Exploring Saigon and Beyond - Saigoneer

The Grotesque Food on AI Slop Signs Ushers in the Age of Flattened Human Experience

2026-11-01T10:00:00+07:00

The AI slop has arrived, our streets conquered by vibrant, same-same cartoon faces with goofy grins slapped atop gradient-drenched backgrounds, every inch of space smeared with colorful activity that distracts from wonky details: clocks with nonsensical numerals, bánh mì with reptile skin, and passion fruit oozing juice from sinkhole centers.

When you step onto Saigon sidewalks, a blitz of activity bombards your senses and splinters your attention, so you might not pay much notice to individual signage. But if you look closely, you’ll detect AI everywhere. From street carts to chain-store window posters, advertisements reliant on the technology have transformed the look and feel of Vietnam’s urban environments over the past months. The change is subtle because it takes place within an already cluttered visual landscape that, since the early 2000s, has expanded on a maximalist attitude which professes that more and bigger is best in a competitive ecosystem.

The adoption of AI in Vietnamese advertising shouldn’t surprise anyone. The country is more accommodating of the technology than regional peers, with 78% of businesses using it alongside high rates of personal use led by Gen Z, who ping chatbots to work, study, relax, and receive advice. While strict laws surround disinformation and scams, which are intertwined with AI, the government is also supportive of its potential to empower industry and economies, even using it for its own campaigns and media. The leap from Gemini inquiries to cyber-meat monstrosities on the side of a bún bò cart is infinitesimal.

Bottom-line costs, as opposed to aesthetic preferences, are surely why proprietors employ AI instead of a graphic designer or sign-painter. Friends and co-workers assure me we can not assume they make the same corner-cutting decisions when sourcing ingredients and materials or hiring workers. It feels cruel to levy our scorn at humble vendors who are unaware of the ethical concerns and political machinations that fill think pieces. But who, then, is to blame for all creativity-deficient crud on our city streets? And what can we do about it?

The unsatisfying answers may lead to the tech oligarchs described by author Arundhati Roy as “a single head and a single pale, unblinking eye set into its forehead, way to the right of centre, which casts its jaundiced gaze on ordinary humans and sees only what miners see in a mineral-rich forest, or what dam builders see in mighty, flowing rivers. A resource to be extracted, accumulated and put on the market. Fuck the forest. Fuck the river. Fuck the human.”

Some witnesses to the slop sludging up Saigon’s streets will claim it’s no different than Vietnam’s decades of pirating images and that the issue isn’t the reliance on AI, but the lazy use of it. Citing the limitless potential of AI to create images and even host lame web series, they will note that if visuals look bad or strange, it's because the creators aren’t skilled or diligent in how they craft prompts. And it might all be moot, anyways, as the most egregious errors in textures, patterns and interpretations are attributed to older models. In a few months, one probably won’t be able to tell what’s AI and what isn’t. At best, it all makes one even more nostalgic for the errors, idiosyncrasies and imperfections of handmade signs.

Ultimately, AI signage in Vietnam merely serves as a loud example of a wide-reaching issue of the modern age. Like the visual trends preceding it, AI is washing out creativity and flattening the diversity of human experiences. Spit out by the same source-trawling algorithms that churn out trends, the signs all look the same, whether in Saigon, Boston, Caracas, or Belgrade. The phenomenon applies to cafes that all feel like Apple Stores and music videos with indistinguishable choreography styles. If you take a thousand of the most magnificently plummaged jungle birds and throw them in a blender, you’ll get a monochrome slop of brown sludge — never mind you’ve lost the birds’ songs too, beautiful mistakes and all.

A Eulogy for My Childhood Along Saigon's Xuyên Tâm Canal Amid Its Cleanup

2026-11-01T07:00:00+07:00

Along the busy Điện Biên Phủ Street that travels through the former districts 1, 3, 10 and Bình Thạnh is Hẻm 27, located almost next to Trường Sa Street along the Nhiêu Lộc Canal.

Entering Hẻm 27 feels like arriving at a typical, laid-back residential area of Saigon. You will notice two- or three-storied houses, a tiệm tạp hóa every 10 steps you take, and of course, delicious eateries packed with locals. But as you travel deeper, it gradually becomes narrower, with houses starting to look smaller and less well-built than those at the alley’s entrance. You start to notice even narrower alleys along the way; these smaller hẻms contain even smaller houses. There, you can catch glimpses of the ordinary lives of the people: light flickering from dangling lightbulbs, uncles smoking on scooters parked out front, aunties spreading out on the floors making food, most likely to sell as their livelihoods, and if you go down these narrower hẻms, eventually you would reach a channel called Xuyên Tâm.

Views of Xuyên Tâm Canal. Photo via Đầu tư.

Rạch Xuyên Tâm is a tributary of the Nhiêu Lộc canal, flowing through Bình Thạnh and Gò Vấp and ending at the Vàm Thuật River. For over 50 years, the banks of Xuyên Tâm have been the lifeline for thousands of low-income working-class families, including my own. We have relied on the channel to build our lives in a city that has become increasingly expensive. As of May 2026, hundreds of these families have moved elsewhere; many more will follow, as part of the city’s cleanup efforts and infrastructure improvements.

A theory on how this neighborhood came to be

As a city built with and upon a large network of rivers, canals, and channels, many aspects of life here go hand in hand with bodies of water. For a long time, local waterways have been used as means of transportation, creating a culture of economic activities right on their banks and surfaces. Many markets and neighborhoods have formed near the water. One such neighborhood grew alongside the Đôi channel in former District 8; District 7 houses the Tẻ canal neighborhood; and in Bình Thạnh, in addition to the one along Xuyên Tâm canal, there is a similar neighborhood in Văn Thánh.

My mother in the first home my parents built

For as long as I can remember, Xuyên Tâm has felt well-established. I suspect people were first drawn here for the same reasons people have always settled near bodies of water. The channel itself is less than one kilometer from Bà Chiểu Market; schools, supermarkets, churches, and pagodas are all within two to three kilometers. Furthermore, the area is adjacent to former District 1, Gò Vấp, and District 2. This proximity to so many other populated, developed neighborhoods creates abundant work opportunities while supporting a generally low cost of living. Many of the families who lived here were blue-collar workers with limited education who relied on that proximity to neighboring areas for work.

Before moving away due to the city’s cleanup efforts, my family had a long history living in the Xuyên Tâm channel neighborhood. It all started when my grandmother fled her hometown in the Mekong Delta during the war against the French and settled in Saigon, where she met my grandfather. Like many children born during the 1960s, my mother grew up in a family with more than 10 siblings and had few opportunities for a formal education. In the early 1980s, when she met my father, she was a single mother with two children, but my father pursued my mother and they eventually decided to start living together and work to provide for the children and each other. Then came my older brother and me.

The view from our kitchen window overlooking the canal. During low tide, not much water is visible.

My mother often told the story of how our old home came to be. “It was a pigsty,” she would say about the plot of land when she bought it. At first, they could only afford to make a house with old wood planks and metal sheets for the roof. My older sister and brother once told me how, when they were little, tides from the channel would rise and flood the house, and how they would enthusiastically and innocently splash around in the water while my mom frantically stacked things in the house up high. In the early 2000s, a few years after I was born, my father’s work finally started to look up and my family was able to renovate the house from wood planks to brick and cement. For more than 30 years, that humble home was my mother’s pride and joy. Thanks to her tremendous effort to build something out of nothing, it was where my siblings and I grew up, with all the glories of childhood, bad days included.

Growing up near Rạch Xuyên Tâm

The narrow alleyway leading to the our home.

Neighborhoods like Xuyên Tâm are quite distinctive compared to other Saigon residential quarters. They have existed alongside other popular areas like Chợ Lớn or downtown Saigon but their existence has mostly been obscure. You can’t find neighborhoods like Xuyên Tâm on Traveloka or Booking.com, even to some residents of Saigon, these neighborhoods are unfamiliar.

One thing I noticed growing up here was how the houses seem to be built on the essential need to put a roof over a family's heads, in the spirit of working with whatever little resource one might have. The houses were not constructed by architects or engineers, but men with some construction experience. Therefore, they serve the most basic and important function of a house, which is to shelter, and anything else is a bonus. The houses are often built packed together, in some cases sharing the same wall, leaving little to no space for ventilation or escape routes. This becomes more and more obvious amongst the houses further down the alleys.

