Exploring Saigon and Beyond - Saigoneer

Tracing the History of 'Hello Vietnam,' the Overnight Sensation From Europe

2026-05-29T14:00:00+07:00

Most people who have flown with VietJet are probably familiar with the song ‘Hello Vietnam’ or its Vietnamese version ‘Xin chào Việt Nam.’ As it's often played during landing, tourists might mistake the song for a cute jingle of the company, but the meaning behind the song lyrics is much more nostalgic. It’s about a person of Vietnamese descent longing for their ancestor’s homeland, a place they’ve never been — a story that can certainly strike a chord with many Vietnamese people. Few know, however, that this song was originally a French-language song, one that was almost never released.

‘Hello Vietnam’ achieves the rare feat of being widely recognizable among Vietnamese today, even though it originally emerged from the diasporic community.

The song cover.

Perhaps this accomplishment should not be surprising, as the song seems specifically crafted to appeal to Vietnamese sensibilities: nostalgic lyrics on a melancholic melody were the framework of many other widely acclaimed songs in Vietnam. Even though the lyrics describe the feelings of a person who’s never been to Vietnam, the longing can resonate even with Vietnamese people who never left the country, whether towards their hometown or a version of Vietnam from another decade.

“Want to see your house, your streets. Show me all I do not know.
Wooden sampans, floating markets, light of gold.”

The sheer love and curiosity for Vietnam, along with descriptions of its wonders make the song an easy choice for anyone who wants to convey patriotic pride. This may explain why it sounds familiar even to people who have never heard of it. The exposure to the music is huge: it's featured in travel companies’ commercials, videos on social media, and background music in cafes.

The story behind the creation of ‘Hello Vietnam’ actually began in Belgium, where its original singer, Phạm Quỳnh Anh, was born. Her parents are Vietnamese immigrants. Her father went to Belgium to study and her mother was a political refugee. Always a talented singer, at 13, she participated in the Belgian singing competition TV show Pour la Gloire and won with a terrific cover of Celine Dion’s ‘The reason.’ This achievement convinced her that a career in music might really be a possibility: “Pour la Gloire all started with a bet between my father and me. He was like, ‘Yes, you’ll make it,’ while I was thinking, ‘I won't even get past the first auditions.’ And that's just how it happened; I didn't really realize what was going on at the time,” Quỳnh Anh recounts in French.

Phạm Quỳnh Anh.

In 2005, her career took off, as she became Marc Lavoine’s protégée. Marc Lavoine, a famous French singer most known for his karaoke classic ‘Elle a les yeux revolver…’, was looking for a voice to feature in ‘J’espère,’ a new duet. He was convinced by Quỳnh Anh's performance: three takes during the audition was enough. Following this duet’s success, Quỳnh Anh went along with Lavoine on his tour to many countries.

Being close to Marc Lavoine provided a pivotal boost to Quỳnh Anh, even more so as Lavoine wrote her some songs, which were never released — one of which was called ‘Bonjour Vietnam.’ When learning that the song was written by a white French man, one can feel weirded out at first by the lyrics, notably the description of the character’s physical traits. It was however written at the request and supervised by Quỳnh Anh.

While working on a potential album, she felt the need to sing about her roots, and as such, asked the lyricist Yvan Coriat to write about Vietnam. The text was allegedly too long, which is why she later reached out to the seasoned Lavoine to transform the text into a song, with music by him. The Vietnamese-Belgian singer was immediately charmed: “I tried it, and it worked instantly. It’s amazing because they’re European, yet they recreated an Asian atmosphere so well. I feel very lucky to be surrounded by talented people who help me express myself.” She says in a French interview in Vietnam.

Marc Lavoine.

How ‘Bonjour Vietnam’ reached stardom was its own story: a demo leaked on the internet, and quickly spread throughout the diaspora. By Tết 2006, the song had already blown up all over the world, usually paired with a fan-made video montage of Vietnam. This unexpected instant hit made Quỳnh Anh famous around the globe among Vietnamese diasporic communities. The song never had an official release, and yet she started receiving offers to perform live in many countries like Canada, the US and Australia. Spurred by the global attention, it behooved her to release an English version, translated by Guy Balbaert, called ‘Hello Vietnam.’ This version gained a wider audience in Vietnam, while solidifying her fame among the English-speaking diaspora.

In 2008, she performed ‘Hello Vietnam’ on Paris by Night, which cemented the ubiquity of the song in the diaspora. At the end of the same year, she was able to set foot in the forever longed-for Vietnam in the lyrics, thanks to the popularity of the song, via a short tour in the country.

The original version in French performed by Phạm Quỳnh Anh.

There is a some undeniable poetry in the fact that everything seems to have led Quỳnh Anh to the country of her roots. Starting with her meeting with Marc Lavoine, which resulted in the creation of a song where she sings about how much she would like to go to Vietnam. Then the fact that the song got a self-made fame of its own. And finally, the English translation reached Vietnam, bringing her there as she wished for in the lyrics.

“One day I’ll touch your soil.
One day I’ll finally know your soul.
One day I’ll come to you.
To say hello… Vietnam.”

Nowadays Quỳnh Anh’s musical career has gotten much more quiet, she kept her studies a priority throughout this success, and now it seems to be a historical period, as she has begun new chapters of her life. But the popularity of ‘Hello Vietnam’ is as strong as it has ever been: many translations to Vietnamese helped the song gain a new audience. The budget airline VietJet decided to play a mix of the English and Vietnamese versions as landing songs and a welcoming gesture. This has increased the song’s popularity even more, though it has also inspired a sense of overexposure for frequent domestic travelers. The history of ‘Hello Vietnam’ is usually forgotten, obscured by its reputation as a mere commercial jingle, but it was once a heartfelt wish to reconnect with a homeland one hears about so much but has never encountered.

How Bách Tùng Diệp Became a Saigon Park From Earmarked Consulate Land

2026-05-29T09:30:00+07:00

In 1927, after being abandoned for more than 60 years by its Spanish owners, the “Jardin d’Espagne” — known today as Bách Tùng Diệp or Lý Tự Trọng Park — seemed set to become the new home of the British Consulate General in Saigon… but it was not to be.

The participation of Spanish naval forces in the 1859 French conquest of Cochinchina is well documented. The event which had triggered the expedition was the execution on July 20, 1857 of the Spanish bishop of Tonkin, Monsignor José Sanjurjo Diaz. In response, the invasion fleet incorporated a large contingent of Spanish troops drawn largely from the Philippines.

In the aftermath of the conquest, several streets in Saigon were named in honor of Spain, including Rues Isabella, Isabella II and Palanca.

The Jardin d’Espagne on the left of the postcard.

A potential location for a Spanish or British Consulate?

The French authorities also granted the Spanish government a plot of land on which to build a consulate. According to the Colonial Council minutes dated November 8, 1928, the Conventions of May 15, 1864 signed by Spanish Acting Consul Manuel M Caballero, and of January 31, 1866 signed by his successor Fédérico Taque, ceded to the Spanish government “a 3,000m² plot of land on the north side of the junction between Rues Lagrandière and Mac-Mahon [now Lý Tự Trọng and Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa].” The concession of this land, now part of Lý Tự Trọng Park, was “made free of charge, but under the provision that the land is allocated solely for installation of a Spanish consulate and cannot be used for any other purpose”.

For a short while, an “old Annamite house” on the site was occupied by a group of Spanish naval officers. However, when the Spanish delegation eventually departed from Saigon, it had “failed to take effective possession of this land and abandoned the project of constructing a consulate in Saigon”. Thereafter, Spanish diplomatic affairs in Cochinchina were handled through the Consular Agent of Portugal.

Over the next half-century, as the surrounding streets were transformed into the so-called “Triangle of Power” (comprising the Law Courts, the Central Prison and the Palace of the Lieutenant Governor), this little piece of Spanish territory was christened the Jardin d’Espagne. During this period, it was looked after carefully by the staff of the Botanical and Zoological Gardens, who installed lawns and flowerbeds and took great care of its ancient banyan tree.

By 1919, the Consulate-General of Great Britain had outgrown its premises at 4 Rue Georges-Guynemer (present-day Hồ Tùng Mậu), and the search began for a suitable plot of land on which to build a larger diplomatic mission. The Jardin d’Espagne seemed to fit the bill perfectly, and later that year the British Consul-General wrote to the director of local administration asking if the French government “would be disposed to give its consent to the cession of this land from the Spanish government to the British government, which proposes to build a consulate there”.

The Jardin d’Espagne can be seen on the right of this early 20^th-century postcard of the Lieutenant Governor’s Palace.

