Staying in a local neighborhood means surrounding yourself with the sights, styles, routines, traditions, and history of a locale. Hotel Indigo Saigon The City, a new boutique lifestyle hotel, tells the stories of the iconic Ba Son area via its details, decor, atmosphere, and experiences, so checking in feels like taking part in a celebration of the city.

Entering the Alleyways

A towering stack of vintage suitcases atop a classic bike at reception greets you upon arrival. Tucked behind this “Bags of Burden” installation are two public computer desks meticulously designed to resemble street barber chairs. This serves as the perfect introduction to how Hotel Indigo Saigon The City infuses iconic elements of the city into every nook and corner of your stay.

Past the reception, a hẻm runs past the lounge area. An intrinsic element of urban activity, the recreated alleyway provides guests an opportunity to relish in the cramped lanes that thrum with activity throughout the city. Sipping an iced coffee made with robusta beans and sweetened condensed milk prepared with a “phin” filter while sitting on a small chair invites guests to the quintessential Saigon pastime of hanging out. The scene is imagined so faithfully in the outdoor veranda that you wouldn’t be surprised if a mobile laminator were to move their cart through the small lane.

Saigon culture plays out primarily on the pavement as understood via the lobby’s homages to sidewalk vendors. Moreover, walking to the elevator to access your room feels like moving through the streets to go home. A vintage Phoenix bicycle rests against the wall beneath modernist light bulbs that resemble streetlights. To enter the elevator, you must pass the decorative folding steel door gate that accompanies a subtle clank of collapsing metal hinges: one of the city’s most charmingly recognizable sounds. Inside, the walls are covered with the familiar scrawl of phone numbers announcing homes for sale and services on offer. Finally, the hallway to your room is awash in color, with reds, yellows, greens, and blues conveying the city’s eclectic use of bright hues. Beside each door, the room number is presented as a mailbox, calling to mind the importance of the city’s Central Post Office and the larger legacy of colonial architecture.

The Familiarity of a Saigon Home

Hotel Indigo Saigon The City’s rooms aim to give you the feel of staying at a local home while providing the international standards the global chain is known for. Accomplishing this balance involves authentic design details, materials, and motifs alongside modern amenities.

A characteristic element of a Saigon dwelling awaits in every corner of the rooms. From floor carpeting styled after buildings’ classic ceramic tiles to wicker and rattan furniture to the dishes of nostalgic street snacks, including pig's ear cookies and dried fruit awaiting alongside a vintage garde-manger minibar, the habits and surroundings of an urban family are presented effortlessly. While the room provides a peaceful bit of serenity, the city beyond makes itself known as well via lightbulbs inspired by a hẻm’s tangle of exposed wiring as depicted on the mural behind the bed. Some of the rooms feature views onto a true and timeless city hẻm while others gaze onto the majestic Ba Son Bridge, a hint at the area’s rapid modernization.

Amidst this careful conflation of styles that embraces a home’s assemblage of hand-me-down and reclaimed items are touches of modern charm. On the bathroom vanity, for example, which is adapted from a humble street cart, is a full assortment of amenities. Whether you are exploring the city as a solo-traveler, on a romantic getaway, a carefree family holiday, or simply in town for business, each room type is aimed at providing you with international comfort wrapped in the aesthetics of historic Saigon.

Stopping at the Shipyard

Ba Son, the neighborhood where , Hotel Indigo Saigon The City is located, has a specific storied past. As part of their colonizing efforts, the French expanded it into Indochina’s largest shipyard. As the metropolis was most frequently accessed via the Saigon River and maritime trade was of the utmost importance, the shipyard’s role in connecting the country to the world was immense. After Vietnam won its independence, it remained crucial to development, allowing the shipbuilding and repair industry to flourish alongside naval needs.

While Ba Son no longer serves a maritime function, the architecture, infrastructure, and details of its history remain as defining characteristics, particularly in The Shipyard, Hotel Indigo Saigon The City’s in-house restaurant. Walking from reception, you’ll pass a communal space with cabinets containing antiques from times past. Old compasses, cameras, lamps, and machine parts set the mood for the nautical iron and fishbone ceiling. A rugged pulley system connects L1 to The Shipyard Upper Deck on the Mezzanine floor, bringing not only dishes down from the kitchen but also taking you back in time to the former shipyards' powerful mechanics.

After sitting down at a table that features a saltwater lamp, a “Storyteller” will arrive wearing a uniform styled after classic sailor attire. Behind you, calming fabrics accenting the wall call to shipments of fine materials and the nearby Tân Định Market, where tailors transformed them into the styles of the day. With ceramic flooring straight out of Saigon’s mid-century modernism, the two floors of dining, which are open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, encapsulate how the city’s collective style is one of contrasting elements.

The Shipyard’s menu reflects the area’s harmonizing of tradition and modern trends with its expansive menu that features Saigon favorites like hủ tiếu and bánh mì alongside expected international items like steak and hamburgers. The coffee, prepared with a heavy dose of caffeine and sugar, as Saigon residents like it, is an essential part of any meal.

While not yet known in Vietnam, Hotel Indigo is a familiar name throughout the world, renowned for its incorporation of local design elements that ensure no two locations are similar. Hotel Indigo Saigon The City, the first Vietnamese location, thus serves as an introduction ot its philosophy. Its faithful embrace of local styles and stories that offer an authentic and intimate experience rewards those who are traveling here for the first time, or are eager to feel the city more deeply than ever. Meanwhile, local residents can be proud that their culture’s unique style is so lovingly presented.

What are our memories made of?

If we were to imagine them in physical form, childhood memories might resemble the sturdy heart of aged timber or solid stone. Firm and enduring, they are the very core of who we are. Romantic affairs, on the other hand, feel more like soft skeins of yarn, comforting when they keep us warm, but will unravel just as easily if we let go.

What about the everyday, adult ones? What shapes do they take? Thin and brittle, they often slip away unnoticed. Yet, as fleeting as they are, these everyday memories form the quiet backdrop of our lives.

Life is delicate, like rice paper.

For Jamie, the designer behind strangevisuals, these little fragments are quintessential. They carry their own weight and deserve to be kept on materials as distinctive as the moments themselves.

At its heart, strangevisuals is Jamie’s personal archive of memories, expressed through postcards made from dó paper and rice paper. Each postcard features photographs she captures on a whim — snippets of daily routines or scenes from her travels. Through them, viewers may find themselves wandering a produce market, befriending stray cats and dogs, or squinting at quirky details of an old building.

Postcards made out of dó paper and rice paper.

The idea first took root when Jamie watched a documentary about dó paper. In it, the filmmaker lamented that this craft was no longer “in fashion,” too slow and labor-intensive to keep pace with mass production. But Jamie was struck by its meticulousness and layered depth, a quality that mirrored her own perception of the world — to appreciate the beauty of the quotidian means slowing down and watching closely to see that even the most mundane contains multitudes.

Dó paper became Jamie's material of slowness.

“I like to keep my memories on a medium […] of the right size to fit in the palm of my hand,” she explained. By coincidence, the standard postcard size, 15 x 10 cm, turned out to be the perfect fit. She also liked the word postcard itself, as to her, post suggested something that comes afterward, which felt perfectly in tune with the project’s spirit of tucking memories away to revisit later.

The front bears a photograph while the back leaves space for a note.

Jamie explained that many printers initially refused to collaborate because her chosen materials were incompatible with mass-production processes designed for plain white paper. So, drawing on her design background, she put her own printer to work and tinkered until she developed a usable method: “At the time, I didn’t know if I could pull it off, or if anyone would even buy them. If the plan fell apart, I would have been so upset. Luckily, it didn’t.”

After experimenting with dó paper, Jamie’s curiosity led her to rice paper. One evening over bún đậu, she thought to herself, why not try this?

The many rice sheets that Jamie put through trials.

Different kinds of materials revealed different qualities: dó paper absorbs ink deeply, making images soft and dreamlike, while rice paper’s glossy surface sharpens details, giving a film-esque aesthetic. One material acts like a mirror to the past, the other opens a window toward the future.

Each texture tells a story differently.

Strange materials cause strange mix-ups. A parcel of rice-paper postcards once stalled at customs. “Is it food?” they asked. Jamie had to sign a waiver promising it wasn’t edible. “Please don’t eat those prints,” she quipped. “They’ll just make you sick.”

Handle with care, and do not eat.

Unlike some other postcards, those of strangevisuals aren’t intended to commemorate anything special. Viewers can feel the spontaneity in every frame and sometimes pause to wonder: “Why photograph this?” or “Is there a hidden message here?” Jamie insists she simply lifts the camera and clicks without overthinking, “as a gesture of gratitude to the moment itself.” Whether the image is visually impressive or carries any meaning isn’t the point. What matters is that particular moment will never return. Soon, the afternoon sunray will change its path across the leaves. The cat will move into another languid pose. Beauty lies in impermanence, and that’s what strangevisuals exists for.