Because of all of these factors, fire was always a looming concern. Each month, on days when it’s customary for households to burn votive papers as offerings for dead relatives, neighbors would remind each other to pay attention to the smell of burning or smoke. On such occasions, everyone in my alley would stop whatever they were doing and go ask around until they found the source of the smell and were sure that everything was under control. Most houses also didn’t have a proper waste disposal system and no septic tanks, meaning that all the household liquid waste got flushed directly into the canal water. Most families would pay for trash pick-up to handle their solid waste, but some just treated the canal like their personal trash chute.

Those living along the canal are not always concerned with keeping it clean. Photo via Đầu tư.

Our Xuyên Tâm neighbors

The people of Xuyên Tâm canal are a mix of those whose families had lived there since its early days, and those who came to live there over time. Many are diligent workers, often making their living through street food carts or stalls, and small home businesses like tạp hóa or tailoring services. Among those who make an honest living are others who were stuck in bad gambling and drug habits. Growing up surrounded by people whose career was selling food, I started to notice how labor-intensive the work is, especially when they are not professionally trained or do they own any proper kitchenware. The dishes that they sell are often noodles or desserts such as chè that include many components, which are mostly homemade. For this reason, they spend the majority of their days cooking. In my old alley, the atmosphere would be lively as early as 2–3am as people got up to prepare food to sell breakfast. The people here are hard-working, simple folks.

My mother and aunts making bánh tằm at home, a common scene among many households in the neighborhood. Bánh tằm is a type of rice noodles used as the main ingredient for bánh tằm bì, a Mekong Delta specialty.

They work long hours to survive and take care of their families, but they can be inconsiderate at times. Their idea of entertainment and leisure often includes drinking parties with blasting music or karaoke without concern for the whole neighborhood that has to hear it. Their idea of conflict resolution between neighbors often resembles the way Vietnamese parents cut fruits for their kids after smacking them instead of talking and saying sorry. Two neighbors could cuss each other out one day and yet, weeks later, one would help the other with parking, going back to talking as if the quarrel had never happened. One time, my mother agreed to let the neighbor next door use our house’s right wall as their own when they built their house. While this was a gesture of kindness, it resulted in multiple incidents when the neighbor's son got drunk and slammed our wall to harass us. The sense of community was always present here, but at times it could feel toxic and thoughtless.

Despite all of that, I would not describe my childhood as anything but fulfilling. As a child, I never felt the troubles of the adults here, and the neighborhood didn’t have a negative effect on me, despite seeing and hearing many fights and incidents. I was fortunate enough to live most of my life in the brick house my parents renovated, which was much sturdier than the one made from plain wood planks that preceded it. In my memory, childhood was the days spent in the care of my parents, going to school on weekdays and church on the weekends, having friends, community, warm meals, and play. For that, I have the Xuyên Tâm canal to thank, as it provided the stability that was foundational to a childhood I enjoyed. It allowed me to stay in one place and thus have set down roots and feel grounded while developing my sense of self and building relationships. I realize now how much the time living here has shaped who I am today. My special bonds with it that were not always apparent before. As this realization arrived, so did the final days of the Xuyên Tâm canal.

Happy moments during birthday celebrations in the home after it was renovated.

A new beginning for the canal and for us

In the months leading up to the day when our family would be moving to our new home, I watched the houses around mine being torn down. As I saw the scenery I grew up in gradually disappearing, reduced to bricks and dust, I was filled with conflicting emotions of hopelessness and hopefulness.

I was sad to see the excavators tearing down house after house, knowing that soon, my very own house would suffer the same fate. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of hopelessness amidst everything. I was hopeless to think of one day when the house that has sheltered our joys and sorrows for so long would no longer exist. The presence of the house and the place were physical evidence to all the hardships of my family and all the turmoil of growing up there. Once the scenes are gone, what would be left of our history? I have come to terms with the fact that it would only exist in our memory from now on. And each time I felt down, I reminded myself that this was for the best, that our family had emerged from this ordeal with the best outcome possible.

My mother with a neighbor's child in front of our former home.

I was also hopeful when thinking of our new place to live, an apartment located in a nearby building that my family was eligible to buy at a discounted price, because we were losing our only house. I was hopeful that we would have a stable place without having to go into debt to the bank for it. But above all, I was hopeful about my mother finally being able to own a place of her own, with legal papers acknowledging her ownership, an achievement after decades of her hard work and never spending anything more than the bare necessities. In addition to my family, I was happy to think of the Xuyên Tâm canal being cleaned and its environment improved; it will no longer be a dumpster for household waste, and soon, it will be a neater and nicer place where the community can enjoy themselves.

Soon, the Xuyên Tâm canal will be given a new identity. After the cleanup, there will be no more shabby houses. It will become legitimate, and the real estate price will inevitably skyrocket. People will consider it more “civilized,” but it will never again be a place for those with nothing looking to build something from scratch in Saigon.

Photos courtesy of Ngọc Hân.

Feeling Peckish at the End of the Work Day? Have a Bánh Chiên, or Two, or Four.

2026-10-30T09:00:00+07:00

The rainy season is upon us in Saigon. Bouts of rain from ferocious to gentle have helped tempered the searing heat of summer. At one corner of the city, amid the moisture of freshly rained-on atmosphere is the bittersweet caramel scent of sugar syrup bubbling on the stove and of fried dough. It fills me with both nostalgia and a craving for golden, crispy bánh chiên hidden at every market and alley across Saigon.

Bánh chiên literally means fried dough in Vietnamese, referring to a genre of pastry that comes in so many shapes and flavors. Today’s bánh chiên carts are adorned with flashy signage and even twinkling LED lights, but when I was young, they merely consisted of an aluminum trunk with wheels beneath so vendors could take their pastry on the road. Above the counter is an oil wok that’s never not boiling, while a glass display sits in front, showcasing steaming pastry that’s freshly fried.

The fragrance of oil and dough emanates from bánh chiên carts.

Even from afar, you can immediately smell the rich scent of fried food without actually seeing the carts. When you arrive, your eyesight will be greeted with a luxurious platter of puffy pastry arranged in neat rows. It’s very hard to walk by without stopping to grab at least a couple of bánh bò-bánh tiêu sandwiches, or a bánh cam to satisfy the craving.

It’s hard to walk by without grabbing something.

Bánh cam and bánh còng

I distinctly remember a time in Saigon when bánh cam vendors could pass for street acrobats thanks to their towering tray of bánh cam and bánh còng piling atop one another like giant hats. I’ve never seen them drop any while moving about on really cluttered streets.

Who wants a bánh cam or bánh còng?

To show appreciation for their intricate balancing act and sympathy for their hard work, my mother always bought a few bánh cam to help out. One for her, the rest for us. My love for bánh cam was kindled from then on.

Bánh cam is named after orange in Vietnamese, because it resembles a small fruit. Each bánh cam is spherical, covered in a shimmering layer of amber sugar syrup and white sesame seeds. Bánh còng gets its name from the shape which resembles a handcuff. Bánh cam and bánh còng often go together, though the former also comes with a mung bean filling.

Bánh cam and bánh còng with sugar glaze.

Before the first bite, I like to hold the bánh cam up and give it a little shake, just to hear the nub of filling collide with the crispy skin. Upon chewing, you’ll get a little taste of the sticky rice dough mixed with the sweet, salty, and nutty filling.

Bánh tiêu and bánh bò

While bánh cam can easily draw both children and adults in with its sweet shiny glaze, bánh tiêu, on the other hand, is much more rustic.

A traditional and pandan version of bánh tiêu.

Traditionally, bánh tiêu is not a sweet dish, mainly made of wheat flour with toasted sesame seeds. The dough is fried in oil until puffy and golden, for a simple and straightforward greasy treat.

Deep-fried bánh tiêu

I will always remember the weekends and summer days without school when mom would take me along during her market visits. The trips would end with heavy bags of produce, but to make it up to me, she would reward me with a bánh tiêu from the market corner.

The pastry is undoubtedly greasy, but very irresistible.