The three-way negotiations between France, Spain and Great Britain continued for another eight years. Finally, on November 10, 1927, “the Consular Agent of Portugal, M. Brodeur, in the name of the Spanish government, ceded and abandoned to the Consulate General of Great Britain represented by Mr. F Grosvenor Gorton, its rights to the Jardin d’Espagne”.

For its part, the Cochinchina government agreed that Great Britain would be substituted for Spain in the conditional rights to the land, which were once again linked exclusively to the construction of a consulate.

Had things proceeded as planned, the British Consulate in HCMC might now be in a very different location, and Saigon would have lost a valuable green space to redevelopment. But that wasn’t quite the end of the story.

From would-be consulate to park

After commissioning a long-overdue survey of the Jardin d’Espagne in December 1927, the British “encountered problems and communicated these to the Cochinchina authorities.” On January 21, 1928, Cochinchina Governor Paul Blanchard de la Brosse wrote to Grosvenor Gorton: “On the occasion of the transfer, you pointed out to me the inadequacy of the said land area with regard to its function, which is the construction of your consulate, and informed me that you would consider favorably the principle of exchange against another city lot administered through the Domaine locale.”

A subsequent report to the Colonial Council by Blanchard de la Brosse sheds further light on the problems encountered and also reveals the alternative lot which had been identified:

“The Consul General of Great Britain has noted that the area of this land is too small for construction of a [consulate] building, and secondly that the Jardin d’Espagne does not seem favorable for the installation of a consulate. For our part, the local administration believes that there is interest in maintaining the current function of the Jardin as a convenient square for walkers and children’s games in the very central area where it is located. Therefore, the principle of exchange of this land against Lot 7 of the subdivision plan of Boulevard Norodom is being considered. This latter terrain, situated between Boulevard Norodom (Lê Duẩn) and the Rues de Massiges (Mạc Đĩnh Chi) and Lucien Mossard (Nguyễn Du), has an area of 3,548m² and its market value is equal to that of the land known as the Jardin d’Espagne.”

A plan of the 3,548m² Lot 7 on Boulevard Norodom, which the British Consulate General was granted in exchange for the Jardin d’Espagne.

A formal offer was made, and on April 25, 1928, British Consul General F Grosvenor Gorton wrote to the governor accepting the substituted plot on Boulevard Norodom. This undoubtedly pleased the French; another report dated November 26, 1928 says of the Jardin d’Espagne that “its situation right in front of the Governor of Cochinchina’s Palace, from which it is separated only by the Rue Lagrandière, is not appropriate for the installation of a consulate”.

On October 6, 1928 Les Annales Coloniales carried an article entitled “The future British Consulate in Saigon”, reporting the exchange of the Jardin d’Espagne for the new plot on Boulevard Norodom, and explaining that “the plans, drawn up in London, will be executed in Saigon under the supervision of one or more architects who will come all the way from England. The design will be a reproduction of those buildings already constructed to serve the same purpose in Bangkok and some major cities in China; or rather, it will be a ‘Cochinchina adaptation’ of the commonly adopted type.”

A view of Saigon's Boulevard Norodom.

The replacement lot was formally ceded by the Domaine Locale on December 21, 1928, but the new British Consulate General at 21 Boulevard Norodom (now 25 Lê Duẩn) took several years to construct and was not inaugurated until 1934. Sadly, no photographs have survived of this building, which in the 1950s became the British Embassy to the State of Vietnam and then briefly to the Republic of Vietnam. It was demolished and rebuilt in its current form in 1958–1959.

The 1958-1959 British Embassy building, now the British Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City.

Crucially, the land exchange of 1928 returned the Jardin d’Espagne to the Domaine Locale and it became a small municipal park.

After 1955 it was renamed Công viên Liên Hiệp (Union Park) and, after 1975, Công viên Lý Tự Trọng. Then in the early 1980s, the buildings which had stood on the adjacent plot of land were demolished and the park was doubled in size, so that today it stretches the entire length of the block between Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa and Pasteur Streets.

Abandoned by the Spanish and rejected by the British, the Jardin d’Espagne was eventually transformed into one of Saigon’s best-loved parks.

The former Jardin d’Espagne, now the Lý Tự Trọng Park, in 2016.

This article was originally published in 2016.

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.

Quy Nhơn’s Quy Hoà Leprosy Village to Be Relocated for Mega Resort Project

2026-05-28T10:00:00+07:00

Authorities in Gia Lai Province have approved plans to relocate the Quy Hoà leprosy village from its current ocean-side setting in Quy Nhơn to make room for an ambitious real estate and tourism project.

Founded as the Laproserie de Quy Hoà Hospital in 1929 by Paul Maheu, a French priest, along with Dr. Lemoine of the Bình Định Hospital, the facilities in Quy Hoà include private homes, treatment rooms, a church and recreational areas. It was essential for providing care to patients when the disease was heavily stigmatized before an effective treatment was discovered in 1940, and remained important for treatment services for decades. While populations have declined thanks to improved sanitation and vaccination efforts, as of today, it is home to 250 families and 300 patients. Many families have spent several generations in their homes after a patient recovered from the disease.

In addition to its on-going medical purposes, Quy Hoà holds significant heritage value. It boasts stunning modernist architecture situated in sight of the ocean and is home to the grave and former home of beloved poet Hàn Mặc Tử. Easily accessible from expanding Quy Nhơn city, including via scenic hiking path, it offers visitors an opportunity to learn about a unique period in Central Vietnam's development, marvel at colorful buildings with bold design choices and even take in some cultural oddities.

Hàn Mặc Tử's grave (left) and some materials placed in the home he occupied in the village (right).

Anyone who has visited Quy Hoà and witnessed the picturesque ocean with sandy beach juxtaposed by the humble, impoverished buildings of the leprosy colony would be able to understand why it is wanted by developers. The inevitable is finally official with the Gia Lai People's Committee announcing on May 19 that the province is currently accelerating procedures for the implementation of the Ghềnh Ráng-Vũng Chua International Beach Resort Urban Area. Covering nearly 2,900 hectares, the project will require Quy Hoà to be moved to Tuy Phước Commune of Gia Lai Province, approximately 20 km to the north and noticebly not on the ocean.

View looking down onto Quy Hoà.

The new megaproject aims to provide upscale housing for 40,000 people and accomodate an average of approximately 6,900 tourists per day. A sports center, a golf center and hotels will rise above the austere bed where Hàn Mặc Tử once perished in agony. Flying taxis and seaplanes are included in Sun Group's plans.

Officials have stressed the need for careful planning to ensure uninterrupted healthcare services for the patients. Specific plans for the site of the new leprosy treatment hospital and community are in development.

The Little Moments of Stillness on Hanoi Streets via Artist Hoàng Hiền's Illustrations

2026-05-27T14:00:00+07:00

Whether they're from Saigon, Hanoi or Đà Nẵng, urbanites in Vietnam have all grown up amid the chaos of local street culture, where the pulses of civic life churn with every vendor, family business, and gig worker. "Moment of Stillness," a collection of colorful illustrations by artist Hoàng Thanh Hiền, was born of the artist's keen observations of the familiar scenes in her immediate surroundings.

Hanoi streets are notoriously busy and hectic, but when one actually sits down to focus on each moving part in that busy puzzle, they would immediately notice the charms and vivid liveliness of things that we often overlook while going about our life. Each artwork in Hiền’s illustration project zooms in and isolates an element from the street scene in Hanoi, and highlights it with her artistic sensibility.

“The bikes carrying seasonal fruits, the food carts, the corner vendors selling iced tea, the trees and traffic signs that double as helmet or raincoat racks,” Hiền shares with Saigoneer via email. “Perhaps, with the forces of development and convenience of modern society, sidewalk vendors have become something associated with disorderliness and complications. But I want to redraw those images with a gentle palette. A moment of stillness for people whom I think are dealing with a lot of hardships.”

Mobile fruit sellers, a deliveryman waiting for pickup, rideshare drivers on bikes, a sugarcane juice cart: the subjects of Hiền’s illustrations are mostly small business owners and gig workers who spend the majority of their workday on sidewalks. The human figures are all faceless, perhaps in line with how most of us perceive the people we brush past on the street, but each scene is portrayed using cheerful color choices to celebrate the small moments rather than dismiss them.

Observing daily moments and illustrating them have become an escape for Hiền after the many hours spent at her day job. While drawing has been her favorite pastime since she was four or five years old, she graduated with an unrelated degree and then started working. “After many years, I still drew, wanted to draw, and constantly thought about art, so I quit and started learning art from the beginning,” she says. “ I got another job and, fortunately, met seniors who are very patient with me and believe in me. So I’ve been working while studying since.”