Jamie hopes strangevisuals will bring her to different lands and cultures, where she can continue collecting and experimenting with new materials, recording the world in its own peculiar rhythm. When asked if she could send a postcard to her younger self, she said: “I’d pick one where I’m laughing like an idiot and write nothing. Past Jamie, present Jamie, and future Jamie, we would all agree that life is wonderful.”

Chợ Lớn on dó paper.

Hà Nội on rice paper from Tây Ninh.

Phú Yên on dó paper.

Photos courtesy of strangevisuals.

Lắng Nghe Điểm Chạm is a project aiming to expand exposure opportunities and application potentials of performing arts into the life of marginalized and minority communities of Vietnam.

The initiative is created by Thân Nghiệm Club and Saigon Theaterland, and supported by the Goethe-Institut, Hear.Us.Now, as well as HUTECH University. By its second season, the project has explored dance and movement with artists-in-training from Saigon’s Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing* community, in collaboration with hearing artists-in-training and local sign language interpreters.

Though they make up a significant segment of the Vietnamese population, the local Deaf community continues facing many systemic barriers, largely due to a lack of language-related support. A large number of deaf people in Vietnam communicate using their local Vietnamese sign languages, including three notable varieties: Hanoi Sign Language, Haiphong Sign Language, and Ho Chi Minh City Sign Language.

To them, Vietnamese sign language (VSL) is actually their mother tongue as opposed to the Vietnamese language — whose grammatical rules and vocabularies are completely different. As such, deaf people most often rely on sign languages to efficiently and accurately gain access to information. Unfortunately, outside of a special education or Deaf-led environments, spaces that commonly provide other Vietnamese people job opportunities, recreation, health assessment, and other services do not cater to their communication needs. Thus, the Deaf community is denied equal access to the same experiences compared to their hearing counterparts, not to mention the costs incurred for interpreting services due to a lack of governmental support.

Nevertheless, in a discourse that tends to generalize deaf and hard-of-hearing people, or merely discuss them within educational and medical contexts, recreational and artistic avenues created to support the Deaf community thus become noteworthy and refreshing, even if they are limited. There is Nghe bằng mắt, a project that has been fostering collaborations between deaf and hearing artists in Hanoi to create visual and film art projects for many years. Similarly, in Saigon, Lắng Nghe Điểm Chạm aims to provide people from the local Deaf community access to dance and movement arts as an alternative career, a chance for self-discovery, and a strategy to foster empathy between hearing and Deaf communities.

*Saigoneer uses the capitalized Deaf to refer to the community and culture of deaf and hard-of-hearing people.

How it began

“Ever since I studied dancing abroad 10 years ago, I’ve already been fascinated with sign languages,” Lyon Nguyễn, told Saigoneer when we visited their rehearsal last month. Lyon is a movement art educator in charge of Thân Nghiệm Club and an organizer and the key instructor for Lắng Nghe Điểm Chạm. “I recognize their similarities with dance art: between the artform’s usage of body movements to convey emotions, and sign languages’ employment of movements to communicate everyday contexts.”

Lyon Nguyễn (left) and Phương Nguyễn (right).

Lyon eventually met Hạnh, a VSL interpreter, after he returned to Vietnam in 2023 and signed up for a sign language class. This was a serendipitous encounter for Hạnh herself, as she was trying to find a dance instructor willing to take in her deaf friend, and eventually became connected to artists like Lyon and Phương Nguyễn; the latter is in charge of Saigon Theatreland. “Via suggestions of two visiting Welsh artists, Saigon Theatreland has decided to ensure our productions are more inclusive for our audience,” Phương shared. “I was very surprised to find so many Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing people at the show, and decided to meet up with them and the interpreters.”

Hạnh is a VSL interpretor working with Lắng Nghe Điểm Chạm.

All artists audition for Lắng Nghe Điểm Chạm via open calls, after which eight to 10 deaf and four hearing performers are chosen. Anna Hương, one of the deaf artists rejoining the project from the first season, said: “I’ve always wanted to learn dancing with hearing people, and be integrated into their movement art field. I joined the project after learning about the art form from hearing folks and became very interested. My dream is to be a dancer, and I believe the project will show people that deaf people can do it!” Meanwhile, Chiêu Anh, one of the second season’s hearing participants and a psychology specialist, said she encountered Lắng Nghe Điểm Chạm’s notice on Facebook.

Within a span of three months, project organizers and participants host consecutive movement and sign language workshops once every week as they work towards the season's final performance, but also ensure the project’s sustainability for future seasons by equipping themselves with movement art knowledge and, more importantly, basic VSL skills.

The inclusive beauty of movement art

It might be baffling to some why deaf people would want to engage in an art form that is often associated with music. While incidental music will be composed to accompany the dances, it should be clarified that their work are better described as “movement art,” a term the project’s artists themselves use to describe their avant-garde approach to dancing, distinguishing them from more conventional iterations of the art form. Apart from the objective fact that three-month is a short run time for an art form that traditionally requires years of practicing to achieve choreographed synchronicity, movement art’s comparable approach to acting means there is less focus on following fixed beats, and more on the narrative conjured from the expressiveness and interactions of dancers’ bodies — features that go beyond the boundaries of spoken languages among all people, but those deaf people especially have resonance with and excel at.

Proper stretches are essential to any physical practice.

After a long warm-up session that stretches the participants’ movement potentials, with the assistance of interpreters, Lyon and his co-instructors workshop the movements that hearing and deaf participants have co-created within various groups: a practice called “contact improvisation.” “We move to understand our own bodies, but also to interact with others and understand the intersections that arise out of it,” Chiêu Anh explained. “Such intersections don’t have the language of speech, but they have that of bodies, of contact points, and their pressures. We learn to understand each other in such ways.”

In a group, they initially explore writing their own names using various body parts and upon various surfaces: one could be tracing their name’s letters in mid-air using their left elbow, or the tip of their right foot upon the floor. The contact part eventually comes in when, for instance, one dancer uses a body part of their partner to write their own name: they could be tracing out the letters while lightly supporting their partner’s head as if it were a pen. The choreography is thus built up gradually, whereby movements are experimented with to create poetic tensions, and their meanings are organically discovered along the way. There are also breaks between sessions for performers to mingle and chat with each other, with hearing performers learning to communicate with their accented sign language, before the workshop ends with some reflections.

Anna (left), Hiếu (middle) and Chiêu Anh (right) have all discovered the project via different channels.

For the deaf participants, movement art’s devising process opens up both their own artistic potentials and discoveries into their own emotions and mental health. “Regular dancing doesn’t allow me to understand my feelings, nor the internal struggles that I don’t know how to heal,” Anna shared, “yet once I learnt of this movement art, I feel it can help me thrive, healing the wounds within me, and believe that I can do more things, while also accepting my own flaws.” In fact, this is what sets Lắng Nghe Điểm Chạm’s second season apart from its predecessor: the project’s deaf dancers are diving deeper within themselves, harvesting their own lived experiences and Deaf culture, like sign language, to craft stories which are distinctly theirs, while still enabling the audience to connect with them, due to the rich displays of their emotional life.

Movement art’s devising process opens up participants' own artistic potentials.

“The art form enables all kinds of bodies to participate,” Lyon shared. “Everyone can approach the art form, no matter their disability, condition, gender, or skin color. As compared to hearing dancers, I find deaf participants to be especially attuned to their movements, and senses of sight and touch.” Phương also added: “I believe all bodies are equal: no body is more suitable to practice art than another. Sometimes, as with hearing people, our verbal abilities enable us to communicate fast, yet we thus forget that we also have our body language as another miraculous form of communication.”

Overcoming communication barriers with Vietnamese sign language

Supplementary to each movement art workshop is a session of VSL, hosted one day after, aiming to foster community and bridge communication and cultural gaps between deaf and hearing artists so they can better collaborate during the movement art rehearsals.

Typically, participants will first revise the last sessions’ vocabularies and practice finger-spelling among themselves, before the sign language instructors, with the assistance of interpreting volunteers, introduce them to some warm-up games, and new sign language topical vocabularies and grammatical constructions.

As participants engage in these activities, as well as practicing signing in pairs and with the class, they also get to hone their language use, including communication etiquette such as voicing-off during signing, or using appropriate eye contact and facial expressions. “Currently, hearing participants may be shy at communicating in sign language with their deaf peers, while the deaf participants are more confident,” Hạnh shared her observations as the main interpreter. “Nonetheless, I can see that their relationships are getting better: proactive communication is very important.”

