In Plain Sight - Saigoneer

Has the Saigon Metro Made Suối Tiên Relevant Again in the 2020s?

2025-05-19T10:00:00+07:00

Has Vietnam outgrown Suối Tiên Theme Park?

Opened in 1992, the nation’s largest amusement park welcomes a reported 1 to 2 million visitors a year, with an observed target audience of domestic tourists from rural areas and their young children. It may linger in your memory as the site of a family or school trip back in the day, or somewhere you visited when you first arrived in the city and were getting your bearings. But it’s probably not somewhere you visit regularly or even recently.

Until earlier this year, I’d never been to Suối Tiên. The closest I ever came was when I heard it hosts an annual fruits festival with heavy durian presence, though the 40-minute drive out there proved too steep a barrier. While I do love exploring overlooked and oft-maligned Saigon stops (it’s the origin of this entire series, really), I could never bring myself to make that trip. That all changed this past year with the opening of the long-awaited metro, which now comfortably brings visitors from downtown District 1 right to its front gates.

The Saigoneer team had long discussed a visit to the park to celebrate the metro’s opening, so a few Saturdays ago, myself and two of our photographers gathered at Bến Thành Station for the ride out there. What follows is an inexhaustive list of suggestions for a Suối Tiên visit. I hope the do’s and don’ts help you get the most out of your trip, and perhaps allow you to decide, one way or the other, if it’s worth your time.

Do take the train. Our motivation for the Suối Tiên visit proved to be the right call. Not only is it the metro most convenient way to get out there and an opportunity to use it as it was intended (as opposed to employing its station steps as a social media photo backdrop), but it allows you to have a new vantage point of the city. Similar to a ride on the waterbus, the elevated line reveals the backs of neighborhoods, parks, and landmarks. You may think you know Saigon well, but witnessing it from the cool and comfortable train windows is akin to installing a camera in your home and finally getting to watch what your cat does all day while you’re at work.

We knew the metro was the right choice before we even got into the train car. A group of elderly veterans in full, medal-accoutered uniforms was being led through the station. Their experience of marveling at the modern structure juxtaposed with memories of dirt and gore-filled battlefield days is a testament to the nation’s resilience and what’s possible in peace.

While the ticket vending machines remain bafflingly unoperational, everything else about the metro ran smoothly. We tapped our debit cards to board and even got a free newspaper on the way. But be warned, though the last stop on the line is called Suối Tiên, you don’t actually want to get off there. You want to get off one stop earlier, at Đại Học Quốc Gia Station.

Do buy the peanut butter coffee. Egg coffee, salt coffee, coconut coffee, and coffee with sweetened condensed milk: I thought all the realistically delicious Vietnamese coffee drinks had already been introduced. And if a new one were to be developed, I certainly wouldn’t have expected to first come across it at Suối Tiên. However, the cafe at the entrance to the park sells peanut butter coffee that is astonishingly tasty. A mixture of regular Vietnamese phin coffee, some sweetened condensed milk, and real peanut butter results in a rich, nutty, sweet drink that is as refreshing as it is invigorating. The flavors blend so seamlessly that I wonder why I’ve never seen anyone else sell it, and have already begun experimenting with versions of it at my house. And maybe the best part is you don’t even need to pay to enter the park to buy it. You could, in theory, get off at the train stop, purchase the reasonably priced drink, and be back on your way. You can also visit the adjacent MiniStop for some drinks and snacks, so you don’t need to visit one of the uninspired canteens inside.

Don’t buy the ticket book. I’ve never encountered a more confusing amusement park ticketing system than Suối Tiên’s. The majority of the parks I’ve visited have a general admission rate that allows unlimited access to all attractions inside. Once in a while, there are one or two separate prices for unique sections. Suối Tiên doesn’t do it like this. They have half a dozen different ticket level options, each allowing visitors one-time access to different rides or experiences.

We assumed that the most expensive ticket book option, the so-called “Combo Thrill Seeker,” would let us enjoy everything in the park. We were very wrong, however. Coming in at nearly VND500,000 each, we soon found out we weren’t allowed entry for everything. We also found ourselves going on rides we had no interest in simply because it was in the package. Every ride, funhouse, and transportation method can be paid for separately, and we no doubt would have saved more money had we opted for this route.

Don’t believe everything you hear. This park is really quite large (105 hectares), and the thought of walking in the stifling heat was quite overwhelming, so we decided to take the train (at added expense, of course, because this was not included in our ticket book). After convincing the staff at the train station to give us a paper map as opposed to relying on the woefully janky QR-code version, we decided to ride to the far end’s organic farm and work our way back towards the entrance.

As we disembarked the train, a playful chattering of birds filled the air. Was this farm truly so large and verdant as to attract wildlife like a rural commune somewhere deep in the delta? No. The birdsongs were being pumped in via overhead speakers. The farm does have an acceptable number of plants, including 30 exotic fruit varieties such as Indian red pomegranates, Brazilian cherries, and Taiwanese golden star apples, that are cultivated using Japanese farming methods, Israeli drip irrigation, and organic fertilizers. Alas, its claims to be an immersive learning opportunity about sustainable agriculture struck me as a little far-fetched. One could probably learn a lot more by visiting an actual working farm or meeting an agriculture lecturer from one of the nation’s agriculture departments.

Don’t pick the grapes. Large signs posted tell you not to do this, and that should be reason enough not to pluck down a colorful orb and pop it in your mouth. But if you refuse to be a rule-abiding citizen, you’ll be very sorry. They are sour, grainy, terrible!

Do take photos for tattoo inspiration. I’m of the mind that strange statues made permanent via ink beneath skin is one of the best souvenirs one can have; the giraffe climbing a tree as observed at the Saigon Zoo forever on my leg may reveal my bias. If you agree, you’ll find plenty of ideas here. Pomelos with four faces and one crown; a durian with arms and legs; all 12 zodiac animals striking the imposing expressions of disgruntled retail workers on Christmas eve: there are many candidates — except for the mouse doing a pose that suspiciously looks like the Nazi salute… Probably don’t get that inked.

Don’t pay for the crocodile farm. The park’s selection of attractions seems a bit haphazard, but I’d like to think the crocodile farm is a subtle allusion to the land’s use before it was an amusement park. It was first a commercial forest farm built by Sóc Trăng native, Đinh Văn Vui, in 1987 for raising pythons. Moreover, a stream that flowed through the former wasteland area is connected to a legend of seven virgin girls who died and gave it the name: Suối Tiên, or fairy creek.

Regardless of why it’s there, for inexplicable reasons, a ticket to the crocodile farm was not included in our booklet. Putting aside the fact that reptiles generally, and crocodiles particularly, are unimpressive animals for viewing on account of their sedentary, submerged lifestyles, you don’t need to pay to see them. You can instead view them from the monorail, which our ticket booklet did include entrance to.

Don’t rock the monorail car. In addition to the views of the cold-blooded logs that are crocodiles in the tepid pond below, the monorail allows you to get a better view of the park in general. You can see the scrabbly animal cages that house rabbits, turtles, and birds, as well as games and rides. But be careful not to move too aggressively within the car because it shudders and sways with unnerving squeals when you do so. As the day wore on, we increasingly noticed areas of questionable safety controls, but this was the first instance where we understood that our health and well-being required self-vigilance. For the remainder of our monorail ride we sat very still, enjoying pleasant chit-chat.

Do empty your pockets before getting on the rides. While some negativity may bubble to the surface of this article from time to time, credit where credit’s due when it comes to two rides in particular. The Rotation of the Universe and the Giant Pendulum provide thrilling speed and daring drops. The high-velocity, adrenaline-filled rides whisked us into the sky and set us careening back down with gravity tugging on our stomachs. Just be careful not to have a loose hat or any valuables in shallow pockets because they might tumble out and shatter on the ground.

But if you do lose something, don’t worry too much. There is a lost and found case beside the train station containing a number of early edition iPhones, early digital point-and-click cameras, and official IDs. It's like opening a time capsule from the early 2000s. One wonders what juicy text messages are now locked up in those Nokia brick phones and if their owners will ever return to claim them.

Don’t bother with the overhead bicycle. While you’ll get some exercise pumping the pedals to help you burn off the peanut butter coffee calories, this ride offers little else. It has a view of some construction areas and carnival games of little popularity, I suppose. If this hadn’t been paid for in our ticket book, we surely wouldn’t have wanted to take part in this one, and neither should you.

Don’t take your eyes off your little ones. The construction site visible from the bicycles is woefully unguarded. Intense equipment, including soldering irons, stemrollers, and drills are strewn all over waiting for a child to stumble over.

Meanwhile, entrance to the Rotation of the Universe, whose speed I rightfully praised, has no gate or door, meaning a toddler could simply teeter into the full downswoop of hundreds of kilos of shuddering steel. Suối Tiên is unquestionably aimed at children, but it does very little to ensure they remain safe. Hell, a person could even fall into the crocodile ponds and prove me wrong for thinking the animals are slow, dimwitted bores. If you bring children to the park, do keep a close watch on them to ensure they don’t get seriously injured by any of the precarious overhangs, slippery floors, sharp cliffs or recklessly arranged machinery.

Do pack a swimsuit. Or maybe don’t pack a swimsuit. We didn’t bring swim trunks and thus didn’t go to the waterpark, so I cannot say anything good or bad about it. It did appear stuffed with screaming children on a school trip, which might very well be overwhelming, particularly if you are a foreigner.

Do smile and wave. Hello! What’s your name?! It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a crowd of children shout this at me. In Saigon, people are familiar with foreigners, and unlike in rural areas, we rarely arouse a second glance. This was not the case at Suối Tiên. Likely because the main demographic of guests is rural dwellers, we were very much a source of unwarranted excitement. Anytime we walked past a school group or found ourselves in the same haunted house, they shouted all the random English phrases they knew at us. I never feel more appreciated for doing absolutely nothing other than having been born elsewhere than in such situations. The best thing to do is to politely smile, say hello, and return the high-fives.

Thankfully, it’s quite easy to be jovial because, for the most part, people at Suối Tiên are in good spirits. Security guards, peanut butter coffee makers, ride operators, and construction workers were all friendly and helped create a jubilant atmosphere.

Don’t be scared. (Don’t worry, you won’t be). Many of the attractions at Suối Tiên have names that don’t reveal what’s inside. Phoenix House, Magic Castle, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Unicorn Palace are all haunted houses reliant on janky animatronics to provide unconvincing jump scares.