The title “Moment of Stillness” refers to the snapshot of street moments that Hiền collects while walking around Hanoi, but on the other hand, it also started from a need for her to take a break from drawing for work. “One day, I felt like I was illustrating like a machine. I illustrate at work, for my jobs every day. Everything runs smoothly and everybody is satisfied, but suddenly I stopped feeling that joy when I draw,” she shares. “A product finishes and another one comes right along; I don’t know how things began to flow so fast [...] So I started doing art just for myself in my free time.”

With a simple goal to reignite that happiness while drawing, she began with the simplest things that are right around her: “A dry leaf on the street, a fold on my clothes, a muscle of human anatomy… everything can become a story. I want to return to finding beauty in simple things like that. Gradually, I started paying more attention to our sidewalk space and its daily life.”

It might be a bittersweet time period for anyone making a living on Hanoi’s pavements or harboring great affection for the city’s vibrant informal economy, as a sidewalk-clearing campaign is sweeping through local streets, aiming to make them neater and safer for pedestrians. Independent art projects, like “Moment of Stillness,” will serve as an indelible documentation of the street moments of our collective memory.

Hailing from Hải Dương, Hiền herself has been in Hanoi for 10 years through her education and career. Creating art about Hanoi has encouraged her to observe where she lives more instead of being a mere passerby.

“I think each person has a different Hanoi. An old cart can be someone’s way to make a living. It seems like there’s everything on the sidewalk: necessities, food, clothes, even haircuts. Fruits, bánh mì and coffee in the morning and iced tea and skewers in the evening. The space on the pavement might look messy, but operates rhythmically with its own symbiotic negotiations.”

To view more of Hoàng Hiền's artworks, visit her Behance page here.

Hẻm Gems: Indonesia's Ayam Penyet Is a Smashing Celebration of Spices

2026-05-25T10:00:00+07:00

The most straightforward definition by which to explain ayam penyet to the Vietnamese layperson is perhaps “cơm gà Indo.” It’s technically not wrong: the dish has rice and chicken, and originates from Indonesia. But once you've actually sunk your teeth into this special fried chicken, the translation seems unfairly reductive because ayam penyet is so much better than the sum of its parts.

Editor's note: As of March 2024, Ayam Penyet Vindo has moved to 24 Điện Biên Phủ. The interior depicted in the review features the previous location.

You can’t go 500 meters in Saigon without bumping into cơm gà. Combining the cheapest carbohydrate and the cheapest meat, permutations of chicken rice are available to people of all ages, financial situations, and walks of life. With just VND50,000 or less, Saigoneers can wolf down a portion of Hainanese-style chicken rice or crispy cơm gà xối mỡ just around the corner from their natural habitat. This poultry love is not limited to Saigon, as many other Vietnamese localities have concocted their own versions as well, such as cơm gà Hội An, Phú Yên, Nha Trang, and Phan Rang, among others.

Ayam Penyet Vindo's light box.

As a cơm gà hobbyist, I find great pleasure in its level of ubiquity, but for home cooks aspiring to break into the commercial scene with their own creations, this means there are many chickens in the market to compete against. The owner duo behind Ayam Penyet Vindo, Lizam and Ricoh, find the popularity of cơm gà in Vietnam both an opportunity and a challenge to overcome — how to convince local customers’ taste buds that ayam penyet is not just typical rice with fried chicken.

Originating from Java, ayam penyet is nothing fancy, though its accessibility means there are thousands of versions out there. “Ayam” means “chicken” and “penyet” is Javanese for “smashed.” After being fried, the chicken leg is pounded to break up the meat. Some theorize that the action is to make it easy to eat ayam penyet by hand, but Ricoh tells me that it’s to release the moisture so that once sambal is applied on top, the meat will absorb the sauce, becoming more flavorful.

According to Singaporean food blogger Tony Boey, this now-commonplace dish had its beginning in sambal tempe penyet from the East Javan city Surabaya where tempeh — fermented whole soybeans pressed into blocks — is fried and pressed into a plate of sambal. This is a favorite meal of Pak Wardoyo, the son of Puspo Wardoyo, the founder of Ayam Bakar Wong Solo restaurant chain, so he added it to their menu, and later Pak incorporated fried chicken to form a new dish called “ayam penyet” in 1992. The smashed chicken gradually grew in fame, spreading to the rest of the country, and even to nearby neighbors like Malaysia, Singapore, and now Vietnam.

From house party to restaurant

Having sampled some particularly memorable ayam penyet versions in Singapore, I often find myself daydreaming about sambal chicken and airy fried batter flakes. A spontaneous Google query during the lockdown in 2021 brought up Ayam Penyet Vindo, a casual upstart promising authentic fried chicken from their home base on Cống Quỳnh Street, which has since shuttered as the Vindo duo ventured outside the alley onto the streets of downtown District 1. As you make a turn from Điện Biên Phủ into Mạc Đĩnh Chi, it’s impossible to miss the bold red-and-yellow sign of Vindo. The restaurant’s dining area is sparse, with a small entrance furnished with a few table sets, and a cozy air-conditioned corner upstairs.

Vindo is open from 10am to 10pm.

Vindo is run by Lizam, a Malaysian, and Ricoh, an Indonesian, who had been close friends for years before they decided to dip their toes into the F&B world. Lizam, with salt-and-pepper hair and a warm demeanor, represents the cautious, measured half of the pair, while bespectacled Ricoh fills in the rest with an adventurous streak and knowledge of Indonesian cuisine.

Back in Malaysia, the two met in 2014 while working for the same rubber company: Lizam in marketing and Ricoh in a technical role, a dynamic that they said carried over into the restaurant’s genesis. The friends moved to Vietnam in 2016 and 2017, following a call for a foreign partnership from a Vietnamese rubber company. Working together in Vietnam, they once shared an apartment and sometimes would cook dishes from home; this was the setting for the first spark leading to Vindo. Being an Indonesian restaurant, Vindo’s original chicken recipe naturally came from Ricoh, though once they realized that this flavorsome chicken was something special, they worked together to perfect it into an easy-to-follow recipe for the kitchen staff.

Lizam and Ricoh, the owners, came to Vietnam in 2017 and 2016, respectively.

“One day, in the evening, I fried chicken, then he [Lizam] said he loved it so much. Then I suggested ‘how about we make ayam penyet?’” Ricoh recalls. He would make ayam penyet again for a Malaysian buddy, and slowly the tasty fried chicken gained a reputation among their Malaysian and Indonesian friends in Saigon. “They love the chicken so much, so people would call and say ‘Please come to my house and eat chicken together.’ They ask me to cook the chicken. I said ‘Oh my god, I cannot cook for you every day.’”

We pooled the money, got the place, and rented it. Do first, worry later.

Nonetheless, getting from “this is some delicious chicken, we should sell it” to opening an actual business is not a simple A-to-B journey. “We didn’t agree [on the decision to open the restaurant]. We spent a month or two playing devil’s advocate. He was ‘pro,’ I was ‘con,’” Lizam explains. “After a while, Ricoh said ‘let’s just rent a place and do it.’ So we pooled the money, got the place, and rented it. Do first, worry later.” It took them about a month to test the whole dish together to reach a final product that can appeal to most Saigoneers, meaning trying to temper the heat in the sambal so as not to blow people’s heads off with Indonesia-level spiciness.

A chicken by any other name

Clockwise: ayam panggang, ayam penyet, ayam kremes, gado-gado, and nasi goreng in the middle.

At Vindo, the menu is decidedly straightforward: the main attraction is chicken leg quarters done in various ways. The headliner, of course, is ayam penyet, a fried chicken leg gently smashed and slathered in a coat of bright, pungent sambal. Ayam panggang instead subjects the leg to open flame in a grill while rendang ayam is chicken that has been braised for hours in coconut milk and a host of aromatics. If one is tired of poultry, there’s also fried rice in the form of nasi goreng, and a sweet peanut salad in the form of gado-gado, both officially recognized as Indonesian national dishes. Each chicken plate arrives with rice, fried tofu, tempeh, and a dollop of sambal.

Nasi goreng.

Gado-gado.

Differentiating their fried chicken from the corner cơm gà in the eyes of eaters is a continuous concern for the pair, though, if the addition of sambal and native accouterments like tempeh is not enough to do that, the flavor of the chicken leg would surely suffice. Having been parboiled with spices before being fried, the chicken absorbs much of its surroundings to stand on its own, but the sambal topping really equips it with a powerful punch. Notes of galangal, turmeric, chili, and garlic seep into every bite, cutting the oily side of the frying. We enjoy the sambal so much that we have to order an extra bowl to smear on everything.