Bánh tiêu might look plump and round, but the inside is empty, so people often pair it with a jiggly chunk of white or green bánh bò as the filling. It’s a match made in sweet heaven as their tastes compliment each other: the oily fried dough is anchored by the soft, light texture of bánh bò. Just one pair of bánh bò tiêu is enough to make anyone feel full.

Modern bánh tiêu is upgraded with ice cream like durian or taro.

Giò cháo quẩy and other crispy fried treats

Apart from circular and spherical pastries, the picture is incomplete without pairs of sausage-shaped dough called giò cháo quẩy. These originate from Hoa Vietnamese communities, but have been adapted to Saigoneers’ palates.

Giò cháo quẩy and drumstick donuts

As a morning snack, giò cháo quẩy is paired with hot drinks like bạc xỉu and milk coffee. Tear off a small chunk of dough, dunk it in the glass, and enjoy how that woodsy, bitter liquid perfectly balances out the greasiness of the fried dough. Elsewhere, in a savory context, bite-sized quẩy pieces are served alongside porridge and bánh canh. The dough will soak up the flavorful broth and burst in your mouth with every bite.

Of course, any fried food discourse can’t leave out the crispy presence of banana fritters. Small local banana cultivars like chuối sứ are rolled thinly, coated in flour, and then double-fried to produce a golden shell and moist, caramelly banana filling. Not to mention the quirkily named and shaped bánh đùi gà — chicken drumstick donut — that’s both sweet and chewy and smells of toasted sesame.

Fried bánh bao

A more adult offering would be fried bánh bao. A typical bao is soft and white, cooked in a steamer, while the fried version is amber-colored and crunchier, though the mince and quail egg filling is the same across versions.

Saigon’s bánh chiên arts are always a sumptuous feast that can satisfy any palate. Bánh chiên is a rustic treat for the people, a nostalgic snack that not only helps connect eaters with their childhood, but also satiate late-afternoon cravings.

Golden fried dough is never not alluring.

How Saigon's Lăng Cha Cả Went From Mausoleum to Roundabout

2026-10-30T08:00:00+07:00

If you’re just off the plane and heading west into the city, it’s hard to avoid the busy six-way Lăng Cha Cả intersection south of Hồ Chí Minh City’s Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport. But it’s even harder to believe that this was once the site of a national monument: the grand mausoleum of Bishop Pigneau de Béhaine — best known in Vietnam as Giám mục Bá Đa Lộc (Cha Cả).

Top image: the mausoleum in 1966. Photo by Alan Beckler via Tuổi Trẻ.

A portrait of Pigneau de Béhaine, painted by Maupérin during his 1787 trip to Paris with Crown Prince Cảnh, on display at the Paris Foreign Missions Society

Monsignor Pierre Joseph Georges Pigneau de Béhaine (1741–1799) first came to Vietnam as a missionary with the Paris Foreign Missions Society in the late 1760s. In around 1775, he set up a seminary on the island of Phú Quốc. It was there that he mastered both Chinese and Vietnamese and worked with Vietnamese colleagues to compile the Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum (Vietnamese-Latin Dictionary, 1772) before his elevation to the post of Bishop of Adran and Apostolic Vicar of Cochinchina in 1774.

In 1777, Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh (later King Gia Long) arrived on the island and sought protection at Pigneau’s seminary. The sole survivor of the Đàng Trong (Huế) royal family, which had been massacred by the Tây Sơn, he was offered shelter by Pigneau and the two men quickly became close friends.

Pigneau subsequently pledged his support for the Nguyễn cause, and over the next 15 years he became Ánh’s close confidant and indefatigable champion in the war against the Tây Sơn, procuring munitions and other military supplies for his armed forces.

A portrait of Crown Prince Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh at 7, painted by Maupérin during the prince’s 1787 trip to Paris with Pigneau, on display at the Paris Foreign Missions Society

In February 1787, Pigneau left for France, taking with him Nguyễn Phúc Ánh’s young son and heir, Prince Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh. By the terms of the subsequent Treaty of Versailles, signed on November 21, 1787, the court of Louis XVI promised military support for Nguyễn Phúc Ánh in exchange for economic and territorial concessions in Vietnam. However, due to the subsequent political situation in France, the Treaty was never implemented and Pigneau was obliged instead to use funds he had raised in France to recruit a force of mercenaries.

By the time Pigneau arrived back in Vietnam in 1789, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh had retaken his old base at Gia Định. The team of French officers Pigneau had enlisted brought with them state-of-the-art weaponry and helped to train Ánh’s troops in modern infantry tactics and the use of heavy artillery. A naval workshop was set up in Bến Nghé (Saigon) to assemble a fleet of modern warships and a series of major fortifications was built, including the massive 1790 Gia Định Citadel, which became the temporary Nguyễn royal capital. In the 1790s, these military reforms enabled Ánh to launch a series of successful campaigns against Tây Sơn bases in the south-central region, paving the way for his final victory in 1801.

During the 1790s, as Nguyễn Phúc Ánh took the fight back to the Tây Sơn, Pigneau de Béhaine served as advisor at his court in Gia Định and tutor to his son Prince Cảnh.

The Dinh Tân Xá at the Archbishop’s Palace.

Writing in the 1880s, Pétrus Ký gave a fascinating account of the life and death of Pigneau de Béhaine: “Following his return from France, the Bishop of Adran lived in Saigon, in a house called the Dinh Tân Xá which Nguyễn Phúc Ánh had built for him at the outer corner of the citadel, at the spot where the gunpowder magazine is now situated [now the site of the HCMC History Museum]. The Christians of Thị Nghè also had their church close by, on the edge of the Arroyo de l’Avalanche [Thị Nghè Creek], in the parish of Tân Sơn, now the location of the bishop’s tomb.”

During this period, in addition to tutoring the young Crown Prince Cảnh, Pigneau also accompanied him on several military campaigns against the Tây Sơn, including the defence of Diên Khánh in 1794.

And it was on one of these campaigns, the seige of Quy Nhơn of 1799, that “after thirty-three years of a very rough and laborious life,” the bishop succumbed to acute dysentery.

The main gate of Diên Khánh Citadel in Khánh Hòa province where Pigneau died.

“Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh, driven by a genuine affection for the prelate who had rendered to him such eminent services, sent his best doctors and employed every possible means to conserve his life. Prince Cảnh came every day to visit his master, and Ánh himself came several times to see his benefactor, despite his concerns about the ongoing siege of Quy Nhơn, from which he tore himself away out of a sense of gratitude.”

Pierre Pigneau de Béhaine died on October 9, 1799, “in the arms of M. Lelabousse, a missionary who had accompanied him.” Having received the sad news, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh sent “a beautiful coffin, together with silk for wrapping the body.”

In 1925, one scholar cited an inscription at the Lăng Ngọc Hội, 8 kilometers from Nha Trang, which suggested that Pigneau was actually laid to rest there rather than in Gia Định. However, other French sources make no mention of this. According to Pétrus Ký, on October 10, 1799, Crown Prince Cảnh accompanied the corpse as it was placed on one of the Nguyễn ships and returned to Gia Định for burial.

Arriving in Gia Định on October 16, Pigneau’s body was placed in the Dinh Tân Xá, where it lay in state for a month. Crown Prince Cảnh “considered himself as a disciple and eldest son of his master the prelate, for whom he was in deep mourning.” Cảnh had a special temporary palace built opposite the bishop’s house and stayed there day and night, receiving many mandarins who came from all parts of the kingdom “to render illustrious funeral honors to the deceased.”

Nguyễn Phúc Ánh’s funeral elegy was transcribed onto embroidered silk.

A French architect named Barthélemy was commissioned to build a Nguyễn Dynasty-style mausoleum in Tân Sơn Village, while Crown Prince Cảnh was entrusted with the detailed arrangements for the funeral ceremony. Despite the ongoing campaign in Quy Nhơn, Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh himself made time to sail south to Gia Định to attend Pigneau’s funeral on December 16, 1799.

Pétrus Ký describes how the procession from the Dinh Tân Xá to the newly-built mausoleum set off at around 2am on December 16, 1799, led by Prince Cảnh.

“A large cross, formed from artfully-arranged lanterns, was carried at the head of the procession, followed by a series of elaborately carved red and gold portable shrines, each held aloft on an ornate dais and carried by four men.” The first housed a stele bearing the characters 皇天主宰 (Huáng tiān zhǔ zǎi or Hoàng thiên chúa tể, meaning “Sovereign Lord of Heaven”) in gold lettering. The second contained an image of St. Paul and the third an image of St. Peter, patron of the Bishop of Adran. The fourth contained an image of the guardian angel and the fifth an image of the Blessed Virgin.