Brushing up on communication skills, especially VSL, is important to the group.

Nevertheless, sign language interpreters remain incredibly necessary for the working process. Hạnh elaborated on her role, being the one explaining dance terminologies or instructors’ actions to deaf dancers so they can understand the intentions behind those movements, as well as directing deaf participants’ queries to their hearing instructors. “I feel that a number of hearing people tend to believe that ‘you only need to use gestures to communicate with deaf people, no need to have an interpreter who’d make things cumbersome,’” Hạnh discussed some misconceptions surrounding her role. “However, a sign language interpreter remains a crucial bridge for knowledge to be transmitted clearly and accurately to the Deaf community, in all fields that they want to take part in.”

Moving forward

“Lắng Nghe Điểm Chạm has brought to the forefront the awareness that there are many communities around us,” Chiêu Anh shared, with regards to the importance of inter-community and disability awareness. She added: “We need to think: how can we live with each other? Can we grow together? How can we interact with each other?”

Undoubtedly, no one desires to improve the public’s understanding of the Deaf as much as those within the community themselves. “I feel that currently, deaf people are facing a lot of hardships, and I hope models like Lắng Nghe Điểm Chạm can be duplicated, and receive systematic governmental support, or support from influential organisations, so that more opportunities are created for Deaf people,” Hiếu, a dancer from the Deaf community, shared.

Chiêu Anh (left) and Hiếu (right).

Anna corroborated on the importance for solidarity between both communities — including between deaf people and their own hearing parents within a family — so as to stop discrimination, and work towards true fairness and equality. “I want hearing people to take the extra step to understand the culture of Deaf people, and can communicate with us,” she said. “That’s why I want them to learn sign language: only by understanding clearly can one respect our culture, and thus can support the Deaf community.”

The project is hoped to be a visible testament to the possibility for communities to work together, make friends, and respect each other’s cultures.

As an organizer, Phương hoped that the project will be a visible testament to the possibility for communities to work together, make friends, and respect each other’s cultures. “I hope we can be motivated to find ways of diversifying our own understanding and experiences,” Phương expressed his gratitude towards the deaf participants, “rather than being comfortable within our own privileges, thus forgetting others’ existence, or pitying them.”

Because the wider public often assumes deaf people are not artistically inclined, Anna and Hiếu and other deaf dancers within the project look forward to be new positive representations of the Deaf community, dispelling stereotypes and inspiring other deaf people, as the project is being publicised across Vietnam on various mass media channels.

Anna and Hiếu and other deaf dancers within the project look forward to be new positive representations of the Deaf community.

In many situations in Vietnam, disabilities continue to be viewed through the patronizing lens of the medical model, and such conditions are seen merely as deficits in need of fixing, but projects like Lắng Nghe Điểm Chạm can present the social model of disability as a healthier alternative. Specifically, the disadvantages faced by people with disabilities should be attributed to the society’s unwillingness to accommodate them, as opposed to shortcomings that are beyond their control, so systematic societal changes become crucial to ensure their equal participation and access.

As such, hopefully in the near future, more communities of people with disabilities and allies will proactively collaborate with each other to create inclusive performing arts, while also equipping themselves with more knowledge to create projects that not only authentically tell their stories but also curate valuable spaces for them to explore, self-advocate, and thrive.

Parallels by Vũ Đình Giang shocked me. While I refrain from spoiling its plot, allow me to share my experience when reading this novel, as translated by Khải Q. Nguyễn, to better explain how the book jolted me from expectations and why the experience provides a unique and valuable addition to the array of Vietnamese novels translated into English.

Parallels, originally published in Vietnamese in 2007 under the name Song Song, follows the lives of three homosexual men in an unnamed Vietnamese city. As established from the onset, it shifts focus between H, a relatively stable design firm employee; and G.g, his artist boyfriend, who seems disturbed from the beginning. A third character, Kan, who works with H, eventually enters to create a love triangle. Told via alternating perspectives interspersed with epistolary moments, the story flirts with surrealism before establishing reality as more frightening than any hallucination.

Cover of the Vietnamese original Song Song. Photo via Tiki.

Each of Parallels’ numbered chapters begins without establishing whose perspective is being offered, causing initial challenges in orienting oneself, particularly early in the book when reader tries to become acquainted with the characters and settings. Upon adjusting to this style, I could focus on what I believed to be a novel content to dwell on stylized depictions of the men’s mundane lives, augmented by articulations of emotional and psychological upheaval. About one-third of the way through, I sensed the book had settled into its final form where, absent a plot, the described moods, feelings, and ideas about art and life would constitute its gravity. The experience, I expected, would be a bit like how chapter 26 opens, with G.g opining: “People often complain that a year goes by too quickly. But for me, it often feels too long. Throughout the past year, there were no significant incidents or events. After work, I didn’t say goodbye to my colleagues; I just got on my motorcycle and left. After leaving any group of people, I immediately reverted to my original position, the position of an individual object. That rapid qualitative change was the result of a metaphysical needle being inserted into my body, draining the blood, and then pumping air in. I’d become an empty shell, a lifeless corpse, a hollow carcass. I’d be nothing but an empty nylon bag dragged along by the wind.”

An acrid strangeness fills the space where a plot could fit early in the book. H and G.g fritter away their time with bizarre games, including filling a basin with a putrid mixture of household goods and ingredients so as to drown the sun via its reflection. They paint mushroom caps so H’s co-workers think he is consuming poisonous fungi. They even discuss plans to murder an adopted puppy upon its first birthday while G.g repeatedly fantasizes about murder: “I didn’t feel guilty when I thought about killing him. I thought it was a beautiful idea, very poetic. Fly. Fly. Fly. I wanted to see how humans fly. I was waiting for a chance, and I would do it.”

Initially, I took these bouts of imagined violence as the angsty ramblings of poetic young adults, intoxicated by their macabre posturing. When G.g calls H in the middle of the night to announce that he is surrounded by wild wolves, H’s rational response assured me that there was a clear line between fantastic derangement and reality, and at least one of the characters knew which side we stood upon: “Do you think you’re lost in some wild forest? Listen to me, this is the city, and wolves can only come out of the Discovery Channel.”

However, soon the violence ramps up, and along with it, enough clarity to remove any uncertainties that could have cloaked terrific carnage in the surreal daydreams as had been suggested by a quote attributed to the puppy that comes before the first chapter: “Don’t rush to trust anyone, don’t try to find meaning in actions; maybe they’re simply a game, maybe it’s all the product of madness.” While I will leave it vague enough so as not to ruin a reading of it, the actions are in line with a grisly Hollywood movie that would need scenes trimmed before it could be screened at the local CGV.

Along with the violence, the novel’s approach to sexuality undergoes a radical shift in the second half of the book. At first, I was struck by how commonplace the homosexual lifestyles were presented, and found myself reflecting on how this reveals a normalizing of gay relationships in society. Love between men was referenced with the casual respect paid to any routine aspect of life. For example, early on H remarks off-handedly when describing G.g’s home: “So many times I’ve had to discard used condoms that G.g left under the bed, and I always had to have a tube of lubricant available, for G.g didn’t care.”

Somewhat rapidly, this changes, and the novel becomes filled with lurid details and graphic descriptions of BDSM. This particularly occurs as the characters share stories of their pasts, including Kan who recounts a lover who enjoyed being beaten:

“Kneeling, arms bent forwards at the elbows, he tilted his head upwards at an angle of about fifteen degrees. His thighs were wide apart. With that posture and his white, naked body, he looked like a frog with its skin peeled, patiently waiting for its prey.
The bait was the lashing of the whip.
The frog’s face deformed with each convulsion. Its mouth opened wide; its tongue was filled with foam, it groaned incessantly, and it soon reached the climax of its orgasm, sending a strong stream of semen onto the bed.”

While not interested in discerning morality, these depictions, which include a predatory relationship between a young, possibly underage man and a much older man who becomes his "adoptive father,” seem to relish in their potential to unsettle polite society.

Much like the transition from daydreamed violence to horrific bloodshed, this move from blasé depictions of sex lives to graphic retellings upended what I had assumed Parallels was at its core. These surprising shifts, I realized, are rather unique to Vietnamese literature translated into English. Many translated novels offer familiar narrative arcs that at least follow the rules they set out for themselves at the onset. While some such as Nguyễn Ngọc Tư's Water: A Chronicle, deviate from conventional storytelling techniques, plot structures and movements, relishing in intentional mystery and lack of closure, and others, including Thuận's Chinatown, refuse to meet reader’s expectations for tension and meaning, I have yet to read one that so flagrently upends the expectations it establishes.