The flavorful chicken is enveloped in a layer of sambal.

A slice of tempeh.

According to Ricoh, every day he has to make three batches of fresh sambal, each with a different level of heat. If this was Indonesia, we likely would need just one — at the hottest level — but alas the sweet tooth of Saigoneers necessitates palatal coddling. I am guilty as charged, and I enjoy dipping my chicken into the Level 1 sambal a lot.

Vindo’s ayam penyet is just as delectable as my memory serves, but admittedly, it’s just No. 2 in my ranking of dishes here: the first position belongs to their rendang ayam. It’s a festive treat whose main method of imbuing flavors into the meat is by cooking it for hours and hours, as Lizam aptly puts in my favorite description of anything we sampled during our visit: “Rendang is like ‘Danggg, you don’t have rendang?’” Its existence is so natural in any self-proclaimed Indonesian eatery that people will bemoan its lack thereof. With every slight maneuver of my cutlery, the meat falls off the bone, deeply infused with a coconut-rich sauce that prompts me to demolish the entire portion of rice as quickly as it arrives.

Ayam kremes.

Ayam panggang.

There used to be a time when Vindo’s following was made up of nearly all Malaysians and Indonesians, but now, they tend to book takeaway orders rather than make time to dine in. On weekends, Indonesian households living in suburban Saigon or nearby localities visit the restaurant as a stop during a family outing, but during the weekday lunch rush, Vindo’s tables host groups of Japanese office workers, curious passersby, and even gaggles of young Vietnamese eager to sample new, exciting food.

“We are a halal restaurant. People always think halal is ‘no pork,’ but it’s actually much bigger than that, it’s about the cleanliness, method of preparation, and the animals being used. We want to portray that it’s not just for Muslims,” Lizam says. “When you put in effort, when the food is good, the people are happy. The love is there.”

To sum up:

Opening time: 10am–10pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: +84 366 891 668
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: ShopeeFood, Grab

Khôi loves chicken, is a raging millennial and will write for food.

Ayam Penyet Vindo

24 Điện Biên Phủ, Tân Định, HCMC

Dispatch From Udine: Vietnam's Cinema Reaches the World Stage While Rooted in Local Culture

2026-05-24T14:00:00+07:00

Vietnamese cinema experienced a watershed moment at the 28^th Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy.

Long recognized as a vital European hub for Asian film, the festival’s 2026 edition, which ran from April 24 to May 2, went beyond mere representation, turning into a platform where Vietnamese narratives commanded attention and critical acclaim. Four Vietnamese films were selected for screening: Leon Lê’s Quán Kỳ Nam (Ky Nam Inn), Hàm Trần’s Tử chiến trên không (Hijacked), Bùi Thạc Chuyên’s Địa đạo: Mặt trời trong bóng tối (Tunnels: Sun in the Dark) and Phan Gia Nhật Linh’s Đại tiệc trăng máu 8 (Blood Moon Rite 8).

The festival's reception confirmed a shift in momentum. Bùi Thạc Chuyên's Địa đạo won both the Mulberry Award for Best Screenplay and the Crystal Mulberry audience award, marking the first time a Vietnamese film has won even one award in the festival's history.

The success extended beyond the screen. Two ongoing film projects were selected for the Focus Asia in-production industry sidebar program: Dear Sơn An, directed by Bùi Kim Quy (produced by Varan, Vietnam, and A Company Film, Germany) in its All Genres Project Market 2026, and Chớp bóng (Picturehouse), directed by Nguyễn Võ Nghiêm Minh (produced by Girelle Production, France, East Films, Vietnam, Add Oil Films, Singapore, and Daluyong Studio, Philippines) for the Far East in Progress 2026 initiative.

Industry insiders at the festival noted that films finding audiences and projects securing international partnerships signal the transition of Vietnamese cinema from the margins to the global stage.

The more local we stay, the further we can travel

For decades, international perceptions of Vietnam were shaped by external narratives. As FEFF curator and consultant Nguyên Lê points out, the country was often reduced to a jungle backdrop or a conflict zone in American-led stories.

When it comes to defining or understanding Vietnamese cinema, there have historically been two approaches, Nguyên notes: “Any film about Vietnam is either a documentary or a film about the war that is told from an outsider perspective.” This means they are stories about Vietnamese but not told from a Vietnamese perspective.

Thus, what is happening now is a vital reclamation of perspective. Vietnamese filmmakers are reframing narratives from insider perspectives. Bùi Thạc Chuyên highlighted how even language reveals this divide: “In the US perspective, they call it the Vietnam War, but from the Vietnamese perspective, they call it the War against Americans. It is the first step to really show that this war is very complex. It's not only a conflict between nations and forces, but also between ideologies, and between the same Vietnamese who follow different factions.”

For Chuyên, whose research for Địa đạo spanned over a decade, storytelling is inseparable from personal exploration. “I don't really think of how I would tell the story or where the story can reach,” he explains. “Whenever I make a film, it's also a discovery. I'm discovering myself, and I'm discovering about the topic as well.”

Bùi Thạc Chuyên at the festival.

Phan Gia Nhật Linh sees this moment as a turning point in global awareness: “I think the world is telling so many stories, but they haven't heard a story from Vietnam yet. And for years, our story was told by Americans, Chinese, and Koreans. And now we have a new generation of filmmakers who can make really good films. So now we start telling our story, and the world can now hear our story.”

This search for authenticity is also echoed by filmmaker Leon Lê, who actively avoids the exoticization or fetishization that international markets sometimes demand. In Quán Kỳ Nam, he handles memory and the legacy of French colonialism in Saigon with artistic restraint, allowing the story’s context to unfold naturally rather than explaining it outright.

The shift towards representation and genre

One of the most striking aspects of contemporary Vietnamese cinema is its expanding range. Where earlier filmmakers often faced strict political and commercial limitations, today’s generation is experimenting more freely with form, genre, and subject matter.

The rise of horror and folklore-based storytelling is particularly significant. In the past, supernatural elements in Vietnamese films often had to be rationalized or explained. Now, filmmakers are embracing the mystical and the unknown as legitimate narrative tools. Local folklore, such as the figure of the Vietnamese vampire known as Phí Phông, is being reimagined for modern audiences. These stories differ markedly from western or even other Asian interpretations of similar themes, offering something distinctly Vietnamese while still appealing to global genre fans.

At the same time, representation within narratives is evolving. Traditional war films have often centered on male protagonists and action-driven plots. In contrast, newer works are increasingly foregrounding women as central figures. This shift reflects a broader recognition of women’s roles in Vietnam’s past and present, particularly in times of conflict and resilience. By reframing these perspectives, filmmakers are diversifying their stories and also challenging long-standing cinematic conventions.

Phan Gia Nhật Linh speaks to the audience.

Stylistically, the industry is becoming more versatile. From comedies like Đại tiệc trăng máu 8 to action-thrillers like Tử chiến trên không, Vietnamese cinema is no longer confined to a single identity. This diversity reflects both creative ambition and a growing understanding of audience expectations. Even when working with adapted material, Linh emphasizes localization, “I choose stories that haven’t been told in Vietnam before, and then I adapt them to fit our context. That’s why the industry is growing. It’s also why audiences are choosing Vietnamese films over foreign ones.”

Industry challenges and the path forward

Despite these achievements, the Vietnamese film industry remains in a state of flux. Rapid growth brings both opportunity and instability, and sustaining momentum requires more than creative success. “The Vietnamese film industry today is like a fireworks show. It looks spectacular from a distance, but once you get up close, there are things to consider. Because, as you know, just like in real life, standing right under the fireworks carries a risk of fire. It’s very unstable and fraught with danger,” says Nguyên Lê.

One of the most pressing challenges is infrastructure. While filmmakers are producing compelling work, the systems needed to support international distribution and promotion are still developing. Festivals like FEFF play a crucial role in bridging this gap, but long-term success will depend on building consistent pathways to global audiences.

Another challenge lies in defining the audience itself. As the industry becomes more vibrant and diverse, questions arise about who these films are ultimately for. Domestic viewers have different expectations than international ones, and balancing these perspectives is not always straightforward. There is a risk that in trying to appeal to global markets, films might lose the very specificity that makes them unique.

Yet many filmmakers see this as a false dilemma. The emerging consensus is that authenticity is the key. Stories that remain grounded in local culture, language, and experience are precisely what attract global audiences seeking something new. As filmmakers continue to explore their own histories, experiment with new forms, and connect with audiences both at home and abroad, they are reshaping not only how Vietnam is represented on screen, but also how it participates in the global cinematic conversation.