Then came a great standard measuring some 15 feet in length and made from damask, on which were embroidered in gold letters the titles conferred on the Bishop of Adran by the King of France and the Lord of Đàng Trong [Nguyễn Phúc Ánh], as well as those of his episcopal office.

After this came a litter housing the insignia of the prelate, his cross and his miter, which was carried directly in front of the hearse.

A 1960s photograph of the mausoleum shrine with its embossed coat of arms of the bishop.

On either side of these shrines and litters walked “a large number of Christian young people and clergy from every church in Cochinchina.”

The hearse carrying the body of the bishop was “a beautiful litter of about 20 feet in length, carried by 80 picked men, and covered by an embroidered gold canopy.” On it was placed “the magnificent coffin….. covered with beautiful damask, set in a frame and surrounded by 25 large lit candles.”

Nguyễn Phúc Ánh’s royal guard, comprising more than 12,000 men, was arranged in two lines, with field guns at the head of each line. “One hundred and twenty war elephants with their escorts and mahouts walked on both sides. Drums, trumpets and both Annamite and Cambodian military music accompanied the mournful march, which was lit by a prodigious number of candles and torches and more than 2,000 lanterns of different shapes. At least 40,000 men, both Christians and pagans, followed the convoy.”

Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh was present, along with his mother, his sister, his queen, his children, all the ladies of the court and the mandarins of different government departments. “All wanted to express their regret at the eminent and distinguished prelate who was no more, following his remains to the grave which had been prepared to receive him.”

The Pigneau de Béhaine mausoleum pictured in 1867.

Arriving at the grave, a missionary named Father Liot performed the ceremonies of the Catholic liturgy. Once the Christian burial ceremony was finished, Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh stepped forward and gave a tearful funeral elegy which he is said to have composed himself. This elegy had been transcribed onto embroidered silk and was “presented to the late bishop in the form of a posthumous diploma.”

Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh’s elegy recounted Pigneau’s efforts to obtain official French military assistance from Louis XVI and explained how, despite being “met with adverse conditions midway through his endeavours,” he had gone on to “marvelously save the situation with his extraordinary plans.”

It described Pigneau as “a precious friend, whose character fitted so well with mine… the intimate confidant of my most secret thoughts… who came to my kingdom and never left me, even when fortune eluded me […] We were such friends and so familiar together that when my business called me out of my palace, our two horses walked abreast. We never had anything but the same heart.”

“After the funeral oration, the clergy and the Christians withdrew, Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh, alone with his mandarins, offered the sacrifices they were accustomed to make for souls of the deceased. Then Prince Cảnh and royal ministers each read out their own eulogies.”

Writing in 1884, Charles Lemire also mentioned the “curious details” of Pigneau’s funeral as recounted by an eyewitness named Father Bouillevaux, who gives us a detailed description of the mausoleum constructed over the tomb.

An image of the mausoleum from Charles Lemire’s 1884 book L’Indo-Chine, Cochinchine Française, Royaume de Cambodge, Royaume d’Annam et Tonkin.

Known locally as Lăng Cha Cả, the mausoleum in which Pigneau de Béhaine was buried was located in a large rural clearing near Tân Sơn village. Designed in the Nguyễn dynasty style, it was supported by a frame of precious wood and topped by a traditional yin-yang tiled roof. In front of the building stood a large screen (bình phong).

Inside the mausoleum, behind a kowtowing hall (bái đường), was the tomb of Pigneau de Béhaine, positioned in the center of the building and featuring a stele inscribed with Chinese characters describing the prelate’s life and work. At the rear of the building was a shrine decorated with “the embossed double coat of arms of the bishop, on whom King Louis XVI had conferred the title of count.”

At the time of the funeral, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh ordered “a guard of honor of 50 men to be posted outside the mausoleum in perpetuity.” While that order may not have been carried out for long, it is said that the mausoleum remained an important place of pilgrimage throughout the pre-colonial era.

After the arrival of the French, Pigneau continued to be honored as a great statesman, thanks to the pivotal role he had played in Franco-Vietnamese relations and the fact that the terms of the abortive Treaty of Versailles had been used in the 1850s as a basis for French claims on Vietnamese territory.

The Pigneau de Béhaine statue which stood in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral from 1902 to 1945.

As early as 1861, Admiral-Governor Léonard Charner declared the Lăng Cha Cả a national heritage site, and in 1902 a statue of Pigneau de Béhaine was installed in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral. The statue depicted Pigneau holding in his right hand the 1787 Treaty of Versailles and with the other hand guiding his student, Crown Prince Cảnh. At that time, the square, previously known simply as Place de la Cathédrale, was renamed Place Pigneau de Béhaine.

This 1968 photograph shows the mausoleum and next to it the main gate of Tân Sơn Nhất Airbase.

The Pigneau de Béhaine statue was removed during the August Revolution of 1945. The present statue of the Virgin Mary, made of Italian granite and created by sculptor G. Ciocchetti, was installed in February 1959.

During the colonial period, a cemetery for French Roman Catholic priests was established immediately behind the Lăng Cha Cả.

Towards the end of the French era, urban development began to encroach upon the land surrounding the mausoleum. By the 1960s, as the first American troops arrived, the Lăng Cha Cả was a small compound in the middle of a busy traffic roundabout, right next to the main gate of Tân Sơn Nhất Airbase. However, the South Vietnamese authorities continued to maintain the mausoleum as a national monument right down to 1975.

After reunification, discussions began regarding the repatriation of foreign graves, and in 1983 the mausoleum was earmarked for clearance, along with the old Rue de Massiges cemetery (now Lê Văn Tám Park) and several other French military graveyards.

The urn containing the ashes of Pigneau de Béhaine after they were returned to the Paris Foreign Missions Society in 1983.

Pigneau’s remains were exhumed, cremated and then delivered to the French Consul General for repatriation, along with the remains of several other priests who had been buried in the adjacent cemetery. Other graves at the site were cleared away. The mausoleum was then demolished to create a large roundabout. Today this roundabout — still known as Lăng Cha Cả — is one of the city’s busiest intersections. A flyover was installed in 2013.

Bird's-eye view of the mausoleum before and a rendering of the layover in 2013

While the Lăng Cha Cả and the statue of Pigneau de Béhaine have long been consigned to history, the Dinh Tân Xá house which Nguyễn Phúc Ánh built for his friend still stands today in the grounds of the Archbishop’s Palace at 180 Nguyễn Đình Chiểu in District 3. It was dismantled and rebuilt twice, firstly in 1870 in the grounds of the previous bishop’s palace at 6 Rue de l’Évêché [6 Alexandre de Rhodes] and 30 years later at its current location. Still used regularly as a private chapel by the Archbishop and his staff, this historic building was dismantled again in 2013–2014 and reassembled on a raised platform to provide further protection against damp and insects.

Lăng Cha Cả Roundabout in the 2010s.

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.

The Shrimps Are to Die for at This Riverside Nhậu Spot on the Outskirts of Saigon

2026-10-29T10:00:00+07:00

“We eat so many shrimps, I got iodine poisoning,” rapper Pimp C famously proclaimed. But how many shrimps would that require, exactly? The internet claims it would require 680 large shrimps for one to suffer iodine poisoning.

Were I going to attempt the consumption of 680 shrimps, I know exactly where I would want to do it: Quán Bến Đò Cây Me along the Đồng Nai River. The humble restaurant extends from the dead-end of a tangle of hẻms, and nearly teeters into a sediment-stained stretch of the unsophisticated river. Barges passing with loads of coal and pilfered sand and errant coils of rusted barbed wire will distract little from the main attraction here: shrimps.

Served steamed with beer, fried with tamarind or salt sauce, in a hot pot, or even raw, the shrimps can be ordered in small, medium, or large varieties at market price. Vegetables and noodles can also be provided for making rolls. Regardless of the particular preparation, it’s the plump, meaty prawns with fibrous antennae and sturdy limbs that I care about. If shrimps have souls, I posit they are located in the sweet, orange goo that oozes from their heads when ripped from their bodies.