Having finished the novel, I will return to the beginning, re-reading with awareness of where it ends and suspicion that the slippage of angst into mayhem should have been obvious, and I merely glossed over the hints. Or maybe I misunderstood the reality of the ending. And if either of these is true, it’s of little importance, because while the plot and its consequences, which are both legally profound and emotionally wrought, provided the tension that carried me through the book’s final half, it’s the unique style, voices, and heart-wrenching anecdotes that will remain with me. These are present from the very beginning.

In juicy, metaphor-rich prose, readers are gifted access to the complex interiors of complete individuals. It’s unclear which moments within these minds frightened me most; those when I heard echoes of myself, or recognized that the full spectrum of humanity contains individuals with diametrically opposing experiences and philosophies: “People thought I was simple, and a bit unstable. I didn’t give a fuck. Caring about what people thought was a waste of time. I had my own goals and principles. I lived for myself and because of myself; I did what was needed to meet what I aspired, demanded, worshipped. I knew I was selfish, but I was happy that way. I only cared about what I wanted, and I took up all its ramifications. Norms belonged to another paradigm that had nothing to do with me. I had my own universe, my own satellites, and I revolved around my own orbit.”

Under the shared heartbeat of “129BPM,” the dancers channeled their emotions through movement, navigating between individuality and collectivity both on and off stage. Extending beyond Vietnamese audiences, the piece has now been presented on an international platform at George Town Festival 2025 in Penang, Malaysia, marking a significant milestone for Vietnamese contemporary hip-hop performance on the international stage.

After two successful performance nights in Saigon and Hanoi, the performers of H2Q Dance Company brought “129BPM” — a contemporary hip-hop dance theater work — to George Town Festival 2025 (GTF 2025) in Penang, Malaysia. Originally titled as “129BPM: Động Phách Tách Kén” and co-produced with the Goethe-Institut Hồ Chí Minh City in 2024, the new touring production took place at the historic Dewan Sri Pinang theater from August 4 to 5 2025, presented and managed by MORUA, with travel sponsored by AirAsia and partial support from Đối South. Directed and choreographed by Bùi Ngọc Quân, the performance featured dancers Nguyễn Duy Thành, Lâm Duy Phương (Kim), Lương Thái Sơn (Sơn Lương), Nguyễn Ngọc (Mini Phantom), Bùi Quang Huy (Snoop Gee), Nguyễn Đỗ Quốc Khanh (Nega), and Vũ Tiến Thọ (Joong), alongside stage design by Mara-Madeleine Pieler, and live music by Tiny Giant (LinhHafornow and Tomes) and Nguyễn Đan Dương.

“129BPM” performance at Dewan Sri Pinang. Photos courtesy of George Town Festival.

The journey of “129BPM” to Penang began when Producer Red Nguyễn Hải Yến attended a forum for stage producers in Asia through GTF 2024, which highlighted the dialogue between heritage spaces and contemporary performance practices. Recognizing the potential of staging works in Penang’s historic buildings, old alleyways, and theaters — an atmosphere unique to the festival — she decided to submit the 129BPM project to the festival organizers, and received an official invitation to perform at the festival.

“129BPM refers not only to the rhythm of music, but it’s also a heartbeat — a palpitating heartbeat that shows our body in agitation, anxiety, as well as in thrill and fervor,” shared  Choreographer Assistant and Stage Manager Lyon Nguyễn. Setting against the backdrop of rapid social changes that Vietnamese youths are facing, this raises a central question on self-identity: “Who are we in the middle of these changes with regard to our past and heritage?” Using hip-hop dance as a shared “language,” performers from backgrounds came together to create a collective voice while maintaining their own uniqueness, and move under one beat of 129BPM.

“129BPM” performance at Dewan Sri Pinang. Photos courtesy of George Town Festival.

Hip-hop is often associated with dance battles, where dancers only have limited time to showcase their skills and charisma. However, “129BPM” shifted the audience’s focus to the raw emotions and vulnerability of dancers on stage, expressed with their strongest movements and synchronization with one another. Developed and performed over the span of 75 minutes, this work challenges the dancers’ endurance, physically and emotionally. Dancers are placed in conditions where they must let their inner feelings surface: from joy to pain, from happiness to sorrow. At the same time, this framework also opens up new opportunities for experimentation: expressing emotions through movements, and navigating between one’s self identity and collective creation. While audience reactions to “129BPM” are diverse in Vietnam, in Penang the response was especially vibrant, with the audience spontaneously joining the performers in a post-show cypher — a hip-hop term for the circle dancers form, taking turns stepping into the center to dance — which embodied the spirit of creating unity and shared rhythm across differences.

“129BPM” performance at Dewan Sri Pinang. Photos courtesy of George Town Festival.

“Puzzles” workshop, led by the performers under the guidance of Director and Choreographer Bùi Ngọc Quân and Lyon Nguyễn, took place a few days before the live performances. Designed as a guided jam session, it invited local participants to explore improvisation, physical storytelling, and collective rhythm. Extending beyond the collective work among the performers themselves, the workshop opened up to a wider community, bringing together participants from adolescent to 75 years old, both experienced dancers and beginners. More than just a workshop, it became a space for cultural exchange, interaction, also community building — the very spirit that 129BPM hoped to share.

“Puzzles” workshop in Penang, Malaysia (30 July 2025). Photos courtesy of Tilda61 Media.

Bùi Ngọc Quân, who returned to Vietnam after more than 25 years with Les Ballets C de la B in Belgium, “129BPM” did not look to direct references to Vietnamese heritage through sound or imagery. Instead, its identity emerges from the lived experience of being in Vietnam: working closely with the dancers, understanding their desires, and allowing individuality and creativity to shape the process. As he notes, the work carries a distinctly Vietnamese sensibility “because all of us are allowed to comfortably be Vietnamese.” This perspective highlights the significance not only of what appears on stage, but also of the collaborative process that unfolds behind the scenes.

Director and Choreographer Bùi Ngọc Quân at “Puzzles” workshop. Photo courtesy of Tilda61 Media.

All team members of 129BPM at George Town Festival 2025.

“For independent theater works without government funding or access to costly infrastructures for ticketed performances, participating in festivals has become a key strategy to sustain the life of the work, while also serving as an entry point to introduce new hip-hop performances and Vietnamese theater to the world,” Producer Red Nguyễn Hải Yến told Saigoneer in Vietnamese, when asked about the significance of presenting an independent Vietnamese piece on an festival stage to new audiences in a country with different social and political contexts. “Sustaining the practice of independent artist collectives plays an essential role in shaping and developing a nation’s theatrical landscape.”

“129BPM” performance at Dewan Sri Pinang. Photos courtesy of George Town Festival.

More information and recap of “129BPM” performance at George Town Festival 2025 (Penang, Malaysia) can be found here on this Facebook page.

Everywhere I go in Vietnam, I keep my eyes peeled for the incredible birds that call this country home. Sometimes I don’t even realize that I’m doing it. I scan the horizon above low hills for migratory hawks. I stare into breaks in the foliage for passing buttonquail. I peer into rice paddies, fingers crossed for a cryptic snipe. And, of course, there’s Facebook. I refresh Facebook over and over again, waiting for the arrival of the mandarin duck. Its scientific name is Aix galericulata, which one assumes means “prettiest goddamn duck in the world.”

In actuality, “aix” is an Ancient Greek word first used by Aristotle to refer to an unknown diving bird while “galericulata” is the Latin for a wig, derived from galerum, a cap or bonnet. This is the kind of bird so utterly magnificent that you basically assume you’ll never see it. Mandarin ducks breed in the dense and isolated forests on the edge of rivers and lakes in far eastern Russia, China, and Hokkaido, Japan; the total number tallies up to just a few thousand pairs. During the winters they migrate southwards, fleeing the subarctic temperatures of their breeding grounds for the warmer swamps and flooded fields in central China. And every winter there is a single family group that decides to fly a little farther than the rest: about a thousand kilometers farther, to a hidden lake in northern Vietnam.

A family of Vietnam's next top avians.

Ba Bể is the largest natural lake in the country, and the heart of Ba Bể National Park. While only four hours from Hanoi by car, this treasure of the northern mountains is often skipped by Sa Pa trekkers and Hà Giang road trippers. But it is not ignored, thank goodness, by the Vietnamese birdwatching community. Steep limestone cliffs and primary forest all around the lakeshore make Ba Bể a hidden haven for birds, including the too-beautiful-to-be-allowed mandarin duck. My search for the duck during the migratory season begins online, where Vietnamese birdwatchers share their photos, tips and secrets.