The success at the 28^th Far East Film Festival is a signal. Vietnamese cinema is finding its voice, and the world is beginning to listen.

Photos courtesy of Far East Film Festival.

Short Story Collection 'Gills' Pieces Together a Raw and Complex Portrait of Saigon

2026-05-22T09:00:00+07:00

Saigon’s landscape looks dramatically different from how it did three or even two decades ago. As the country’s economic powerhouse, Saigon has seen rapid urban development: new highrises like Landmark 81 and the Bitexco Financial Tower that now define the city’s skyline, new urban infrastructure like the Ba Son Bridge and Saigon’s first metro line, as well as the city’s expansion into areas like District 7’s Phú Mỹ Hưng and District 2’s Thủ Thiêm. If the west has long viewed Saigon under the shadow of war, it is clear that such a rigid frame fails to contain the Saigon of today, whose entropic inner life seems to constantly overflow; with motorbikes onto sidewalks, loud honks through windows, and rainpour over Saigon’s riverbeds.

Tuan Phan’s newly published short story collection Gills: and Other Stories primarily takes place in the backdrop of this Saigon. A set of 10 short stories written in unassuming and measured prose, it is his second book following his memoir Remembering Water, where he, as an adult who returns to live in Saigon, reflects upon his childhood departure from Vietnam as a refugee and his family’s subsequent returns.

Tuan Phan. Image via author website.

In line with the themes of his first book, a significant chunk of Gills center the lives of Việt Kiều. Such stories dwell in the space of the in-between and serve to capture the brushing encounters between those who have left and stayed, between memory and reality, past and present, strangers and family.

In the opening story ‘At the Bánh Mì Stand,’ the owner of a bánh mì stall named Khanh converses with a hungry and jetlagged Việt Kiều who has just arrived in the hours before early dawn after a long flight. His second story, ‘The Việt Kiều Casanova,’ also features a Việt Kiều, though this time a vulgar womanizer who visits the same gift shop every week with a different girl. In ‘Short-Term Rental’ — the only story to take place outside of Vietnam — a Vietnamese American teenage boy visits his father in Houston over the holidays, where he navigates the fractures left by his parents’ separation, as well as the increasing disillusionment with the American dream. And in ‘Photographs,’ narrated in the second person, a Việt Kiều visits her aunt who repeats stories behind photographs she has kept of him and his father, who, in his last visit, told the same stories “almost word for word.”

As is perhaps clearest in this last story, there is a certain kind of nausea to many of these moments, where a spiraling abyss opens up between worlds that reveal their distance precisely via their proximity. Yet, in others, one feels surprisingly comforted by the fact that the misunderstood, wandering gaze across such seemingly irreparable gaps is, at the very least, returned.

It would be a mistake to define Gills as solely a meditation on the experience of the Vietnamese diaspora, for the focus of the greater part of the collection lies elsewhere: namely, the class-ridden social fabric of Saigon.

It would be a mistake, however, to define Gills as solely a meditation on the experience of the Vietnamese diaspora, for the focus of the greater part of the collection lies elsewhere: namely, the class-ridden social fabric of Saigon. The stories that depict this occur in the overlooked folds of Saigon’s socioeconomic order. In ‘A Clean Record,’ for instance, we see the struggles of an elderly man navigating a system of openly corrupt, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, seeking to acquire appropriate paperwork in order to begin driving for Grab. If the old man represents the economically precarious in Saigon — who live in informal, “illegal” homes, who make a living by working in a gig economy characterized by low pay, unstable income, and harsh working conditions — other stories offer glimpses into the other end of Saigon’s socioeconomic order. ‘Selling Sài Gòn,’ for instance, tells the story of Trang, a luxury apartment realtor dating a moneyed yet unambitious boyfriend, who has to navigate the murky waters of having to close a deal with a famous celebrity client named Liêm, who is clearly bent on using his leverage to get with her. In bringing together stories set in widely different settings across Saigon’s socioeconomic strata, Gills offers a damning portrait of Saigon’s class hierarchies in which multiple realities, each absurd in their own ways, co-exist with one another in unsettling and maddening ways.

Nowhere is this more viscerally rendered than in ‘Reusables,’ the most dramatic and gripping of Tuan’s stories. Set during the COVID-19 pandemic, it tells the story of Lâm, a recycler in need of money to treat his dog, who has accidentally swallowed something he shouldn't have from a pile of junk in District 7. Upon being persuaded by his friend Tèo, together they embark on “find[ing] new owners for” (Tèo’s euphemism for stealing) condenser units sitting idle by a BMW dealership in “Korea Town” — a plan that turns south upon being confronted by a celebrity named Liêm (presumably the same character from ‘Selling Sài Gòn’), who, it turns out, had previously been mired in controversy for ripping off flood victims. Indeed, there is something quite bizarre about the whole scene, where we find Lâm’s economic despair juxtaposed against the eerie tranquility of the neighborhood that is arguably Saigon’s most affluent. It is here that Tuan becomes most explicit with his critique of the class-stratified order of contemporary Vietnam:

The fact was, and the fact always was . . . in this long pandemic, it’ll be the already rich bosses, the ones that run dealerships, the ones that get kickbacks and bribe money for construction projects needing their signatures to begin, the ones that buy BMWs for their kids to wreck, that’ll not only survive this lockdown but get even richer. [...] And it’ll still be the little people like me and Tèo, the grandmothers selling grilled corncobs on the street or the homeless kids hawking lottery tickets, that get fucked. Every fucking year. Forever into infinity.

In a well-known passage from his Theses on the Philosophy of History, the German philosopher Walter Benjamin critiques the ugly underbelly of what we call progress. In offering a reading of Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, a monoprint of an eccentric angel figure, Benjamin reimagines Klee’s angel to be “the angel of history,” who, though desperate to gather and restore history’s wreckage piling before him, is helplessly swept forward by the ceaseless “storm of progress.” The story of Lâm is the story of those who have been left behind by a vision for progress that is as idyllic as the picturesque scenery of Phú Mỹ Hưng — for Lâm too stands before history’s ever-piling wreckage — except that he, unlike Benjamin's angel of history, has to sift through it for reusable scraps.

The book cover

Tuan’s collection takes its title from one of its stories, ‘Gills,’ which stands out from the rest as the only magical realist piece. It tells the story of two siblings, Liên and Tú — children of a loving mother and a crass, abusive father — who one day discover gills just below their ankles after the water recedes from flooded streets. In this engrossing reimagination of Saigon's monsoon season, the two children revel in their ability to swim through the city during its submersion under rainwaters — that is, until their father finds out and eventually devises a way to exploit their peculiarity.

Reading ‘Gills,’ one cannot help but contextualize the story within the planet’s ever-worsening ecological crisis, especially given that with it, extreme flooding will only become more common. Yet, it is unclear what exactly is to be the takeaway from the story (which of course is not in and of itself a problem). In an interview with Texas Tech University Press, Tuan describes ‘Gills’ as a “hopeful story,” a yearning for the younger generations to “have the capacity to be resilient.” Here, however, I find it difficult to agree with the author, for hope and optimism seem naive in the face of the global capitalist economy’s unwaning consumption of fossil fuels. Resilience implies coping, and coping implies that we have no choice but to accept the ecological crisis — and that, we cannot accept.

What opens as a fleeting snippet of an interaction by a bánh mì stall at early dawn expands, story by story, and slowly crystallizes into an intricate and dynamic portrait of contemporary Saigon.

I thus find that the most compelling reading of ‘Gills’ is not as an allegory of the environment, but rather as a kind of literalization of the different and uneven ways that the residents of Saigon move and breathe through the city and its spaces. It is a theme that runs through the broader collection, which is perhaps why I find ‘Gills’ an oddly wonderful title for the book. ‘A Clean Record,’ for instance, ends with the elderly man stuck in traffic, suffocating in the heat and diesel exhaust. In ‘Reusables,’ Lâm walks his dog through a lusciously green golf course in District 7, which he is able to access only because of the lockdown. In ‘Selling Sài Gòn,’ Trang moves through a world of luxury apartments that literally exists in a different atmosphere, skyhigh above the rest of the city. In many ways, Gills makes obvious what we all intuitively understand: that what we singularly call “place” is in no way singular, but rather a pluralistic formation of different material and phenomenological spheres — a beautiful thing, no doubt, were its contours not drawn so brutally by class.

