Exploring Saigon and Beyond - Saigoneer

The Facetious Gender Politics of Gỗ Lim, Hanoi's Feminist Post-Punk Quintet

2026-03-16T10:00:00+07:00

In an example of cruel irony, October 20 is when we celebrate annual Vietnam Women's Day, and also the anniversary of the passing of Mai Nga (commonly known as Nga Nhí), the lead singer of Gỗ Lim — a Hanoi-based female post-punk band that, albeit short-lived, struck a blow for women’s representation in rock and metal music in Vietnam in 2011 and 2012.

It was only until a few days after Nga Nhí's death in 2012 that I first started listening to Gỗ Lim’s music, despite having been a fan of the underground rock and metal music scene for quite awhile. Every rock concert I went to at the time consisted of crowds of men in black band T-shirts headbanging to similarly attired and gendered musicians.

My first impression of Gỗ Lim was on a YouTube thumbnail showing Nga Nhí in a pink tee on the stage of CAMA (Club for the Appreciation of Music and Art) Festival. It immediately disrupted my visual perception of the genre. I wish I had a more interesting story to tell about the first Gỗ Lim song I ever heard, but I'm sure it was the one that comes up first in YouTube's algorithm-driven search results, their most popular, ‘Các bạn đứng nghiêm.’ The song takes the perspective of a giám thị (school disciplinary master), throwing orders at students to make them stay in line, not to move, and not to laugh.

‘Các bạn đứng nghiêm’ is a song at conflict with itself. The funky bassline, heavy guitar riffs, and drums instruct you to dance, while Nga's scream instructs you not to. The song struck a chord with any Vietnamese person who ever attended public school and likely had their own giám thị encounter. Its playful proposition produced laughter, which was at the heart of Gỗ Lim's subversive power.

Nga Nhí on the stage of CAMA Festival. Photo by Lizo Glennard.

The band originally formed as Golem, and had an alternative rock sound and identity. They performed covers of ‘Zombie’ and ‘Animal Instinct’ by The Cranberries, as well as some original songs.

Nga Nhí joined the band in 2011 and Golem become Gỗ Lim. The full lineup consisted of Nga Nhí on vocals, Trang Chuối and La Sim on guitar, Nghĩa Bờm on percussion, and Hà My on bass. They described themselves as “punk pussies and beard,” with the “beard” referring to the band's lone male Nghĩa, Nga’s brother. Their style evolved too: the sounds became heavier and edgier as influenced by punk rock and riot grrrl, while the lyrics became more casual and playful. Gỗ Lim’s only album, “Gái Làng” (Village Girl), was released in October 2015 as a tribute to Nga Nhí.

Describing their music in an interview, the band noted: “There are no restriction in terms of what topic goes into our songs, we talk about what we’ve seen and want to express: from school kids having to stay in line to girls doing their hair, even a cat, our favorite pet, being hungry, gets a song. Our music is open-minded, easy-going, oftentimes very grungy because we play what we like to play. We believe in the freedom of individual’s expression.”

Photos via Gỗ Lim's Facebook page.

Gỗ Lim’s performances expanded from local gigs in Hanoi music venues like Hanoi Rock City to international events. In March 2012, Gỗ Lim opened for MEN, a radical art project that featured JD Samson and Johanna Fateman, two legendary gender-smashing icons best known for their involvement with Le Tigre, one of the pioneer punk band of the riot grrrl movement. Later that year, they played CAMA Festival alongside Chinese indie sensation Carsick Cars, Japanese punk rock band Electric Eel Shock, and Philippines’s electronic rock pioneer Turbo Goth.

While the messages of many riot grrrl bands are in-your-face, straightforward and hard-hitting, Gỗ Lim’s lyrics take a more ambiguous, humorous, and playful approach, while still keeping the genre's defiant spirit intact. This quality reflects many feminist and queer scholars theories about the subversive potential of humor and serious play. Philosopher Judith Butler contended in her preface for Gender Trouble that “laughter in the face of serious categories is indispensable for feminism.” Playful acts serving a cause work as powerful tools to denaturalize norms, thus inviting alternatives and open-mindedness.

Take the first two sentences from ‘Các bạn đứng nghiêm’:

Kìa em bé gái, kìa em bé trai, em đứng sang phải, em đứng sang trái! Mau lên! / Này em bé trái, này em bé gai, em rơi trong rọ, em rơi trong rọ rồi. Em ơi!

Hey little girl, hey little boy, move to the right, move to the left! Quick! / Hey little left, hey little spike, you fell into the trap, you fell into the trap, hey you!

In the first sentence, two pairs of binary gái / trai (girl / boy), and phải / trái (right / left) are used. Then, in the second sentence, using spoonerism, gái / trai becomes trái / gai (left / spike), which is no longer a dichotomy, and when put beside em bé (kid), makes absolutely no sense. This toying with pairs directly questions the legitimacy of binary gender classifications.

Gỗ Lim's wrestling with stereotypical gender notions can also be spotted in ‘Người đàn bà làm đầu’ (The Woman Does Her Hair), which starts off with a list of nouns and adjectives depicting women's hairstyles. The lyrics' female figures have hairdos that are not traditionally seen as feminine such as húi cua (crew cut), dreadlocks, siêu hói (super bald), nát xơ (crushed and dry), uốn hôi (stinky).

Dissecting Gỗ Lim’s lyrics is a fascinating exercise. The band blends extensive malapropisms, alliterations, and onomatopoeia with creative wordplay. The band often sprinkles in their own invented phrases as well. For example, the chorus of ‘Người đàn bà làm đầu' is a rapid-fire string of phrases formed by rearranging the titles five words. The result is phrases like người đàn bà làm tình (the woman make love), người làm tình đàn bà (those who make love to the woman), and người làm tình cụt đầu (others make love without their head).

Art enthusiasts might interpret Gỗ Lim's small acts of defiance against language as a nod to Dadaism. The anti-art art movement first started in 20^th century Europe, and one of its core premises was to abolish reason and logic to strike against the rationalizations of modern capitalist society. Dadaists opt for a nonsensical and irrational approach in their work; even the word “dada” itself means nothing. In the words of the poet Tristan Tzara, which excellently captures the heart of Gỗ Lim's music: “Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.”

This article was first published in 2018.

From Quảng Nam to Gwangju: Confronting the Bloody History of South Korea's 'Vietnam'

2026-03-15T19:00:00+07:00

In her novel Human Acts, the renowned South Korean author and Nobel Prize recipient Han Kang writes about the May 18 Democratization Movement, also known as the Gwangju Uprising. That month, student-led demonstrations broke out in the city of Gwangju following army general Chun Doo-hwan’s coup d'état, and his military government responded with a violent crackdown and an indiscriminate massacre of civilians.

In one of the chapters in Human Acts, set in 1990, a university professor interviews an unnamed narrator who had previously been imprisoned and tortured. Upon being asked about a photo depicting a line of dead children from the massacre, the narrator recounts the story behind the harrowing image:

We kept our faces pressed into the corridor carpet for as long as the soldiers ordered us to. Around dawn, they hauled us to our feet and took us down to the yard. They made us kneel in a line, our backs to the walls, with our hands tied behind us. An officer came over. He’d worked himself up into quite a state. His combat boots thudded into our backs, driving our heads down into the dirt, while he spat out a string of curses. “I was in Vietnam, you sons of bitches. I killed thirty of those Vietcong bastards with my own two hands. Filthy fucking Reds.” Kim Jin-su was kneeling next to me. The officer stamped on his back, grinding his face into the gravel. When he let him back up, I saw slender threads of blood clinging to Jin-su’s forehead. [...]