Birdwatchers like Nguyễn Mạnh Hiệp, a senior official at the Vietnam Administration of Forestry, who keeps tabs on the ducks by staying in contact with national park rangers. There's also Nguyễn Thanh Sơn, an office worker and wildlife lover in Hanoi who, like me, relies on a network of bird and photography enthusiasts to let him know when incredible species like the mandarin duck are spotted. This winter, when the prodigal ducks returned, photos of them immediately began to pop up among this insular community of dedicated birders. Sơn decided one afternoon that he had to see them, and the next morning he was up at 3am to make his way north. I was on a business trip in Thailand when they appeared, and the moment I returned to Hanoi I was on my way, too, not wasting the hour it would have taken to go home and drop off my luggage.

Mandarin duck is the kind of bird so utterly magnificent that you basically assume you’ll never see it.

The passage into Ba Bể felt very much like entering another world — so much so that it’s worth saying this, despite the cliché. I joined my friend Bùi Đức Tiến, Vice President of the Vietnam Bird Conservation Society, and together we caught an early morning boat from town that coursed down a narrow river feeding the lake. We passed through an enormous limestone cave, coming out on the other end to the secluded sanctuary of Ba Bể. I was, of course, deeply anxious. We did not yet see the duck. It was far from certain that we would see the duck. I'm not sure I can describe how much I wanted to see the duck.

And then, there it was. It was Tiến, of course, who spotted it first: a single male, perched on a tree that overhangs the water. We cut the engine and coasted towards it. I lay on my stomach on the bow, steadying my camera and holding my breath. The duck, who has, in the past weeks, flown on little wings across a significant portion of the Asian continent, was totally relaxed. He was, without exaggeration, one of the most beautiful birds on a planet so richly populated with beautiful birds. Purple, indigo and chestnut splayed from his body at odd angles, like ornate shavings of tinted glass. What a thing it is to behold.

Majestically leaping off the water.

The Vietnamese name for these ducks, chim uyên ương, can be literally translated as “love bird.” Vietnamese novelist and translator Nguyễn Hiền Trang points out that the name comes from the Chinese language: yuanyang (鸳鸯). In both Vietnam and in China, these ducks have a cultural significance dating back millennia. Mandarin ducks first started to show up in ancient Chinese poetry more than 1,500 years ago, appearing as symbols of both romantic and fraternal love. In Vietnam, terra cotta mandarin ducks decorated palace and pagoda towers during the Lý and Trần dynasties. The ducks even make a few appearances in the classic Vietnamese narrative poem 'Chinh Phụ Ngâm Khúc' once again as symbols of devotion and love.

Why symbols of love, you ask? The answer is in their duality. With ostentatiously colored males and much more modest females, the mandarin duck embodies the balance of yin and yang — gendered forms of the feminine earth below and the masculine firmament above. Perhaps owing to this legend, people across the ducks’ migratory route believe them to mate for life. But while lifelong monogamy isn’t unheard of in the world of birds, I regret to inform you that, in the case of these ducks, it is indeed a love story that’s too good to be true. Male mandarin ducks may be beautiful, but they are also carousing ruffians, hilariously unfaithful lovers, and absentee fathers.

Mandarin duck is one of the most beautiful bird species that can be spotted in Vietnam.

But that name, love birds, still rings true. One of the joys of birdwatching is escaping the self, and spending time appreciating an animal entirely on its own terms, and in its own world. Love birds may better describe the feelings that the mandarin ducks give us than it does their talent for monogamy. Judging by their prominent place in ancient Vietnamese culture, we can guess that there used to be a whole lot more of these ducks flying around than just this one family, at this one hidden lake. But with a growing number of Vietnamese people committed to protecting these creatures, we can hope that they will remain safe for generations to come. That’s what we could all use in times like these, I think. More birds. More love.

This article was originally published in 2023.

One of the small joys in life is having a favorite dish readily available whenever you crave it. Ever since I discovered the little hẻm in Saigon where Cơm Hến O Thu lies, my life has been ever so uplifted by the comfort that, every fortnight or so, I can hop on my motorbike, sit for 15 minutes, and have cơm hến on the table in a blink of an eye for gulping pleasures. Cơm hến is one of my favorite things, so naturally, when I got a chance to visit Huế, the dish’s hometown, there was no way I could miss out on this small joy that packs big flavors.

There is very little you can say about the decoration or interior design of Cơm Hến Bé Liêm, because very little attention has been paid to it — which, in this case, is a good thing, because it means the proprietor cares more about the food they serve than where they serve it. The eatery is located in a convenient spot on Nguyễn Công Trứ Street. The family lives on one side of a nondescript yellow house, while on the right, a semi-open space serves as the dining and kitchen for their thriving cơm hến operation. Walking past a peacefully napping dog and under a verdant vine-covered pergola, you will be greeted by rows of low plastic chairs and tables that have definitely seen better days.

Cơm Hến Bé Liêm is open from 6am, just in time for an early breakfast.

I’ve been Pavlov-ed by Vietnamese street food places so much that I practically start salivating whenever I see light blue plastic chairs, not because I’m hankering for a bite of that greasy plastic, but for the culinary orgasm that they often herald. It was a Monday morning, so the dining space wasn’t crowded. There was an air of subdued routine amongst diners, who were mostly Huế residents catching a quick bite before heading to work — we were the only rowdy tourists sitting on the edge of our tiny stools, humming with anticipation.

Usually, eating in casual street food settings like this, I’m not one to police the attitude of staff. F&B, especially in this economic climate, is back-breaking, hernia-inducing work, so as long as they don’t punch me in the face or slash my tires, we’re cool. However, I feel the need to point out that the people at Cơm Hến Bé Liêm were really sweet and accommodating, especially to a party of seven people of varying ages and dietary finickings. The fact that, according to multiple online reviews, local taxi drivers and xe ôm uncles keep recommeding this place to visitors is a testament to its service and the tastiness of its food.

The people who run the place are some of the nicest people I've come across during my travel across Vietnam.

Like hundreds of other cơm hến eateries in Huế, Bé Liêm serves only the star dish, though one can opt to switch out rice for bún or instant noodles — all for just VND15,000 a portion. On each table, there is a plate of 10 banana leaf-wrapped chả for diners to fortify their bowl if needed; these morsels of pork sausage are chewy and perfectly seasoned, but I personally think they fit clumsily in a cơm hến bowl as they are too chunky compared to the other perfectly chopped toppings. After a few minutes of us sitting around trading complaints about the Huế heat, our portions of cơm hến arrived.

Freshly assembled cơm hến.

Of every step involved in the dining experience, this is perhaps one of my favorite parts: when the food lands in front of me, putting a temporary suspension on the anticipation and hunger and showing off its glamorous bells and whistles. This is the best that any given dish will look on your table, so take it all in, waft the palpable aroma into your nostrils, feast your eyes on the freshness of the herbs, and enjoy it in any other senses because your palate does its job. A bowl of cơm hến is always a visual treat — on a bed of white fluffy rice grains, snippets of different shades of green peek out in between golden puffs of pork crackling and nubs of baby hến. Chopped Thai basil leaves, shreds of yellow young mango, slices of starfruit, and spongy stalks of dọc mùng form a luxuriant undergrowth just waiting for your spoon to dig in.

Made from cold rice and other simple veggies, cơm hến is a surprisingly balanced meal.

Cơm hến can be eaten any time of the day, but to me, it is the perfect breakfast with a balanced nutrient profile to fuel a busy day at work or school: just enough carb in the form of rice for energy, plenty of fiber from a diverse array of fresh vegetables, protein from the clams, fat from pork crackling, and heat from the chili oil to dispel any lingering lethargy. Bé Liêm has managed to evade some common setbacks that can sully the cơm hến experience, like sandy cold rice, clams that are past their prime, or fishy broth. Add in a teaspoon, or half if you’re a wuss like me, of chili oil, some shrimp paste, mix everything together with vigor — and your bowl of cơm hến is ready to be snacked on. I say “snack” because one bowl is never enough for me. My palate yearns for that comforting mix of savory shrimp paste, tingling heat, and crunchy veggies, so much so that I always get two, or even three on a hot day, bowls in one sitting.

Bún hến and cơm hến.

Every Vietnamese dish has a story behind it. Even right in Huế, nem công chả phượng is a living remnant of the grandiose court cuisine that past emperors enjoyed. Cơm hến, however, hails from much humbler origins on the submerged low-tide stretches along the Hương River, especially around Cồn Hến, a patch of land formed by river sediments and the ideal habitat for baby clams to thrive. Leftover rice, hến caught right from the water, and unripe fruits from the backyard are the simple ingredients that have allowed cơm hến to stay affordable and, over time, spread to all corners of Huế, becoming a satisfying snack for anyone, any time of the day.

