turns it on its head in a way that forever changes the reader’s relationship when seeing that object.

As the title states, the poem is about a bathroom hand towel. However, it is not an ordinary bathroom hand towel. It has dreams and aspirations. The towels talks to us, the reader. It tells us “No, it was not my choice / to do this type of towel work.” And later, “Yes, I gaze at the most vulnerable: / the backs of long strained necks, the backs of skulls that haven’t been held, / the back of ears that never listen to my advice.” The towel admits to feeling “lonely.” And in a beautiful poetic turn, it reveals its aspiration to be a kitchen towel. The turn is unexpected. It is the type of poem that makes us feel sorry for our own bathroom hand towels. It makes us wonder, what do our hand towels think?

Joshua Nguyen performing 'My Father and I Trade Bedwetting Stories.'

The collection is interesting in that many of the poems use traditional or neo-traditional forms. There’s a haibun, a ghazal, and a duplex, a form created by Jericho Brown. There are also poems that are stunningly experimental. Among these is 'Google Calendar for My Imposter Syndrome.'

The poem shows a week of the speaker’s life, painstakingly planned out, in the form of a screenshot of a Google Calendar. It gives deep insight into the life of the speaker. There are sections on when to work out and when to call their mother. Beneath the titles for many of the activities are descriptions.

On Monday, the speaker has to attend “Intro to Grad Studies” from 6 to 8:15pm. It’s described as “How Not To Sound Stupid Talking About Dead White Men.” On Tuesday the speaker has set aside two hours at night for “Comments For Other Poets Who Are Better Than Me.” On Thursday, there are four hours set aside for “Thesis Hours.” Layered directly on top of this four-hour slot are other activities the speaker will do—“Sweep” “Vacuum” “Mop” “Organize Your Organizers.” It’s clear the speaker will not be working on their thesis.

There is a neurosis to the planning, an attempt to use scheduling as a cure for impostor syndrome. There is also a sense of deep self-consciousness. It’s also very relatable.

These more experimental poems are a welcome addition to a collection so interested in form. They are not incongruent, but instead, lend to a greater poetic world that Joshua is creating with his mix of contemporary takes on traditional forms. The collection is a huge success with a profound resonance. While it tackles many difficult subjects, it does so with such nuance and beauty that the poems ache to be read, not just once, but many times over.

This article was originally published in 2021.

For those in the US, the book is available through the publisher, The University of Wisconsin Press, as well as independent bookstores including Square Books, the bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi, where the author lives.

The Story of Cà Mên, Vietnam’s Living Fossil From the Wartime and Subsidy Eras

2026-09-25T12:00:00+07:00

During lunchtime at work, I spot a few aluminum cà mên that my coworkers bring from home to keep their lunch warm. Cà mên was once an indispensable item in my family too, but now it’s rarely used; its limited to the few occasions when my grandparents or parents pack lunch for the kids.

Cà mên still lives at hospitals, dangling from the hands of visitors carrying nutritious food to their ill loved ones. The appearance of cà mên could be an optimistic sign of recovery — perhaps someone’s appetite has returned? Inside cà mên, portions of homemade porridge or warm phở bought from a regular eatery have become a crucial part of Vietnamese patients.

Though I don’t use it often, it is still a familiar sight to me. It reminds me of the time of my parents and grandparents, as something they remain close to like a default routine, firmly rooted in unforgettable historical episodes. Cà mên has encapsulated both the poverty and wealth of Vietnamese life for years.

Cà mên’s historical origin

Cà mên is an early ancestor of the heat-insulated lunchboxes of today. It consists of a few separate compartments made of aluminum, stainless steel, or even plastic. Each “drawer” holds a separate part of the meal. They can be firmly stacked on top of one another and then secured by a lock for transportation. Depending on the region, it’s also known as cặp lồng, cà mèn or gà mên. Cà mên originated from “gamelle” in French, which in turn was based on the Latin “camella,” referring to a cup or bowl. French-style cà mên was produced starting in the mid-19^th century, becoming popular on battlefields across the world, each location using a slightly different variation. It’s possible that the French introduced cà mên to Vietnam.

An aluminum cà mên used by French soldiers during World War II. War veterans in Vietnam also kept a cà mên with a similar design. Photos via Marna Militaria.

During the French occupation of Vietnam, cà mên was a mainstay at cơm tháng eateries in Saigon. Cơm tháng, literally “monthly rice,” was a service offered by local rice stalls in which one could pay to eat for a whole month. In an ad in the newspaper Trung Lập Báo, Vi Tiên, an eatery offering Central Vietnamese-style meals at 42 rue Amiral Courbet (now Nguyễn An Ninh Street), promoted a takeaway option with meals stored in cà mên. The sight of French housewives biking with a cà mên to deliver meals to their husbands and blocking a bike race appeared in Vịt Đực, a satirical newspaper from 1938.

Cà mên was a major part of mealtime during French rule. Images via the Journalism Archive of the National Library of Vietnam.

Cà mên also played a part in soldiers' lives in Vietnam, but in this manifestation, it was often painted over or wrapped in fabric to prevent reflected flares from exposing the troop’s location. It was used to store rations for long stretches of time, heat up food, and as bowls.

It was this versatility that helped military-issued cà mên remain in Vietnamese civic life, especially the thick and enduring type that arrived from the Soviet Union as aid. The generic aluminum cà mên, in contrast, sold at nationalized stores was often thin and could warp easily with one drop.

Cà mên on the battlefield, 1973. Photo via TTXVN.

Similar to Vietnam, a number of Asian territories with colonial histories also incorporated western war food containers into daily civic life. In India, these containers are called tiffin, and the food they contain is transported by a network of delivery people called dabbawalla. During colonial times, British colonialists used the word “tiffin” to refer to a light meal eaten to abate the tropical heat in India. Today, across major cities, lunchtime dabbawalla fill the streets to deliver meals to workers in a diverse range of tiffin containers. The containers are marked by colorful signs for ease of distinction. They are delivered around noon from rice stalls or home, and then collected when work ends. This word is also used to refer to tiered containers in Malaysia and Singapore, popular due to the ability to separate rice and soupy dishes.

The subsidy economy in cà mên’s meager meals

If nowadays, answering the casual question “what’s in your lunchbox today?” is quite an easy task, this would be redundant and dispiriting during the subsidy period, because the content of every cà mên would be the same: destitution.