“Look at these bastards!” the officer yelled. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Want to surrender, do you, you fucking Reds? Want to save your precious skins?” With one foot still up on Kim Jin-su’s back, he raised his M16, took aim, and fired. The bullets tore into those school kids without hesitation. My head inadvertently jerked up, and when he whooped in the direction of his subordinates, “As good as a fucking movie, right?” I saw how straight and white his teeth were.

Han Kang’s depiction of the ruthless and cold-blooded violence is jarring. But what is perhaps additionally surprising is the novel’s reference to Vietnam.

Students captured by soldiers after a raid during the Gwangju Uprising. Photo via The New York Times.

Human Acts is not the only novel by Han Kang that references the “Vietnam War” — as it is known in South Korea, instead of the “American War” in Vietnam. Two of her other major novels, The Vegetarian and We Do Not Part, also make references to the war.

Perhaps her most famous novel, The Vegetarian centers around Yeong-hye, who turns vegetarian and refuses any engagement with meat after dreams involving the slaughter of animals. Towards the end of the first chapter, narrated by Yeong-hye’s husband, Yeong-hye’s father becomes infuriated with Yeong-hye’s refusal to eat meat. In a disturbing sequence of events, her father slaps her and tries to “thrust” a piece of pork into her mouth with his fingers, after which Yeong-hye slits her wrists, resulting in her hospitalization. For her father, Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism is a disgrace, most of all to the patriarchy, inconveniencing the diet and lifestyle of her husband.

Like the officer in Human Acts, Yeong-hye’s father, too, is a veteran of the Vietnam War, described at one point by Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law as a “Vietnam War hero.” Here, again, Han Kang appears to link violence within Korea, this time patriarchal in form instead of authoritarian, to a history of violence abroad.

Han Kang delivering a keynote speech at the International Congress of Writers Writing in Korean, in Gwangju, 2023. Photo via Korea Herald.

The third novel worth mentioning is We Do Not Part, which follows Kyungha’s journey to Jeju Island upon the request of her friend Inseon. The central topic of the novel is the Jeju massacre that took place on the island from 1948 to 1954. Between April 1948 and May 1949, what is known as the Jeju Uprising broke out in protest against US-run elections, which the island’s residents feared would further entrench the division of the two Koreas (which it did). Under the premise of cracking down on communist collaborators, military and police forces under the US Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGK) massacred civilians, resulting in an estimate of between 25,000 and 30,000 deaths.

Like her other two novels, Han Kang again alludes to the Vietnam War in We Do Not Part. Part of the novel’s premise is that Kyungha’s friend Inseon is a documentarian and filmmaker who previously worked on a series of interviews with Vietnamese women who had been the victims of sexual violence perpetrated by Korean troops during the Vietnam War.

What explains the repeated allusions to the Vietnam War? What do they reveal? What are these traces symptomatic of? Though certainly motivated by Han Kang’s works, I should note that my questions are not literary so much as historical. In answering these questions, we must thus first confront the history of Korea's participation in the Vietnam War: a past that Korea has yet to properly reckon with, and one that turns out to be far closer to home than most Koreans realize. Korean violence in Vietnam must be regarded as part of the same apparatus of violence that also brought about the massacres in Jeju and Gwangju. The glimpses of Vietnam in Han Kang are the hauntings of a past that Korea has for too long neglected to face.

South Korea in the Vietnam War

Despite not being so widely discussed, South Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War was significant in multiple facets. Between 1965 and 1973, South Korea deployed 320,000 troops to support the US-backed Republic of Vietnam, making it the second-largest foreign participant in the war, second only to the US.

South Korea’s participation was, in part, ideological. Like Vietnam, Korea was one of the “hot” zones in the so-called global cold war. Park Chung-hee’s authoritarian and militant rule, which spanned the whole of South Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War, was staunchly anti-communist, as was the case for both dictatorships that preceded and followed Park’s, during which the Jeju and Gwangju massacres occurred, respectively.

Former President Park Chung-hee (black suit) greets ROK Army personnel during their deployment in Vietnam. Photo via Korea Pro.

But Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War was also heavily driven by economic interests. Park’s initial push to offer South Korean military personnel was strategic, with a broader vision in mind of eventually landing favorable terms to access the US military-industrial complex. Indeed, the Johnson administration repaid the favor. In addition to paying Korean troops in Vietnam rates 22 times greater than regular Korean military pay, the Johnson administration also procured preferred treatment for Korea under the State Department’s offshore procurement program (OSP): a strategic program of procuring goods and services from foreign countries. This proved hugely significant for Korea's economic development. In the late 1960s, OSP and the US’s Military Assistance Program (MAP) collectively comprised between 40% and 60% of South Korea's gross capital formation, while chaebol conglomerates like Hyundai derived as much as 77% of their total profits from military contracts between 1963 and 1966.

South Korea’s ascent from one of the world’s poorest countries to one of East Asia’s “tiger” economies is often referred to as “the miracle on the Han River.” But the term “miracle” mystifies too much. In many ways, South Korea’s participation in the Vietnam War constitutes no small part of the story of the country’s rapid economic boom that began in the 1960s.

A South Korean soldier in Bồng Sơn. Photo via The New York Times.

But as with any war-derived profit, the economic benefits South Korea gained from the Vietnam War were built upon, and remain inseparable from, the tremendous violence that had been perpetrated by South Korean troops. The atrocities that the US committed in Vietnam are well known: carpet bombings, the use of Agent Orange, torture and sexual violence, as well as indiscriminate massacres, including, most famously, the Mỹ Lai massacre. But though less well known, South Korea perpetrated many of the same atrocities, including brutal massacres of villages and rape of countless women. Korean soldiers in Vietnam gained a reputation for being “harsh, ferocious, even brutal,” such that even Americans viewed the Koreans with a measure of fear.

Among the atrocities that Korean troops committed in Vietnam are the following: In December of 1966, South Korea troops murdered 430 unarmed civilians, 166 among them children, in Bình Hòa Village in Quảng Ngãi Province. In February 1968, South Korean marines also killed 151 civilians in Hà My Village in Quảng Nam Province. Of those murdered, 60 were children under the age of 10 and many were women. In the same month, South Korean marines also murdered more than 70 civilians in Phong Nhị-Phong Nhất, also in Quảng Nam. Photos documented by US troops, who entered the village shortly after the South Korean troops left, show brutal images of children shot dead, women with their breasts cut off, and burned corpses. The group Justice for Lai Dai Han continues to campaign for South Korea’s recognition of the rape of women by Korean soldiers and the tens of thousands of children who were born as a result. One such victim, Trần Thị Ngải, recounts the horrors of a Korean soldier forcing his way into her home and raping her at age 24, “he pulled me inside the room, closed the door and raped me repeatedly. He had a gun on his body and I was terrified.”

From Vietnam to Gwangju

The story of Korean violence in Vietnam, however, did not simply end with the withdrawal of its troops — for it eventually found its way back home, to Gwangju. In seeking to justify the expansion of martial law that enabled the subsequent violent crackdown on Gwangju, South Korea’s minister of national defense at the time described the state of the country as akin to the early stages of Vietnam. In the eyes of Chun Doo-hwan’s military government, the threat of communism spanned borders: the events in Saigon that occurred just years prior loomed as what must be prevented at all costs, spurring violent military action.

South Korean citizens in Seoul welcome soldiers home from Vietnam on March 20, 1973. Photo via Korea Pro.