In many ways, Gills: and Other Stories reads like an exercise in world-building. What opens as a fleeting snippet of an interaction by a bánh mì stall at early dawn expands, story by story, and slowly crystallizes into an intricate and dynamic portrait of contemporary Saigon, within which different smaller worlds recursively overlap, collide, and coalesce. In this sense, there is something special about reading the collection in Saigon, where the reader may find themself subsumed into exactly such a confluence of worlds — specifically, of the text in front and the world around.

Against a backdrop of Vietnamese diasporic literature that often overlooks the complexities of modern-day Saigon, Gills feels like a breath of fresh air.

Copies of Gills will arrive in Vietnam eventually, while people outside of Vietnam can order from Texas Tech Press directly as well as find the audiobook version on Amazon and Bookshop.

Whale Worship: Exploring the Role of Whales in Vietnam's Coastal Lore

2026-05-22T08:00:00+07:00

In 1799, the ferocious Tây Sơn army forced the first Nguyễn Emperor, Nguyễn Ánh, and his troops to flee to the sea. While making their escape, a great storm engulfed the retreating army. As their ship’s mast shivered and the hull shuddered, threatening to break it into splinters, a great whale rose from the depths. It lifted the emperor's boat and carried him and his men to safety. To thank the animal, Ánh bestowed upon whales the official title of "Nam Hải Cự Tộc Ngọc Lân Thượng Đẳng Thần," which was shortened to Cá Ông, or “Lord Fish.”

This story, apocryphal as it may be, is not the only such tale of cetacean rescue in Vietnam. Indeed, people up and down the country's coast tell modern-day stories of whales saving stranded fisherman. Mùi, the caretaker of a whale graveyard in Phước Hải Village near Vũng Tàu, for example, told me through an interpreter of a time in 2016 when a whale saved his life. He had been out drinking with a friend and on his trip home, their boat capsized. As the waves pushed him beneath the surface, he thought he was about to die. Suddenly, a large whale appeared under him and supported him on its broad back, shifting and rolling as Mùi lolled and floundered in the current. When eventually the whale steered the elderly man to the safety of another ship, it came as no surprise to Mùi, as he is a devout worshiper of Cá Ông.

A painting featured in Vũng Tàu's whale temple.

The silent guardians of the ocean

I first learned about Vietnam’s whale worship tradition thanks to a single-sentence caption on a photograph that had been entered in a national art contest. I’ve always been enamored with these ancient, intelligent and spectacularly foreign creatures and was curious to learn more about a religion devoted to them. Some of my friends who are native Saigoneers said they were vaguely aware of it, but didn’t know the particulars nor anyone that actually practiced it. The internet offered some information, but to get a better understanding, I needed to venture to the sea.

I traveled about 20 kilometers from Vũng Tàu through a small town and down a construction-ravaged coastal road to a stretch of sand near the sea. After passing beneath a welcome banner, I arrived at a large sand field dotted with mounds topped by tombstones. This rather remote spot is a whale graveyard, one of dozens in the country.

A woman arranging offerings in the whale graveyard in Phước Hải Village.

A woman — who was placing flowers, fresh fruit, glasses of rice wine and lit incense at each grave — paused to talk with me. She explained that she comes from a family of fisherman, and leaving offerings at the graves of the Ông lụy (whales that have washed ashore) and praying to Cá Ông at the site’s temple help to ensure prosperous catches. The fishermen usually work far out in the open ocean in international waters near foreign coasts, so giving offerings also helps to ensure safe journeys.

Mùi, the old fisherman who was rescued by a whale, has managed this graveyard for the past seven years and explained that whales don’t just physically intervene to safeguard against drowning. He recounted an instance of local fishermen working illegally in Indonesian waters. Foreign authorities had appeared in the area and the men were certain they’d be arrested. They shut off their lights and began frantically praying to Cá Ông. Miraculously, they evaded capture and continued on to a very lucrative catch. Mùi stressed that while whales were instrumental in defeating Chinese invaders centuries ago, they are not nationalistic. Rather, they will rescue anyone in need. For example, Mùi recently heard a story about a whale saving an American ship and bringing it to Russian shores. He also added that praying to Cá Ông can bring one good health and luck in finding a husband or wife.

Cá Ông as mortal beings

During her extensive research on whale worship in central Vietnam, scholar Sandra Lantz encountered numerous tales similar to the ones that Mùi shared. For example, around 1950, a man named Ly was fishing outside Phan Thiết when an unexpected storm threw his small ship into peril. He quickly began praying to Cá Ông and sprinkled salt and rice into the water as an offering. Within five minutes, the storm retreated, hovering ominously nearby. A whale then came to his boat and shepherded it to within sight of a nearby mountain and safe anchoring.

Lantz also found in her studies a belief that Cá Ông helps fishermen who perish at sea by returning their souls to shore. If the men’s souls can't make it to land, they will forever wander the open ocean as ghosts, but once brought ashore they can attain eternal peace.

Science offers an alternative to acts that are interpreted as instances of cetacean altruism. During storms, whales face difficulties navigating waves and benefit from leaning against boats, using them as steadying fulcrums. Even with the assistance, sometimes the efforts to stay afloat exhaust the animals to the point of death, upon which currents drag their corpses into the shallows. Similarly, whales will often fight predators not out of any devotion to people, but out of instincts to protect their own young.

The Phước Hải graveyard is home to more than two dozen mounds of varying sizes, each containing the body of a whale that has washed ashore near the tiny village. Each year, as many as 20 whales end up on the beach in the area. In whale worship, there is no specific distinction made between whales and other cetaceans such as dolphins and porpoises, and there have been virtually no scientific studies in Vietnam to ascertain which marine animals live in the area. Most of the animals villagers find are rather small — up to 1.5 meters in length — according to the woman I spoke with, so it’s likely that many of them are not technically whales. Moreover, there was at least one tortoise buried in the graveyard, brought in seemingly out of reverence, though not specifically associated with the religion.

A large burial mound in Phước Hải Village whale graveyard.

One grave in Phước Hải stands out from the rest. An enormous whale washed ashore on December 28, 2017. Mùi claims it was more than 10 meters long, while the woman giving offerings estimated it was closer to 7 or 8 meters. As far as anyone can remember, the 10-ton creature was the largest to have ever arrived in the village, and required a crane to bring it to its current resting place. Similarly sized whales have recently appeared on beaches in other areas of Vietnam as well.

Mùi explained that during its long life, that particular whale had saved many ships throughout the area, not just in Vietnam, but in Thailand, Myanmar and even Russia. However, after it failed to save an overloaded ship during a large storm, it committed suicide. Intentional beaching is, sadly, how Mùi claims the whales find themselves on the village’s shores. Having been unsuccessful in an attempt to rescue a human, they commit suicide out of shame or grief, according to lore.

Alter dedicated to Cá Ông at the Phước Hải Village whale graveyard.

Ông lụy are given elaborate funerals typically reserved for humans. People play drums and offer various fruits, meats, liquor, ghost money and flowers. Lantz notes in her research that Ông lụy are placed in bamboo coffins lined with red paper. Before being interred, the coffin is paraded through the streets so people can offer their respects. Whales have even been rumored to visit harbors during these funeral ceremonies to give a final send-off to their deceased brethren. If a whale is too large to move to the graveyard, and a crane is not available, some villages will elect a guardian to watch over the Ông lụy until the meat has rotted off its bones and can be more easily transported.

According to some believers, the first person to find an Ông lụy is bestowed with great luck, but only the elderly should bury one, because a human soul that the whale may have brought ashore might still be restless and seek to inhabit a young body. Each grave is marked with a tombstone that lists the date of burial for a given whale, as well as the boat or person that originally discovered it.

Cá Ông altar in Phước Hải.

Ông lụy remain buried for three years, a period during which locals like the one I met tend to their graves: replacing offerings and saying prayers. Much like humans, the whales receive anniversary ceremonies 49 and 100 days after their initial burials. Once three years have passed, the bones are dug up and meticulously cleaned. Unlike Vietnamese people’s disinterred remains, which are sometimes kept in the homes of family members, the whale bones are transported to nearby temples, called Lăng Ông, that are specifically reserved for whale worship.

Altar base filled with cetacean bones.

Whale mausoleums

I visited the Lăng Ông in Phước Hải, which rests in the middle of the village just a few blocks from the whale graveyard. In one small room, an altar dedicated to Cá Ông festooned with flowers and incense contains two elaborately carved whale statues and the fully articulated skeleton of an undetermined cetacean. A scrum of bones, including at least a dozen intact skulls, fill the altar’s hollow, windowed base. In addition to the altar room, an impressive multi-room structure serves as a community gathering site as well as a place for whale worshipers to pay their respects. A large platform in the center elevates a huge, freshly painted wooden whale statue.