While there is creativity behind the morality-themed Unicorn Palace, which points out the gruesome afterlifes awaiting drunkards, cheats, and those who don’t honor their parents, the screeching, scowling, whirring maelstrom of machines presenting them could use a major overhaul. Worse is the copyright-flaunting Harry Potter-themed Magic House that is so incredibly dark inside it’s impossible to see any of the installations that are just ripped-off versions of Hogwarts’ spiders, witches, serpents, and villains. It’s hard to imagine even the most skittish child being actually frightened by any of it. We put our heads down and quickened our pace to get through the dark and boring buildings.

Do forget what you learned in history class. The Journey to the Center of the Earth is the most baffling of all Suối Tiên’s attractions. It could have been an imaginative trip to the magma-rich core of the planet, or some time-traveling fever dream filled with dinosaurs, but it’s not. The mannequin dressed like a 1990s grunge rock fan is a red herring, and the attraction is actually a cart-based trip through a fantasy version of Egypt, complete with mummies, gold, and animatronic Nile beasts. It’s another humdrum parade of attempted jump scares.

The comical jumble of Egyptian tropes obliterates any argument one could make about the park being a learning experience. And while the brief gestures to Buddhist principles in one ride is admirable, it’s hardly a stand-in for a visit to the temple. If your child claims they are going to Suối Tiên as an educational trip, it's probably best to keep them home that day. But at the very least, the large globe accurately depicts the world’s nations, including the prominent identification of Trường Sa and Hoàng Sa as Vietnamese.

Don’t eat the snow. The Snow Castle allows you to know what it would be like to work in a frozen seafood factory. I didn’t notice a thermometer while putting on the provided winter jacket or plastic boots, but it's surely well below 0°C. This feels wonderful when coming in from the scorching Saigon sun. After ten minutes, it even got uncomfortable. Thankfully, there isn’t much to do in the Snow Castle. We whisked down the slide a couple of times, careful not to slip on the thin layer of shaved ice that covered every surface, and we were ready to exit. There isn’t enough of these slivers to make a snowball or snow angel. And you definitely shouldn’t put them in your mouth.

Do plan around a festival. On June 1, the fruit festival at Suối Tiên officially begins. Based on videos of parades featuring absurd mascots and moderately horrifying characters alongside human performers that I’ve seen, the occasion ramps up the slapdash joys of the entire park experience. You’re allowed to pick fruit at the farm with no shame, and at the very least, all the other attractions will be available as well.

Don’t let us tell you what to do. After nearly four hours, we were hot and tired. We’d used up our entire ticket book, but hadn’t explored every nook and corner of the park. We didn’t even pay to have those tiny massage fish nibble at our feet. The newest roller coaster was under repair. There is plenty to discover that we no doubt missed.

Yes, Suối Tiên is overpriced and shoddy, with many of the attractions needing not maintenance but a complete teardown. It’s hard to favorably compare the park to newer entertainment sites in Saigon, including even basic mall arcades. Yet, even without being able to connect it to nostalgic childhood visits, I find myself reflecting with great fondness on our trip. Maybe it was seeing our photographer’s eyeglasses fogged up in the giant industrial cooler, or laughing at the other's discovery that every single toilet in the male bathroom was empty and locked; we had a lot of fun. Like most things, anywhere in life really, if you go with the right attitude and the right people, you can make it fun.

Meet the Saigon Man Whose Home Is an Archive of Traditional Musical Instruments

2025-04-27T12:00:00+07:00

“These instruments serve our everyday life, or even our spiritual life. For example, they mark the transitions of life. When a baby is born or a person passes away, people play these instruments to welcome or bid farewell to these moments. They also use music to pray for good weather, good business, and happiness for future generations,” Đức Dậu, a seasoned collector of Vietnamese traditional instruments, shares how these antique musical devices are more than just merely tools used for entertainment.

Dậu has dedicated more than 30 years of his life to researching and collecting musical instruments from Vietnam’s 54 ethnic groups. He garnered a massive collection of approximately 2,000 items from percussion to string instruments. He keeps them in his private home, a unique wooden house located in an alley off Phạm Huy Thông Street in Gò Vấp District.

Dậu’s residence is hard to miss as a large drum rests at the front of his property. Once one enters the home and closes the door, street noises disappear. The interior is adorned with stacks of century-old drums on one side of the wall, while on the other side there are hundreds of flutes, percussion, and other instruments on display.

Dậu is not only a collector but also a musician who uses these traditional instruments to make a living. Thus, “the arrangement of items here is not like a typical museum,” he explains. “Instead, they are arranged in such a way that I can pick up and use them on the spot.”

His bond with music began when he was just a child. Born in 1957, he lived on Hanoi’s Huế Street, right across from a theater. This provided him with “the sounds, the friction, and the artistic voices of cultural performers at the time,” he says.

Beyond the fortunate address, Dậu believes that his journey in music is predestined. His family are devout Buddhists, and initially, his father wanted him to pursue a career in medicine instead of music. However, during a funeral trip to Ba Vì District, Dậu’s father asked a monk for advice on his son’s future. The monk said: “No, your son’s fate is not meant to become a doctor, as he is meant to become an artist.”

During the 1970s, Dậu joined many local ensembles to make a living and hone his craft. In 1983, he joined the state’s Institute of Music and Dance Research in Hanoi and began collecting folk instruments. “I got the chance to learn from all the veterans, the experts in Vietnamese music culture. They were also researchers and collectors of these things too. So this collection of mine was inspired by my surroundings, my work and of course, it also came from my love for traditional music,” he explains.

In 1986, Dậu and his family relocated to Saigon, where he started his collecting journey. His time working at the research institute educated him about many traditional music festivals across the whole country, so he utilized his knowledge to visit those festivals and connect with local ethnic groups and communities.

But it wasn’t easy to actually get his hands on the instruments. “These artifacts are not just something that just money can buy, they were passed down from many generations. I usually ask the ethnic groups to help me learn about an instrument, how to play them, and their importance for their community. And in return, they either sell or gifted me the instrument out of appreciation,” Dậu shares.

Sometimes it takes up to four years of traveling back and forth from Saigon to the ethnic community area for Dậu to learn the ropes of playing an instrument and form a strong enough bond with the locals to ask them to sell it to him. “Sometimes I spent a lot of effort trying to get an instrument for my collection, but the locals ended up saying no. At those times I felt quite sad, but it is what it is, not everything is meant to be,” he says.

Dậu also attempts to purchase instruments that are no longer being made by the ethnic minorities or at risk of being dismantled for materials during difficult times as a way to prevent those artifacts from being lost in time. He wants to preserve the instruments, the stories behind them, how they were made and what roles they played in the community.

As we tour Dậu’s museum, he explains the mechanisms behind some artifacts. Materials such as wood, bamboo, leaves, or animal products are commonly used to craft traditional instruments.

The collection’s most notable instrument is a set of 300-year-old H'gơr drums from the Central Highlands region. They are played in Ê-đê ethnic minorities’ feasts such as a baby’s one-month anniversary, or a longevity ceremony. Made of wood and covered with elephant or buffalo skin, the drums seem immune to the effects of time. Dậu explains that the Ê-đê people had a special method to preserve these drums. “It is a secret recipe of their community. They use a type of leaf to mix into water, then the liquid is poured onto the drums, giving it a bitter taste so it doesn’t attract termites. Now you can see that 300 years later, it only gets old but not damaged.”

Dậu then offers to perform a song for us. “You need to hear the live sound of these instruments to somewhat feel the spirit of Vietnamese music,” he says. He introduces us to his chapi, a tube-shaped instrument that is often played during festivals in Kon Tum and Gia Lai provinces. It has 13 strings with a gourd shell attached to the end to amplify its echo.

Dậu started performing the song ‘Đôi Chân Trần’ (Barefoot), a song composed by people from the Central Highlands. The bright, up-tempo tune creates the adventurous atmosphere of embarking on a journey. Then Dậu begins to sing. The lyrics convey the perseverance and hardship of the Central Highlands people via the story of a man raising his child. Dậu’s rich, masculine voice alongside the chapi creates a full and powerful experience, despite it being a simple acoustic performance.

Dậu says that the location where a song is performed matters just as much as the instruments and performer. “These musical instruments are used in natural, mountainous areas. Therefore, I built a wooden house to somewhat preserve the sound, because bricks and concrete would not be able to convey the soul of the music. However, to have the genuine listening experience, you’ll have to go to each native place and see the locals perform,” Dậu says.

Dậu’s collection helps preserve people’s love and appreciation for traditional Vietnamese music. His large collection was documented for educational and research publications such as the photobook named Tiếng Vọng Ngàn Năm (The Thousand-Year Echo). In the 1980s, he formed a traditional music ensemble named Đoàn Nhạc gõ Phù Đổng with his family. Over the years, the Phù Đổng ensemble have shared their passion for traditional music with many schools, tourists, and festivals both in and outside of Vietnam.

“Fate has granted me the chance to preserve these artifacts, so I have to appreciate this opportunity and take responsibility for it. I want to bring this genre of music to more and more people, so that they can understand the cultural and spiritual values of traditional music,” Dậu says. “These instruments were made from natural materials granted by heaven and earth, and people used those blessings to craft the musical tools that serve their community. So the sound made by these instruments carries the Vietnamese identity, and with different communities and ethnic groups, you have the variations of melodies, rhythm, and symphonies,” he adds.

“In the past, there were people who offered me a crazy amount of money for this collection, but I refused. Because as I reflect on my collecting journey and my passion for music, these artifacts carry the soul of Vietnamese music, and no one can put a price onto them.”

To Appreciate Tao Đàn More, Study the Park's Past, Present, and Future

2024-11-20T09:00:00+07:00

Shallow shrub and fern roots tussle to send shoots, tendrils and stalks up and outwards, sprawling across uneven ground and grasping at patches of light. A musky, funky, fetid soil stink emanates from crooks, crevices, and holes ungoverned by grubs, spiders, snails, beetles, and flies. Flowers bloom in vibrant bursts of color amongst vines, the collapsing pulp of decomposing logs and uncompromising boulders; birds trill, cicadas whine, and the air offers its inexhaustible exhale of droplet-rich molecules. We live in the tropics. Often, we forget this. Tao Đàn Park allows us to remember.

Everyone knows what and where Tao Đàn is. The city’s largest downtown park has been a green oasis for longer than any living resident can remember. But despite its size and centrality, I was shocked to discover via informal discussions with friends and co-workers that most people spend very little time there. Some have never even stepped foot inside.

Colonial plans for Tao Đàn (left) and scenes from the park of decades past (right). Photos via Chuyện Xưa.