You either lust for shrimps or you don’t. But if you do, and you don't feel like catching your own, this restaurant’s ability to bring plate after plate of steaming shrimps to your table without judgement will appeal. The freshness and high quality, a result, in part, of the volume they sell per day, is the main selling point here. But the ramshackle structure where beer cans pile under plastic chairs and flimsy tablecloths bear cigarette burns adds to the charm. There is no illusion of sophistication or expectation for polite table conversation to get in the way of consuming vast quantities of shrimps.

Such high-quality shrimpsare not cheap (VND440,000 per kilo on my visit), which means that on my visit, I unfortunately did not eat enough shrimps to experience the nausea, vomiting, swollen airways, and delirium indicative of iodine poisoning. I feel immense shame for not living up to Pimp C’s standards. However, the silver lining is that I can return to one of Saigon’s best places to consume shrimps.

To sum up:

Opening time: 8am–8:30pm
Parking: Parking is available inside the restaurant
Contact: +84 93 978 99 11
Average cost per person: $$$$ (300 - 400k per person)
Payment: Cash, Transfer

Quán Bến Đò Cây Me

45 Mạc Hiển Tích, Long Bình Ward, HCMC

Review: Thịnh Suy, Datmaniac Deliver Earnestness in 'Tự,' an Experiment in Spirituality

2026-10-27T11:00:00+07:00

Following the musical works of Thịnh Suy means always being on alert for sudden song drops, sometimes without even a cryptic social media status update as a harbinger. Thịnh’s latest creation, ‘Tự,’ came to be in a similar fashion: the vocal version was unveiled in August, while a few days ago, another version with a rap verse by Datmaniac came out.

Thịnh Suy is the stage name of Bình Định-based musician Đỗ Quốc Thịnh. Right from his debut song ‘Một đêm say’ (A Drunken Night) in 2018, Thịnh had already made a splash in the scene thanks to his earnest sounds that navigate the indie-pop crossover with effortless ease. Thịnh Suy’s music is characterized by simple and contemplative lyrics delivered with similarly frill-less vocals. In ‘Tự,’ Thịnh Suy and long-time producer Lazii brought to the table his staple thoughtful songwriting, but with an added layer of mesmerizing spirituality.

The song title itself is a wordplay as the word “tự” can mean independent and self-sufficient, or a temple, hinting at the track’s surprisingly theological leaning. Thịnh sings about a feeling of existential instability one often faces upon returning to their hometown after living elsewhere — something he would probably know firsthand, having moved to Saigon for college and then returned to Bình Định. Everything seems recognizable, but somehow that sense of belonging is waning.

The song's visualizer, produced by Thành.

The instrumentation begins with three reverberating strikes of temple bell, followed by rhythmic mõ (wooden fish) clanks, a flute lead-in, and finally recurring guitar. Here and there, the wooden percussion would return alongside the flute to anchor the song to its Buddhist leaning, while drums come in at the chorus with layers of other organic sounds like bamboo and temple brass. It’s also interesting to note that the song’s climax is entirely dedicated to instrumentation without vocals. It’s impossible to resist being drawn into this complex sonic ambiance.

According to Thịnh, the rap part by Datmaniac wasn’t planned at the beginning, but first came to be just as wishful comments in conversations with Lazii. They approached Đạt with the idea, and the rapper immediately wrote a verse, recorded it, and sent it back. Datmaniac is also no stranger to writing from deeply personal reflections, so his verse added depth and texture to ‘Tự.’ At the end, the instrumentation is once again taken into overdrive, this time with a sample of Buddhist chant.

Overall, while Thịnh Suy’s songwriting has always been solid and open-hearted, the arrangement and production can be sparse at times, with guitar as the only accompaniment. ‘Tự’ presents a more stylized, entrancing, and atmospheric version of Thịnh Suy’s music that might deserve further experimentation.

To sum up:

Type: Single
Release date: October 2026
Lyrics: Reflective and sincere like a diary entry
Danceable: Interpretive dance fodder
Cryable: If you miss home enough
Karaoke potential: Might bring the mood down but who cares

Score: 86/100

The Simple Pleasures of Kite-Flying in Thủ Thiêm

2026-10-26T11:00:00+07:00

One of the most elegant means to observe the textured heft and untethered strength of otherwise-invisible wind — there is plenty one could say about the poetry of flying kites.

I could grasp at philosophical pseudo-koans about kites, like “the same string that keeps a kite tethered to the ground, enables it to remain in the sky”; share stories of Kim Yu-sin inspiring an army by tethering a flaming sphere to a kite, to suggest a bad omen had returned to the heavens; detail Ben Franklin's first harvest of electricity by looping a key around a kite string during a storm; offer an incomplete list of governments that have banned kite flying (the Taliban, Mao's China, 18^th-century Japan, 21^st-century Egypt, etc.); and passionately argue how “kite” the predatory bird out-astounds “kite” the flying contraption in every way.

But it's better to keep it simple. Because flying a kite in Thủ Thiêm is a simple pleasure. Simply show up at dusk when the summer heat begins to lift. Plastic chairs already line the boulevards built for developments that have yet to appear. Vendors sell cold drinks and basic street snacks. You can bring a kite or buy one there. Enjoying the event is as simple as jogging a few paces while a string uncoils into the air and the kite takes flight. You don’t even need a kite; simply ease back in the chair and chat with friends and family while watching colorful swaths of fabric drift across the sky.

Kites warrant no applause. You will not hear the ooh's and aah's that fireworks or sporting matches elicit. Pleasure is measured in small talk and smiles. Pleasure comes cheap. Perhaps that is what I appreciate the most about kite flying. Saigon is not a cheap place to live, doubly so for families. Not everyone can afford restaurant visits or structured entertainment, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have opportunities to enjoy fresh air and a night out. Kite flying ignores demographics, incomes, reputations, and past sins and welcomes all. I don't have to worry about how or even if I fit in. With the city’s expansive skyline towering in the distance, kites smear the skyline like children’s names written in beautifully crude crayon strokes.

This article was originally published in 2023.

Nguyễn Bình Phương's Tale of Magical Realism Revels in Absurdity

2026-10-25T11:00:00+07:00

“Clip-clop, clip-clop.” So goes the sound of the water buffalo hooves pulling a wagon through the highlands against the magenta sky of an unending sunset. The wagon is guided by a nameless driver, and onboard are three travelers: a veteran referred to as “the Man” and two other younger men.

A train coasts by in the distance, but its sound is muted. On the wagon, the Man reminisces. He recalls having been on what seems to be the same wagon years ago with his father and sister. He recalls his time as a soldier during the war and the death of his comrade. He recalls other strange occurrences too, like the story of a young woman who would give birth to babies born old and the banyan tree in his village, where bodies of the dead that had died far away would magically return. Yet, other moments simply emerge to the surface, adrift, untethered to any one person’s consciousness in particular. “Clip-clop, clip-clop.” The Man wonders where he is, and where he is headed. But like the march of time, the wagon continues to voyage onward without care — except that they almost appear to be out of time altogether, timeless.

Elsewhere, in a world more akin to our own, a blind man with hypersensitive ears named Bào hears the sounds of a wagon growing louder each day. There, in Phan Village, in the mountainous province of Thái Nguyên in Northeastern Vietnam, we find the unravelling of a grand generational family feud over secret buried treasure in the hills behind the village. The patriarchs of the two rival families, Old Trường and Trình, both possess knowledge of strange instructions for what must occur for the treasure vault to open: a second comet must appear; a third grave must be dug and, with it, the death of a member of either family; as well as the final appearance of the mythical half-dog, half-lion Nghê that must ultimately be beheaded.

Nguyễn Bình Phương

Nguyễn Bình Phương’s The Young Die Old is an eerie, fantastical novel whose chapters alternate between these two ontologically distinct yet entwined worlds. Originally published in 1994, the novel was translated by Khải Q. Nguyễn and made available in English this year. The book, as with Phương’s other novels, has often been labelled as magical realist — magical realism being a novelistic tradition which fuses the surreal into the quotidian, most closely associated with Gabriel García Márquez and other Latin American writers. It is a term, however, that the author is careful to qualify, as he does in an interview with Mekong Review that was re-published to coincide with the English translation of the novel.