Entrance to the Vũng Tàu temple dedicated to Cá Ông.

The temple is not dissimilar to many located on coasts throughout the country, including one in the middle of Vũng Tàu itself that I also visited. According to its management board documents, the temple was built in 1824, while emperors Thiệu Trị and Tự Đức provided for it with three dynastic investiture decrees in 1845, 1846 and 1850. In addition to two glass cabinets impressively crammed with large whale bones, it also houses an enormous, almost fully articulated whale skeleton and a huge wooden whale sculpture. Several paintings depict whales blurring the boundary between myth and biology.

Thứ Hải, a monk at the Vũng Tàu whale temple.

Thứ Hải, the resident monk at the Vũng Tàu Lăng Ông for the past 20 to 30 years, explained to me that everyone in the area knows the power of Cá Ông and comes here to pay their respects and ask for prosperity. I talked to him beside a wall covered in aging photographs. The sepia snapshots offered glimpses of whale funerals and festivities going back decades.

In addition to the elaborate funerals, whale worshipers hold annual festivals to honor the marine mammals. The three-day events, which take place on different dates in different villages according to the lunar calendar, feature offerings, prayers, boat races, music and, in some cases, theatrical performances. Different communities celebrate in slightly different ways, but each allows citizens to pay their respects to Cá Ông, pray for loved ones lost at sea, and take a break from normal work schedules. People often wear their finest traditional clothing, decorate their boats and place colorful banners and flags around the city.

Like followers of most other religions, whale worshipers believe in a variety of superstitions. Lantz claims many adherents follow dietary restrictions that forbid the eating of Cá Ông’s assistants — swordfish, shrimp, sucking-fish and giant squid — as well as dog meat, because dogs frighten whales. Similarly, fisherman should not wear jewelry made of claws or teeth as those objects would scare a whale attempting a rescue. If a woman enters a Lăng Ông while menstruating, some believe whales may not save her family’s boats.

At Phước Hải Village whale graveyard manager Mùi (left) and his friend Ngọc (right).

I asked Mùi about the particular dietary restrictions and he compared them to Buddhist practices of only eating vegetarian food on certain days of the lunar calendar — some believers choose to follow this, and others don’t, with room for personal interpretations. He did add, however, that people are careful not to offer chickens to Cá Ông. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but theorized it dates back to ancient times when the calling of a rooster signaled people to venture into the fields, which left their villages vulnerable to invasion. Hải, the Vũng Tàu monk, downplayed the idea of forbidden foods or offering requirements at his temple, claiming that whale reverence comes with no such demands.

Whale worship vs. whale protection

The origin of Vietnam’s whale worship remains unknown. Some scholars have proposed it was introduced in the area by 4^th century seafaring Chăm and 10^th century Khmer people in southern Vietnam. Hindu animist beliefs which influenced early Chăm religions may have helped elevate whales to the status of gods in coastal areas.

Buddhism also offers an explanation. According to one legend, upon witnessing the plight of poor fishermen who were dependant on the tempest-plagued South Sea, Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva tore her cassock into pieces and threw them across the ocean. Each piece turned into a whale tasked with rescuing distressed fishermen. Upon noticing that the newly created creatures were rather small and unable to withstand severe storms, the Avalokiteshvara gathered elephant bones from the forest and gave them to the whales. This made them strong enough to complete their duties, and also gave them their Vietnamese name, cá voi — literally: elephant fish.

If whale worship’s past is unclear, its future is equally uncertain. As younger generations move from fishing villages to large cities and abandon their ancestors’ trade, there are concerns that they will also abandon the religion. Additionally, the radical development of Vietnam’s coasts thanks to roads, housing and tourism projects threatens the very structures that support this tradition. Moreover, climate change is shifting local tides and making the graveyards more difficult to bring whales to.

Whale spinal bones at Phước Hải Lăng Ông.

Mùi, for his part, disagreed that cultural and socioeconomic changes could result in the demise of whale worship. He explained that people here are proud of the practice, and even if they are no longer fishing in the village, they learn how to properly honor Cá Ông from their parents, who learned it from theirs and presumably will pass it on to future generations. Hải echoed this belief and professed to not having witnessed any decline in worshipers in the Vũng Tàu temple. Still, it’s hard to imagine the fervor or dedication of current practitioners withstanding generations divorced from ever seeing, let alone being saved by, whales.

While pre-Đổi Mới policies resulted in the shuttering and destruction of some whale temples, Vietnam's leaders have recently taken steps to ensure this unique practice continues. For example, in 2013, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism recognized the whale festival in Cần Giờ District outside of Saigon as an example of intangible cultural heritage at a national level. Twelve regional festivals in Đà Nẵng received similar recognition in 2016. Perhaps out of respect for the locals’ beliefs, or for its potential as a tourist attraction, Quảng Ngãi Province’s Lý Sơn District has plans to restore a 24-meter-long, 300-year-old whale skeleton and exhibition center with an investment of VND10 billion (US$437,000).

Whale skeleton displayed in Vũng Tàu.

It is easy to romanticize an obscure ancient beliefs and apply modern or idealist values to them. It would be nice to categorize whale worship as a form of nature worship committed to the plight of cetacean species and the biological health of the seas. Nothing, however, suggests its adherents are concerned with, or even aware of, the cataclysmic decline of global whale and fish populations, let alone solving the problem. Mùi claims he has not witnessed a change in the number of whales that wash ashore or a decline in fishing productivity, but his anecdotal observations are hardly definitive, especially in the face of mounting outside evidence. While governments around the world have established hunting moratoriums for many whale species, which has led to minimal increases in populations, their numbers remain decimated thanks to the massive whaling industries of previous centuries.

Perhaps more troubling is the reality that whales, dolphins and porpoises die as a result of the very activities humans request their assistance with. Cetaceans hunt the same fish that people are after, so many of the whales that wash ashore have not, in fact, committed suicide, but instead drowned at sea after becoming tangled in nets.

As I sat sharing shots of rice wine with Mùi, I couldn’t help but be conflicted over whale worship. On the one hand, as a great admirer of whales, I too profess a deep and profound respect for the incredibly intelligent and emotionally astute animals and consider them worthy of our time and offerings. But does the religion not also encourage human’s anthropocentric inclinations at the expense of the natural world? Can a person profess to love and honor a creature while doing nothing to protect it? Should we really want these majestic creatures to kill themselves as acts of penance for not rescuing us? Eight billion humans inhabit this planet, but how many whales remain?

Ultimately, it is not my place to say. After speaking with Mùi, I visited Cá Ông’s altar and lifted a strand of incense while praying for the survival of the whales, a prosperous future for the village, and my own private successes — aspirations that don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The joss stick’s smoke wafted apart in the air, like a whale song echoing into silence as it navigates up from the murky depths.

This article was originally published in 2018.

Opinion: Electric Vehicles Are Southeast Asia's Way out Amid the Global Fossil Fuel Crisis

2026-05-21T14:00:00+07:00

As the Iran war crunches global energy supplies and disrupts prices, Southeast Asian leaders may need to diversify oil and gas supplies in order to protect ordinary people.

However, they must also look beyond short-term remedies and seek to get their countries off the fossil fuel rollercoaster. As well as building out renewable energy generation and modernising the grid so it can handle the new power, the region should be more prudent about importing gas and turbocharge electric vehicle (EV) adoption.

Road transport is a key driver of oil demand in the region, and gas is a core part of several countries’ power supply. The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is disrupting roughly one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows. Of the gas exported through the strait last year, 90% was destined for Asia.

Southeast Asia has been a net importer of oil for over two decades. With its population growing, the region’s meeting of its demand continues to rely on a 1990s model: more car and fuel subsidies; more imported cooking fuels; and a continued push to build even more gas power capacity. Yet its oil and gas production has been decreasing.

Indonesia’s oil production peaked in the 1990s, and it now imports 60% of its needs while spending tens of billions of dollars annually on fuel and electricity subsidies to keep prices stable for households. Thailand’s gas production has been declining since the mid-2010s, yet it still generates about 65% of its power from the fuel; and, in 2023, it imported nearly half of its gas supply, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Though the region as a whole has been pushing to produce more gas, largely via drilling, the implication is clear: however quickly countries try to ramp up production, demand on its current trajectory will continue to far outpace supply growth. Southeast Asia is on track to become a net gas importer.

To secure its energy future, the region needs to accelerate the electrification of its transport sector via EV adoption and strengthen its clean energy development, opening a credible path towards energy self-sufficiency.