When the French began their long-lasting Saigon subjugation process and started constructing the Norodom Palace in 1868 in what was then the city outskirts, the massive expanse of open land behind it was cultivated as the palace orchard. When the French opened Miss Clavell Street (now Huyền Trân Công Chúa), the garden was separated from the palace and renamed “Jardin de la ville” (city flower garden), but it remained a place of pleasure primarily intended for the colonialists and their rich associates. Once the French withdrew in 1955, it was given its current name. From then until 1976, Tao Đàn was home to a primary school and hosted a variety of leisure and educational activities. It gradually evolved into what we know it as today.

Tao Đàn in 1976. Photo via Đỡ Buồn.

But the park’s history is not what first interested me in Tao Đàn. I began spending time there out of pure convenience: it was merely the fastest route from the Saigoneer office to my apartment. Cutting through it every morning and evening not only provided a pleasant dose of shade and reprieve from dodging sidewalk-hoping motorbike hooligans, but it also allowed me to notice the park’s charming, at times baffling, elements and characters.

Tao Đàn's collection of curios

In particular, Tao Đàn’s strange assemblage of unmarked statues first aroused my curiosity. A thumbs up slammed through a wall, a child reading a book on the back of a modernist buffalo, a bust of Beethoven with his name misspelled beneath the title of one of his most famous piano sonatas, what appears to be a giant tailpipe beside a doorstop and the silhouette of a nun impaled by spikes. The statues have no accompanying information such as title or artist name. Packed together towards the southern end of the park, they are an incongruous mix of styles and motifs. Where did they come from? Why are they here?

It turns out that the artworks were produced during a month-long sculpture creation camp in 2005 that focused on beautifying the park. Artists from around the country were invited to create pieces without any requirements or directions for subject matter. Such activities have occurred in other parts of the country as well, including Huế and An Giang. While such attention to supporting art and making public spaces more visually appealing is admirable, there could have been greater thought behind the presentation of what would become a permanent installation. Speaking in Vietnamese about the camps in general, sculptor Lê Xuân Tiên noted: “The way of displaying and preserving works in each camp is not scientific or artistic. Such a display method not only fails to honor the works but also makes them look more miserable, in a cramped environment lacking landscape, space, and perspective.”

Indeed, many of the individual works have merits that would benefit from more respectful installation, including basic details about the artist and consideration for how they capture sunlight and occupy space. As they currently stand, they remind one of the stock photos hotels hang to cover bare walls without the intention of inviting much thought or emotion. Or perhaps the sculpture garden as a whole can be likened to a fashion designer presenting a new collection by hanging the clothing on a balcony laundry line.

Other statues in Tao Đàn are more clear in their origins and intent. A bust of Mahatma Gandhi, for example, comes with an inspiring quote and details of the sculptor and the Indian Council for Relations that provided for it. A small-scale replica of the Po Nagar Chăm Tower in Nha Trang was built several decades ago as a pleasant monument that nods to the history of the thalassocratic Champa in Vietnam. The original was crushed by falling trees during a heavy 2021 storm, but a new one was quickly erected, underscoring its assumed value to the park.

The Lâm burial complex across the park, at least, has some brief identifying material that offers context. A plaque notes that it was built by Lâm Tam Lang, an immigrant from Guangdong, and his wife, Mai Thị Xã. The Chinese text on the tomb walls indicates he died in 1795, during the tumultuous period in southern Vietnam when the Tây Sơn toppled the first reign of the Nguyễn lords in the south. The Inventory List of Historical-Cultural Relics in Ho Chi Minh City claims that the ancient tomb was built in 1895, when southern Vietnam’s brief independence was coming to a close. The monument’s construction materials — quicklime, fine sand, shell powder mixed with molasses, and sticky jungle tree sap — denote the family to have been wealthy. In 2014, it was recognized as a city-level architectural and artistic relic. I have never seen anyone visit it or leave offerings, suggesting familial duty and legacy can only extend so many decades. Perhaps, we should take advice from renowned pugilist, Mike Tyson, who said this week, after one dies: “We're just dead. We're dust, we're absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.”

Compared to the Lâm tomb, a far more frequently visited structure in Tao Đàn is the Hùng King Shrine which was built in 2012 and refurbished a decade later. I’ve frequently observed park visitors stopping at it to light incense, offer respects, and make prayers. Modeled after the much larger temple in Phú Thọ, the shrine’s ridged, upturned roof, stone lions at the entrance, and plants contained in attention-drawing ceramics all reflect Chinese influence as reinforced by the Chinese script on its pillars. These are contrasted by the Đông Sơn drum at the top entrance flanked by a familiar chim Lạc. These images, attributed to the Đông Sơn culture in the Red River Delta over 2,000 years ago, are cited as one of the few uniquely Vietnamese ancient aesthetics remaining today.

Before my last visit to the park, I'd just finished reading Architects of Dignity, a book that examines early and mid 20^th century debates about Vietnamese independence and identity including the role of outside influences. This no doubt led me ruminate on the structures in Tao Đàn in the context of how they reflect the challenges of separating uniquely Vietnamese culture from that of the many nations that have ruled Vietnam over the centuries. In addition to the park’s very existence, many of its gargantuan trees are not native to the area. Rather, the French transplanted them from the highlands and elsewhere per their cultural understanding of shade, city use, and urban development.

So where does the French end and the Vietnamese start in Tao Đàn? Is the Chăm sculpture an example of appropriation or does thinking of it as such ignore the fact that Kinh is not synonymous with Vietnamese identity? What should we say of public parks and many of the activities they allow for being foreign concepts?

Such overwrought topics slipped from my mind when I reached the cactus garden. Cactus, a species not even native to Asia in general, let alone Saigon, throw up their spiky arms with no regard for our notions of nationhood. To tell the history of Tao Đàn requires Vietnamese, French, English and a bit of Chinese. Cacti have their own language; one with no past or future tenses. Cacti only speak of now.

Tao Đàn in use today

Enough static ruminations on what Tao Đàn is; let's turn to what Tao Đàn is used for. If you venture there early in the morning, before the city lathers itself up in layers of smog and humidity, you’ll find people exercising. Walkers and joggers weave around organized dancing, aerobic and yoga groups. While their competing music, which varies from modern global pop hits to classic Vietnamese slow jams, can be a bit jarring, it's an overwhelmingly peaceful atmosphere. Aunties and uncles use the workout equipment and strike slow-mo martial arts poses. Badminton players block off stretches of the sidewalk to nearly no one’s concern. Kids climb and clamber on playground equipment. These people focusing on mental and physical wellness seem calm and happy. It’s a scene that repeats itself in the evening and stands in stark contrast to the agitated motorists that snarl the city’s boulevards, honking and huffing like caged ferrets.

Sports have a long history in Tao Đàn, dating back to when the French first developed it. In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, they built numerous athletic facilities, including what is thought to be the nation’s first football field. Because the sport was unknown amongst locals at the time, it hosted games between mostly foreign soldiers and port workers. Tao Đàn was also a major site for bicycle integration into Vietnam. In 1896, Tao Đàn held what was possibly Vietnam’s first bicycle race and organized classes to teach people how to use what was at the time a new and strange invention. Back then, the colonial administration had already taken a liking to horse racing, so the space on an adjacent plot on Nguyễn Du was devoted to the Horse Riding Association which raised and trained horses for the racetrack elsewhere in the city.

Tao Đàn’s tennis courts as photographed in 1948 by Jack Birns of TIME and LIFE magazines.

Imagining what Tao Đàn’s sporting scene must have been like back then conjures images straight from Vũ Trọng Phụng’s satirical epic Dumb Luck which lambastes 1930s Hanoi bourgeois society and their pursuit of what they considered “civilized society” as mimicked from the French. Tennis plays a central role in the work, with the pomp, circumstance, and politics surrounding the game exposing the flawed logic and immoral behavior employed by the elite to gain and maintain power. Or as its main character experiences it: “Red-Haired Xuân felt the road to fame and success opening wide before him. The driveway was full of beautiful cars. Elegantly clad Vietnamese and French men entered and exited along with fashionable Vietnamese ladies and French madames. They all exuded the luxurious air of the upper classes. Xuân knew that he had truly arrived. Oh, sports! Glorious sports! What can't you accomplish? Hip hip hooray!”

Tao Đàn’s role as an athletic center continues today in a more democratized form that no longer resembles that of Red-Haired Xuân’s. In addition to the previously mentioned dancers, aerobic enthusiasts and badminton players, the park caters to residents via the Ammite Sports Club which includes football fields, a swimming pool, basketball courts, an archery range, and tennis courts. While not as fancy as other facilities in the city, the shade offered by enormous trees, the central location, and the time-worn details including frayed nets, wonky unlicenced Donald Duck advertisements, downtrodden canteen, and faded paint all contribute to a feeling of connection with a messy, dynamic city and corresponding civil society. Strolling into the space without the need for a pass or security check imparts the idea that you are welcome, you belong, you are part of the human apparatus that constructed, maintains and is expected to appreciate the communal space.

Such freedom of movement allows one to poke around in the nooks and corners of this area of the park, including the back of the Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theatre. The traditional art form which dates back hundreds of years has long been relegated to primarily a tourism oddity. And even in that context, it is best known in the north where it originated. Therefore, it's of little surprise that few international tourist itineraries include a stop here, to say nothing of domestic guests or Saigon residents. Still, it's well worth wandering around behind the building to observe the puppets in various states of repair and replacement. Streaked by shadows falling from the colonial structure’s stately shutters and pillars, the wooden dragons, phoenixes and villagers rest amongst disheveled shelves of glues, paints, glitter, unmarked goop, naked mannequins and cast-off construction pieces. The blank stare of miniature farmers with wires protruding from their bellies and warped back pieces split by the elements would fit perfectly in a horror movie if a director ever took notice.

But even if you are not one for exercise and don’t even appreciate a bench with some shade in the outdoors to read a book or scroll a phone, the park has one last use: toilets! On its north side, near the children’s playground equipment is a clean and inviting public bathroom. The city features far too few such amenities, so it's great to know where they are. It can save one from having to purchase a coffee to use a shop bathroom, let alone consider peeing along the side of the road. The value of an available public restroom should not be understated when listing Tao Đàn’s merits.

The future of Tao Đàn

So if all that helps us understand what Tao Đàn was and is, let us consider what Tao Đàn will be. Like so many elements of Saigon, the park is at the mercy of modern values and blunt realities. Simply, the city is getting more crowded, and green spaces seem to be among its least respected elements. The people will not allow it to be destroyed all at once, so it gets chipped away, piece by piece; scraped, chunked, and fissured. It’s already well underway.