In fact, Chun Doo-hwan, the head of the military coup, as well as other notable figures in his military government such as Roh Tae-woo — who would eventually succeed Chun as president — had themselves served in the Vietnam War. In later assessing and analyzing the excessive use of force and violence by Chun’s government, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) cited their training and experience in the Vietnam War as a driving factor, even describing Gwangju as “Korea’s Mỹ Lai,” in which Korea’s own citizens were treated as foreign threats. In Vietnam, for both US and Korean soldiers, the alleged impossibility of distinguishing ordinary civilians from enemy soldiers in the context of guerilla warfare served to rationalize the indiscriminate murder of civilians. Precisely the same logic was applied in Gwangju. In his book Discourse on Colonialism, Afro-Martiniquan French poet and writer Aimé Césaire writes of the “boomerang effect”: the ways in which colonial violence abroad eventually returns to the metropole to be deployed against its own people. In South Korea’s case, its own military violence boomeranged back from Vietnam to Gwangju.

But we can complicate things further. For it is not that violence simply boomeranged back from abroad. Rather, such violence already existed in Korea long before the Vietnam War, deployed on its own people via US-backed, staunchly anti-communist and anti-left authoritarianism, as had been the case for the Jeju massacre — which had been the result of the perpetuation of forms and methods of violence deployed by Japanese colonizers during its occupation of Korea. From this perspective, it is no wonder that Han Kang considers Human Acts and We Do Not Part to constitute “a pair.” Both novels invoke the Vietnam War because the atrocities committed in Vietnam and the civilian massacres of Jeju and Gwangju belong to the same historical matrix of state violence, driven by a logic of cold war counterinsurgency and aggressed by US-backed governments. This shared history was not lost when, in 2018, two victims, one of the Hà My massacre, and one of the Phong Nhị-Phong Nhất massacre, visited victims of the Jeju massacre and commented, "I had not realized that Jeju had experienced such pains. It broke my heart to witness a similar scene.”

Civilian protestors captured by troops in Gwangju. Photo via AP.

Jeju, Vietnam, and Gwangju exist in an interconnected web. In The Vegetarian, Yeong-hye's father "thrust[s]" a piece of pork at his daughter's lips, an act that unmistakably evokes sexual violence. It is a form of violence rooted in the same patriarchal system that enabled sexual violence in Vietnam — the subject of Inseon's documentary in We Do Not Part. It is also the same patriarchal system that Park’s regime invoked in mobilizing a “remasculinization” of the nation via the Vietnam War. And again, the violence committed by Korean troops in Vietnam remains inseparable from the atrocities of Jeju and Gwangju. The glimpses of Vietnam in Han Kang are brief and sparse, but together they point to historical connections that run far deeper than what the surface reveals.

A Moral Failure

Concerning the atrocities of Jeju and Gwangju, significant, though far from adequate, efforts have been made by the state to address the injustices and human rights violations, including, most notably, the trial of former presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo (both of whom were convicted but eventually pardoned), as well as various truth commissions tasked to investigate the truth behind the events and give victims a public platform for testimony.

The same simply has not been true concerning the Vietnam War. Though several left-wing presidents have expressed regret for the pain and suffering Korea has caused during the war, South Korea has yet to make a formal apology to Vietnam. This comes even as the country recognizes the immense economic benefits it has gained through its participation in the Vietnam War.

Against the state’s largely disappointing refusal to engage with the legacy of Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War, Korean civil society groups have long pushed to bring justice for victims and their families — specifically, ever since the progressive Korean newspaper Hankyoreh’s breakthrough investigations that began in 1999.

In recent years, there have been two noteworthy developments. On the one hand, there have been efforts to seek compensation for victims through the courts. In January 2025, Nguyễn Thị Thanh — one of the two aforementioned victims who visited Jeju Island, a survivor of the Phong Nhị-Phong Nhất massacre — received a favorable ruling after the South Korean government sought to appeal a lower court decision (a move which the Vietnamese government called “extremely regrettable”) requiring the government to pay more than KRW30 million, or approximately US$20,000. At the age of 8, the massacre left Nguyễn Thị Thanh orphaned and with an abdominal injury caused by a shot in the stomach.

Nguyễn Thị Thanh (right) and her uncle Nguyễn Đức Chơi (left), a witness to the same massacre, at a press conference prior to a hearing before the Seoul Central District Court on August 9, 2022. Photo via VICE.

Meanwhile, there has been a push to launch a formal investigation into the Hà My massacre under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Unfortunately, the TRC dismissed the request, citing lack of jurisdiction over incidents concerning foreign nationals outside Korea’s territory. Since then, five victims and bereaved family members of the massacre filed an appeal to challenge the dismissal, but in August 2025, the appeal was rejected in a lower court decision. Lawyers representing the victims plan to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

In criticizing the TRC’s dismissal, Im Jae-seong, lawyer for the Vietnam War Task Force of Minbyun (Lawyers for a Democratic Society), commented, “How crucial is the victim’s nationality? [...] How crucial is the location of the unlawful act? Why discriminate, choosing not to pursue truth simply because the victim is foreign?”

Indeed, why the discrimination? Especially in the face of unthinkable violence, such a distinction feels utterly arbitrary. If anything, the brutal violence committed in Jeju, Gwangju, and Vietnam must be seen as one. The three are all connected in that the violence committed in each case had been a result of the same lineage of cold-war authoritarian dictatorships leading up to Korea’s democratization in 1987. Why is it that Korea has utterly failed to make progress in reckoning with its atrocities in Vietnam, unlike in Jeju and Gwangju? Vietnam is exceptional in that it laid the groundwork for Korea’s “miraculous” economic boom. The exception of Vietnam sends the message that violence, even at its most barbarous and heinous, remains permissible if it enables economic growth.

For the American anti-war movement, Vietnam has long served as a shorthand for the moral failings of US foreign interventionism. The Vietnam War is more often than not invoked as what must not be repeated elsewhere. Gwangju, likewise, occupies a similar psychic territory in Korean public memory. In a way, Gwangju is to Korea what Vietnam is to the US — both operate as “common nouns.” But as we have seen, the parallels run deeper than mere rhetoric or symbolism. Since its very beginning, Gwangju has already long been Korea’s “Vietnam.” Korea cannot properly reckon with injustices at home without reckoning with its injustices abroad. Korea must recognize, apologize, and compensate for its war crimes in Vietnam. All of it is long overdue.

'Chuyện Của Pao' Turned a Historic H'Mông Home in Hà Giang Into a Tourist Attraction

2026-03-13T11:00:00+07:00

The photos don’t do it justice. That’s what you’ll often hear from people who visit Hà Giang to cruise its famed highway loop.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Roads ribbon down the sides of unhemmed cliffs and a seemingly endless rise and plummet of mountain peaks skewer the soft, cloud-filled sky. Careening around curves reveals fields that have erupted in flowers and everything is covered in vegetation that exposes the inadequate range of the word green. One can see the stars and taste the rich soil whisked off fresh harvests.

Like photos, my words cannot accurately capture the immensity of the area’s beauty or the perspective one gains while traveling there. Hà Giang was one of the few major tourist spots in Vietnam that I had not yet traveled to during my seven years living here and I was thus eager to experience it this past fall. While I was confident the landscape would astound, I feared finding an area straining under the weight of overdevelopment like Sa Pa, Đà Lạt or Phú Quốc. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to discover that the region is not yet inundated with large resorts, exploitative tour groups or locals who had altered their lifestyles in drastic ways to appeal to outsiders’ notions of adventure.

Photos by Alberto Prieto.

While there is of course development in the province that caters to the many who come to travel the loop, it is less invasive than I had expected. Quaint homestays are still operated by families who grew up in the area and prepare delicious meals in rustic kitchens before joining travelers at their living room table to toast homemade rice wine. When I woke early in the morning, I watched farmers lead their buffalo out to graze, elderly women stoke fires beside the stacks of wood collected to last the approaching winter, and throughout the day, people of all ages, occasionally in ethnic minority attire, trudged along the highway; their backs laden with collected crops.

The house at the center of it

The house. Image via Đài Phát thanh và Truyền hình tỉnh Hà Giang.