To sum up:

• Opening time: 6am–until stock runs out
• Parking: Bike only
• Contact: 0795538330
• Average cost per person: $ (Under VND100,000)
• Payment: Cash, Transfer
• Delivery App: ShopeeFood

Among Bùi Viện's assortment of xe ôm drivers and street food vendors, Bible-toting religious enthusiasts and other colorful personalities, 66-year-old Nghĩa stands out for his kind eyes and walrus-like mustache.

When we meet for the second time, near a pagoda in one of Phạm Ngũ Lão's wide alleys, Nghĩa rolls up on a well-worn, bright blue xích lô, slowing to a halt just beside me. We'd found each other the week before, when I was hanging around the backpacker area scouting xích lô drivers for a story. Well-versed in introductions, Nghĩa approached me, proudly unfolding the laminated news clippings he keeps in his pocket.

A xích lô driver for over half his life, Trà Vinh-born Nghĩa left the Mekong Delta as a young boy after his father was killed. Shortly thereafter, his mother brought Nghĩa and her four other children to Saigon, raising them by herself.

Though his childhood was fairly normal, Nghĩa's teen years were lived out against a backdrop of war. At 19, he joined the military along with two of his brothers and was injured twice over the next six years.

Around that same time, he met his wife.

“We became friends,” he explains. “She would treat me with fruits from her garden and clean water. Later, [after 1975], we got married.”

It was a difficult time for them both. Along with the rest of the country, Nghĩa struggled to pick up the pieces after years of conflict. Money was scarce and opportunities even scarcer. By the early 1980s, he had invested in a xích lô and began taking customers around at night.

For two years, Nghĩa struggled to make ends meet, earning a meager living from nighttime customers. That is, of course, until the foreigners came.

“Things changed in the early 1990s, when the first tourists arrived in Vietnam,” says Nghĩa. “I still remember my first foreign client, an Australian woman. Her fees were much higher than I was used to receiving. After I understood, I moved my spot to Bùi Viện, got my own team and start making decent money.”

Thanks to his English skills, Nghĩa was able to earn more, allowing him to raise his four children, the eldest of whom is now 42. His youngest, a 16-year-old son, is still in school and wants to be an engineer. This pleases the xích lô driver.

“I want him to become somebody,” explains Nghĩa. “Not the lowest caste like me.”

While he acknowledges the difficult circumstances which put him in this profession, Nghĩa harbors no bitterness about the course of his life. Even at his age, he works 12 hours a day, seven days a week. It's no longer out of necessity — he has grown children who can provide for him — but there's a sense of duty in Nghĩa's efforts. For decades, the xích lô has sustained him and raised his family. He's relatively well-known now, especially among high-end hotels, and routinely ferries customers around the city.

It was nearly noon by the time I clambered out of the weather-worn, 15-year-old xích lô. Along with a small but steadfast collection of other retirees, Nghĩa represents the last crop of Saigon's xích lô drivers. As the city develops and opportunities grow for young people in Vietnam, the tough times which brought Nghĩa into his lifelong occupation no longer exist. On the contrary, city officials are trying to phase out this mode of transportation, he explains. More and more, weary xích lô drivers who are struggling for fares will take the cash payout offered by the city to trade in their wheels for a different job. In another few years, xích lôs may be relegated to yet another nostalgic piece of Saigon’s collective memory.

This article was originally published in 2016.

What can tiny sheets of paper reveal about a whole time period?

Xổ số kiến thiết Hà Nội, which could be loosely translated as the “Hanoi Development Lottery,” came to be during a time when northern Vietnam was rebuilding itself from the rubble of the resistance war against the French and establishing a socialist society. From the illustrations to the way it was promoted, the lottery exemplifies Vietnam’s coupon era.

At the time, while the government was still trying to make ends meet, there was great demand for infrastructure projects and amenities to improve the quality of life of the people, such as roads, schools, healthcare facilities, factories, and other public projects. Northern Vietnam was also saving money to channel revolutionary efforts in the southern region. In that economic climate, Hanoi was searching for a way to secure financial contributions that could both promote the collective spirit and appeal to the people. Thus, for the first time, during the Tết holiday of 1962, the state issued its first lottery tickets named “cần kiệm kiến thiết” (frugal development) as a lunar new year gift to Hanoians. These tickets became the initial foundation for a future lottery program that expanded to the entirety of northern and, later, the whole of Vietnam.

The lottery operation shared some similarities with its counterparts in the Soviet Union and other communist nations at the time. In the USSR, for example, the lottery was wholly state-run and tickets were distributed via official platforms like local workers’ unions, youth unions, kiosks, and state-owned stores; the government also strongly encouraged civil servants to buy tickets. This model was generally adopted by Hanoi: xổ số was both sold at physical locations and sent to state agencies so workers could purchase them at their workplaces.

The way the state promoted the lottery program in its early days displayed a strong sense of collectivist mobilization and socialist messaging. Tickets were often depicted with poetry excerpts and slogans like “Lottery purchase benefits both the state and the household” or “First, [we] build the capital / Then, [we] strengthen the nation’s future” to spread the maxim that buying these tickets was a way for the individual to play a part in developing the nation.

Overall, lottery design during this period wasn’t too elaborate, as the material and technology to produce them remained quite primitive. Both the subject matters and text on the tickets were displayed simply, using bright, eye-catching palettes and straightforward layouts, evoking propaganda posters or illustrations in old textbooks from the 1980s and 1990s. Tickets usually highlighted public buildings, Hanoi’s famous landmarks, or scenes showing Hanoians going through daily activities.

As this was viewed as a key state project, xổ số kiến thiết was run quite seriously. The lottery draw was conducted under the supervision of municipal officials at live events, most famously at the Đoàn Kết Club near Tràng Tiền Street. During the decades of a planned economy, when most commodities were tightly controlled by the state using coupons, the lottery was among the few goods that the people could buy freely. Hence, the lottery was warmly welcomed by Hanoians as a form of state-sanctioned gambling.

Đoàn Kết Club. Photo via Báo Tri thức & Cuộc sống.

Trần Minh Hải, a writer who lived through the prime years of xổ số, shared that he used to watch the lottery draw every afternoon because he “liked chum change, tiny prizes — whatever seems within reach tends to draw people in.” True lottery-heads back then even developed strategies to maximize their luck. The set price was just VND2 for a ticket, but a set with auspicious numbers can fetch VND22–24 on the black market.

The atmosphere at live lottery events could be compared to that of football matches. Fans arrived early to find the best, closest seats to the stage to watch the numeral balls spin in the case and the winning sequence on the blackboard; this was because the events took place in the evening and the electricity grid was unreliable, so one needed to stay close to the stage to read the numbers. Every spin was closely followed by hundreds of spectators eagerly waiting for the host to read out the numbers.

Lottery ticket booths. Photo by John Vink.

Hải recounts the sense of palpable disappointment in the air when the sequence was finalized: “1,001 participants simultaneously morphed their faces into a rainbow of emotions — very few of joy and most were of chagrin and regret. Shoe-clad legs stomped on the ground like a percussive symphony, harmonizing with a choir of woeful groans and thundering kneecap slaps [...], leaving behind their seats a white blanket of torn tickets and strewn shreds of hope.” Still, Hải adopted a rather sanguine outlook, reminding us of the true purpose of the lottery: “Losses also meant my beloved capital might gain a few additional bricks to build.”

In the following decades, as Vietnam’s economic model and situation shifted, the lottery operation also changed accordingly: on each ticket, socialist slogans and pastoral scenes were gone, replaced by flashy motorbikes, color TVs, and even the faces of celebrities enticing passersby to pick up a few tickets. Crowds of capital residents gathering around lottery draw events, once a highlight of the local social calendar, disappeared too. Albeit still run by the state, xổ số today is much more commercialized, and much less about fostering a sense of collective nation-building. Still, it remains a unique facet of Hanoi’s cultural history worth remembering.

Images courtesy of Lê Khanh.

As a resident of Saigon, I’m well-acquainted with the city's vibrant food scene, which features cuisines from various regions of Vietnam, and how these dishes blend local recipes with flavors that resonate with Saigon locals. But Bún Ốc Thanh Hải is quite the opposite. Its dishes, snacks, drinks, and even atmosphere carry a distinct northern identity, so much so that upon visiting the place, I felt as if I was on a culinary adventure within my own city.

The eatery is located inside the alleys off the Nhiêu Lộc Canal in District 3. It’s quite easy to find; just wander through the narrow lanes between Trường Sa, Trần Quốc Thảo, and Kỳ Đồng streets, and the small roads will lead you into a spacious oasis, where Bún Ốc Thanh Hải awaits.