By 7am, the park’s quiet is fractured and with it the illusion of solitude. In 2003, two periphery roads were connected to become the park-bisecting Trương Định Street. Like a pinhole pierced into a satchel of soup that spills broth into a takeaway bag of dinner, the road has ushered in the city’s noises and chaos. Traffic fumes and engine discord leak across the serene atmosphere. The space cannot be both a thoroughfare and an oasis. One of my friends who remembers visiting the park long ago, decades before the road, claims it has now been ruined. A younger friend argues the road was necessary to make traversing the city convenient. Who’s correct? So it is with matters of public space; the public is always divided.

A similar piecemeal removal of the park occurred just a few years ago. On the western edge, a longstanding bird cafe was demolished to work on an underground portion of a woefully delayed Saigon Metro Line. Transplanted on a busy road, the new bird cafe is a sad facsimile of its former self, welcoming few bird enthusiasts who must struggle to hear the trills of their bulbuls over the dyspeptic groans of unrepentant capitalism careening along the street. The section devoted to metro construction access is a filthy, puddle-strewn stretch of gravel marred by potholes, corrugated sheet metal, and spray-painted cement blocks.

Smaller incursions into the park's natural beauty are ongoing too. Earlier this year, a tree branch fell, killing two people and injuring three. The city rightfully used it as an opportunity to trim other limbs to guard against similar tragedies. This balancing of safety and wild splendor will continue, with errors certainly made on the side of keeping people free from harm. In a perfect world, Saigon would be so filled with parks it wouldn’t have to compromise and could devote itself fully to being a place to savor the city’s tropical botany, or be a mecca for physical fitness, or serve as a showcase for art projects, or a keeper of cultural destinations or space for holding events. Alas, it must be all of these as well as a means for reducing traffic.

Maybe such an understanding of shared use allows us to see the park as a metaphor for public spaces as a whole. They will never please anyone fully. Micro and macro elements will always upset us as we each could offer a different vision better suited to our particular preferences. And yet, this is certainly preferable to the space being held in private hands, be it a wealthy individual or a greedy government. Instead, Tao Đàn is a site to witness and appreciate compromise; an act our species will need to perform with increasing regularity to survive.

Hanoi's Largest Indoor Aquarium Is Surprisingly Impressive for a Mall Attraction

2024-04-15T11:00:00+07:00

I am a champion of the public aquarium. For many people, the aquarium is the only place where they can meet marine life outside of perhaps a wet market or seafood restaurant. Some research suggests that watching fish swim around can reduce stress and lower blood pressure, and that seeing marine life in their (simulated) habitats can inspire people to care more about these endangered species in their besieged environments. For the serious study of marine life, aquaria allow biologists to observe the behaviors of animals that are otherwise difficult to observe in nature. Vietnam has a few public aquaria: the Viện Hải Dương Học and Trí Nguyên Aquarium in Nha Trang, the Vinpearland-branded aquaria in Hanoi, Phú Quốc, and Nha Trang, and a handful of others. When Vietnam’s newest aquarium opened at the end of last summer, I had to go take a look.

Lotte World Aquarium Hanoi, in the basement of the new Lotte World Shopping Mall on the western shores of Hồ Tây, boasts several impressive qualifications: it is Hanoi’s largest indoor aquarium (handily beating out the small aquarium at Times City), the largest touch tank in Vietnam (filled with 90 tons of water), and the largest curved aquarium tank in Southeast Asia (18 by 5.8 meters). The aquarium has a total area of over 9,000 square meters and all of the 67 tanks combined hold 3,400 tons of water. Within those tanks live 31,000 aquatic animals representing around 400 species from freshwater and marine environments around the world. This is no pet store or wet market. Now, with those dry statistics out of the way, let’s get wet.

It took a minute to find the aquarium entrance since it’s below the main shopping area, but once I was downstairs it was pretty clear that I had found the right spot. Admission is a bit complicated: there are separate price categories for children and adults, for weekdays and weekends, and for Vietnamese and foreigners. The lowest price (Vietnamese children on weekdays) is VND190,000 and the highest (foreigners on weekends) is VND500,000, so expect to pay somewhere between those two price points. Even though I’m American, after chatting in Vietnamese a bit the admissions staff allowed me to pay the Vietnamese price, which I really appreciated. The aquarium is open seven days a week from 9:30am to a staggeringly late 10:00pm so even the night owls have a chance to see beneath the sea.

Lotte World Aquarium Hanoi is divided into four themed exhibit areas: Làng quê yên bình, Dạo bước trên biển, Thám hiểm biển xanh, and Quảng trường đại dương (the official English names of each zone are slightly different than direct translations: Fresh Town, Beach Walk, Sea Adventure, and Ocean Square). The aquarium is linear, so there is an A-to-B path that visitors are expected to follow from the first exhibit to the gift shop. The central theme of the aquarium is a journey down a river from the mountains to the open ocean. Visitors start in a mountain village and follow the river down to a beach, through a coral reef, and into the open ocean, finally ending up in a café and gift shop. The entrance promises a very Vietnamese theme: the tale of cá ông, presented to viewers through a short animation about a fisherman, his daughter, her hat, and a whale.

As a historian who studies the history of oceanography and fishing in Vietnam, I was mainly interested in how the aquarium would educate visitors about aquatic environments in Vietnam and Vietnamese people’s relationships to them, but in this respect I was disappointed. Most of the aquarium’s exhibits, while impressive, were generic, and not representative of specifically Vietnamese environments. Other than a cá ông temple in Beach Walk, the theme of cá ông is mostly ignored within the actual exhibit halls, and very rarely do any exhibits directly represent a Vietnamese environment.

The first exhibition area is Fresh Town, which showcases freshwater life from around the world. Starting with a highland village of stilt houses over ponds in a bamboo grove, visitors follow an imaginary watercourse downstream from the mountains to the coast. Under the stilt houses live freshwater fish from around the world: some South American cichlids, giant gourami, tigerfish, and red-tailed catfish. A jungle room with tiny green jewels of aquaria nestled in concrete trees showcases the kinds of fish one can easily buy at a pet store: tetras, smaller gourami, angelfish, discus, and goldfish. The only exhibit here directly related to Vietnamese environments is the Mekong River tunnel, which is also the largest tank in the hall. In it, visitors can see some of Southeast Asia’s truly magnificent freshwater fish: Mekong giant catfish, Siamese barbs, basa catfish, and the non-native arapaima that have been introduced for sport fishing. This tank is the standout exhibit in Fresh Town. It is impressive, well-designed, and does a good job of showcasing regional biodiversity.

After Fresh Town, visitors arrive on the coast at Beach Walk, which in, my opinion, is the most interesting section of the aquarium. Exhibits here include a recreation of a mangrove forest, a large beach exhibit, and a large touch tank where visitors are able to touch a variety of marine life. Vietnam’s coastlines used to host large mangrove forests, which protected the coast from typhoon damage and hosted many of Vietnam’s important marine life. Today, these important yet vulnerable environments are under constant attack by developers and shrimp farmers, and the presence of an exhibit and some signage explaining the importance of mangrove ecology is appreciated — all the more so because the exhibit is home to one of my favorite animals: the humble and beautiful horseshoe crab. At the touch tank, aquarium staff supervises guests who want to touch hermit crabs and starfish and in the beach tank, visitors can see batfish, grey snappers, sergeant-majors, and cute little cat sharks that swim under the tourists at Vietnam’s various beaches. Above the beach sits a mock cá ông temple, to remind visitors that this exhibit represents a Vietnamese environment.

Following the beach is the most psychedelic of the exhibition halls: a fluorescent and blacklight-lit coral reef. It is supposed to be a series of tanks exhibiting coral reef ecosystems, but also a great approximation of how it feels to watch Finding Nemo on psychedelic mushrooms. The tanks are nestled in giant neon-colored coral sculptures, each one a miniature tropical reef. Clownfish, lionfish, cowfish, decorator crabs, razorfish, and other colorful crowd-pleasers are on display in the jeweled boxes. Almost all of the marine life in these tanks comes from the tropical Indo-Pacific, so even though the signage is never explicit about it, it is likely that much of Sea Adventure represents Vietnamese coral reefs. Vietnam is at risk of losing much of its coral diversity as various development projects and increasing environmental degradation affect these vulnerable spaces, so any chance for people to see and appreciate these endangered ecologies up close is much appreciated. Finding Nemo fans, this exhibit hall is for you.

Tucked away to the side of the hallway here, visitors can see behind the curtain and peer into some of the aquarium’s animal care/veterinary labs, as well as an education space called Lớp Hải Dương Học or Marine Education Class. It was empty when I passed by, but it gave me hope that school groups or perhaps interested summer classes could come through to learn a bit more about marine environments and how to care for aquatic animals in captivity. Even though I never saw it in use, the presence of an education space puts the Lotte World Aquarium above any of the Vin-sponsored resort aquaria. A few other exhibits here and there throughout the four halls interested me: one on marine soundscapes played sea animal noises to teach visitors that the sea is not silent, while another provided info on plastic and pollution. I lingered a bit at each of these, listening to whale songs, and so did some of the other guests around me.

Sea Adventure takes us into the open ocean and is home to the largest single aquarium tank in Vietnam. The centerpiece here is a sunken western sailing ship, ruptured and rotting on a seabed surrounded by sand flats and rocks. This tank is full of schooling jacks, batfish, and snappers, with some large Napoleon wrasses, groupers, stingrays, and sharks. The sharks are standard tropical aquarium residents — zebra sharks, white-tip reef sharks, and black-tip reef sharks. The tank inhabitants are from the South Pacific, and western sailing ships traded in the East Sea for centuries, so this exhibit could represent a shipwreck off of the Vietnamese coast. A tunnel goes through it, and a window inside the shipwreck peeks out over the blue. The sharks are the big draw here, but just the scale of the exhibit space makes it impressive.

This area also has a darkened room that holds three large kriesel tanks, a specialized tank designed for fragile free-floating friends like the moon jellyfish displayed here. The kriesel tanks are freestanding, giving the public a chance to walk around them and not only view the jellyfish from all angles but also view the entire tank system. Modern aquaria often conceal the various filters, pumps, and other life support systems necessary to their functioning, but this wasn’t always so: the first modern public aquaria in Britain and France were built with all of these pipes and tubes and pumps externally to show off the complicated systems to interested viewers. Though the rest of the aquarium’s exhibits conceal the complex engineering from guests, this glimpse alone can satisfy the nerds who drop by. If anything, the design of this jellyfish room is just too good, and it risks becoming just another trendy TikTok or Instagram check-in background instead of a chance to say hi to some of our oldest and most distant cousins, a place to ruminate on how far we all have come from those Precambrian days of floating mindlessly in the azure.