In the planned economy era, a meal with enough rice — never mind meat or vegetables — was a dream of many Vietnamese. According to historian Đặng Phong, in March 1978, Hanoians could only purchase 4 kg of rice a month each; the rest was sweet potato and cassava. The demand for market rice was sky-high, and subsidized rice was constantly running short, too cheap, and of low quality. Most people bought it for cheap to resell in hopes of bartering for homegrown rice from the countryside. Farmers and wholesalers shied away from selling to the state because of low profit margins. The total amount of food yield and donation in 1979 and 1980 even decreased compared to 1976.

Queuing for rice in 1985. Photo via ZNews.

The subsidy-era cà mên was so scantily filled that, when you accidentally dropped one, nothing of value would go to waste. Writer Đỗ Phấn recalls: “The rice, mixed with noodles, congealed at the bottom of the cà mên like a cake. It rolled out dozens of meters on the street and stopped.” The meals were often rice mixed with corn, adlay, and noodles; the side dishes rarely appeared, mostly boiled vegetables, broth, salted peanuts, or pickled fire-cracker eggplants. Sometimes, if there was a sick person in the household, the cà mên could contain a takeaway bowl of state-subsidized phở — meat-included for better-off families and meatless for the poor.

“Hanoi in my meager cà mên,” poet Thanh Thảo writes in Hà Nội – nhìn về phía tôi (Hanoi — look at me). In this era, civil servants usually biked to work with a cà mên on their handlebars. This image is so entrenched in the collective memory that people packing lunch to work were humorously called “cán bộ cặp lồng” (lunchbox officer). It followed them to work and then back home, like a reluctant accessory. It also bears witness to the sly office tradition of bringing ingredients to cook at the company’s electric appliances to save money.

Cà mên on a bike during the subsidy era. Photo via CGvDT.

Opening up a cà mên is like taking a glance at the realities of life at any given point in history. The cà mên content reflected the quality of life of the average salary worker. In the issue published on March 17, 1988 of Lao Động newspaper, a report discussed the wage of healthcare workers. It referenced a moment when a doctor showed the journalist their cà mên, which contained “barely any rice, a morsel of vegetable, and a few braised peanuts.”

Before Vietnam opened up the economy to outside products, buying basic household necessities wasn’t easy. Military-issued items like cà mên were thoroughly repurposed because they were very durable. Household goods became a big-ticket item, so cà mên was frequently given as a wedding gift, alongside basins, thermos, textiles, etc.

After Đổi Mới, the livelihood of Vietnamese gradually improved, yet cà mên remained a mainstay at casual rice eateries. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the four- and five-layered cà mên of the cơm tháng place portrayed in the film Quán Kỳ Nam. The content is still classic home-cooked dishes: braised pork, tofu in tomato sauce, fish canh chua, stir-fried veggies. But when they are kept in the hidden compartments of cà mên, every meal is a surprise. Though I had already eaten before the movie, I still felt that secondhand sense of hunger seeing a mouth-watering meal on screen inside cà mên.

Cà mên is used to serve cơm tháng in Quán Kỳ Nam.

The sets of cà mên used as props in Quán Kỳ Nam are made of anodized aluminum, with ornate motifs on the side. These designs mirror those of traditional cà mên seen in Thailand, which could potentially be their original source. In Cambodia, ornate cà mên is called chan srak, often used to contain altar offerings and gifts for monks during the Pchum Ben Festival.

Across our history, from wartime to the subsidy era, cà mên has encapsulated many hardships. When life improves, cà mên is still patiently hibernating in a corner of our kitchen, waiting for its next mission. Cà mên has been the companion of countless hands during the early mornings, as they prepare food and package a little flavor from home to improve rushed lunches at work. Opening up the cà mên to be surprised by the dishes of the day is still a much-anticipated ritual for many, and I can’t help feeling wistful when I happen to spot a cà mên dangling from a handlebar on the street, even though today, cà mên no longer carries within it the signs of an impoverished time.

On Searching for Rươi Vendor Street Calls, Hanoi's Harbinger of Autumn

2026-09-23T11:00:00+07:00

Embedded in the street call of rươi vendors is the conjuring of autumn, when delectable cuisines from across the land of Vietnam come together on a dinner table.

Rươi vendors’ calls, similar to the prized worm itself, only appear for a brief time during the fall, particularly from the 9^th to the 11^th month on the lunar calendar when, as the owner of Hưng Thịnh, a famous chả rươi store in Hanoi, described: “The sky is above and the rươi are wiggling below.” Rươi is the Vietnamese name for palolo worm, an unsightly, two-inch-long sea creature that's the key ingredient of chả rươi, an omelete dish with tangerine peel, herbs, minced pork, and of course, chunks of rươi.

The seasonal appearance of rươi has been well-documented in Vietnamese literature. Vũ Bằng, a renowned journalist and writer, wrote fondly about the call of rươi vendors in a chapter specifically dedicated to rươi in his book, Miếng Ngon Hà Nội.

Đương ngồi ở trong nhà bỗng nghe thấy những người đàn bà lanh lảnh rao: Ai mua rươi. Ai mua rươi ra mua!” người ta bỗng nghe thấy lòng tưng bừng như có muôn đoá hoa hé cánh và người ta vội vàng chạy ra cửa gọi mua: “Rươi! Rươi!” / As one sits in the house, one suddenly hears the clear and high-pitched call of women: “Come and buy rươi!” The call sparked thousands of blooming flowers' pedals, and one would sprint to the door: “Rươi! Rươi!” to attract the vendors.

Vũ Bằng's depiction of the call of rươi vendors evokes the cultural imagination of Hanoi as an abundant culinary feast. The notion that plump and fresh rươi is mere footsteps away from the door of your home paints an all-too-comfortable picture about how a subset of Hanoians used to live. But all of that seems to be a memory of a distant past: the vivid and high-pitched sound of rươi calls in past Hanoi seems to have disappeared.

Live rươi sold in big duct-taped boxes. Photo via AFamily.