Besides the incredible views, harrowing roads, and friendly people I met on the journey, and not counting the truly strange 500 million-year-old trilobite fossil presented on the path up to the Lũng Cú Flag Tower, the site that left the most lasting impression was a traditional H'Mông house in Lũng Cẩm village in Hà Giang’s Đồng Văn District directly off National Highway 4.

Photos via Bắc Giang Newspaper.

During the colonial period, the area produced mainly opium plants in addition to corn but has since transitioned to rice, buckwheat, flowers, fruits and corn. Built in 1947, this particular house owned by a wealthy H’Mông family provides a good example of traditional architecture with a wooden gate standing in the middle of the stone fence that circles a spacious courtyard surrounded by fruit trees. The home’s foundation, base and porch are made from local green limestone while the support columns and trusses are wooden and the walls are earthen. The large attic space is still used to dry corn and other crops and the four-generation family continues to live and work inside, though their activities now include attending to the hundreds of tourists that visit every day.

Fields of flowers and various crops grow on the plateau beneath rising gray-faced mountains. To reach the house, one must walk beneath a gate announcing the Lũng Cẩm Tourism Village and pass dozens of stalls selling dried fruits, nuts, herbs, roots, seeds, grains and mushrooms. Intricately sewn H'Mông dresses, blankets and scarves hang beside a woman selling buckwheat cakes. Local beer, shredded bamboo and honey are all sealed in bottles to be transported away and gifted as souvenirs. The tour buses pulled over beside the road during my visit attest to its popularity, and during the peak buckwheat flower season in the fall it’s reported that upwards of 1,000 people visit per day.

Movie poster via IMDB.

The particular home would not have been established as a tourism site if it were not for the movie Chuyện của Pao (The Story of Pao) which premiered in 2006 and won numerous awards including four Golden Kites and was introduced at the 2007 Cannes International Film Festival. The house at the end of the pathway was used as the main filming locale for the movie.

Chuyện của Pao focuses on the namesake character, a young H'Mông woman raised by her father’s first wife, but born to a different woman in accordance with the culture’s patriarchal traditions and expectations. She is reaching adulthood while navigating her family’s complex unhappiness when tragedy strikes at the movie’s onset.

Movie still via Zai Tri.

The difficulty of life in Hà Giang looms throughout the film as characters are constantly plodding through fields burdened with manual labor to scrape together a livelihood. But a gentle lute song drifts through the cold air, bringing a tinge of sweet tenderness to the movie thanks to the joys of youth and the first pangs of the mature romance Pao is pursuing. While technological limitations make the film look older than it really is and fail to capture the area’s natural grandeur, and the slow pacing and art-house style may turn off some viewers, it is a masterful and heartbreaking work of acting and writing that everyone should watch.

When May became Pao

“A cold wind blew in from the mountain, the old pear leaves were falling with a soft rustling noise as they landed on the stone gate.”

This quote is not a description of the movie, but rather the final line from 'Tiếng đàn môi sau bờ rào đá' (The Sound of the Liplute Behind the Fence), the short story by Đỗ Bích Thúy that Chuyện của Pao is based on. Films may represent a more popular form of storytelling than novels nowadays, to say nothing of short stories, but like film industries all around the world, Vietnam has long looked to literature to find core narratives and characters for films, as is the case with Chuyện của Pao.

'Tiếng đàn môi sau bờ rào đá' won the 1998-1999 short story prize in Văn nghệ Quân magazine and has been reprinted in her collections of stories with an English translation forthcoming in a collection of female authors that I was able to get an advanced copy of. Despite the characters all having different names (May becomes Pao in the movie, for example), the fundamental setup of the story is the same. May must face the infrequent arrivals of her biological mother to the home where her father and his wife, the woman that raised her, live. Meanwhile, a young man in the area woos May by playing his lip lute on the other side of her home’s wall. Only 10 pages long, the suspenseful story succeeds thanks to its tight plot and fully realized characters with clear but complex motivations. The unforgiving realities of filial expectations and fates beyond one’s control are exacerbated by the harsh climate where crops must grow on farms where “rocks rose to the surface of dirt that held seeds awaiting germination,” an apt metaphor for how people develop in the story, as well.

Đỗ Bích Thúy (right) in her hometown. Photo via Văn Hoá Doanh Nhân.

Reading 'Tiếng đàn môi sau bờ rào đá' and then watching Chuyện của Pao reinforces my belief that short stories make for better source material for movies than novels. Simply, novels contain too much stuff for a film to hold. Putting aside the challenges of capturing internal monologues and omniscient narrators able to offer sweeping expositions, novels feature too expansive of plots with too many characters. Upon viewing a movie based on a novel, audiences typically focus on what was removed, simplified or altered, as well as what characters and scenes looked different from what they had imagined. While relying on a short story instead doesn’t solve all of these issues, it does help.

Chuyện của Pao doesn’t omit major elements from the story, but rather adds significant ones by including a dramatic third act that is set up by a new opening scene. Faced with more choices to make that occur across a larger span of time and geographic region, the characters reveal different elements of themselves. One will have a different view of Pao’s mother, in particular, and the work’s greater commentary on patriarchy, after watching the film compared to the story. This is not to say that one is somehow better than the other. But rather, the stories they each tell are well suited to their formats and equally pleasing. I’d suggest consuming both if one has any interest in either, though start with the story first.

Given evolving understandings of cultural appropriation and increased discussions of the concept, both here in Vietnam, and abroad, it's worth touching on the fact that the story and the movie are the works of Kinh people yet focus on the lives of H'Mông individuals. Đỗ Bích Thúy was born and raised in Hà Giang in a hamlet consisting of Kinh, H'Mông and Tày families and many of her stories, spread across more than twenty books, focus on the diverse lifestyles and cultures in the region. One of her closest friends, Giàng Thị Thương, became the foundation for May in 'Tiếng đàn môi sau bờ rào đá.' When she became a writer, she was intent on presenting the resilience of the woman who raised but did not give birth to Thương, just like in the story.

Recent photo of Giàng Thị Thương via Báo phụ nữ.

When I asked Đỗ Bích Thúy about the subject of cultural appropriation, she explained in Vietnamese via email: “I was born and raised among Hà Giang’s ethnic minorities, even though I am not an ethnic minority. I see myself as part of their community and I appreciate and am proud of our traditional cultural values. I use these values in my creative works as a way to promote and introduce the beauty of my community to others; at the same time I also hope that members of my community feel proud of what we have.”

Meanwhile, the film stars Đỗ Thị Hải Yến who was raised in Hanoi while Hải Phòng native Ngô Quang Hải wrote and directed. Đỗ Bích Thúy had no involvement in its making, and she was happy to enjoy it like an audience member without expectations. And while there was seemingly no backlash at the time regarding the film lacking the involvement of people inside the community and culture it focuses on, it is worth noting that a 2022 film titled Khu rừng của Páo (Pao’s Forest) stars a H’Mông actor in the lead role, pointing to the possibility that notions of representation are changing in the industry.

The legacy of Pao and May in Hà Giang

While most Vietnamese tourists are likely familiar with Chuyện của Pao, I doubt that many come to Lũng Cẩm Village because of their appreciation of it. Rather, the spot offers a convenient place to stretch their legs, take some selfies and buy some unique souvenirs. A few photos from the filming days hang on the wall with minimal signage, but otherwise, there is little that would lead someone to watch the movie after visiting. Unfortunately, the story the movie was adapted from is even less present. Visitors have claimed that local tour guides mistakenly told travelers that the film was based on a work by Tô Hoài. A sign even featured a misprint in the story’s title that was recently corrected with expanded details about the writing.