Ocean Square, the final hall, is more open than the previous three. Here, a viewing window with stadium seating and a Wayne’s Coffee provide a space for visitors to sit a bit, watch the fish, and reflect on the ocean. Ocean Square also offers sea lions dancing in their pool and penguins waddling around their rocks. Staff members occasionally give talks on marine life husbandry to interested guests, and a schedule of talks and feedings is posted near the aquarium entrance.

After Ocean Square, visitors exit through the gift shop. The gift shop is just a generic MyKingdom toy shop, no different from any of the others scattered across Vietnam except that this one is painted with blue highlights and sells perhaps one more plastic toy shark than most others. There are no gifts for adults and no books on marine life for sale, one last reminder that Lotte World Aquarium Hanoi is primarily the kind of place where kids go to look at fis, and any oceanographic education is, at best, a side effect of their visit.

Many other aquaria around the world do a great job of showcasing local environments: the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a stand-out, as are many Japanese aquaria, but even regionally, some Southeast Asian aquaria like the Viện Hải Dương Học in Nha Trang, the Angkor Aquarium in Siem Reap, Cambodia, the Indonesian Aquarium at Taman Mini Indonesia in Jakarta, and (formerly, unfortunately) the S.E.A Aquarium in Singapore succeed in taking visitors through an educational voyage through Southeast Asian waters. Lotte World Aquarium Hanoi does not. Besides the Mekong tunnel and the cá ông temple, any exhibit’s resemblance to a real Vietnamese environment is purely coincidental. A visitor who is particularly interested in learning about Vietnam’s varied and diverse aquatic ecosystems or long cultural history of interacting with marine environments will find nothing here worth the high admission price — a real shame, since besides the Viện Hải Dương Học, no other public aquarium in Vietnam tries to educate Vietnamese guests about Vietnamese environments or Vietnamese history. On the other hand, I understand that most visitors don’t mind that as much as I do, and even though I would have liked to see more of a focus on local environments and fauna, I did enjoy my visit enough to come back several more times.

Compared to other Vietnamese aquaria, Lotte has the most impressive visitor spaces. There is not much particularly new or notable about Lotte World Hanoi in terms of marine life or exhibit design when compared to aquaria and oceanographic research institutions around the world. Within Vietnam’s ranks of for-profit shopping mall aquaria, however, Lotte World Hanoi is a revelation, a technical marvel, handily beating out all of the Vin-affiliated aquaria at the Vinpearlands dotting the resort cities of the coast. At Lotte World Hanoi, the fish are at least alive. It does not have the august history of the Viện Hải Dương Học (located in Nha Trang), which remains my favorite aquarium in Vietnam, nor does it have the kitschy old-school charm of the Trí Nguyên Aquarium (also in Nha Trang), but for families looking to take the kids somewhere cool or for couples looking for a wholesome date, Lotte World Aquarium Hanoi makes for a perfect outing. Treat yourself to some sushi upstairs after you spend a few hours looking at the fish. Watch Finding Nemo or, if you’re up for it, Jaws on the night before you visit to get in a fishy mood. Just, try to visit the aquarium on a weekday, when it’s less crowded.

On a Boat Ride Through Nhiêu Lộc Canal, a Fish's-Eye View of Saigon

2024-03-20T09:00:00+07:00

Could your life in Saigon be made into a quirky indie film?

Are your afternoons spent rambling around the city with fashionable friends; snacking on photogenic pastries at comfy retro cafes; and swerving through traffic beneath shady trees, as a particularly whimsical band with clever lyrics and tissue-paper vocals titter in your headphones? Do you consider yourself awkward but adorable? Are your memories coated in the warm shade of brown unique to recycled paper used for expensive journals filled with handwritten notes and lists? Do you encounter middle-class problems and conventional challenges that can be addressed in a quick 90 minutes? If so, it seems your life is ripe for low-stake, small-budget flick treatment. And if this movie were to be made, then certainly a scene should take place in the middle of the Nhiêu Lộc–Thị Nghè Canal aboard a small boat.

The Thị Nghè canal exists like a seam; a thread suturing the city’s disparate districts together, and thus, it is not a part of the city itself, exactly. Who doesn’t long to exist in a liminal space, indulge innate alienation and assimilate into the marginalia? If you’re like me, you’ve often gazed at the canal with wistful desires to voyage out on it. But how? Finding and buying a boat, cultivating rudimentary piloting abilities, researching licensing and preparing bribes is a hassle and a half. It’s better to employ an expert. So Saigoneer took our recent trip on the canal via the Nhiêu Lộc Boat Company (NLB), the canal’s seemingly singular operator of commercial water vessels from 2014. You will pass by one of NLB’s two stations whenever you drive over the Thị Nghè Bridge into District 1 via Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai. The fact that you’ve likely never noticed it enough to consider a voyage makes them perfect for an article for our In Plain Sight series because they are particularly splendid.

Pleasure is the sole purpose of a boat trip on the canal. This separates it from the city’s Waterbus which operates on the Saigon River and was initially launched with aspirations of providing viable public transportation services. So while it’s nice to daydream of daily commutes to and from work aboard one of the NLB boats, that's simply impossible. It exists solely to bring joy to riders and it succeeds remarkably well with these modest aims. I’d go as far as to put it on my top five list of Saigon activities.

NLB has a fleet consisting of from five-person Phoenix rowboats up to 35-person yacht-style boats that it employs for a variety of services that include packaged public tours with food and entertainment that include music performances and opportunities to release paper lanterns as well as options to rent the boats with a captain on a per-hour basis. The latter fit the Saigoneer team’s needs and a Turtle boat (Thuyền Qui) was waiting for us when we arrived at the dock for an arranged (you must book in advance) 4:30pm departure. Between 4:30pm and 5:30pm is the best time to schedule the one-hour journey between NLB’s two docks — one near the border of Districts 1 and 3 and the other across from the Saigon Zoo — as the gathering dusk creates an ideal atmosphere, and atmosphere is the journey’s main draw.

Dusk braises the horizon in rose, orange and ochre. The sky smears soft light like a blam across the crags and imperfections of buildings that line either side of Hoàng Sa and Trường Sa. Between the roads and the water, wide strips of grass with trees offer shade to benches, exercise equipment, and sidewalks. The unmistakable scent of blooming sứ trắng hovers around the occasional bend. At this hour, nearby workers are heading home, local residents are walking their dogs, youths are gathering for gossip and horseplay, and street restaurants are opening for the evening. It’s as if the neighborhoods lining the canal have collectively finished work for the day and are casting off their uniforms for a few minutes of rest and unencumbered loafing before plunging into the hectic rush of Saigon nightlife. I’ve long claimed that the area around the canal is Saigon at its most charming and this is best witnessed via a boat at dusk.

In addition to the general vibes, a boat ride offers unique vantage points for viewing some notable city landmarks as well as personally cherished places. Landmark 81, that grotesque clutch of mismatched chopsticks, looms in the distance. The Vạn Thọ Pagoda, an understated and tree-shielded site of Buddhist worship kneels just a ways down from Pháp Hoa Pagoda, an ornate and lantern-filled spectacle near where our trip began. The bright blue Sawaco water tower, a curious insect specimen pin speared into Bình Thạnh, is likely to arouse inquiries as to its purpose from some of your fellow passengers. And then there are those sites that might not be on a typical tourist itinerary but hold private meaning for those who lived or spent time near the canal. For me, it is my favorite coffee shop, Lão Hạc Cafe; a beloved Greek restaurant whose owner still sends me the occasional random Facebook message and generously offers complimentary off-menu treats when I pay a rare visit; a particular bench near my old apartment where I would spend evenings reading and even the balcony where I spent COVID-19 lockdown watching the giraffes in the zoo. Perhaps we can only love a city once we’ve become attached to some of its insignificant elements.

Photo by Paul Christiansen.

Okay, so you can soak up the vibes and savor some nostalgic sightseeing if you happen to have a personal connection to the areas along the canal, but is there anything to actually do during the boat ride? Well, if Saigoneer’s behavior is any indication, the experience provides a terrific opportunity for taking selfies. Group shots, solo shots, candid shots, action shots; the light combined with backdrops and perspectives rarely encountered amongst tired social media locations make the boat ride perfect for taking photos. I would even suggest that those needing professional shoots (weddings, product launches, music videos, etc.) consider it.

The boat can jostle, so secure your camera while waiting for the selfie-timer. Photo by Khôi Phạm.

And since we are now on the topic of suggestions, I have a few. Bring food and drinks. If you book some of NLB’s packaged cruises they include dinner, but if you do as we did and simply rent the boat and captain you can take whatever you would like on board. Pizza buffet? Chilled beers? Selection of the latest novelty chips? Whatever your heart desires. Ditto for what type of music to play, but definitely bring some Bluetooth speakers and prepare a breezy playlist to accompany your trip. There is no need to bring cards or board games as you can satisfy such urges by inventing games that make use of the surroundings. For example, why not create a game that involves evaluating and ranking the different names and architectural styles of the various bridges you will pass beneath? Indeed, architecture buffs will enjoy them for their historical significance, but even the uniformed can enjoy debating the merits of various aesthetics. The undersides of many of the bridges feature original artwork, both officially commissioned and unsanctioned street art. Finding them feels like discovering Easter Eggs the city has hidden specifically for you and other purveyors of the canal because they would be difficult to notice otherwise.

And on the topic of objects being easy to spot, I wouldn’t suggest bringing binoculars. There’s no need. I took mine thinking I might find something neat along the way that demanded closer inspection but other than pulling them out once to attempt an identification of a dead fish floating beside us, I didn’t use them and they were rather heavy to lug around. Your naked eyes will be enough to notice floating detritus and trash on the canal, of course, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it once was. It certainly isn’t worse than any other public space in Saigon and shouldn’t discourage you from the experience. Similarly, word of mouth or past experience may lead you to believe that the canal stinks. It does not stink. If anything, the relative distance the space offers from the city’s oppressive noise pollution and general density of commotion makes the middle of the canal feel fresher and freer than just about anywhere else downtown.

Of course, as with many under-promoted and largely ignored Saigon activities, a boat ride on the canal is not without sources of whimsy. Most obvious are the strange, plastic-encumbered vessels anchored in the canal. One features painted plastic bottles assembled into crude pinwheels while another has a small hut built out of clear bottles. Like many sources of whimsy, their intended purpose is unfathomable. Another surprise awaits at the end of the journey, at least if you are disembarking at the zoo-adjacent dock. As we approached a large fountain system erupted. After 6pm, the jets of water would be accompanied by colorful lights, but instead, it was just clear canal water arcing up into the sky and falling back down unceremoniously. The overture intended for our arrival was a little pathetic in its lacked grandeur, like three people performing a round of applause in an otherwise empty conference room. It felt fitting though, as whimsy always travels with a lump of disenchantment in its shoe, like sand carried in from the beach.