On a Saturday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours walking through Thanh Hà Market, Ô Quan Chưởng and Đồng Xuân Market to retrace the sound of rươi calls in the hope that I might find some insights into where this call has gone. I secretly wish that the rươi that I encountered looked a bit more like sandworms from Frank Herbert's Dune. However, instead of gigantic, tube-like and having impenetrable armour, the rươi that I saw at wet markets and food stalls were tiny, flat creatures at the mercy of Hanoian ladies’ swift hands. Out of the box and into the frying pan. They are certainly not the most attractive creatures on Earth.

In a distinctly Vietnamese cardboard box with blue duct tapes, the rươi specimens collectively wiggled their six-centimeter slimy bodies on top of one another. It must be some sort of bizarre joke from mother’s nature that their colors are subtly reminiscent of bàng leaves, with fiery red and a dark shade of green; and that their bodies are covered in miniature hairs that bring to mind those of rambutans.

Despite rươi being one of the less visually engaging critters, chả rươi and rươi vendors alike could not help but urge me to take photos of the rươi. The cashier at Hưng Thịnh told me to point the camera toward the rươi box, not forgetting to highlight the worms' freshness, plumpness, and “good-for-publication-ness.” Some vendors at Hưng Thịnh markets also proudly advertised that many young kids like taking photos of the rươi. Other rươi vendors were even under the impression that I approached them to make content for TikTok.

The people I met on my walk seemed divided as to whether or not the vendors from Vũ Bằng's writings still roam the streets of Hà Nội . The first seller I spoke to, a lady at Thanh Hà market, didn't recall hearing the sound of rươi vendors on local streets for the longest time: “Nowadays, people only sell rươi in stores. It’s rare to find street vendors these days.” She tucked her hands behind her back shyly when I asked if she could replicate the sound of rươi vendors, but then she smiled and happily hummed: “Ai mua rươi ra-à mùa.”

Is there a distinction between a rươi vendor and a poet? In a single call, the vendor manages to use consonance and alliteration — the “m” in mua, mùa, and the “r" in “rươi,” “ra" — to create a rhythmic effect in her call. By playing with the accents and modifying stresses with “ra" and “mua,” she infused music into her call. Simple in its effect, yet complex in its undeniably rich cadence, the call of rươi stands out among the eclectic corpus of Hanoi sounds.

While I was more than happy to hear the sound for the first time on Hanoi streets, I also wondered why it was that the call for rươi has gradually disappeared. Her theory was that the demand for live rươi is no longer as high as before. In the olden days, rươi vendors would carry their gánh across neighborhoods after their main session at the market to showcase the leftover rươi to local families, enticing homemakers — especially the women of the households — to purchase them in time for dinner preparation. It’s hard to imagine that happening nowadays with the changing social landscapes of Hanoi.

That afternoon I arrived in Hưng Thịnh, a famous chả rươi spot in Hanoi. Here, for VND75,000, you can get the bigger portion with rươi visible on the surface while the VND45,000 option tastes more like your standard cutlet. As she scooped out delicious, sizzling pieces of chả rươi from the hot oil onto a plate, I struck up a conversation about street calls. Unlike the lady at chợ Thanh Hà, she offered a different perspective on rươi vendors: “It’s not so much that rươi vendors and their calls have disappeared,” she said. “It is because they only appear on specific roads near the Old Quarters, where there would likely be more customers willing to buy rươi and process the rươi themselves.”

While walking across Đồng Xuân Market, I did pass by a rươi street vendor, đòn gánh on her thin back and bamboo baskets full of rươi before and in front of her, but she was passing by in silence. All around me, the noises of construction drills and motorbikes filled the atmosphere.

My brief search for the sound of rươi vendors’ calls ended up a meditation on what tiếng rao really means for Hanoi, for Saigon, the rising cities of Vietnam that are constantly negotiating between rubbles of its past and the high-rise buildings of the present. As the soundscape of urbanity — full of unattractive, dull, deafening noises — pervades our daily lives, the nostalgia of tiếng rao reminds us of a distant era when our hometown was more intimate and poetic.

This article was originally published in 2023.

Kem Vi Bổn's Popsicles Anchor 70 Years of Saigon's Summer Memories

2026-09-22T13:00:00+07:00

Saigoneers have always been blessed with a thriving ice cream scene, perhaps an inevitable perk of living in a city that’s rarely not scorching hot. Amid a thriving scene of inventive gelato and soft serve flavors, one frozen treat place has stood the test of time for nearly 70 years: Kem Vi Bổn.

The first time I tasted Kem Vi Bổn was nearly 20 years ago when I was still in school, and I can confidently say that, after trying it just a few days ago for this article, the taste has remained unchanged. The shopfront has been renovated, and the ladies who run the place might look a little older, but it’s astonishing how the menu and recipe have stayed consistent throughout the decades. I guess if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The Vietnamese language uses “kem” as a catch-all term to refer to all frozen desserts, but the products that Kem Vi Bổn is best known and loved for are actually popsicles. They also make a selection of ice cream in tubs. Available popsicle flavors could change depending on the day, but are usually in the range of mung bean, black bean, coconut, taro, durian, and kumquat.

At VND4,000 per kumquat pop and VND7,000 for the rest, this is likely to be the cheapest dish you will be able to purchase in Saigon these days. Are the popsicles the best thing you will taste in the city? Absolutely not, but boy do they give the most bang for your buck. What’s more, the ladies here are so sweet and considerate: they saw that our ice-pops were melting after being photographed in the sun, and offered to exchange them for new ones from the freezer.

Every flavor is made from simple local ingredients, prepared simply. Admittedly, to a tourist or visitor not having grown up with these ice-pops, they can taste aggressively plain, but, if you want to partake in a piece of Saigon culture, this is one of the cheapest ways to do so, for a refreshing outcome. My favorite is still kumquat after all these years, though to me, it looks and tastes more like Tang orange juice than tắc.

Kem Vi Bổn was founded by the family of Lý Vĩnh Đạo and Võ Thị Hai in 1958. Đạo’s father, Lý Thân, learned how to make ice cream when he was living in Cambodia. When they relocated to Saigon, he opened up a shop and taught all the children the family trade. A few sons and grandchildren even started branches across the city over the decades, but today, only the OG shop has managed to endure.

According to Thân, “bổn” means lifeblood, like in “bổn mạng” and “vi” means “because.” He named the shop as such to remind every household member that it is the family’s livelihood, something to maintain and preserve.