It’s useless to bemoan how infrequently people read. Rather, my energy is better spent being proactive and looking for small opportunities to entice people to pick up a book. Hà Giang, a locale that needs little promotion, is an obvious place to do so. Independent of the story, be it the book or the movie, it's a great place to visit, but with the characters fresh in one’s memory, it takes on a much greater weight. I was able to feel a slightly more significant understanding of the experiences and endurance of the people working and living in the area. Whatever tiny glimpse the works of art afforded me helped provide a sense of connection and appreciation, which is a main reason we travel, after all.

Looking for a happy ending

While the characters end the film and story in very different places, their futures are open-ended in both. Upon completion, the viewer or reader is gifted the opportunity to imagine their futures and fates, one of the most satisfying elements of a work of fiction. I asked Đỗ Bích Thúy what she thought might happen to the characters after the story’s conclusion and she shared: “I always hope my fictional characters have a happy ending in their lives, because even though they are fictional, they carry with them figments of real people living lives filled with more misfortunes than luck, more sadness than contentment.”

If I had read the story when it was first published over twenty years ago, I certainly would not have imagined that a representation of the home May lived in would become a tourist destination. But one can now question if such a third-wall-breaking moment would represent a happy ending for the fictional May and her family. Given the financial resources and opportunities that tourism has ushered into the region along with improved living conditions, it's reasonable to assume the characters’ lives would be better now than at the conclusion of the stories.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

As an outsider, it's not my place to offer a definitive judgment about any net positive or negative to the area as a result of increased tourism as seen in places like Pao’s home. I asked Đỗ Bích Thúy about the matter and she explained that in her hometown, “people place their hope on tourism as the most important solution to grow the economy. There’s nothing wrong with that. I was born and raised in Hà Giang so I know firsthand how rough and daunting life here can be. Wherever the wind of tourism sweeps past, the material life of people will change for the better. But along with benefits are more losses. The most obvious loss is transformations in local customs, ways of life, agricultural methods, languages (because they will start speaking Kinh Vietnamese), loss of traditional costumes, architecture, etc. — in short, it’s an erosion of traditional values. Every day, they are going away, little by little… With every step of tourists, a gust of wind will form, sweeping away all the tangible and intangible values, things we once thought are indestructible after years of formation, but are actually quite fragile. They take centuries to create, but only a few decades to be destroyed. And once they’re gone, it’s very hard to get back.”

She continued by stressing the importance of sustainable travel that can balance the preservation of cultures with improving living standards. With that in mind, perhaps the most responsible and satisfying way to travel to Hà Giang is to read 'Tiếng đàn môi sau bờ rào đá' and then watch Chuyện của Pao. Certainly doing so will result in a richer, more intimate experience if one does journey there.

This article was originally published in 2023.

Hẻm Gems: Inside a Modernist Abode, O Phương’s Bún Bò Harks Back to Huế Flavors

2026-03-13T10:00:00+07:00

“O” is the affectionate way central Vietnamese call their sisters and aunties. For children of Central Vietnam like me, it has taken root in me like the most natural anchor of home. Sometimes when I’m out and about, glimpses of the accent of my hometown would pull me back home.

Quán O Phương found me in a similar way. In the middle of a relentlessly congested street, the familiar “O” from the shopfront drew me in. Huế foodies often tell each other that, away from home, whichever eatery is brave enough to use “O” in the name might be one with authentic flavors worth checking out.

Quán O Phương is located at a quiet corner where Điện Biên Phủ intersects with Trương Quyền streets, inside an old house designed in the southern modernist style. The dining space has a nostalgic ambiance, featuring tall steps, windy corridors, and walls covered in wash rocks. Wide window frames welcome sunlight inside, weaving through wrought iron bars in common Asian patterns like clouds, waves, and the character for “blessing” (福/Phúc). The house’s layout is typical of a courtyard residence, including a small pond in front and rows of bamboo providing a natural rustling canopy. The calm atmosphere makes it hard to believe that this is just a bún bò restaurant.

As Duy, the founder of O Phương, tells me, during his time in Saigon for work, far away from home, he greatly missed the life and tastes of Huế. In hopes of appeasing his own homesickness and other Huế migrants in the city, too, he founded this place. The “O Phương” in the name is inspired by none other than his wife, a Huế lady who was also his childhood sweetheart. The name evokes a coziness, as if this is not a restaurant but a home kitchen welcoming every visitor in for a generous meal.

Bún bò is always the standout representative whenever Huế cuisine is mentioned. It epitomizes the precision and specificity with which Huế chefs approach their culinary creations. O Phương’s menu naturally revolves around bún bò, featuring a clear broth simmered with spices and bones, moderately chewy rice noodles, tender beef slices, and chunks of crab cakes — all presented in a pretty rooster bowl. Sprinkle a little pickled shallot on top, and the essence of Huế is ready for your enjoyment.

“O Phương retains the original flavor profile of bún bò in Huế without adjustments,” Duy shares. “The broth is simmered for 14 hours alongside Huế’s distinctive mắm ruốc tép that’s pungent but not overly fishy.” Other ingredients include sa tế chili oil, pepper powder from Gio Linh, seafood from the Tam Giang Lagoon, and alliums from Lý Sơn Island. Most particularly, the food is cooked inside an aluminum pot with a belly and a small opening — a unique utensil for bún bò.

Apart from the classic bún bò soup version, the restaurant offers a southern-style bún bò “remix” version that’s eaten dry. The broth is provided on the side instead of being ladled into the noodle bowl that’s already seasoned alongside the protein toppings. Shrimp paste, chili oil, rau răm, and onion slices play the supporting role too.

If you’re in the mood for something else, other Huế specialties serve as great options for palate cleansers: bánh bột lọc wrapped in lá dong, bánh ướt tôm cháy, bánh bèo chén, etc. According to the owner, the dumplings are made using shrimp caught in the Tam Giang Lagoon (tôm sáo). This variety thrives in the brackish waters of the lagoon and thus possesses the qualities of shrimps from both freshwater and saltwater. Despite the small size, tôm sáo are chewy, sweet, and thin-shelled. Once cooked, the flesh turns an attractive shade of scarlet, which lends well to its role as the dumpling filling.

Last but not least, diners will also find a number of Huế snacks in the menu, such as roasted hyacinth bean tea and a bean-based chè that’s both fragrant and sweet.

Memories of Huế return to me in droves as I sit in the atmosphere of Quán O Phương. From faded sets of tables and chairs, bamboo furniture pieces, a vintage tea cupboard, to the paper lanterns and phoenix paintings on the walls, everything sings of the cultural heritage of Huế and Central Vietnam. While waiting for the food to arrive on our table, I heave in a whiff of incense, listen to the soft melodies in the air, and the rustles of bamboo outside the windows.

To sum up:

Opening time: 7:30am–9:30pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: 0933654343
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: ShopeeFood

O Phương - Món ngon sông Hương

162 Điện Biên Phủ, Xuân Hòa Ward, HCMC

How Vietnam's Muslims Celebrate Ramadan, Eid Al-Fitr in Mekong Delta's Châu Đốc

2026-03-10T15:00:00+07:00

Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, yet Vietnamese Muslims represent as little as 0.1% of the country’s population. Most are ethnic Chăm, while a few are foreigners and a few converts. After traveling to Châu Đốc in An Giang Province, where the majority are located, I was mesmerized by the unique cultural mix this community represents.

I visited a few times during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Muslims around the world celebrate this holy month by praying during the night time and abstaining from eating, drinking, and sexual acts between sunrise and sunset. In 2019, Ramadan finishes on June 4, with Eid al-Fitr taking place on June 5. It is believed the Quran’s first verse was revealed during this period of the year.

At the end of Ramadan, the Chăm Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr, which translates literally as the “break-fast festival,” by wearing new clothes, visiting relatives and gathering food. Kids play with candles and new toys while young people stay up all night. Many also choose to get married during the festival.