Whimsy is never too far removed from danger, either. Genuine risk of injury is my fondest memory of a boat ride on the canal. Back in 2018, I joined a group of friends for an identical ride and midway through our voyage, the engine erupted in great flames. They pawed and scratched at the boat’s wooden roof while we rushed to the front with provided life jackets in hand and discussed who could swim and which side of the canal we should head for if we needed to jump off. Thankfully, the captain was able to put the blaze out with shirts dunked in the canal water. The engine no longer worked but we were able to float back down to the dock without a problem. It was a beautiful night.

At Bá Tân Bookstore, a Home for Vintage Books, Readers, and Goodness

2023-11-27T16:04:53+07:00

I got to know Bá Tân Bookstore thanks to a friend’s suggestion.

A cozy book haven filled with interesting titles, two cats, and complimentary tea and coffee — Bá Tân seems to have been constructed straight out of my childhood vision of a peaceful hideout. That special feeling of glee and giddiness that swelled in me, lying on the floor relishing a new batch of rental books from an old store near my school, was something that even until now, when I’m an adult with the means to buy books to my heart’s content, I rarely feel again.

Giving a new life to old books

In the mind of many, old bookstores in Saigon might appear as cramped and slapdash displays like that of Trúc in the hit TV series Bỗng Dưng Muốn Khóc, or moth-bitten archives filled with floor-to-ceiling columns of books, manned by a wise old proprietor.

Bá Tân Bookstore is a breath of fresh air in the trade of old books in Saigon. Here, the inventory is separated into two sections. The first, which is located near the opening of the alley, sells books by the kilogram, ranging from VND40,000 to 60,000 per kilogram depending on the genre. The second section is a few doors down, featuring a more spacious reading space to receive more guests. The titles here are priced based on market demand. Most of the books here are around 90–99% new, though a few are rare limited editions and special prints for collectors.

Upon entering the bookstore, one is immediately greeted with a sense of cozy comfort thanks to the warm yellow lights, which help reduce eye strain during long reading sessions. On the shelves, titles are sorted based on genres, geographies, and time periods. Interestingly, there are a number of surprising curated collections, like Higashino Keigo’s mystery novels, and manga classics like Case Closed and Dragon Ball. They are all in very good condition but sold at more accommodating prices than at major retailers.

The first time I got to flip through the yellowing pages here and saw a painting by poet Bùi Giáng hung in the middle of the store, an unnamed emotion swole in me, reminding me of my past years. I bought two philosophy books, and can't help but give them a whiff every time I read them. Patrons who wish to “cleanse” their new purchases can get a packet of 20 grams of star anise and 30 grams of cinnamon at VND35,000 to deodorize and demold their bookshelf.

Most members of staff here are still quite young. I’ve hung out here long enough to notice the bookstore’s very special demographic of customers. Every 10–15 minutes, someone on their motorbike would drop by and yell out “Hello, do you have [book title]?” without even turning off their vehicle. If the answer is no, they would zip away, but if it’s a yes, a bookkeeper will very quickly bring the book in question out and process the order, because they know by heart the particulars of the store’s regulars. Hats off to the dedicated souls here who do a sterling job without records and computers.

I had a chance to sit down with Lê Bá Tân, the store's owner. He told me about his criteria to assess the values of vintage books: the tangible factor and knowledge factor. The former often applies to recent releases in great condition. These cases are often sold at 40–60% of the cover prices. For rare or historic titles containing a great wealth of historical and intellectual values, they can’t be judged based on cover prices. A first edition of Sợi Tóc, a short story collection by Thạch Lam, printed by Đời Nay publishing house in 1942 could fetch VND30 million due to its rarity, for example.

Lê Bá Tân.

Operating with the motto “we trade in good deeds,” Bá Tân Bookstore is not just a hub for purchasing and exchanging books. There’s also a free-to-read bookshelf and the store often organizes competitions and activities where books are the prizes to promote the local reading culture, as to Tân, “reading without real-life practice is unfortunate.” Thanks to these efforts, his bookstore has grown into a welcoming home for young Saigoneers, many of whom even hand-wrote letters to express their affection and gratitude to this place.

When asked how he defines “old books,” Tân shared: “My definition is quite simple, the word ‘old’ in ‘old books’ just refers to how [the books] are passed on from one reader to another. Some pieces of knowledge have existed since 2,000–3,000 years ago, even 4,000 years in Greece or Egypt. You only think that it’s new because you only get to read about it now, but in fact, it’s ancient and natural out there. I always think that in the old there’s the new, and vice versa, just like everything else in this life.”

“I want to share a path with books until the end of time”

One of the factors that compelled Tân to start selling old books was his having received so many of them from friends. He used to teach History in school, but, due to a number of reasons, decided to stop.

“At the time, my knowledge was quite limited, and all my connections were with other teachers and students, so I didn’t know what to do next. I have always been given a lot of books, like 2–3 shelves’ worth. I often write about those I enjoy reading on the internet. Many people kept asking if they were for sale, even though I wasn’t selling anything. A thought flared in my mind: maybe the trade has picked me, so I decided to start selling books,” Tân explained.

Throughout the years of running the bookstore, Tân has experienced all the ups and downs of being an independent business. It went from an online-only shop to the first location in District 2 and a book cafe named “Sài Gòn năm xưa” (Saigon of yesteryears) on Nguyễn Khắc Nhu Street in 2019. Operating a coffee shop is no easy feat due to numerous challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted Tân to shut down everything and take a break, before finding a new beginning in Bá Tân Bookstore.

Regarding the profitability of running a bookstore, Tân just laughed and casually brushed that aside: “Honestly, I’ve never intended for this to be a temporary thing or something just to do until I get bored. I want to share a path with books to the end. Everybody has greed, but books are already a wholesome thing, if I infringe on that, perhaps I’m not that good of a person.”

Even though the store has been through many forms and locations, one thing has remained unchanged: the appreciation of Tân’s books among readers. Perhaps that fondness is rooted in his respect for books and faith in Saigon’s reading culture. Many past patrons don’t even know or remember who he is or where he’s moved to, but every time they have the need to sell or purchase old books, they find one another again in Saigon.

“Thanks to those customers, I feel even more strongly about my bond with this trade. I never thought to stop selling books even during my worst crises. I want to stick around for longer and spread farther. If possible, I want to be with books for the rest of my life.”

Bá Tân Bookstore is located at 451/22 Hai Bà Trưng Street, Ward 8, D3, HCMC.

Shrimp Fishing in Thanh Đa Is Fun Even When You Don't Catch Anything

2023-09-24T14:00:00+07:00

If it weren’t for shrimps, developing taste buds would have been an outrageous waste of evolutionary time and resources. Truly, without the potential for boiled, grilled, fried, baked or even raw shrimp, I find little point to getting out of bed with my tongue still in my mouth.

But despite my belief in the supremacy of shrimps over all other shellfish, and even though I occasionally introduce myself as a shrimp magnate when people incorrectly assume I’m an English teacher, I have never actually tried to catch shrimps. The mere phrase “to catch shrimp,” doesn’t conjure images of an idyllically endless summer afternoon beside a watering hole with a radio and six-pack of beers as “to catch fish” would. Rather, it makes me picture a hulking boat noisily trawling along a scraggly coast or an odorous, sun-shellacked pond down a dusty Delta road. These realities all come together to make the signs for “Câu Tôm” (shrimp fishing) in Thanh Đa particularly enticing.

It’s tempting to think of Thanh Đa as a largely neglected swath of Saigon mired in development morass, but there is a lot more to do there than one might expect, including rollerblading, riverside nhậu-ing, lounging in bucolic pseudo-countryside cabanas and visiting honey farms. However, more extensive explorations of those will have to wait for a Saigoneer Stroll article. Our journey to Thanh Đa — the Bình Thạnh peninsula-turned-island by a 20^th-century American canal project — was singularly shrimp-focused.

We could have traveled by car, but the Saigon Water Bus has a convenient stop at the base of the peninsula and a one-way ticket from District 1 is only VND15,000. And truthfully, I don’t need an excuse to enjoy the city’s most endearingly ill-designed public transit system. I’ve taken the brisk 30-minute boat ride from Bạch Đằng Wharf to Thanh Đa many times and never grow tired of the views. Vinhomes Central Park’s bare, off-brand Gardens by the Bay Supertree Groves always elicit a sigh while the contrast of luxury yachts alongside barges laden with construction-grade sand remind me of the true costs of unfettered free markets. Meanwhile, looking at the water so slicked with oil it shimmers like peacock plumage and clumps of hyacinth tangled with styrofoam flotsam reminds me that devastation can be beautiful. Each trip seems to reveal something new, as well. For example, I’d never before noticed the “Thủ Đức City” sign erected in front of the city’s most comically unfinished conference building. If signs have dreams, does this one aspire to notoriety equal to that famed Hollywood lettering in California?

For all there is to look at while on the water taxi, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a living creature in the water. But surely, somewhere down there in the muck, some specimens of Macrobrachium rosenbergii might lurk? Known as “giant river prawn” in English and “tôm càng xanh” in Vietnam, they are native to waterways across South and Southeast Asia. One of the most commonly farmed species of prawns, they are related to Macrobrachium dienbienphuensis, a species of prawn found in Northern Vietnam that exits the water to march around waterfalls and dams; it is named in honor of Điện Biên Phủ. Simply, shrimps are amazing. While there are subtle biological and taxonomic differences between prawns and shrimps, such scientific specifics are not always reflected by language and thus for the rest of this article, they are shrimps.

After walking 30 minutes from the water taxi station, the peninsula’s residential and commercial buildings begin to thin out. Amongst the groves of palm trees, plant-filled ponds and gardens are a number of restaurants that boast fishing opportunities. Based on a reconnaissance mission the week prior, Saigoneer selected Hồ Câu Tôm-Ẩm Thực Sân Vườn Thanh Đa. From the road, one can see its large cement-lined pond around which people sit holding fishing poles. Vinahouse tuned to a surprisingly restrained decibel level met us at the door.

What do shrimps eat? I'm not sure I'd ever really thought about this before. I could of course have googled, but for this trip, we were lucky to have an expert on Vietnamese marine history and wildlife, David McCaskey, affectionately referred to as The Fishman, to answer all our questions. The Fishman looked at the pile of bait that was provided on a filthy cloth along with our poles and seats around the pond and proclaimed it was chopped up bits of palolo worm (rươi), the same creature used to make Hanoi’s wildly delicious chả rươi. We simply had to pierce the two hooks on our lines with the soft guts, toss them into the pond and wait for our bobbers to dip.