Thanh Hải moved from the Kỳ Đồng pavements into an alley years ago due to tightening rules.

I arrived at Thanh Hải during lunchtime. The scene was lively with sounds of customers chatting while enjoying their noodles, and the clinking of utensils coming from the kitchen. A waitress guided me to my seat and promptly took my order. Surprisingly, only a minute later, a hot bowl of bún ốc riêu cua was already placed on my table.

Seafood essence in a bowl.

“You should try putting some mắm tôm into it,” she told me right after serving my meal. While I rarely add shrimp paste into my food, afraid that my breath will inherit its pungent aroma, the lady adds that “a little bit of the paste won’t hurt anyone.” Intrigued by her enthusiasm, I decided to give it a try. In turn, I got to have a quick chat with her to learn more about this place.

The interior of Thanh Hải is very typical of a storied street restaurant in Saigon.

Bún Ốc Thanh Hải is ran by a family from Thái Bình. They moved to Saigon and introduced their hometown dishes to the city locals in the 1980s. Back then, they operated a small food cart on Kỳ Đồng Street. However, as sidewalk regulations became stricter, they relocated further into the narrow alleys of Kỳ Đồng and eventually set up their establishment.

For more than 40 years, Thanh Hải is mostly known for their signature northern-style bún ốc in which the toppings consist of snails, crab paste, some slices of tomatoes and green onions. And of course, the addition of shrimp paste into the mix is also a part of this traditional style. “That’s how we do it in our hometown,” the waitress said to me.

Chewy chunks of snail and soft crab paste are the star toppings of bún riêu here.

After stirring up the broth to let the shrimp paste dissolve into it, I had my first taste of the broth and the noodle. At first, I don’t notice any clear difference. But much later on, when I was casually going through the dish, the broth started having a tangy flavor that was stronger than the regular bún ốc that I’ve tried in the past.

The main highlights of the bún ốc were its seafood toppings. The snails are sliced into small pieces, spotting a crunchy texture when chewed on. My portion had chunks of melt-in-your-mouth crab paste, and its sweet flavors really came out when combined with the broth.

A portion of bún riêu cua (left) and bún ốc riêu cua đặc biệt (right).

Aside from the signature dish,the menu features a variety of options ranging from main courses to side dishes. If you’re not in the mood for another bún riêu variant, there is northern-style bún ốc chuối đậu. Various snail-based side dishes like ốc bươu nhồi thịt, ốc xào chuối xanh are available for your chewing pleasure. The tangy taste of bún ốc broth mixed with shrimp paste might leave you feeling thirsty, and the place offers multiple types of refreshing drinks like apricot juice.

Bún ốc chuối đậu is among a handful of northern dishes on offer here too.

The spaciousness of the establishment gave me a chance to walk around and explore the place. Right at the entrance of the shop, a counter hosted an array of northern delicacies and snacks such as Thái Nguyên tea leaves, peanut brittle candy, and bánh cáy — it felt like a mini market filled with northern goodies. 

Eating here, patrons can also brush up on their ethics lessons.

The distinctively northern setting and heaps of regional snacks at Bún Ốc Thanh Hải made me feel like a tourist, as it reminded me of the rest stops where my family and I would hang out during trips; the only difference is that the Thanh Hải “pit stop” is conveniently a three-minute drive away from my workplace.

A northern specialty corner in the middle of District 3.

Overall, my experience with Bún Ốc Thanh Hải was a delight. As I savored the flavors of their signature northern-style bún ốc riêu cua and couldn’t help but enjoy the lively and inviting atmosphere. I appreciate how the Thái Bình family gives me a taste of their hometown. Throughout my stay, the eatery welcomed throngs of patrons: some lingered at the local specialties counter, and some brought their whole families, casually chatting with the waitress like they’d known one another for a long time. It was as if Bún Ốc Thanh Hải could provide northern-born residents of Saigon a taste of their roots.

Bún Ốc Thanh Hải is open from 7am to 8:30pm.

To sum up:

• Opening time: 7am–9pm
• Parking: In front of the restaurant (bike only)
• Contact: 02838435785/0945888849
• Average cost per person: $ (Under VND100,000)
• Payment: Cash, Transfer
• Delivery App: ShopeeFood

In the mind of many Vietnamese readers, the name of writer Trần Dần has been inextricably linked with artistic experimentation and innovation. His poetic voice feels nothing like those of writers I learnt back in high school: there is something so different, refreshing and oddly contemporary about it. As I consider every page of his bulky posthumously published anthology Thơ (Poetry), I find his legacy remains inspirational even for contemporary readers — especially other young Vietnamese — on what it means to “be an artist.” This does not only entail one’s appreciation and production of Vietnamese art, but also their adoption of an artist’s mindset into daily life.

Good art confronts life in all its complexity and grittiness

Around 1954, Trần Dần joined the guerrilla forces to fight against the French in the Điện Biên Phủ battle, and was actively involved the artistic scene alongside his revolutionary peers. While they all adopted socialist realism as the ideological paradigm for their works, what set a writer like Trần Dần apart was his desire to confront the current affairs in all their complexity and grittiness.

Trần Dần as a young adult.

In comparison, most poets in this period still adhered to the lyricism of the sentimental pre-Điện Biên Phủ Thơ Mới (New Poetry) movement, and classical Vietnamese epics such as Truyện Kiều (The Tale of Kiều). Their depictions of battles were indirect at best, romanticized at worst, and mostly focused on uplifting, hard-working portrayals of a pastoral Vietnam, as opposed to the soldiers’ internal struggles. “Some people want poetry to be clear, enthusiastic, rosy, melodious,” Trần Dần wrote, “that is why, I instead want a kind of poetry where there’s the enthusiasm of teardrops, sweat, and crimson blood; the enthusiasm of dust, dirt sand, gunpowder, corpses, crematorium, [...]; the enthusiasm of disappointments, separations, disintegration, and failure. I want a dose of sweet medicine from earth’s most bitter and spicy tastes.”

A soldier unit carrying the flag “Quyết chiến, quyết thắng” as they seize Mường Thanh Bridge in 1954.

Soldiers rowing against the stream of Mã River in Thanh Hoá to deliver rice as part of their war effort during the Điện Biên Phủ battle.

This was extracted from Trần Dần – Ghi 1954-1960 (Trần Dần – Writes 1954-1960), a published compilation of the writer’s personal notes. He further added: “I love current affairs poetry, following closely the anticipations and worries of my Party, my fellow citizens, millions and millions of hearts of civilians and army, soldiers and cadres, leaders and populus.” As evaluated by critic Đỗ Lai Thuý, Trần Dần was highly against superficial and clichéd tellings of contemporary life. Instead, he championed honest observations that demonstrated deep empathy for flawed, human experiences. As sentimental as this might sound, Trần Dần’s works actually embraced ambivalence with an astute eye, and via a more impactful and innovative poetic voice than his contemporaries': this was what poetry of the new, revolutionary era should be — as envisioned by Trần Dần and many writers supporting Nhân Văn–Giai Phẩm.

Earlier publication of  “Đi! Đây Việt Bắc” under a different name, “Bài thơ Việt Bắc.”

Trần Dần — Ghi 1954-1960.

His epic-poetry collection Đi! Đây Việt Bắc! (Go! Here’s Việt Bắc!), wrote during a brief peaceful era regarding his Điện Biện Phủ’s experiences, exemplified such a spirit — as seen in an excerpt of chapter III:

The refrain “chung” employs togetherness to connote soldiers’ impoverished state — sharing mats, and even shirts; harsh life-risking conditions in battle, with its malaria-inflicting mosquitoes and deadly bombs. They are traumatic yet real experiences that the cultural zeitgeist would like to forget. However, togetherness also emphasizes the soldiers’ steadfast devotion to the cause amid the hardships. This goes to show Trần Dần’s ability to convey the soldiers’ complex experiences using the most succinct and impactful language, but also how encouraging socio-cultural amnesia risked erasing empathy and understanding towards the beauty that came along with and emerged from life’s ugliness.

Wounded soldiers at Điện Biên Phủ being taken care of.

Trần Dần ends the chapter with aplomb, finding new poetically interesting ways of using concepts “nợ” (debt) to convey the soldiers’ humility and gratefulness to everything, even if they were inanimate beings like the land, its flora and fauna, and of course, their fellow citizens:

As such, Đi! Đây Việt Bắc! demonstrated Trần Dần’s socialist realist spirit, but also his rebellious creativity: not just in the idiosyncratic yet apt imageries, but also in the enjambed lines of the stair-case poetic form that he learnt from Russian poet Mayakovsky, whose “poetic form-and-function revolution” practice resonated much with Trần Dần, infusing an accelerating dynamism to the work.