In Châu Đốc, wedding celebrations go on for three days. People visit the family of the bride and groom to congratulate them, enjoy traditional green tea and eat snacks. On the final day, the groom goes together with his family and friends to the bride’s house for a celebration. It lasts for hours and culminates in the announcement that they are now husband and wife.

The following photos represent the daily life of the Chăm people during Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr:

Sunset over the Mekong River in Châu Đốc, where many families live in floating houses.

Family restaurants could be found around the village

A Việt-Muslim family.

Old people waiting for the sun to set before breaking their fast.

Kids and young men playing traditional games just before the sunset.

The backyard of a mosque where people get together to play games.

Men gathering together to break their fast.

Men and women gather to pray Taraweeh, an extra prayer that is usually only performed during the nights of the holy month of Ramadan.

The night is the only time when Muslims can eat and drink during the month of Ramadan so fried food and nước mía stalls open late.

Kids play with candles during the night.

Joining the bride or groom’s family to drink green tea and to congratulate them during the three-day wedding celebrations.

The bride and groom in their house finally announced as husband and wife.

This article was originally published on Urbanist Hanoi in 2019.

How Did Vietnam Start Celebrating International Women's Day on March 8?

2026-03-05T12:00:00+07:00

In the hyper-commercialized world we now live in, it might be impossible to associate anything but overpriced flower bouquets and corporate sponsorships with International Women’s Day (IWD), but the widely celebrated occasion actually has a rich history of over 100 years of the women’s rights movement.

March 8, known as Ngày Quốc Tế Phụ Nữ in Vietnamese, was officially codified by the United Nations as IWD in 1975, but the idea for a day for women started brewing way before in 1910 during the International Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen, when German journalist Clara Zetkin and other delegates put forth the idea for a yearly “Women’s Day,” though no specific date was mentioned.

On March 18, 1911 — the 40^th anniversary of the Paris Commune — the first widely recognized IWD event took place in Europe, where over a million Austrian, German, Swiss, Polish, Dutch, and Danish women took part in marches and meetings.

In Petrograd, Russia, on March 8, 1917, women textile workers took to the street to demand the end to WWI, food shortages, and Tsarism, igniting the start of the February Revolution (due to a previous calendar system in Europe, March 8 was February 23). March 8 continued to be celebrated by Bolsheviks as IWD to remember the beginning of the revolution.

The march in 1917 that sparked the February Revolution. Photo via Bảo tàng Hồ Chí Minh.

In 1922, the then-communist Zetkin worked with Vladimir Lenin to formally establish International Women’s Day on March 8 as a communist holiday of the Soviet Union. From then, IWD started to be widely adopted by other communist nations and the communist movement worldwide, including in Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and, of course, Vietnam.

Due to IWD’s roots in socialism and official link to communism, the US and many members of the Western Bloc remain icy to the day for most of the 20^th century, though in recent decades, following the UN’s recognition, it is starting to appear on the festive calendar of more countries.

In Vietnam, the earliest evidence showing IWD observation points to a letter from Hồ Chí Minh, published in Nhân Dân newspaper on March 8, 1952, to commemorate Hai Bà Trưng’s death anniversary and International Women’s Day. In the address, he showed his respect for the female soldiers who sacrificed themselves for the revolution, as well as those whose children and husbands were fighting in the war.

[Top image via Euro Maidan Press]

Hẻm Gems: Bánh Canh Hẹ Is Phú Yên's Homage to Chives and the Sea

2026-03-05T11:00:00+07:00

Ever since I was a kid, I have had a general dislike towards vegetables, but green onion has always been an exception. I regard green onion as a garnish that can lighten up the whole dish, and it seems like whenever it’s absent from my cơm tấm or xôi mặn, I will instantly lose my enthusiasm to eat. But during my teenage years, my affection for scallion was challenged for the first time, when I encountered a photo of Phú Yên’s bánh canh hẹ online.

I was taken aback by the bold presentation of the dish, the dizzying amount of greenery was too much for me. From time to time, I would come across photos of bánh canh hẹ on the internet, and the weirdness of the dish made me think it was just a gimmick, so I never thought about trying it.

Chopped chives and Phú Yên-style bánh canh are two main components of bánh canh hẹ.

Fast forward many years later, bánh canh hẹ came up once again during a discussion meeting for Saigoneer’s two-week noodle content chapter, where I learned that Phú Yên’s bánh canh hẹ is a popular Central Vietnam delicacy with a humble beginning. It is made of cheap and accessible ingredients from the region. The noodle is made of Phú Yên’s local rice, the broth is stewed from fish in the province’s coastal areas. The green color of bánh canh hẹ comes from Phú Yên’s local hẹ, a thinner version of green onion that emits a lighter and distinctive aroma. According to locals, the excessive amount of chopped chives is used as an alternative for other vegetables and also to ease out the broth’s fishy smell.

The menu at Bánh Bèo Cô Mai hasn't changed even after the family relocated from the central coast to Saigon.

After learning more about the dish, I realized that I was unfairly judgmental towards it, missing out on a unique regional specialty. So I thought it would be a good idea for me to try it out to see what it’s all about. An eatery named Bánh Bèo Cô Mai Phú Yên was recommended due to its popularity among Saigoneers.

Bánh Bèo Cô Mai is located on Hoa Sứ Street near the Phan Xích Long food heaven. We arrive at lunchtime and it is already quite crowded. Luckily, we still get the chance to have a quick chat with the waiter to find out about the place’s history.

Home to chives and bánh bèo.

According to him, Cô Mai is run by a Phú Yên-born family, and it was first opened in Saigon about seven years ago, but before that, the family ran an eatery at the foot of Nhạn Mountain in Tuy Hòa, the capital city of Phú Yên. The menu at Cô Mai, identical to that of the old place, consists of three Phú Yên specialties: bánh canh hẹ, bánh bèo and bánh hỏi.

When asked about the cooking style of the dishes, he tells me about the family’s efforts to keep the tradition going. “We cook in the exact same way as we did in our hometown. There is no change at all.”

Bánh canh hẹ is an easy-to-eat but flavorful snack suitable for any time of the day.

When able to observe bánh canh hẹ at close range for the first time in my life, I was amazed by its unique visual and surprised by its simplicity. The copious amount of chopped chives creates a layer of vibrant greenery on top of the broth, below, there are fried fishcake patties, boiled quail eggs and a slice of black mackerel — all very familiar toppings. Add in some chili slices and we have a simple, yet colorful and distinctive-looking, Phú Yên specialty.

Taste-wise, the unique flavor of bánh canh hẹ is mainly due to the broth. It has a very subtle fishy aroma that doesn’t affect the overall taste. Combined with the delicate scent of Phú Yên’s local chives, the mackerel slice and the fish patties, the soup offers up a pleasantly light and sweet flavor that makes me feel like I am dining near the ocean.

Cá thu fillet is one of the toppings.

The main starch is a type of rice flour noodle that is thinner and less chewy than that in regular Saigon bánh canh dishes such as bánh canh cua. Upon tasting, I am treated with Cô Mai’s well-cooked noodles with a soft and supple texture that’s enjoyable to chew and makes you want to keep slurping.

The seafood toppings present me with two polar opposite qualities. The mackerel chunks have a tender and fatty texture. In contrast, the fried fish cake chunks are chewy with a sweet aftertaste. Dipping these toppings in the store’s provided fish sauce mixed with minced chili can enhance the overall dish's oceanic feel.

Even though we come here for bánh canh, both its bánh bèo and bánh hỏi are equally delightful.

The bánh bèo and bánh hỏi are side dishes. One order of bánh bèo is served in 10 small bowls, likely meant to be shared among many people. The starches of bánh bèo and bánh hỏi are sprinkled with chives oil, pork floss, fried bread crumbs and fried shallots. The highlight of these two courses is the accompanying sweet-and-sour fish sauce.