Calm, slow-moving and with great reverence for all crustaceans: on paper, I am a good fisherman. However, my shrimp-catching success this day suggests otherwise. I didn’t catch a single one. Khôi, Saigoneer’s Editor-in-Chief, pulled up perhaps the largest shrimp I have ever seen. The Fishman, living up to his name, pulled in two. However, we were all put to shame by a young girl who arrived well after we did and showed no enthusiasm for the activity at all. More interested in snacking or haranguing her family, she placed a brick on her pole and ignored it. She then caught at least three shrimps in rapid succession.

Catching shrimps here is a matter of luck. And what is luck other than “accidents in a very busy place,” as Kurt Vonnegut observed? Even though one cannot see to the bottom of the shallow pool, it is certainly a very busy place thanks to the staff that routinely tosses new shrimps in via a bucket brought out from a backroom. The operation must have deduced the ideal ratio between the time an average customer spends waiting and shrimps caught, calculated alongside the price of raising versus selling shrimps offset by the number of beers served. They thus seem to know exactly how often to re-stock the pond from the large supply of shrimps being kept in big tanks behind a guarded door. We tried to get back there for a closer look. Staff promptly shooed us away.

Surely we could have just requested some of these shrimps from the backroom pools and done away with the farce of catching them. The entire activity is simply a charade we’ve agreed to participate in. If ignorance is bliss, then willful ignorance is entertainment.

Because shrimp fishing is a low-attention activity, we had plenty of time to chit-chat. This makes the experience an ideal weekend activity for families, co-workers, friends and couples. In a city somewhat lacking in novel, affordable activities I would place this high on the list, particularly if one includes a trip on the water taxi. Scanning around the room, we noticed the place attracts Korean and Japanese families on holiday as well as locals. I don’t know how they find out about it, or what particularly appeals to them, but perhaps it helps conjure feelings of rural lifestyles that are difficult to emulate in the metropolis. Thanh Đa, in general, is good for this. The Bình Quới tourist areas recreate the experience of countryside picnics while larger ponds further up the peninsula are surrounded by chainsmoking men angling for fish which immediately reminds me of late afternoons in the Delta.

Each shrimp we caught was placed in a mesh bag and submerged in the water to keep them alive as we fished. Alternatively, we could have had a grill set up beside us to place each shrimp on immediately after snagging it. One group did this and several others ordered full spreads of food including a hotpot to eat while they continued to catch shrimps. We, however, opted to simply enjoy trà đá. We ordered three glasses but were given a single giant Aladdin cup with many straws. Never before had I considered trà đá to be a romantic beverage from which to sip while locking eyes with a partner whose face is mere centimeters away. I now know better.

When it was time to eat so that we could make our return to the wharf in time for the boat, we were informed we couldn’t continue to sit beside the pond if were not fishing. We thus migrated to one of the large tables in the back beside an ornamental fish pond. And while waiting, we strolled around the spacious venue. The Fishman immediately proved his worth. He was able to identify each of the turtles that were kept as pets in various slipshod tanks around the room and even entertained some of my more ridiculous questions (yes, if I stuck my finger in the tank of the American alligator snapping turtle, it would indeed be able to take it off at the knuckle). For inexplicable reasons, the restaurant is home to many animals involved in the global pet trade including snapping turtles from America and eastern long-neck turtles from Australia. And there is of course an arowana, that great Amazonian fish known to pluck small monkeys from low-hanging tree limbs.

At the start of our day, I had made the claim that I would only consume what I’d caught. This would have left me shrimpless. My colleagues were kind enough to assure me that they wanted to share the three shrimps that had been grilled and brought to our table. After all, as residents of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, a shrimp caught by one is a shrimp savored by all. With such egalitarian emotions ensconcing our table, I wish I could say the shrimp was tastier than it was. But even mediocre shrimps taste great, so I am not complaining, even if the shrimps were a bit stringy and bland. The other dishes failed to impress as well, with the stir-fried beef tough and the seafood fried rice good, but nothing special. Still, we hadn’t come with a delicious meal as the day’s priority. Instead, we came for a relaxing, and unique afternoon to enjoy one another’s company and savor the splendor of shrimps. Mission accomplished. And I will certainly be back.

In Hanoi, the Vietnam Museum of Nature Is an Inquisitive Child's Heaven

2023-05-25T15:00:00+07:00

Amidst the dull, grey buildings of the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, a giant dinosaur model stands out. The T-Rex was guarding the entrance to the Vietnam National Museum of Nature (Bảo tàng Thiên nhiên Việt Nam), and as I approached it I felt a sense of childlike wonder wash over me. I thought I would learn much about Vietnam’s natural history; I was wrong.

The usual serene and contemplative aura that most museums have didn’t exist here. The outside was filled with children’s excited chatter and the roars of their parents' motorcycles. The cacophony continued inside with even more children running and screaming. I realized this was more of a daycare than a museum of nature.

There were still interesting exhibits, however. In the first room, there was a beautiful totem representing the “evolutionary tree” of the five biological kingdoms.

Encircling the totem is a wooden wall with intricate engravings depicting the various stages of the natural process.

The second room housed over 40,000 items. I was enchanted by the vast array of animals, from reptiles to mammals, insects to birds. The specimens were meticulously arranged by type, with plants, mushrooms, and geological samples interspersed throughout.

As I made my way from room to room, I was struck by the sheer diversity of life on our planet. But it wasn’t just the displays that left an impression on me, it was the way the children interacted with them.

The children that filled the museum seemed to be enthralled by the fascinating replicas of animals that once roamed the earth. Their eyes beamed with wonder, they darted from one specimen to the next, screaming in excitement as they encountered a new creature.

I couldn't help but smile as I watched them make faces and attempt to touch the eyes of the amphibians on display. My joy was also mixed with some concern when I noticed a poor fish taped behind the amphibian exhibit — most likely a victim of a curious child.

Stepping out of the museum, the nondescript campus became a welcome respite of peacefulness after the chaos within. As I could hear myself think again, I realized how precious it is for the children of the city to have such a place to learn about the natural world.

Though modest in size, the Vietnam National Museum of Nature had an abundance of captivating artifacts. They invoked an innate curiosity in children and adults alike, making it an essential destination for families seeking an enriching experience.

An Ode to Saigon’s Chò Nâu Trees

2023-05-10T09:00:00+07:00

It’s too cold for chò nâu to grow where I’m from, but we still gave it an English name: dipterocarp.

It’s too cold for chò nâu to grow where I’m from, but we still gave it an English name: dipterocarp. Dipterocarp. Say it. Aloud. Dipterocarp. That subtle folding and fumbling of lip, tongue, teeth, precise flexing of thousands of muscles, tendons, cells? It’s far simpler than the efforts the great tree endures to gather water into its roots and coax it up to its canopy.

When walking Saigon’s streets, one only gets a good look at a chò nâu's drab trunk and a craned-neck view of their leaf-filled canopy 30 meters above. But those fragile upper limbs clutch delicate white flowers brushed with pink accents as subtle as a butterfly’s whispering wing strokes. You’ve just never seen them. It’s as if the trees are telling us: my fragile petals and soft fragrances are not meant for you; you would ruin them with your human attempts at appreciation.

But the trunk isn’t drab. Fissures, flakes, flecked scabs and multi-color scales: a complex crust akin to a river delta rich with sediment, silt, species. Can you really look at one and not recognize the beauty of an algae bloom, a shrimp spawn?

Jean-Baptiste Louis-Pierre was born on La Réunion off the coast of Madagascar to a family that made a fortune off sugar. But the business went bankrupt when the government emancipated the plantation’s slaves, and Louis-Pierre was forced to drop out of school, drifting from one colonial post to another before landing in Saigon, where he introduced European aesthetics by lining the streets with chò nâu he gathered in the highlands to protect pasty French skin and indulge foreign concepts of nature.

White spray paint stencil numbers grace nearly every chò nâu in the city, allowing authorities to identify which ones need to be trimmed for power line maintenance or be removed so their roots don’t undermine pavement construction or burst buried water pipes.

Tree #11: Saigon’s chò nâu are older than telephone wires, older than chainsaws, older than nylon, polyester and penicillin. Older than motorbikes, bubble tea, bánh tráng nướng and selfies, older than airplanes and the defoliants they dropped.

Tree #152: When the districts erupted in gunfire, casings clattered against the chò nâu trunks that soldiers took shelter behind. Their shade was balm to destroyed buildings, bombed roads, ruined bodies. They’re right there in the background of the grainy documentary footage. No one notices them.

Tree #78: Saigon’s chò nâu are younger than wind chimes, younger than fireworks, younger than kites, xích lô, and spit-roasting. Younger than áo dài, rice wine and cồng chiêng, younger than walking alone at midnight, feeling great pity for oneself before looking up and finding solace in the immensity of nature.

Tree #187: In regions that experience regular seasons, chò nâu flower and fruit with great precision, but in Saigon’s Mobius strip-climate, their cycle is chaotic, their branches bursting into bi-winged seeds that twirl down like surreal snowfall perhaps no more than once a decade.

Tree #45: First day of Tet, confetti strewn across exposed roots like music drifting across a peaceful cove. What is a concerto to a coral reef? What is the Lunar New Year to a chò nâu?

Tree #123: Imagine the rings inside this tree. They are nothing like the golden rings the chả cá seller on Tôn Thất Đạm wears because she trusts money on her fingers more than in a bank; not like thuốc lào smoke rings blown in the idle hours at the bus depot waiting to take the long journey back to the highlands; and not like the rings of traffic that circle the roundabout where Trần Hưng Đạo points triumphantly towards the shore his spirit guards.

Tree #7: Mostly water with organic solutes: urea, creatinine, uric acid, carbohydrates, hormones, fatty acids, pigments, mucins, inorganic ions including sodium, potassium, chloride, magnesium, calcium, ammonium, sulfates and phosphates — after seven beers with a long walk ahead, I am grateful for the city’s stance on public urination and honored that some element of my makeup will seep through the soil, slip into the tree’s roots, shimmy up its cellulose veins and nourish so little as the tiny tip of a leaf.

Tree #61: In the same way women no longer darken their teeth, we no longer ferry the Saigon River with poles firm as folk rhythms. Bridges cannot span shores clotted with trees. The stumps’ exposed rings on Tôn Thất Đạm resemble the whorled prints of a fingertip robbed of its ability to feel. I stand beside one and like a phantom limb, feel an ache of abandoned shade.