Kem Vi Bổn

19 Nguyễn Huy Tự, Tân Định Ward, HCMC

Group Exhibition 'Fiction, Fraction' Showcases 6 Artists in Diverse Visual Mediums

2026-09-21T14:00:00+07:00

From August to October, art organizer Rare Sea brings a diverse group exhibition to Saigon, featuring artworks by six young artists: Lê Đ. Chung, Lê Nguyễn Minh Như, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai, Huyền Dương, Thanh Tùng (Ches) and Sophia Mai Brown.

The event, titled “fiction, fraction” (tích, tách, mảnh mơ), is curated by Lại Minh Ngọc and An Trần. It brings together several pieces in a number of visual mediums, including oil painting, lacquer, hand-printed practice, silk and paper.

Sophia Mai Brown is an artist based in New York City, working in drawing and printmaking. Brown maps interactions between the natural and the built world, connecting real landscapes with imaginary inhabitants.

‘Saigon River’ by Sophia Mai Brown. Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Huyền Dương is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is drawn from personal experiences and everyday events. Trained in oil painting, she works across traditional materials — including textiles, papermaking, and printmaking — as well as digital tools, circuit bending, and toy making.

‘A Handsome Duck and Falling Angels’ by Huyền Dương. Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Thanh Tùng is a multimedia artist based in Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam. His practice is rooted in observations of everyday street life in Vietnam, where urbanization continually reshapes landscapes, ecosystems, and indigenous belief systems.

‘Amphidromus dohrni’ by Thanh Tùng (Ches). Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai employs various mediums such as drawing, installation, documentary film, video, and journalism to highlight issues spanning from personal narratives to broader themes of history and migration.

‘The taste of memory’ by Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai. Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Lê Nguyễn Minh Như is among the few young artists in Vietnam who approaches Vietnamese silk painting through mineral pigments, rethinking a medium that has been closely tied to the aesthetics of transparent watercolors over the past century.

‘Unpredictability’ by Lê Nguyễn Minh Như. Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Lê Đ. Chung lives and works in Đắk Nông. With a multidisciplinary practice that includes painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance, Đ. Chung examines everyday events as well as working with historical and counter-historical narratives.

‘following the stone wall and we found an electric generator…’ by Lê Đ. Chung. Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Images courtesy of Rare Sea.

Visit Rare Sea at 3 Đặng Thị Nhu, Bến Thành Ward from August 8 to October 4 to experience “fiction, fraction.” The exhibition is open 10am–6pm, Tuesday–Sunday with free admission.

In the Era of Constant Rebuilding, We Turn to Vietnamese Modernism for Nostalgic Comfort

2026-09-20T12:00:00+07:00

For two years now, I've checked the Vietnamese Modernist Architecture Facebook group almost every day. Here, members post photos of mid-century modernist architecture they find across the country, and I still get a little excited when a house I've never seen appears in the feed.

About four months ago, I noticed a shift: the notifications became more frequent, and suddenly I was watching the group grow by hundreds of members a day. I wondered when it would slow down, but it never did. Today it sits at nearly 150,000 members, up from 40,000 last year, almost quadrupled in a matter of months: Vietnamese modernism is making a comeback.

For decades, almost nobody was paying attention to Vietnamese modernism, neither internationally nor locally. Internationally, it was overshadowed by better-documented tropical modernisms like Brazil, India, or Ghana, which had international “starchitects” like Le Corbusier, Niemeyer, and Fry to hype them up. Locally, it became too common to notice, as so many people built their houses in modernist style that it became vernacular, part of the street furniture, like the red ghế nhựa or the Cooper Black lettering on every storefront. Even tourists are more easily seduced by a bubblegum-pink church than a plain grey shophouse. When things are perceived as ordinary, they often lose value.

Modernism was once the optimistic look of a newly independent Vietnam, but it gradually became a “poorer” aesthetic; a house you upgrade away from the moment you can afford something newer. Many have been destroyed for that reason. Buildings from before 1975, the golden age of Vietnamese modernism, make up only 15% of the country's built environment, according to a 2024 study based on Ministry of Construction data.

The Vietnamese Modernist Architecture group was founded in 2015 by Mel Schenck, Tom Hricko, Tim Doling, and Hoanh Tran, with Saigoneer as an early sponsor. For a decade, the group remained as overlooked as the houses it documented. It was a space for a devoted handful to archive buildings before they vanished and pay tribute to the architects who laid the foundations of the movement, such as Ngô Viết Thụ, Lê Văn Lắm, and Nguyễn Quang Nhạc. Today the group is shifting from niche documentation to mass admiration, and I’ve stopped counting the number of “Đẹp quá!” (so beautiful) in the comment section.

What's driving this comeback, I believe, is nostalgia. More precisely, urban nostalgia: the specific kind that takes hold in cities that never stop rebuilding themselves, where the built environment looks nothing like it did a few years ago. Modernism is rarely loved by the general public, so nostalgia is an unusual emotion to attach to it. Yet people now come to the group to revisit memories, and the comments turn into something close to love letters to a version of Vietnam that is disappearing. A few quotes from the comment section:

“In Cà Mau Province, there are still many houses with this kind of architecture... it brings back so many memories.”
“This kind of house model brings back nostalgic memories of my childhood.”
“For over 50 years, this place has held the entire childhood memories of my father and me!”

The same happens under my own photos on Instagram:

“I've been obsessed with this house since I was a student riding to my math teacher's place to study. Now that you've posted it, I feel nostalgic and goose-pimpled at how fast time goes.”

Probably the comment that best sums up these quotes is a gif a group member posted: the scene from Ratatouille where a single bite throws the food critic back to his childhood in his mother's kitchen. That sudden rush of nostalgia is exactly what these modernist house photos now seem to trigger. Perhaps that's the power of vernacular architecture. Because these modernist houses are so common, so woven into everyday life, they hold a whole population's collective memory, like an architectural madeleine de Proust.

This growing interest in the nostalgic isn't only about architecture. It’s part of a wider retro wave in Vietnam, visible in a few Instagram accounts celebrating the recent past: Sách hơi cũ finds, rents, and sells old art books; Slowz Nguyen digs up and remixes old Vietnamese music, often pre-1970s; Soulvenir posts vintage photography of a Vietnam that’s fading away.