A surprise dessert: đậu xanh sương sáo.

Overall, my first experience with Phú Yên’s bánh canh hẹ was a success. Cô Mai’s cooking is so good that I even came back a couple more times, and what I notice from my revisits is that the store seems crowded around the clock, which is an indirect statement of the eatery's food quality. So, if you’re craving a light noodle dish that evokes the essence of the sea, you can’t go wrong with Cô Mai’s bánh canh hẹ, made just the way locals like it.

To sum up:

Opening time: 7am–9pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: 0937 638 918
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: ShopeeFood

Bánh Bèo Cô Mai Phú Yên

54 Hoa Sứ, Ward 7, Phú Nhuận, HCMC

Life on the Streets of 1978 Hanoi in Black and White

2026-03-05T09:00:00+07:00

In August 1978, I visited Hanoi as part of an educational tour organized by a professor from La Trobe University in Melbourne. I was a high school history teacher at the time and an avid photographer. I walked the streets of Hanoi and took many photographs of everyday life in the city, and until now, these photographs have remained unpublished.

A pedicab driver seeking business in Đồng Xuân.

Beyond our tour group, I saw no other westerners in Hanoi, and there was little western photographic documentation of life in Vietnam in the immediate post-war era. Economic conditions were difficult for the citizens of Hanoi and only improved after 1986 with the Đổi Mới reforms.

In many respects, Hanoi in 1978 appeared to have changed little since the war years. Saigoneer, for example, has published heritage photographs taken by German photographer Horst Faas of Hanoi in 1973 in the aftermath of heavy bombing by the US (Linebacker 11). My photographs feature some similar street scenes. The tram network had changed little; it was ageing, heavily patronized, and invariably featured young children clinging onto the external rear carriage. Many people travelled by bicycle, and some utilized pedicabs.

Tram travel in Hanoi.

Working lives were difficult for most Hanoians, often involving hard, physical labour. Consumer goods were rationed, and everyday living included crowded and shared family accommodation. But despite these hard times, today there are some older Hanoians who look back on the historical Bao Cấp Era with a degree of nostalgia for the comradeship and for having lived through and experienced such hard times.

Have a look at a selection of the photos below:

Bicycle travel was very common.

A moment’s relaxation for a pedicab driver.

Laboring in the city.

Traveling on a lake (left), exercising by a lake (center) and working in a local shop (right).

Typical living accommodations in the city.

Portraits of children in Hanoi.

Portraits of older citizens on the streets.

Welcome to the New Age of Mass-Produced, Enshittified Plastic Bánh Giò

2026-03-04T13:00:00+07:00

Do you always remember the first time you tried a new food? With common staples like hủ tiếu, bún riêu or cơm tấm, that might be difficult, but I can recall exactly the first time I had bánh giò: it was from a bike vendor with a very distinctive northern-accented street call of “chưng, gai, bánh giò.”

Like its siblings bánh chưng and bánh gai, bánh giò is a dish of northern descent, albeit one that has integrated seamlessly into the national snack landscape over the past decades. Today, one hankering for something simple but filling can seek it out anywhere at any time, but when I was a child in the 1990s, northern vendors on bicycles would be the most common way to get our hands on a bánh giò.

On the back of a rickety bike that had definitely seen better days rested a huge plastic rucksack that felt hot to the touch. Inside, rows of leaf-covered bánh sat waiting for their turn to explore the outside world. As he briefly unfurled the bag to pick out bánh giò with tongs, the steam turned my glasses foggy and filled my nostrils with the familiar grassy scent of banana leaves.

A classic bánh giò is made up of a rice-based dough coating a filling of pork, shallot, and mushroom.

Those neatly wrapped leaves would become a clean surface to enjoy your bánh giò, its glutinous wobbly rice dough, its peppery pork filling, and its pearly quail eggs. The best case scenario should involve a spoon, but I have, on occasions, raw-dogged a bánh giò with just my hands and trusty teeth. There is no shame, because bánh giò is not a food designed for decorum and fancy cutleries.

I think bánh giò can do no wrong. As an adult man, I have to admit one is not enough for a full lunch, so you can always eat two or three if you so wish. However, to me, it is irrevocably the perfect snack made for the moments in life when you’re peckish but don’t want a whole bowl of phở: for breakfast; as an after-school, pre-dinner ăn xế; or especially as a stomach soother after a night out drinking.

Bánh giò makers are still around today if you know where to look, but the most accessible way to get them is no longer mobile vendors, but convenience stores. Thọ Phát, Saigon’s very own bánh bao maker-turned-entrepreneur, started mass-producing a version tailored for the convenience of modern retailers, and those leaf-wrapped pyramids began appearing in steamers at FamilyMarts and Circle K’s, further consolidating its role as a convenience, hearty, filling snack.

A maximalist “full-topping” version of bánh giò in Hanoi, featuring various types of sausages and pickles.

In December 2025, the company announced that it would sunset the old leaf-wrapped bánh giò version and switch to a new plastic mold, effective immediately. The reasons given included improved hygiene, convenience, and shelf life. The plastic version retains the pyramidal silhouette, and similar food filling, with a meagre banana leaf square at the bottom that can fit neatly in the palm of my hand. I personally think the mass-produced version, leaf or plastic, has never held a candle to bánh giò by independent makers, but it has taken a turn for the worse after the removal of leaves. Their grassy aroma contributes significantly to the eating experience and their broad surface helps the content retain moisture; without leaves, the dough is stodgy, monotonous, and miserable.

It is perhaps histrionic of me to decry something as seemingly simple as the recipe change of one company. After all, traditional bánh giò are still coming to life every day from kitchens from north to south, and a plastic makeover might not spell the demise of a time-honored delicacy, but it is still very clearly yet another example of the enshittification of modern life that’s unfolding right before our eyes. Shrinkflated chocolate bars, paywalled app features, synthetic fibre replacements in clothing, and now plastic bánh giò — these are all signs of corporations making our lives worse for the sake of profits.

Thọ Phát's bánh giò with plastic packaging.

I haven’t seen our bánh giò bike vendor in 10 years and now satisfy my cravings with ones from a store specialized in northern foods on Nguyễn Thiện Thuật. He could be too old or too sick to continue the work, but I suspect the disappearance of mobile vendors is not limited to my neighborhood, but part of a much bigger shift in the country's economic pattern. It is an incredibly challenging time to operate a small business in Saigon, with stringent recently introduced tax policies, harsh sidewalk-clearing campaigns, and less disposable income from consumers in general all squeezing the profit margins dry and driving out smaller players.

I don’t know about you, but I think it is high time I seek out a nice bánh giò in this trying time. I will drive to my favorite shop, park my bike, and ask for their biggest one with the most banana leaves around it, to make up for the leafless abomination I just ate for the sake of research.

Hanoi Breaks Ground on Sports Complex With World's 2nd-Largest Stadium

2026-03-03T14:00:00+07:00

Hanoi is currently building the country’s largest sports complex that’s hoped to become Vietnam’s go-to location to host international events and tournaments.

On December 19, as Tuổi Trẻ reports, state officials broke ground on the Olympics Sports City at a 9,171-hectare patch of land south of Hanoi. Vingroup is reportedly behind the massive project with a price tag of nearly VND926 trillion (US$38 billion).

According to Vingroup, the complex is separated into four segments of A, B, C, and D. Zone B will be the cornerstone of the project, where major sporting infrastructures are based, including the Trống Đồng Stadium, Global Aquatics Arena, Vietnam Sports Tower, and E-Sports Arena.

An artist's rendering of the complex and the zones.