“The atmosphere and the supernatural haze in The Young Die Old don’t come from Latin America. Those temples and the Nghê are oriental, with their history that spans thousands of years; they didn’t come about a few decades ago, when Latin American literature was introduced into Vietnam,” Phương remarks. “The magical features in my novel are all Vietnamese.” A prominent novelist and poet, Nguyễn Bình Phương is the recipient of numerous major domestic literary awards such as the Vietnam Writers' Association Award in 2021 and the Southeast Asian Writers Award in 2022.

The Young Die Old is a novel that is greatly opaque. Despite its centrality to the plot, the feud over the buried treasure is not explicated until well into the novel, an affair that most members of either rival family too remain unaware of. It is also not clear how exactly the two worlds of the Phan Village and the buffalo wagon and its characters are related (and that they are to begin with is also unclear until well into the book). The novel is at once chaotic and meticulously crafted. Seemingly strange and arbitrary details and accounts, often having to do with the complicated tangling of relationships between the novel’s numerous sprawling characters, fall into place only retrospectively. But even then, the piecing together of fragments does not automatically crystallize but rather takes much effort, at times both tantalizing and dizzying, on the part of the reader. Readers may likely find themselves searching for a moralistic takeaway, perhaps because of how much the story of Phan village has the feel of a folktale (“Some time ago…” begins the story), yet the novel does not at all easily lend itself to allegorical readings. Perhaps in this sense, I feel that the novel’s opacity exists not as a mystery to be solved but rather to be felt. For despite the intricate inner logical workings of the novel and its almost rhizomatic plot, what is perhaps most distinctive about the novel is its quite odd, unique affective texture, one whose architecture is built and sustained by the uneasy overlay of its two para-ontological worlds.

Some titles in Nguyễn Bình Phương's bibliography

To start, it needs saying that the world of Phan Village is absurd, despite it being the world that is at least seemingly more aligned to our intuitions of time and space. Much of this absurdity, to be specific, has to do with the notable lack of psychological interiority exhibited by its characters. If interiority requires friction, the wrestling with depths of the self and the world that resist easy comprehension, there seems to be none of that in Phan Village. Rather, its characters are much too easily moved by greed, fear, anger, love, lust — their desires much too fickle. Old Trường marries his cousin after he is told to do so. A man transmits gonorrhea in order to take revenge. Old Trường’s granddaughter Loan moves on from one lover to the next with remarkable casualness. And in a particularly striking scene, a woman comes to the house of the blind man Bào with plans to murder him but instead falls in love and stays the night. The next day, Bào, who throughout his life had sulked over his inability to sleep with women, is asked by Liêm whether he had “shagged” the woman and realizes he “forgot” to do so. At no point are any of the characters particularly puzzled by their feelings and actions or the eccentric development of events — and if they are, they quickly move on. The men and women of Phan Village simply feel what they feel, think what they think, do what they do. And the result is a kind of absurdity that goes beyond merely the surrealism of magical realism.

Such absurdity, I find, is actually quite comical — though only from a step or two back. For despite all the moments of amusement and even humor of watching events unfold in bizarre ways, they quickly dissipate under none other than the weight of the Man’s grief and sorrow on the buffalo wagon. It is a sorrow that, in many ways, looms timeless: the sorrow of others, of the dead, of the land and the bruised sky made witness to the madness of mankind. As arguably the sole character in the novel that exhibits much interiority at all — for he ponders, sits with the past — the sorrow that engulfs the Man is superimposed above all, including the ludicrous drama of Phan village. The result is a deeply unsettling alloy of dissonant affective registers that is perhaps best described as bordering on tragicomic.

The book's Vietnamese cover

In the afterword, translator Khải Q. Nguyễn suggests the “Soundless” chapters be read as demonstrating “scepticism of violence, and, perhaps to another level, scepticism of the past where the collective past conflicts with the individual’s experience and memory.” He suggests that such modes of scepticism offer a “glimpse into the Vietnamese mentality in the years before and after Đổi Mới.” And indeed, there is good reason to read Phương’s work as a postwar novel: it is after all, at least in part, a novel about war written in the aftermath of four wars over the course of a century. Yet, at the same time, the themes that the novel engages with could be said to be much more existential. In The Young Die Old, we find the ever-absurd predicament of human life, perpetually propelled and hijacked by reckless forces of greed, love, lust, hatred, and more that in turn give rise to events at times head-scratching and at others outright stomach-dropping. The stuff of farce, one might even say, were it not for the timelessness of it all.

I Grew up Among Ducks in the Mekong Delta. They Always Remind Me of Home.

2026-10-23T11:00:00+07:00

On a recent ritual walk around my suburb, I was held up by the sight of a middle-aged man with his “fur kid.” I introduced myself and when he heard the word “Vietnam,” his eyes lit up and with a smile as he tumbled out the words: “The Mekong Delta. Ducks.”

“It is teeming with ducks there,” he continued. “Their quacking still echoes in my mind.”

A gaggle of feathery friends. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Ducks in the yard

With canals and tributaries meandering through endless paddy fields and shady villages, the Mekong Delta is a paradise for ducks. Almost every house has ducks in their yard. So did my maternal grandma. She raised ducks for death anniversaries, for the Tết holidays, and for every other occasion. Like Mekong people, ducks excel at improvising. Her ducks usually heaped their nest with layers of dried banana leaves beneath a thick clump of banana trees. When she was tired of eating duck eggs, either hard-boiled or as omelettes, after 28 days, she would see fluffy pastel yellow ducklings waddling behind their mom to the nearby ponds for their first swimming lesson.

My mom raised ducks too in order to cut the grocery bill and earn some extra money. But her ducks never had a chance to lay eggs. As soon as they were fat, she would take them to the market. She carried them in two tight hand-woven reed bags, three on each side. They would lie quietly on top of each other with their heads sticking out and eyes wide open, seemingly resigned to their fate of being slaughtered and plucked. Those she didn’t take would end up on our table.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

One of my chores was to feed our ducks twice a day. Watching them gobble their food and then waddle away with satisfaction was like watching a sold-out event. Their diet included duckweed or finely chopped morning glory stems and leaves mixed with rice bran powder and water. But their favorite food was rice snails which they ate so fast that snails had no time to breed in the pond where my mom rounded them up. They were not allowed to wander in the yard because they’d furiously peck at anything along their way. On occasion, my father hand-picked snails for them from the rice paddies. They gobbled up as many of the shelled gastropods as they could and even fought each other for them. Then, contented, they would lie down under the thicket of banana trees by the pond. The glowing water with the promise of shrimps and insects no longer alluring to them.

Killing ducks for meat and more

Despite not building emotional bonds with her ducks, Mom would perform a ritual when slaughtering them. She would pat its head and whisper, “Come back in another life form, my dear” and then pluck a speck of feathers from the duck’s throat, just below its head, to offer a space for her to make a small incision. She would deftly cut through that featherless spot with a well-used knife she always kept sharp between butcherings.

As she made the incision, she would direct the flow of scarlet into a white ceramic rice bowl containing a smattering of sticky rice. As the last drop plopped into the basin of blood and rice, she would carry the duck carcass to the pot of boiling water that I was responsible for. The duck’s lifeless head would flop from its body of waxy white feathers.

I was distressed to witness the slaughtering of a duck that I had fed daily for months. I could clearly remember each one when they were still bundles of yellow fluff and how they happily come waddling towards me each time I approached with food.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Silence hung in the air between Mom and me in those moments. When resources are scarce there is no waste and each part of the duck was used with respect: from its heart, gizzard, liver and intestines to its feathers, head and feet, and, of course, blood. The feathers were put aside to dry in the sun and later placed in a plastic bag to be sold to ve chai buyers. Those women would tour through houses and villages on their old rustic bicycles, seemingly always during our lunch hour when we were taking naps. As they pedaled we would hear them call out: “Any recyclables and duck feathers for sale?”

Lost in the pantheon of duck cuisine

Once a year, when yellow mai flowers bloomed, Mom cooked pork belly stew with duck eggs. We would wait the entire year to savor the Tết food. She explained, “It is worth the wait. If we eat it every day, we will not cherish it and look forward to it anymore.” She would simmer hard-boiled duck eggs and pork belly in an ocean of coconut water for hours. When cooked off, the coconut water turns into a soft golden glow which is rich and sweet and makes both eggs and pork golden brown as the eggs became crunchy and the pork tender.