There seems to be a mechanism at work similar to the west's recent Y2K revival: an optimistic era leaves behind an aesthetic that people reach back for when the present turns anxious. In the west, one of those eras was the turn of the millennium, a fresh start where technology glowed with promise. Two decades later, in our doomscrolling, hyper-connected world, flip phones and the Frutiger Aero aesthetic are trending again as a reassuring memory. For Vietnam, that era was post-independence: although still at war, a young nation had a modern future ahead of it, and modernist houses were lining every street. What people might miss isn't only the concrete, but also the confidence of the era that poured it.

What people get nostalgic about usually ends up trendy. I knew Vietnamese modernism had crossed over when L'Officiel Vietnam asked to feature my photos. Scroll their Instagram, and it's top models, makeup, celebrities, then, suddenly, a concrete house pops into that immaculately curated fashion feed.

The clearest proof that the style is trending is that people have started mimicking it. In 2024, Cà Phê Linh opened a café in Xuân Hòa that I took for a restored mid-century building the first time I saw it. It was built from scratch instead, reproducing the modernist codes exactly: đá rửa finish, pergolas with stars, moons and suns, gạch hoa gió tiles, diamond motifs.

Cà Phê Linh's first location, opened in Xuân Hòa in 2024, was built from scratch in mid-century style. Photo by Alexandra van der Essen.

The entrance's vintage style includes an enamel sign, leather armchairs, and a tiled floor, while modernist details on the façade include a diamond motif and đá rửa finish. Photo by Alexandra van der Essen.

The owners judged the look marketable enough to build a new house pretending to be an old one. They were right, and the place is always packed, with a second one having opened in Saigon in late 2025. Other shops have followed, such as Mai An 1983 or Tibon by Jayden in Long Xuyên. By that point, what's being imitated isn't Vietnamese modernist architecture; it's a successful appearance. The copying of a copy, like a game of telephone, continues until it becomes a new architectural species entirely.

Cà Phê Linh's second location opened in Saigon in late 2025. Photo by Alexandra van der Essen.

Meanwhile, more and more cafés and bars are opening inside real modernist houses. Given how much of Vietnamese daily life happens in cafés, this is helping reframe the style as culture rather than just something old. The loudest example came from Highlands Coffee, Vietnam's largest coffee chain, which turned a modernist villa along Hoàng Văn Thụ into its first drive-thru. A TikTok influencer campaign accompanied the opening, with some videos reaching more than 1 million views. It’s a sort of circular logic: businesses choose modernism because they sense trend potential, and every opening makes it a little trendier still.

Left: The modernist villa as it was before Highlands. Photo courtesy of the former owners' family.
Right: Its current state as Highlands Coffee's first drive-thru. Photo by Alexandra van der Essen.

I wrote to a few café owners to ask why they reused a modernist house rather than building new, as most do, and nostalgia came up in every answer.

The owner of Căn Nhà Cũ Coffee, in Củ Chi, grew up in these houses and wants to pass the feeling on. “With the increasing trend of modernization, I want to bring back the old feelings, the images of society from the past,” he told me. “I want to bring a space and a touch of nostalgia to today's youth.”

For the team behind NEO-HBT, it's about preserving a piece of their childhood: “As '90s kids growing up in Saigon, mid-century modernist architecture was the familiar backdrop of our childhoods. Watching these signature structures disappear across the city has been heartbreaking.”

Beyond nostalgia, the revival is also a matter of pride in a heritage that Vietnamese are starting to claim. At NEO-HBT, roughly 90% of what you see is the original structure. “Looking back at our architectural history, figures like architect Ngô Viết Thụ and his contemporaries contributed immensely to establishing a distinct southern Vietnamese modernist identity that could stand proudly on the global stage. This house is a living piece of that legacy, and keeping it alive is an essential part of sharing our design culture with the world.”

Bảy Coffee, Đà Nẵng. The owner kept the 1986 house for its “historical value, solid architecture, and the precision of its decorative lines.” Photo by Tui đi cà phê.

Keeping a house like this is rarely the easy option. At 3.Coffee, opened by 3 Hào Cà Phê, clearing the property involved removing more than 25 truckloads of trash on the first day alone, and the owner was working on a short lease, with no guarantee of staying long enough to earn the investment back. They did it anyway, wanting to “preserve as much as possible of a place that I personally find beautiful and meaningful.” The payoff comes from customer reactions. Some older visitors tell them certain corners remind them of old Saigon houses. “To me, that is a very special compliment. I hope that when people come here, they don't just see a beautiful café to take photos in. I hope they can also feel a little of the memory, atmosphere, and spirit of an old Saigon home.”

The entrance of 3.Coffee with windflower ventilation tiles. Photo by San Dô.

Beyond cafés and chains, the trend has reached the housing market too. The Facebook group is filling with members trying to buy, sell, renovate, or build a modernist house. One real estate agent posted a listing that turned the nostalgia into a sales pitch: “In the heart of Saigon, we return to the peaceful old houses of the 60s and 70s. Villa for sale on Nguyễn Văn Đậu Street, Bình Thạnh District.” Others are choosing to restore rather than demolish, and come to the group for advice: “Is this house considered modernist, everyone? I want to renovate it and keep the original style, maybe add more modernist elements. Any idea of the cost, or experience with this kind of project?”

A family photo of the house posted to the group.

Then there are those who want the look badly enough to build it from scratch: “Most modernist houses are old, has anyone built a new one in this style?” Modernism has become something to build, buy, and sell, a wild reversal for a style usually bulldozed in Vietnam.

Newly built houses in modernist style, completed in 2025.

So, why a comeback now? A revival like this rarely has a single cause. It's more of a domino effect, and the pieces are hard to fit into one picture: the Facebook group, the book by Mel Schenck, the one by Phạm Phú Vinh, Nguyễn Ngọc Sơn's years of archival work, coffee shops, the slow build of nostalgia, each feeding the next.

The most identifiable trigger, though, might have been a single announcement. On May 19, news broke that Quy Hòa, the historic modernist leprosy village in Quy Nhơn, would be relocated to make way for a tourist mega-resort: one built for 40,000 residents and with a master plan including... flying taxis. It felt like the last straw after so many resort projects erasing local heritage. And the timing coincides: the announcement landed right when activity on the Facebook group took off.