The remaining zones comprise residential compounds and other supporting facilities, including a hospital and research center. The complex will house about 751,000 inhabitants and is estimated to finish in 2035. Officials greenlit the project in hopes that it can host regional and global sporting events like the Asian Games and Summer Olympics.

Of the amenities in the list, the Trống Đồng Stadium is perhaps the most talked about since it was announced. Like the name suggests, the stadium’s design is inspired by the Đông Sơn bronze drum and chim Lạc, figures with major archaeological importance in Vietnamese history.

At the moment, the land is still mostly for agricultural purposes.

The oval stadium is planned on a 48-hectare plot at a maximum capacity of 135,000 seats, over three times more than Mỹ Đình Stadium’s 40,000. Once finished, Trống Đồng will surpass India’s Narendra Modi Stadium (132,000) to be the world’s second-largest stadium, just behind North Korea’s Rungrado 1st of May Stadium (150,000). While the exact estimate is unclear, local media reports that construction on Trống Đồng is expected to finish in 2028–2030.

Images via CafeF.

A Brief History of Ông Đồ, Vietnam’s Scholars Whose Calligraphy Is Highly Sought After

2026-03-02T14:00:00+07:00

To say that Tết gathers together everything most beautiful in Vietnamese culture would not be an exaggeration. More than a threshold between the old year and the new, it is also a time when people feel they can return to, and relive, the traditional values that define them.

It is there in those year-end markets, where one searches for the familiar flavors of home. It is there in the square bánh chưng, shaped like the earth, and the cylindrical bánh tét, round like the sky. These are humble offerings, yet deeply reverent, placed before one’s ancestors. And on the afternoon of the 23^th day of the last lunar month, families erect cây nêu (tall bamboo pole) in front of their homes. A small wind chime hangs from it, trembling in the breeze as a quiet gesture meant to ward off misfortune.

Whenever strips of red paper begin to appear along Hàng Mã Street, I find myself thinking of ông đồ who once wrote characters on dó paper. What does the person who comes to ask for a character truly seek, if not something beyond a few strokes of calligraphy? And what does the giver offer, if not something beyond a flourish of black ink?

Silk robes and scholar caps

In the Confucian civil service examination system, candidates who passed three rounds and earned the degree of Tú Tài, a licentiate-level qualification, were known as “ông đồ.” Many never entered official service. Those who advanced only through the lower examinations would continue preparing for higher rounds such as thi Hội (the metropolitan exam) and thi Đình (the palace exam). In the meantime, they often supported themselves by teaching, hence the name “thầy đồ,” literally "scholar-teacher,” or by writing on commission.

Ông đồ reading, 1915. Photo by Léon Busy.

In the book Traditional Vietnamese Customs, compiled by Toan Ánh, a passage reads: “Elementary learning had no state-run schools, yet in every village there were a few ông đồ who taught children. Books were handwritten, as printed books were very expensive. Every ông đồ kept a small library, and students copied their lessons from the master’s books…”

Being recognized as an ông đồ required more than just wearing a traditional robe and knowing how to write. The title was reserved for those who possessed both literary skill and wisdom. Even if they had not achieved high academic honors, they maintained their integrity, lived honestly, and followed tradition. This was because, in earlier times, education was seen as a way to learn not only how to read and write but also how to be a person of virtue. The scholar was a symbol of intellect and character in society. People revered them not just for their elegant brushwork but for their clear conscience and steadfast values.

Tấm tắc ngợi thiên tài: / Praise for his genius:
Hoa tay thảo những nét / His gifted hand sketches strokes
Như phượng múa, rồng bay / Like phoenixes dancing, like dragons flying
— ‘Ông đồ’ by Vũ Đình Liên

In the past, people sought out ông đồ when they needed “special scripts” (xin chữ) or someone literate to help with formal documents. This gave rise to the tradition of requesting and giving calligraphy. During festivals and especially at Tết, students and those devoted to study would ask for specific characters as a way of absorbing good fortune and intellectual blessing.

There was an unspoken etiquette to asking for a script. The petitioner would bring a modest offering such as betel and areca, tea, or tobacco, and come to the scholar’s home. The scholar, in turn, had to be solemn and respectful, giving his art only to those who truly valued the written word, rather than those merely pretending to be cultured.

Ông đồ on the street of Hanoi, 1913–1917. Photo by Léon Busy.

Characters were written in calligraphic form and rendered on many styles on sheets of red paper. Red, in eastern belief, is the color of luck and auspicious beginnings. The writer would let mood and instinct guide the brush, shaping letters into forms that were sometimes striking, sometimes unexpected. Each character that emerged beneath the scholar’s hand was more than a work of calligraphic art. It carried temperament, personality, feeling, and the distinct creative imprint of the individual who wrote it.

A word worth a thousand in gold

The old saying “nhất tự thiên kim,” meaning “one character [is] worth a thousand gold pieces,” is associated with Lü Buwei, as recorded in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian. The powerful Chinese chancellor once hung his book at the capital gate and offered a reward of gold to anyone who could add or remove a single character. His authority was so immense that no one dared step forward to revise it. Over time, the phrase became a classical allusion to writing of exceptional value.

Beyond its physical form, the written character is a means by which humanity preserves memory, opens understanding, and connects across time. That is why words are likened to gold. Dr. Cung Khắc Lược, a veteran calligrapher, explains: “Thought, emotion, and the inner life are always expressed through language, through vocabulary, through text. A single character written on a page, a word from the heart and mind offered to another, is worth a thousand gold pieces. It surpasses material wealth.”

Ông đồ stationed in front of Hương Pagoda, Hanoi, 1995. Photo via Flickr user lonqueta.

Over the years, the practice of asking for characters has grown more widespread, becoming a cherished custom each time Tết returns. From the mountains to the delta, regardless of wealth or status, anyone who comes with sincerity may ask for a character.

Each brushstroke carries a particular wish or intention. One might request Cát Tường (auspiciousness) or Như Ý (fulfillment) to pray for peace within the family. Others ask for Phát, Lộc (prosperity, fortune), or Tài (excellence) in hopes that their work will prosper and unfold smoothly. Young people often request for Chí (resolve) or Đắc (achievement) as a way to steady themselves in the face of hardship.

The ritual is no longer bound by the formalities of the past. The giver need not be an elderly scholar in traditional robes with silvered hair and beard. There are now modern calligraphers, western-trained writers, and women who are taking up the brush.

The art, too, has moved beyond black ink on red paper. Characters are carved or brushed onto wood, stone, bamboo, silk, or brocade. Seal script, clerical script, regular script, cursive, running script, every form has its place. Along city streets and in temple courtyards, people queue patiently for characters that unfurl across the page like phoenixes in flight and dragons in motion, a beautiful custom that feels inseparable from the first days of the new year.

Modern calligraphic masters come from all walks of life. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Dedicated “scholar streets” have also emerged to honor this traditional custom. In the north, the Temple of Literature is widely regarded as a symbolic “village of examination candidates.” In the south, the practice of asking for calligraphic characters dates back to the 17^th century, when the Nguyễn lords expanded southward to develop new territories, followed by waves of migrants from the north and central regions. It was not until the late 17^th century, however, when Chinese communities began settling and cultivating the areas around Biên Hòa and Đồng Nai, that the custom truly flourished. The long coexistence of different cultures has, in subtle ways, shaped the distinctive character of this southern tradition.

Today, more than half of the calligraphy masters are students of classical Sino-Vietnamese studies or simply lovers of the art. Those who come to request characters span every age group, social background, and profession. This is not a fleeting trend. I see it as an act of cultural transmission. Whatever changes in form or setting, the essence of the custom remains intact. The person holding the brush pours care and craft into every stroke. The one who asks comes with respect for learning and for the traditions that have shaped it.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

[Top image by Léon Busy.]