But other than this once-a-year speciality, Mom had an unfixed duck menu I assumed no Michelin-starred chef could imagine. Sometimes, she would cook duck curry with a generous pinch of turmeric, chunks of carrots and sweet potatoes and a sea of coconut milk. Sometimes, she would do braised duck with caramelized coconut sauce, fish sauce and a mountain of ginger. It tastes gingery, which is very pleasant. The secret of this dish is the two cuts of ginger: the thin strips for chewy texture and spicy flavor, and the minced for faster seasoning.

Duck meat is categorized as yin (tính âm) in traditional cooking for its cold properties, so it must be cooked with ginger known as yang (tính dương) ingredients for their hot properties in order to achieve hot-and-cold equilibrium. It sounds mythical. However, both are used in every home for as long as my great-great-grandmother could remember. They complement each other perfectly like the white and the black in the yin-yang symbol. Ginger must be cut on a wooden chopping board to enhance maximum flavor. This applies to garlic too. She taught me so, and I took tremendous pride in sharing it with my husband who loves to put ginger and garlic in every dish we cook.

The duck blood spilled into the uncooked sticky rice? That mixture would be boiled into blood pudding. Mom would boil the thickened blood in the broth of any dish she cooked such as congee, curry and stew. When cooked, it is firm like a pie and has a chocolate color. Duck blood pudding is mottled white with sticky rice which provides a slightly sweet flavor and chewy texture. We ate it with duck meat and fish sauce with minced ginger.

Occasionally, Mom made duck congee for a family treat. At that time, our home was a bustling hive of activity. She chased the fattest duck, butchered it in half, and submerged it in a pot of boiling water with roasted rice. Once the duck was tender, she placed it on a plate to cool and then cleaned every speck of meat off the bones. My sister and I would dash around the garden to chop a young banana stem and pick rau răm for banana stem salad. The salad would be tossed with the meat she tore earlier. It would be served with warm duck congee and the dipping sauce of fish sauce and fresh minced ginger. I polished off duck congee like a hungry wolf and wished Mom would cook it again the next day, as did other family members.

Roast duck served at a Saigon eatery. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

The dish I liked best was the roast duck which Mom only did on my paternal grandma’s death anniversary. She brought ducks she slaughtered to a nearby roasting shop. To munch the roast duck, we first waited until the incense sticks on the ancestor altar — where my grandma always offered a tight smile in a plum red velvet áo dài she never wore in her life — burnt into ashes. It was crispy and succulent with golden brown skin and pink aromatic flesh. After chomping down one big piece, I would lick my fingers so clean that they almost disappeared. The aroma of roast duck always lingered on for hours after.

Ducks on show

At the open-air markets that bustle with a rainbow of exotic fruits and vegetables and a cacophony of noises and scooter horns, the ducks’ loud whistling guide people to their world. The choices are practically unlimited, from free-range ducks to confined ducks of all kinds. There are mottled ducks, Muscovy ducks, Grass ducks, Pekin ducks, and more. People can buy fresh naked duck carcasses with all their internal organs intact lying on big trays that look like giant water lily leaves. Or people can choose a decent live duck and come back to fetch the bird at the end of the shopping trip.

As a single person in the city, half a duck suited me fine for two days. An entire duck would take me further, but, without a refrigerator in the dripping humidity, it would become a mossy frog before I could finish it! I would ask the duck lady to dismember my half into bite-sized chunks. She did so with a deft snip of her well-used but scalpel-sharp scissors. On the days I failed to ask her to butcher the bird, I would end up hacking it to pieces with my mostly unused knife.

To save time, I made braised duck too. Like my mom, I seasoned the meat with caramelized coconut sauce, fish sauce and, of course, two different types of ginger. Then I let it simmer with a lid on and went about my business. By the time I heard sizzling sounds, I knew my braised duck was cooked.

Trứng vịt lộn

Next to the duck ladies sit the egg ladies. Baskets of eggs in all shapes and colors full to the brim await fussy housewives. There are chicken eggs, duck eggs and quail eggs; freshly laid or fertilized. The latter are always duck eggs and quail eggs.

Trứng vịt lộn being prepared on a Saigon street. Photo by Brandon Coleman.

Fertilized duck eggs (trứng vịt lộn) are considered a healthy and nutritious treat. They are believed to be rich in iron, calcium and even Vitamin C. There is no scientific research on this, but the maxim is passed down from generation to generation. No young Vietnamese wants to miss out on the street delicacy on a night out.

As high school students, my friends and I usually conducted a trứng vịt lộn challenge. The winner was the one who ate the most trứng vịt lộn. The reward they received was simply our applause, a kind of appraisal that was of greater importance than that of our teachers and parents. By the time my friend, the winner, was able to bolt six, I had just started to peck at the second, which turned out to be my last. After the challenge, I thought I would not go near trứng vịt lộn for a year. Its richness and creaminess remained on my breath for hours. However, in a week, I found myself gnawing trứng vịt lộn again with my friends.

Here is how we enjoy trứng vịt lộn: first, we crack the larger end of the egg with a teaspoon. Next, we peel back the broken top, just enough, and suck the sauce gently. Then we continue to peel off the shell. The hardened yolk interlaced with cooked blood vessels appears. Scooping it out with a teaspoon, we dip it in a mystifying sauce of salt, black pepper, smashed red chilies and lime juice. We munch on it with some rau răm. A burst of flavors explodes in our mouth: the yolk is crunchy and chewy and creamy; the sauce is hot and salty and sour; the leaves are peppery and spicy and minty. Our mouths are on fire and our sinuses are clear. Now the eyes of a nearly developed duckling are staring at us. But it barely disconcerts us. We have another bite. Its developed bones are so soft.

Trứng vịt lộn eaten in Saigon. Photo by Cao Nhân.

Ducks talk

Ducks have become part of Vietnamese culture both in cuisine and figuratively. My mom is a walking dictionary of duck idioms. Before my brother popped out and "rescued" her from further pregnancy, she felt sorry for my dad for being surrounded by girls, while he felt left out by his friends who all had at least one son to carry on the name of their families. When we could not help our dad with labor that required a man’s strength, Mom would tease us with a giggle: “The house is full of vịt trời (wild ducks).”

When I consistently did not follow her advice, she moaned: “Talking to you is like pouring water over a duck’s head (nước đổ đầu vịt).” Interestingly, English people use a similar phrase: “Like water off a duck’s back.”

When she saw that I was confused by something she said she would complain that I listened to her stories “like a duck listening to a thunderstorm (như vịt nghe sấm).”

If I was slow in doing something she would scold me: “‘Come on! Don’t walk like a duck (Lạch bạch như vịt bầu).” And to encourage us kids to study hard for a better life, she announced: “I promise you, if you don’t study hard, you can only work as duck herders.”

Being duck herders is not easy. They have to move thousands of ducks from paddy fields to paddy fields which are bare after the harvest. The fields promise a paradise of crabs, rice snails, insects and grain for ducks. When the sun dips into the horizon, herders round-up happy ducks for a rest. Their feet are wet and painted in mud all the time. They sleep under the stars, or a rickety hut if lucky, beside the ducks to make sure that none get lost or sick. Plus they have to collect the eggs the ducks lay as they go. And for all that effort they receive a modicum of income. Understanding that, us siblings announced in unison that we did not want to be farmers, let alone duck herders.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

To return to the friendly passer-by who happened to bring me home, a home away from home. He told me, “I will visit the Mekong Delta again.” But he swore, “I won’t eat embryo eggs again. Never again.”

Sympathizing with his unpleasant foodie experience, I said, “In early December, Taste Atlas released a list of ten disgusting street food. Trứng vịt lộn was second in the list.”

“You see!” he smiled in agreement.

Out of the blue, I heard an incessant quacking aloft. Two Egyptian geese were flying above, probably on the way home as the curtains of silk darkness were about to close.

A wave of nostalgia enveloped me. I missed the happy Mekong ducks. And my mom.

The top graphic features a photo by Bill Yeaton via Smithsonian Magazine.