Two of many modernist houses at Quy Hòa that are still being used, but now scheduled to make way for a resort. Photos by Alexandra van der Essen.

Put together, Vietnamese modernism's revival runs on three layers. First, a documentary one: the scholars, authors, and archivists who made the case that this architecture was worth paying attention to. Then a sociological one: a population turning nostalgic as the country keeps rebuilding itself around them. And finally a commercial one: the magazines, coffee chains, and TikTok accounts that are turning it into something marketable and viral, some of them opportunists, many of them genuine lovers of the style. Each layer feeds the next, documentation giving nostalgia something to hold onto, nostalgia giving the market something to sell.

It would be easy to shrug at all this; of course nostalgia revives old things, that's what nostalgia does. But nostalgia for modernism, at this scale, may be close to unheard of. Modernism has rarely been embraced by the public, with a few exceptions such as Brazil. Vietnam represents another, with ordinary people having chosen the style en masse to build their own houses. That first anomaly created a second one, mainstream modernist nostalgia, felt not only by trendy brutalist Instagram accounts, but by the general public too. What got these houses bulldozed, being everywhere, is exactly what makes people miss them now. Concrete brise-soleils make people think “this looks like my grandfather's house” with tears in their eyes; modernist elements get reproduced in fashionable café concepts. There's something poetic about all of this: a modernism once built by the people, for the people, is being slowly reclaimed by the people all over again.

Inside a Saigon Studio Bringing Lion Dance Costumes to Life

2026-09-19T11:00:00+07:00

“This passion for lions is in our blood. Many, many kids in the past dropped out of school or quit work just to go,” said Bành Chí Hùng, owner of Saigon’s Thuận Anh Hãng lion dance costume studio.

Unlike in the central region, where múa lân (lion dances) are most associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival, in Saigon they tend to be biggest during Tết. Still, the weeks leading up to the fall holiday keep him quite busy. Nearly all his waking hours are occupied by completing orders. Amidst this packed schedule, he invited Saigoneer to his Bình Hưng Hòa ward home studio to witness the process and some of the traditions lost.

Hùng (right) works alongside his team on the ground floor of his home, where nearly every wall and corner is occupied by lions.

Bamboo, rattan, and wire are meticulously assembled for the head’s frame before rice paper is glued on and left to harden before being hand-painted. The entire process takes up to five days, with another two required for the costume’s body. In total, they sell for VND5–7 million to buyers throughout the city and country, as well as overseas to France, the US, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and elsewhere.

Careful planning and frame construction are essential to ensure the final lion meets client expectations.

Once the surface is completely dry, the color is added by hand.

Having spent practically his entire life surrounded by múa lân, Hùng has been able to observe trends and preferences in design shifts along with improvements in material quality. Newer lion head models have much lighter frames that are easier to lift. New glues are easier to paint on and thus allow for more intricate details and a wider range of vibrant colors. An influx of foreign influences has added Malay, Chinese, and Hong Kong patterns as well as facial features. But for Hùng, not everything new is better. “I prefer the traditional one more. The traditional one, looking at it, gives you a vintage lion feel.”

New designs are more colorful and complex than those Hùng grew up with.

While he has his preferences, Hùng must acquiesce to customer requests which can include new elements like stainless steel teeth and horns, and LED lights. One consistent feature remains, however, in the importance of the eye-dot. On an auspicious day, Hùng and his team make offerings and perform the dotting the pupil in the center of the eye. Anyone can take a lion home, but before it is truly ready for a dancing performance, especially in the south, it must receive the ceremony to ensure it has “spiritual energy, the soul.”

A head awaiting its important eye dot.

Completed heads ready to be delivered to customers.

“If my stuff is beautiful, people will copy it. If they see my stuff isn't beautiful, who would bother copying it?” quipped Hùng when surrounded by the colorful lion heads and costumes he has been making for nearly three decades. “The more people learn, the more people copy, the more valuable I am. Thanks to that, I must be proud of what makes you jealous of me, right?” he said with the confidence one deserves after international prizes and more annual orders than he can process.

While overshadowed by the lions, Ông Địa plays a crucial role in all performances and Hùng makes these masks as well.

Hùng makes somewhat traditional and more experimental versions.

While Hùng is one of the city’s most revered lion-head craftsmen, it wasn’t creating the costumes that first drew him in: “Honestly, when I was small, whenever I heard the drum beat, I would run out to watch. It's always been like that at home, hearing the drum beat, running out into the street to see where the drum was, where they were dancing.” His first and true passion is múa lân. After performing for many years, he began making costumes to use himself as mentored by previous generations. As he’s gotten too old to perform now, he focuses solely on crafting them as his business.

Performers nowadays rise to platforms far taller than in the past.

In the olden days, múa lân was a more creative, unique undertaking. “In the past, everyone had their own style. Now it's an international style,” with all teams in competitions and performances performing “the exact same routine.”

While they take the art seriously, the performers are not preparing for a fight.

As well as a standardization of rhythms and dance steps and an increase in the height of dance platforms, múa lân has lost a rambunctious violence that was once associated with it. Hùng explained that teams in a competition wouldn’t always be content to settle the matter through dance alone. “Two lion teams would meet, the drummers would hype things up, and they would fight — literally brawling. But if they played a respectful bowing drum cadence, both sides would bow to each other politely, and nothing would happen,” he said with a clear fondness for the rowdy moments. With a wistful tone he added, “All those brawls happened back then, but now they're gone. Today, official permits are even issued for sanctioned competitions.”

While it's just practice, the heights remain real and dangerous.

While Hùng’s costumes are frequently used in international competitions, they are also used for the year-round ceremonies that accompany grand openings, weddings, and other celebrations. The groups that perform these must be ready at any time if hired and thus practice year-round to remain ready.

Without crowds, the practice sessions lack pomp, circumstance and glamor.

After numerous rainouts, we were finally fortunate enough to watch the team practice. Watch some shots of the team in action below:

How Laos's Dams Are Powering Vietnam, Other ASEAN Nations Despite Mekong Concerns

2026-09-18T14:00:00+07:00

Following a spate of foreign investment in the 1990s, Laos began producing surplus electricity and looked to export it. Today, around 80% of its energy, largely from hydropower, is sold to neighbors. Electricity exports from Laos generate around US$2.6 billion for what is one of the poorest nations in mainland Southeast Asia. Across the region, neighbors including Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia have become reliant on hydropower from Laos. Slowly but surely, however, this is changing.