The impact of EV adoption

People often dismiss the benefits of EV adoption when fossil fuels’ share in the energy mix is still high. But there is another pathway: electrify and open up possibilities of powering the sector through green energy. Even when powered by a fossil-fuel-heavy grid, EVs produce less emissions over the vehicle’s lifetime than conventional cars by avoiding tailpipe emissions once on the road, eventually reaching a “breakeven” point, as research by BloombergNEF has shown.

More importantly, increased EV adoption enables the region to decouple from fossil fuels as the grid cleans up, while gasoline and diesel vehicles offer no comparable exit path. Clean electricity creates a route to both lower emissions and greater energy self-sufficiency.

In 2025, 2.3 million barrels of daily oil use were avoided through the global EV fleet, BloombergNEF estimates. This represents a mere 2% of global oil demand, but is a clear signal of an alternative path.

China chose the EV route partly to reduce its reliance on oil imports, which account for around 70% of its needs. That strategy is estimated to have yielded results amid the Gulf energy crisis. For Southeast Asian countries to do the same, its governments need to increase public and political support for greater EV adoption. They should do this by working with electric automakers to boost EV manufacturing and create local jobs, as well as by establishing charging infrastructure.

Gas as a stable transition fuel?

With Asian LNG prices remaining highly volatile amid the global energy crisis, the narrative of gas as a stable transition fuel is beginning to unravel. The crisis has exposed the risks of rapidly expanding gas’s share in Southeast Asia’s power mix.

Gas has been widely promoted as a stopgap measure to achieve the region’s aims of reducing its coal dependence and CO₂ emissions while it grows its renewable power. Research by the Energy Shift Institute, where I work, shows that many Asian governments count gas as part of sustainable investments. But though gas combustion does result in less emission than coal, when leakage occurs in its value chain it is 80 times more potent as a climate heater than CO₂.

There is also the premium on imported LNG from distant suppliers, which is significantly more expensive than domestically produced piped gas.

Gas is far harder than oil to stockpile, making it riskier for import-dependent economies. This vulnerability was evident during the 2022 energy crisis brought on by the war in Ukraine, when LNG prices surged and cargoes originally bound for Pakistan were diverted to Europe as traders sought to capitalise on higher prices. Similar episodes are likely to recur in future supply shocks.

There will be a place to develop some local resources and stockpiles. As with oil, gas will continue to have a role to play as an energy and industrial material input, particularly in industries with limited alternative technologies, such as fertiliser.

China can again be looked to as an example, with an 8% gas share in its total energy supply in 2023, nearly 40% of which was imported. This, combined with its rapid renewables growth, reveals a clear underlying logic: limit exposure to imported energy while reserving gas for purposes that critically need it.

Continuing to rely on gas imports threatens to lock Southeast Asia into the same vulnerability it is only beginning to reckon with on the oil front.

Its governments and utilities routinely cite high upfront costs as a barrier to building renewables and modernising grids, yet sign long-term LNG import contracts without similar scrutiny. They are also burning through cash during the Gulf crisis: Malaysia’s bill for subsidies to stabilise retail fuel prices for consumers has shot up by over ten times. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s fuel subsidies to keep prices affordable for households and motorists are estimated to cost the state IDR6.7 trillion (US$387 million) per US dollar increase in the price of oil. This raises the urgent question of how budgets can best be deployed to secure energy supply for the region.

Short-term fixes during crises are crucial, but true leadership in establishing a secure energy supply requires long-term visionary goals. Competing government budgetary priorities and the need to secure immediate energy supplies understandably pull attention toward familiar remedies such as diversifying oil and gas suppliers and creating more emergency stockpiles.

But in energy, there are no quick fixes; the key is in pursuing a steady direction. Southeast Asia has yet to fully explore exit routes that can reduce its exposure to oil and gas supply shocks. The 1970s oil crisis sparked the emergence of renewables, and the current crisis may prove equally defining for the world’s energy systems.

Clean energy deployment must be accelerated. The transition will take time, but the starting point is clear: governments need to electrify as much as possible before the next crisis peeks its head around the corner.

Top photo: Electric cars at a charging station in Bali, Indonesia. Photo by Carrot via Alamy.

Putra Adhiguna is the managing director of Energy Shift Institute, an Asia-focused energy finance thinktank.

This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth and was republished with permission. Read the original article on Dialogue Earth here.

A Special 'Doraemon' Episode Taking Place in Vietnam Will Be Released in May

2026-05-19T11:00:00+07:00

After decades of watching Doraemon and his close friend groups adventure to all sorts of strange lands from the deepest trenches on Earth to fantastical planets, fans of the beloved cat robot in Vietnam will finally see our country in the cartoon series.

Japanese television station TV Asahi announced earlier this month that a special episode of the long-enduring children’s series Doraemon will take place in Vietnam, the third foreign location the characters have traveled to after Thailand and Spain.

The premise of the Vietnam episode, titled ‘The Gift Is a Trip to Vietnam,’ revolves around Shizuka’s birthday celebration in May. After she expresses interest in visiting Vietnam, Nobita, as usual, asks for Doraemon’s help to make the trip happen as a birthday gift to her. The plan is derailed once they discover that their go-to instant travel gadget, Anywhere Door, is broken.

The Vietnam adventure will take place anyway, if the episode trailer is any indication, as many iconic destinations and landmarks in Vietnam are shown: the Saigon Post Office, Hội An Ancient Town, the Dragon Bridge in Đà Nẵng, Hạ Long Bay, and more. Dressed in áo dài and wearing nón lá, the characters will need to enlist the help of Translation Konjac, which comes in the form of Translation Bánh Mì, to communicate in the Vietnamese language with locals.

The episode is scheduled to be broadcast on TV Asahi on Saturday, May 23 in Japanese. According to Tuổi Trẻ, it will be available for watchers in Vietnam via the PopKids YouTube page, but an official premiere has not been announced at the time of writing.

Have a look at some screenshots from the trailer below:

Images of the trailer via Facebook page Mon Fansub.

Ngõ Nooks: At Bún Bò Huế Thu Thùy, a Broth That Bridges Hanoi Taste and Huế Flair

2026-05-18T13:00:00+07:00

In only three places have I enjoyed truly sumptuous bowls of bún bò giò heo: in its hometown of Huế, in Hội An and at Bún Bò Huế Thu Thùy in Hanoi.

I still remember how difficult it was to try and find bún bò giò heo in the capital after being spoiled by the meal’s true richness in central Vietnam. It always came down to one thing. In Huế, the broth derives its complexity from boiled bones, trotters and mắm ruốc (Huế-style shrimp paste), before being infused with lemongrass, chilies and cashew powder.

Hanoi’s version just seems watery and thin; in comparison, it was an apparition of flavor. Until I realized — that’s how Hanoians like it! It is common knowledge among Vietnamese that northerners prefer subtle tastes, while in the center and south it’s rich and well-seasoned nourishment that fits the palate.

Thankfully, Bún Bò Huế Thu Thùy achieves a middle ground between the two by adapting their recipe to cater not only to Hanoians, but also those searching for a more authentic Huế style, like myself. Though their broth is clear and light and contains pineapple — something that would make my friends in Huế turn their noses up — the richness of the soup remains. Thùy, who owns the shop, is a Huế native and said she achieved the dish’s complexity through prolonged simmering of the bones. What’s more, all the shop’s condiments — mắm ruốc, chilli sauce, shallot vinegar — are shipped in directly from her hometown.

A complete bowl here is topped with thinly-sliced beef, tendon, a firm block of coagulated pig’s blood, a small pig trotter and a knob of chả cua (pork and crab ball). Thuy’s customers rave about the chả cua, to the extent that she fetches more from Huế a couple of times a week in order to keep them fresh. She’s also meticulous with her meat — the beef is always well-marbled and tender. And while I’ve munched on beef loin, brisket and meaty tendons elsewhere, I’ve actually never tried the cut served at Bún Bò Huế Thu Thùy: scrumptious and juicy beef cheeks.

In addition to bún bò giò heo, Thùy also serves bánh bột lọc and bánh nậm — two of the most popular dishes in Huế cuisine. Wrapped in banana leaves and then steamed, the former is pudgy, transparent and chewy, with savory shrimp pork fat inside, while the latter is flat, soft, and topped with minced meat and scallions. Although they aren't available every time I order, they are always fresh, and always my favorite.

To sum up:

Opening time: 7:30am–9:30pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: 098 697 3578
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: Be

This article was originally published in 2018 on Urbanist Hanoi.

Bún Bò Huế Thu Thùy

18 Đại Cồ Việt Street, Hai Bà Trưng District, Hanoi