A Huế Family Temple Shelters Traditional Ancestral Worship Inside a Modern Shell

2026-10-22T15:00:00+07:00

Across the rapidly modernizing urban landscape of Vietnam, Huế stands out as a bastion of traditions, not just in its city layout, rich historical wealth, and court cuisine, but also in the way the city has somehow managed to largely resist the power of rampant urbanization. This architectural project in Huế is a great example of a new structure that can quite seamlessly merge old and new into something mesmerizing.

Designed by Huế-based firm Cote Architects, Vương Đình Temple is based on the ancestral garden of the Vương Đình family in Thủy Biều Village, 5 kilometers from downtown Huế. Like many historical villages in Huế, the neighborhood is peppered with garden estates following the former capital’s distinctive architecture. While the temple was constructed in 2024, its design did a sterling job blending in with the surroundings.

As a family temple, the building’s main function is hosting the family altars while also providing space for gatherings and meals on special occasions. The layout on the ground floor is crafted for that precise purpose, featuring kitchen counters for food preparation and even a queen bed for resting.

The Vương Đình family altars are housed on the second floor, connecting to a gorgeous veranda decked out in wooden motifs overlooking the garden of pomelo trees below — thanh trà pomelo is Huế’s nationally renowned cultivar. At the entrance below, two stone guardian dogs are placed on the sides, in line with building traditions in Huế.

While the interior is predominantly furnished with traditional materials like bare bricks and dark wood tones, the temple is enveloped in a cubic reinforced concrete shell, lending the building its contemporary influence. The shell is balanced on two concrete beams below, making the whole structure look as if it’s “floating.”

It’s also interesting to note that many design decisions behind Vương Đình Temple were made to adapt to Huế’s unique environs, where flooding frequently occurs during the last quarter of the year. These include balancing the concrete shell on the beams and placing the important altars high up on the floor above.

Have a closer look at Vương Đình Temple below:

Photos by Hoàng Lê via ArchDaily.

In Hien's Debut Album, a Self-Discovery Journey Through Vietnam, Hungary and the US

2026-10-21T14:00:00+07:00

After a decade writing and gathering materials, Hien recently published her debut album, “Trăng Qua.”

“Trăng Qua” is a record that was 10 years in the making. Some initial song ideas came up in 2015, while other new songs were started in 2025. The album wasn’t constructed from a fully formed concept right from the beginning. Instead, Hien wrote the tracks one by one, polished them across different times in her life, and only came to realize their common thread after a while.

During the creation of the album, there have been many changes in the life and musical artistry of Hien. Born Nguyễn Thanh Hiền in Budapest into a Vietnamese family, Hien moved to New York a few years ago. Her life experiences pass through three languages and cultures. Vietnamese is the language of family and heritage; Hungarian is closely connected to her formative years in Budapest; and English has become the language of daily life and creativity while she lives in the US.

The album cover.

To Hien, the extended period making “Trăng Qua” also gave some old compositions a chance to revisit a past version of herself.

A multi-year album creation process

Hien describes her songwriting process as “quite simple”: she begins with the sound, then the melody, and finally the lyrics. Still, over the decade, the person behind that process has changed.

“‘Trăng Qua’ has had more time to mature,” Hien shares. She mentions “Bloom,” the EP she released in 2021, as a stepping stone before she transitioned to the full-length album. “I’ve matured — I became a mature woman and a mature artist,” she explains. “I’m very glad to have put some of these songs down for a while, as once I return to them, I could listen to them with a fresher perspective. I’m also much bolder in my creative choices. I stopped chasing perfection and let the production be more rustic and authentic.”

Hien describes her songwriting process: starting with the sound, then the melody, and finally the lyrics.

For songs that have been kept on the back burner for years, taking them out for polishing does not mean retaining how they were first created. Hien believes that letting go of one’s older versions is a natural part of growth.

“Letting go of my old selves is really not difficult, because I simply have grown out of them. It’s a part of growth, of creating a space for someone you’re becoming.”

Those changes are clearly shown in Hien's treatment of her musical materials. “Trăng Qua” swings between electronic, ambient, and pop, employing elements from different influences, specifically bolero, chèo, cải lương, Hungarian Romani folk music, Latin bolero, Bulgarian choral music, R&B, and hip-hop.

Hien wasn’t hung up on recreating traditional elements as is, but picked those that she feels a pull towards, including melody, vocal technique, arrangement, rhythm, and emotivity. She then incorporated them into her own music-making process.

‘Trăng tàn trên hè phố’ (lit: the moon wanes on the street) is Hien’s first-ever release in Vietnamese, which made over a composition by Phạm Thế Mỹ using bolero, drum and bass. In ‘next to you,’ she integrated a sample from ‘Xa mối tình đầu’ (lit: away from my first love), also known as ‘Đoạn tái bút 2’ (lit: postscript no. 2) composed by Tú Nhi and Bằng Giang. In ‘through this phase,’ another segment from ‘Tình thư hạ vị’ (a chèo classic) performed by Minh Thu and Khắc Tư becomes part of an electronic track.

At the photoshoot for “Trăng Qua.”

Relearning Vietnam from the separation

Hien’s own relationship with Vietnam was formed in a similar way. She grew up in Hungary in a Vietnamese family instead of spending her formative years in Vietnam. This background resulted in a certain distance that always exists in how she connects to Vietnamese culture and music.

The music video for ‘Bloom’ documents the life of young girls in the matriarchal community of M’Nông people. Stories about family, roots, culture, and nature continue to be crucial themes in Hien’s music.

“I will never experience Vietnamese culture exactly like someone who was born and grew up there, speaking Vietnamese as a native tongue,” she explains. “But that distance also gives me an alternative perspective. It lets me realize, respect, and appreciate things that someone who grew up in Vietnam might deem obvious.”

Hien doesn’t see this distance as something to hide in her music. On the contrary, it’s become a part of how she explores her heritage: “I still have many things to learn about Vietnam, and I think that constant discovery is also a part of my music.”

One aspect of this journey comes from her family, especially her grandfather Trần Tượng Tư, a cải lương performer hailing from Bạc Liêu in the Mekong Delta. He could play đàn nguyệt, đàn nhị, guitar, and violin and worked at the Trần Hữu Trang Cải lương Theater in Saigon, and then the National Cải lương Theater in Hanoi.

In her childhood, she spent summers with her grandparents, so she can remember how he spontaneously played cải lương on the guitar. Years later, Hien hunted down some of his old recordings and added a segment of his guitar work into ‘trăng ơi,’ a track on the album. Hien sees this as a way to continue making music with her grandpa, even though they come from different musical periods.

The music video for ‘Jetplants’ is constructed from VHS footage of Hien’s family archive, spanning three locations and multiple generations.

Her family story also directly appears in ‘Jetplanes,’ the 15th track of the album. It reflects the journey to find new homes and the experiences of someone living away from home, a reference to how her family left Vietnam for Hungary and how she left Budapest for Brooklyn.

The music video is constructed from old VHS footage of her family, filmed in Vietnam and Hungary. 1992 scenes in a small town near Hải Phòng show her father’s side of the family, while those in Hanoi chronicle family meals, Tết celebrations, birthday karaoke sessions, and her maternal grandparents. The footage in Budapest shows a small family and Hien’s childhood friends.

These video snapshots not only help illustrate the song’s visual side, but also tell the story of places and people that have a role in Hien’s personal narrative, from Vietnam to Hungary and then the US.

Three languages and places

“Trăng Qua” features lyrics in Vietnamese, Hungarian, and English, sometimes in one song. For Hien, each language is connected to a different part of her life, but they coexist in one album formed in Brooklyn.

Singing in Vietnamese was a skill she had to relearn. She used to feel self-conscious about singing in Vietnamese before deciding to bring it to her music. The track ‘Trăng tàn trên hè phố’ is the first step in that journey, followed by many other instances where Vietnamese shows up across the album.

Hien doesn’t look at Vietnam as someone who has learned everything about the place they belong. It’s a continual process of discovery via family, language, music, and inherited memories.

“Trăng Qua” pieces together songs from different periods of Hien’s life. Some had their start when she was still in Budapest; others were finished when she moved to America. In between them were many shifts in living arrangements, language, music, and even the self.

Following the album release, Hien hopes to return to Vietnam for a month during Tết to perform.

“Trăng Qua” is available on Bandcamp on major streaming platforms.