Top image by Matyas Rehak / Alamy.

Laos’ hydropower exports are facing increasing competition from non-hydro renewable energy and wider changes in the region’s power sector. Growing investment in non-hydro renewables and the first steps towards a regional power grid are beginning to change both the nature of that reliance and what it means for Laos to be the “Battery of Southeast Asia”.

The environmental and social effects of hydropower, particularly on biodiversity and local fisheries throughout the Greater Mekong Region, also continues to loom large on the future of hydropower in the region.

Thailand: Buying the battery

Thailand is the most prolific importer of power from Laos, making it the main driver of the latter’s power export ambitions. But Thai civil society organizations are also key opponents of large dam projects.

The Thailand-built Xayaburi Dam in north-west Laos, which began operations in 2019 with a generating capacity of nearly 1.3 gigawatts (GW), was the first Mekong mainstream hydropower project in the country and remains one of its largest. The dam had been mired in controversy during its construction due to a lack of transparency about its potential environmental and social impacts.

Thai villagers protesting against dams on the Mekong, with several placards mentioning Xayaburi. Critics have highlighted the adverse effects of the dam, one of Laos’s largest projects, on the river’s downstream biodiversity. Photo by Apichart Weerawong / Associated Press / Alamy.

But for local communities, the impacts are clear. Critics of the first “mega-dam” have cited adverse effects on downstream fisheries and the reduction of nutrient-rich sediment needed for the river’s biodiversity. They also raise concern about hydropeaking — sudden and artificial releases of water to meet short-term peaks in electricity demand — that affects riparian animals such as beach-nesting birds.

Since Xayaburi’s operations began, several hydropower dams have been planned for the Mekong. Key among them is the 1.5 GW dam near Unesco World Heritage site Luang Prabang, set to come online in 2030. Experts fear construction of the dam could lead to revocation of the site’s status.

Thailand has a dynamic environmental civil society space. The Sanakham dam project, for instance, 2 kilometers from the Thai border in Laos, has drawn criticism from groups for ecological threats. Other dams such as Pak Beng and Pak Lay, which Thailand have significant stakes in, have faced opposition as well as allegations of contentious studies and consultations.

Thailand is the largest investor in Lao hydropower projects. The driving force behind these deals are Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) promising that Thailand will buy energy from the dams once completed. For years, however, organizations such as the Mekong People’s Network and Fair Finance Thailand have fought the construction of new dams and pushed back against PPAs. NGOs and researchers have called the dams a “false climate solution.”

A solar farm in central Thailand. The country is pushing for large solar projects and mass rooftop solar installations to shift away from liquefied natural gas and protect itself against price volatility. Photo by Thattaphon Sukborwornophat / Alamy.

Even with its big stakes in Lao hydropower, however, Thailand is beginning to invest heavily in solar. This is primarily to guard against rising prices of imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), the country’s primary source of energy, from external shocks like the Strait of Hormuz crisis. In September 2026, it announced a drive to install 5 GW of rooftop solar within a year for this purpose. In its draft Power Development Plan 2026, nearly half of all its new renewable capacity between 2026 and 2037, totalling nearly 51 GW, is planned to come from solar.

Vietnam: A new type of battery

Power needs in Vietnam are surging, driven largely by the manufacturing sector. In March 2026, at the height of the dry season, Vietnam’s electricity consumption reached 1 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), months earlier than in previous years. By May, this reached 1.1 billion kWh, and authorities issued orders to maintain stable electricity supply through measures including importing more electricity from Laos and China. In the first quarter of 2026, energy imports from Laos grew nearly 120% compared to the same period in 2025.

In 2025, Vietnam imported roughly 1.5 GW of power from Laos, much of which was hydropower. As part of its revised PDP, released that same year, it aims to increase energy imports from Laos to at least 8 GW by 2030, up from 5 GW in the PDP published in 2023.

Together with Laos, Vietnam is actively increasing the interconnectivity infrastructure, contributing to the dream of connecting the grids of all countries in Southeast Asia. The latest project connecting the two countries is expected to be a 75-kilometer transmission line linking the Nam Nha Hydropower Complex in Houaphanh Province, north-eastern Laos, to the Vietnam border.

While hydropower will still be a key source of Vietnam’s energy imports from Laos, wind projects look set to comprise an increasingly significant share. Monsoon, Southeast Asia’s first cross-border wind project, began sending power to Vietnam in the latter half of 2025. The project, located in Laos’s Sekong and Attapeu provinces, produces 600 MW, which goes to its neighbor through a high-capacity 500-kV transmission line.

Wind and solar farms in southern Vietnam. While the country has started importing wind power from Laos, it is also trying to increase its own renewable generation capacity. Photo by Thinh Doan / Dialogue Earth.

More Lao wind energy import projects are on the horizon. Danish renewables investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Vietnamese developer Fecon have proposed a 1 GW onshore wind project in Savannakhet Province in southern Laos, mainly intended to power manufacturing hubs in Vietnam.

Vietnam’s revised PDP has increased the country’s ambitions for its own non-hydro renewable generation. Compared to its 2023 targets of producing around 43 GW from solar, wind and biomass by 2030, the revised PDP raises this figure to at least 75 GW.

Cambodia: Future for the grid

Cambodia has had difficulty powering rapid urbanization. Unplanned growth in cities like Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville has left authorities scrambling to keep pace with energy demand, which in 2025 increased by around 14% nationwide from the year before. Energy security has been helped by increases in solar, but the country still struggles with reliable energy, further strained by factors like the Strait of Hormuz crisis which has led to volatile prices of imported fuel.

Cambodia imports around 200 MW of hydropower from the Don Sahong Dam in Laos, controversial for its impacts on downstream fisheries and the endangered Irrawaddy dolphin. Cambodian civil society organizations have long pushed back against hydropower projects in the country and region. In 2020, the country implemented a 10-year ban on new dam projects on its mainstream Mekong, citing a need to diversify energy sources.

The Don Sahong Dam on the Mekong, right before it flows into Cambodia. The country imports 200 MW of hydropower from this dam, controversial for its impacts on downstream fisheries and the endangered Irrawaddy dolphin. Photo by Andy Ball / Dialogue Earth.