Russian Dadaist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Unfortunately, despite the work’s merits in both craft and content, it didn’t come to light immediately: Trần Dần had been banned from publishing and served a brief jail sentence that was cut short by his suicide attempt. This was in part due to his involvement in Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm, particularly his criticisms of ‘Việt Bắc,’ a poetry piece written on the same subject matter by Tố Hữu, his literary rival who oversaw the artistic activities at that time. He found Tố Hữu’s work, with its usage of traditional epic poetry’s register to focus on the region’s romantic beauty post-battle, had not dived deep enough into the soldiers’ perspectives, nor had it demonstrated new and strong employment of the Vietnamese language to convey so, thus lacking in power and zest necessary for a revolutionary poetic voice. It did not help that Trần Dần’s artistic approach meant he also decided to address the 1954 exodus of northerners in his poem ‘Nhất định thắng’ (Surefire Victory); this was the nail in the coffin to his literary career, alongside his decision to marry his wife Khuê, even as his peers disapproved because her relatives were among those who left to the south across the divided Vietnam.

Trần Dần (right) and his wife Ngọc Khuê (left).

Up until 1988, many public readers passionately stood by his works; he was even invited for literary talks with them in Huế, admitting: “I became very emotional because of the many direct and honest questions that were posed to me.” His contributions were ultimately formally recognized with a posthumous National Award for Arts and Literature in 2007.

Overall, Trần Dần’s incredible even if tumultuous, journey served as a bittersweet reminder of the difficult yet important endeavors of integrity and sensitivity in life. This wasn’t just a matter of making art, but also adopting in art-making the philosophy of being attuned to contemporary life’s undiscussed social aspects, neither by sugarcoating them nor being “a rebel without a cause.” Only by doing this can we inspire ourselves and others around us to critically reflect on our lives with honesty and acknowledgement.

Challenge yourself and the past, always — because you are alive.

If not for the Điện Biên Phủ Battle against the French, subsequent issues of Dạ Đài would have been produced. The magazine was established by 19-year-old Trần Dần and fellow poets of the Tượng Trưng (Symbolist) group, influenced by Symbolist poetry but also its following artisic movements, such as surrealism and Dadaism — hence the name “Dạ Đài.” “We’ve become tired with shallow poetry, chewing and referencing to death earthly sceneries, and worldly sentimentalism,” their Symbolist Manifesto declared, “we want to dive deep into extraneous bodies, into inner selves, and want to go further than heaven and earth.”

The front and back covers of Thơ.

Trần Dần had been a rebel ever since his formative years. Apart from Russian Dadaist Mayakovsky, in his interview with literary friends, Trần Dần named French Symbolist figures, such as Baudelaire and especially Rimbaud, as his early reads’ writers. This contrasted with the influences of his senior contemporaries, like Xuân Diệu or Thế Lữ, from Thơ Mới, taking cues from the Romanticism of Victor Hugo or Musset. They were thus deemed overly sentimental and melancholic by Trần Dần’s group, who sought to bring in a fresh poetry wave. 

Even as Tượng Trưng was disbanded, its manifesto remained in Trần Dần’s core belief. He was determined to break away from previous generations’ established conventions on what was considered acceptable or unacceptable subject matter and aesthetics. Therefore, apart from embracing the country’s multi-faceted current affairs in poetry, and as part of his “all-encompassing revolution” ideal, Trần Dần also tackled subject matters such as sexual liberation and individualism with the same intensity and avant-garde techniques that had since become his signature style, at a time when socialist realism was solely privileged. “I also love Non-Current-Affairs Poetry,” he explained. “Poetry that encompasses the country and time, Poetry that spills over all centuries, and Poetry that even enters the immense dialectic of things.” 

For instance, in ‘Đố ai chọc mắt các vì sao’ (Who here pierces the eyes of stars?), he combines quotidian images of the townscape and its flora (such as phố, mưa, lá, cành, nhà, and ngõ) with suggestive word choices (such as khoả thân, khe, toẻ, and xoạc) to create a surrealistic poetic tension:

By juxtaposing the two registers, he invites readers to reframe their perceptions of sexuality from something generally considered taboo into something deserving of normalization, for the presence of such terminologies prevailed among most mundane and natural phenomena. Using this technique, Trần Dần further espoused a world washed clean by the rain, returning to a primordial and arguably pure, “naked” state of being, with rules yet to be placed on it.

In fact, Trần Dần’s exploration is comparable to French philosopher Michel Foucault’s 1976 study The History of Sexuality. In it, Foucault argues that repressive moral values and pathologizing scientific frameworks both exist to control sexuality’s discourse in society. Similarly, many of Trần Dần’s writings frequently disrupt boundaries demarcating certain language uses as inappropriate, thus liberating our modes of expression from their preconceived definitions and social connotations. Furthermore, while Trần Dần is not the first Vietnamese writer to explore sexuality, the fact that such a topic was tackled in folk literature or Hồ Xuân Hương’s poems spoke to the timeless and ever-contemporary nature Trần Dần’s experimentations, especially considering how talks on sexuality have become even more open in contemporary artistic and daily realms.

Various drawings by Trần Dần.

Trần Dần also pushes himself further by exploring the individual’s place within society, playing with spelling rules and other “extended techniques” to visually position words on a page. This can be seen in this extract from ‘Con I’ (Unit I), whereby the letter “i” itself is the subject matter — a letter Trần Dần seemingly considers as the simplest sound particle, and basic visual symbol and building block:

According to researcher Nguyễn Thuỳ Dương, “i”’s shape is evocative of a human icon, thus representing an individual person; while I also find it interestingly resonant as the English first-person pronoun “I.” Just like how phonetically similar letters are replaced to produce idiosyncratic spellings (such as j replacing gi in “jới”), “i” morphed in and out of its upper and lower cases, trying out personas and placements in words, as if to find its belonging. “i” becomes part of words like “Đi” or “NGi”, often with deviating case and spelling rules, before joining the ever-present row of “i   i   i   i   i” that conjures sonically drone-like raindrops, or visually a line of humans, etc. — and the cycle continues.

Is Trần Dần trying to convey how the Self constantly fluctuated (and won’t settle: “KHÔNG i KHÔNG THÍC NGi”) between a larger homogenous society symbolized by the line-up of “i” figures, and imperfect even if individualistic cliques symbolized by the differently spelled words? In which case, Trần Dần argues against viewing the concept “us” as an equivocal singularity, and instead calls for the recognition of the individual “I”s that fosters a collective whole. Uncannily, this very conclusion is uttered a decade later in Lưu Quang Vũ’s play ‘Tôi và Chúng ta’ (I and We), in light of Vietnam’s tense zeitgeist towards adopting a socialist-oriented market economy that eventually led to Đổi Mới.

It is easy to dismiss any avant-garde experimentations as alienating and pointless art for others. Nevertheless, “all values of Truth, Kindness, and Beauty are difficult to understand — even artistic ice-skating is difficult to understand (!)” Trần Dần expressed. He added: “What’s known is a meaning, what’s not yet known is a word. What’s not known is deep and profound. Your recitation of a beautiful saying like Confucius’s is yet poetry, of a paradox like Lao-tsu’s is also yet poetry. To jump over your shadow is poetry. One’s yet to understand poetry, because they face difficulty jumping over their own shadow.” As such, Trần Dần’s decision to stretch his artistic practice in both form and function, using ways that challenge its pre-established aesthetic conventions, breaks new grounds for fellow Vietnamese on what our human experiences could look and feel like, and what subject matters art could and should address. 

In the same interview, Trần Dần commented on ca dao, an antecedent folk literary form: “That’s our national heritage, a teacher must place it at the same level as Nguyễn Du’s, or Cao Bá Quát’s. Must learn it to bury it.” Breaking rules and challenging predecessors were what Trần Dần called for, and he anticipated that the younger Vietnamese at that time would eventually rise to the challenge as well: “The younger generation? I’m still waiting and waiting. They were still being contained in the trap of regal literature. I’m anxiously waiting for the young cohort to gather enough strength, grow up, and bury us, just like how we have buried the pre-war generation.”

Trần Dần (second from left) and Trần Trọng Vũ (second from right) and friends.

It can be safe to say that Trần Dần would be pleasantly surprised to learn about the many independent writing communities in Vietnam nowdays. Even without systematic government support, they host spaces for young Vietnamese willing to experiment with the national language and critically engage with our contemporary experiences. Perhaps this is Trần Dần’s greatest hope for his readers: to live and love life like an artist, in ways that are even more passionate than whatever he had done.