In the long run, Cambodia aims to continue importing power from Laos at a stable level, according to its Power Development Plan of 2022. This is expected to increase to around 3 GW by 2030 and remain the same until 2040.

But it hopes to eventually expand power sharing with Laos through one of the region’s most ambitious plans: a power grid connecting the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The initiative, which has been in the works since 1997, is a plan to eventually share energy across all members of the bloc, in both mainland and maritime Southeast Asia. In May 2026, the Asean Centre for Energy, Electricité du Cambodge and Electricité du Laos signed a joint study framework to advance cross-border connections, as part of a phased approach to advancing the Asean Power Grid. The framework involves collaboration on technical assessments, economic analysis and preliminary environmental assessments for future projects.

Laos and Cambodia took a major step towards regional grid interconnectivity in 2023 when they launched a high-capacity China-built 500-kilovolt transmission line linking a substation in Champasak Province in south-western Laos to its border with Cambodia.

Malaysia and Singapore: End of the line?

Neither Malaysia nor Singapore share a border with Laos, so the Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project (LTMS-PIP), launched in 2022, has been hailed as a broad advancement for the Asean Power Grid.

From Laos, energy largely created by hydropower is sent through Thailand, which acts as a “wheeler” country to send electricity through to Malaysia and subsequently Singapore. The city-state began importing 100 MW from this system in 2022, making the LTMS-PIP’s first multilateral cross-border electricity trade through four ASEAN countries — all from Laos’s hydropower dams.

The capacity of tradable electricity was increased to 200 MW in the project’s second phase, launched in January 2026. This phase introduced multidirectional electricity trading, with Singapore importing the additional 100 MW from Malaysia.

Imported hydropower from Laos is part of how Singapore seeks to achieve its climate goals, but experts have raised concerns about the environmental impacts of Lao and Mekong dams, noting that it is more than just counting carbon.

Malaysia has started exporting power to Singapore through the Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project, the first multilateral and multidirectional cross-border electricity trade through four Asean countries. Photo by Stephen Browne / Alamy.

Nevertheless, Singapore’s energy needs are helping to drive the Asean Power Grid ever further as the Sarawak-to-Singapore undersea connection is expected to have some engineering design studies complete by end-2026. The hydropower produced for export will come from Malaysian Borneo, with the project estimated to transmit a proposed 1 GW of energy by around 2035.

China: The battery’s builder

In April, the China-Laos cross-border power transmission line began operations, opening China’s domestic electricity market to Laos’s renewable energy generators. But Chinese involvement in Laos’s hydropower sector stretches back two decades. Today, many of Laos’s planned and completed Mekong mainstream hydropower dams have some involvement from Chinese companies, from ownership to loans and development at different levels. Major dam projects, like Pak Beng and Sanakham, cost at least US$2 billion each to build and are majority-owned by Chinese companies, while others like Don Sahong and Pak Lay have Chinese infrastructure developers.

Chinese companies have also helped build big dam projects on Mekong tributaries, such as the Nam Ou hydropower cascade, as well as non-hydro renewable projects like the 1 GW Oudomxay Solar Farm, the largest in Southeast Asia.

The Luang Prabang dam project, one of the few Lao dams with no Chinese involvement. Many of Laos’s planned and completed Mekong mainstream dams have Chinese companies with part ownership or development at different levels. Photo by Richard Sowersby / Alamy.

China’s development of Laos’s domestic resources has led to some pushback. These include strategic multilateralism concerns from the US about regional influence, and public opposition to mega-project dams due to their environmental and social impacts. Legal disputes have also arisen related to dam projects developed by China. For instance, in 2025, state-owned company PowerChina sued Electricite du Laos for US$555 million in unpaid dues for the Nam Ou hydropower project, reported Reuters.

With more hydropower dams planned for the Mekong mainstream coinciding with promises to expand energy exports, non-hydro renewable energy and the potential ASEAN power grid, the Battery of Southeast Asia could look very different in the future.

This article is originally published by Dialogue Earth and has been republished with permission. Read the article on Dialogue Earth here.

A Pop-up Night Park Brings the Joy of Playing in the Rain to Phú Mỹ Hưng

2026-09-17T12:00:00+07:00

A lack of public spaces and activities has been a chronic problem plaguing Saigon’s urban planning since the city experienced its first population boom a few decades ago. If you happen to be near District 7 in the next two months, a pop-up park could be a new option for children, and perhaps some particularly exuberant adults, to frolic in the rain and the evening.

The temporary park installation project is simply called Night Park, or Công Viên Đêm in Vietnamese, designed by Saigon-based architecture firm Studio Anettai. Based in P2 Park of Tân Hưng Ward, the amenity is free to visit from 3pm to 8pm every day, September 4–November 1, 2026.

The creation of the project takes inspiration from Saigon’s tropical rain, which dominates the local climate every year during the six-month rainy season. Older Saigoneers remember the bouts of rain during their childhood fondly as a great opportunity to play around in the rain with neighborhood friends — a luxury that children growing up in the busy 2020s might not have.

The Night Park has two areas: Night Plaza and Rain Park. The latter was conceptualized specifically based on the joy of playing in the rain. It features a 20-meter-long structure designed to catch and filter rainwater to make it safe for children to play with. The kids can observe the entire process to learn how the water goes from droplets in the sky to the basin. While this water is not drinkable, it is safe to be loaded into hand pumps and splashed around with your best mates.

The Night Plaza is a simple section on the grass with seats and a collection of outdoor lamps specifically crafted for the installation by local designer mài (@mai.cuahang_). The lamps provide enough illumination for a cozy evening hangout, but not so glaring that it might be too harsh on the eyes.

During the two months of its stay, the Night Park will play host to two events: Water Evening (September 19) and Water in the City (October 3). Water Evening will take place in tandem with the Trung Thu celebration organized by Phú Mỹ Hưng, including a walk, a yoga session, and a lantern parade — the yoga activity requires prior registration and a fee.

Water in the City is an education workshop organized by Gieo Collective, that aims to “share stories of the Saigon River from their project ‘The River Tells Its Tales’ — the high tides, and the livelihoods that depend on the flood,” according to the Night Park website.

Visit the Night Park website for more details on the project and how to register for the aforementioned events.

Photos courtesy of Studio Anettai.