Tree #154: To grow a chò nâu, remove the tips of a seed’s wing and soak it in water for one–two hours; place the seed beneath a thin layer of sterilized soil; in three–four days the seed will sprout; in one year it will reach one meter tall; for its first three-four years it will prefer shade, and then sunlight for the rest of its life; during its life it can reach 40 meters tall; it will outlive you and everyone you love.

Tree #36: To get at one’s viscous resin, one must bore a hole, and let it slowly seep out, the way a child’s closed fist opens in sleep.

Tree #42: Uses for chò nâu include paint, varnish, glue, baskets, boxes, panels, kindling, printing ink, tick repellent, laxatives, diuretics, stimulants, antiseptics, charcoal, perfume fixatives, teeth-blackening agent and caulk for the waterproofing of boats.

Tree #167: Epiphytes attach themselves to trunks by tucking into nooks. These leafy air-sippers, thirsty mist-drinkers do not harm the chò nâu nor benefit it, and thus are like barnacles to a whale or the average human to society as a whole.

Tree #99: Chò nâu speak in a language consisting of photosynthesis and respiration, roots, rhizoids, sap and pollen. Our translators are horrendously overwhelmed, yet undeterred.

Tree #58: Driven by some absurd childhood desire to own a dinosaur, I recently purchased a bird. A Japanese white-eye. Its vibrant green feathers would put a chò nâu's lust for photosynthesis to shame. After six days of furiously flinging its body against wooden cage bars, it escaped. I watched with happiness. I hope it made its way to the zoo: a chò nâu roost, its only hope.

Tree #211: They did it while the city slept so as to not draw attention that would distract from what they were doing. Hugging the trees was a communion between human and plant, not a statement. The authorities looked on, waiting to intervene, and yet, what wrong was being done?

Tree #103: Hunched against its trunk in plain daylight a shirtless man dozes, a needle beside his arm. What do chò nâu know of addiction? Can we find a parallel in their thirst for groundwater, the way their leaves crave carbon dioxide, their urge to be pollinated?

Tree #121: Authorities transplant a few of the trees that are culled for the sake of infrastructure. No survival rates are reported. Is it not easier to uproot a person? To, as my friend Quế Mai says: “Eat each breeze that comes...learn to grow new buds…shudder to bloom… grow my fruit from my bleeding roots”? Surely as a man born and raised on a landmass devoid of chò nâu, I must convince myself this is possible.

Tree #6: Walking down Lê Duẩn, a summer wind releases a torrent of helicopter seeds — the nutlets twirl down and flop uselessly on the concrete. Unable to take root, their fibrous wings slump like the dorsal fins of killer whales depressed in captivity. Something inside me keels the same way.

As Science Advances and Stigma Fades, Quy Hòa Leprosy Village Seems Frozen in Place

2023-04-23T15:00:00+07:00

Many of the images conjured by the word leprosy (bệnh phong) can be unsettling to some. Yet, the misunderstood disease exposes the capacity for human care and empathy. Quy Nhơn’s Quy Hoà leprosy village exhibits how communities can come together to lovingly help the less fortunate.

In director Việt Linh’s film Dấu Ấn Của Quỷ (The Devil’s Mark), a character afflicted with leprosy is forced to live on the outskirts of a village with a dog as his sole companion. He willingly wears a crude bell around his neck so his neighbors have advanced warning of his arrival and can run away. His existence serves as a metaphor for the ways in which the disease robs sufferers of human connections.

It’s with this character in mind that Saigoneer entered Quy Hoà, the bright sunshine and the soothing sound of the surf in the distance already at odds with the macabre reputation surrounding the disease. An afternoon spent strolling through the village’s welcoming architecture, meeting friendly residents, and learning about the history of the hospital and the surrounding community further changed our understanding of leprosy and the positive elements it reveals about society.

The History of Leprosy in Bình Định

Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease (HD), is one of the world’s oldest diseases. Caused by a bacterial infection, in the long run, the disease results in skin lesions and nerve damage that leave parts of the body less sensitive to pain and temperature, and prone to deformities. While it is not especially infectious, because no effective treatment was discovered until the 1940s, it brought despair to people around the world for centuries. Exacerbated by pollution, poor sanitation and limited hygiene, it most commonly proliferated amongst the poor.

A lack of scientific understanding of the disease and the misunderstanding that it was highly contagious led to its stigmatization in Vietnam. Patients and their families would be ostracized and face cruel violence including being buried alive, drowned, or tossed into the wilderness to be ravaged by wild animals.

In the 1920s, Bình Định was officially home to 360 people afflicted with leprosy, though considering the lack of widespread diagnosis and the rural conditions, it’s possible that as many as 1,200 of the province’s 70,000 people may have had the disease. Sensing the urgent need to care for them, Paul Maheu, a French priest, founded the Laproserie de Quy Hoa Hospital in 1929 along with Dr. Lemoine of the Bình Định Hospital on a stretch of land along the coast, eight kilometers south of Quy Nhơn.

Quy Hoà village seen from the sky in 1970. Photo via Flickr user manhhai.

During its first year, the hospital welcomed 52 patients who stayed in thatched cottages. To care for growing needs, in 1932, six French nuns departed from Marseille and arrived via an arduous journey through Saigon and immediately went to work expanding the facilities while bathing and tending to up to 180 patients every day. New thatched homes were added to accommodate the increase in residents and the family members that often came to stay with them.

This original colony was sadly short-lived, as a vicious storm destroyed it in 1933. But the devastation allowed for the replacement facilities to expand on the original vision and the campus grew to include a church, convent, and more than 200 homes for patients to reside in.

Quy Hoà village looked little different in 1970 compared to today. Photo via Flickr user manhhai.

The Origin of Quy Hoà’s Unique Architecture

Vibrant, colorful, creative, and flamboyant are not words that one typically associates with medical facilities. Yet, Quy Hoà is in many ways the opposite of the brutally austere architecture found in most hospitals. The picturesque beach in the background, blooming rows of bougainvillea, lush palm trees, and sandy lawns certainly help, but what is truly enchanting is the colony’s architecture.

Following the 1933 storm, Sister Ozithe oversaw the construction of buildings that relied on her work as a French architect and took into account the unique preferences of the patients and their families, as well as Vietnam’s tropical construction styles. Each resident provided their vision for their homes, including the designing of one-of-a-kind bricks and ceramic tiles that were then specially made. Such room for individual expression resulted in a charming hodge-podge of colors, reliefs, facades and roofs.

The specific needs of medical patients also influenced Quy Hoà’s design. Tiled floors, few steps, no fences, and open entrances to houses responded to the physical restrictions of those with severe cases of leprosy. A multitude of benches, shady trees, and park areas were installed with consideration of the fact that those living in the colony were not able to often leave the area.

“The leper camp is becoming more and more like an urban residence. Each street has its own name, the villas loom under the shade of coconut trees, worthy of the name 'Peace covers the country,'” explained one nun in a letter she sent back home in the early 1940s.

Despite their physical limitations, the patients played an active role in the construction of their homes. Over the years, new styles and influences, including elements of Korean and Japanese aesthetics, entered the designs, but they remained unique, in part due to the intimate relationship between home and human. Some would even argue that the suffering of those building the homes only enhanced the structures’ beauty, like water nourishing a field.

While adherence to any specific religion was not required to receive treatment, a number of statues were also installed to reinforce the values of the mission. Jesus, the Virgin Mary, various saints and famous doctors sought to calm and inspire residents. They still stand today, along with the former home of Quy Hoà’s most famous resident: poet Hàn Mặc Tử.

Arriving in in the late 1930s afflicted with advanced leprosy, the writer who famously suggested selling the moon died in 1940, at the age of 28. His simple dwelling stands as a tribute to his austere life of suffering and creativity. Books, personal possessions, letters, photos of distinguished visitors and portraits painted by his brother line the walls beside the wooden bed where he passed away.

Daily Struggles

Despite the cooperative efforts to foster comfortable, healthy conditions, life at Quy Hoà was at times arduous. At one point, only 10 nuns were tasked with taking care of more than 1,000 patients. By 1974, one year before the Vietnamese government took over its operations, there were more than 5,422 patients and the community became crowded with the additional family members that came to stay. Homes were made smaller and resources scarce as it continued to take in patients from beyond Bình Định with no discrimination based on wealth.

While Quy Hoà is now easily accessible via road from Quy Nhơn, it was once much more remote, necessitating vital supplies be brought in by boat, sometimes as infrequently as once every five months. The dire economic conditions led residents to grow coconuts to eat as well as make oil, soap, medicine and brooms. They supplemented the craft industry by asking for food and money from the surrounding communities. Until 1994, no child in the village was able to go to school beyond the elementary level.

An interesting element of the challenges and resilience of the community involves footwear. Leprosy often results in deformed limbs that require shoes of different shapes or sizes and ones that can make walking easier. Thus, in 1997 a special shoe-making operation was founded in the village. Now numerous generations of shoe-makers have participated in the craft and some, such as one man Saigoneer met, decided to continue living in the village after retiring.

And while today Quy Hoà remains well taken care of for the most part, when walking around, we did notice a few untended areas where old medical equipment, furniture and signs had been discarded. The numerous languages observed on the dilapidated signs reveal the village’s international origins and the many global organizations involved in its operations. Were in not such a sunny day with birds chirping in the background, the sight of a rusting surgery chair and old devices would have certainly made us feel as if we had entered a survival horror video game.

Life at the End of a Disease

The use of vaccines, rising living standards and isolation communities like Quy Hoà have all been credited with drastically reducing the rates of leprosy in East and Southeast Asia. Yet the disease remains a concern, and several hundred people are afflicted with it in Vietnam. And many more that have been cured remain in need of long-term care due to physical disabilities brought on by the disease. As of 2019, Quy Hoà was therefore home to 421 inpatients and approximately 40–50 outpatients.

Funding remains a significant problem for the village, even before the added economic strains of the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the modest food rations and subsides totaling less than VND300,000 a month per person are provided via the state and other charitable contributions. Similarly, nuns continue to play an important role in offering care and securing financial support for those at Quy Hoà and the two dozen or so similar leprosy communities and hospitals in the country.

And while the stigma surrounding the disease has been reduced thanks to increased medical knowledge and falling numbers, those suffering from deformities still experience ostracism. This leads many to chose to remain sequestered amongst people that share or can at least understand their conditions. This isolation and general economic challenges mean life can be slow or lonely at Quy Hoà. When walking around, we observed many people napping, watching television and one friendly group gathered to play cards. A few groups of kids were eager to greet us, while one man had a very impressive flock of fighting roosters he was tending to. One gets the sense that like in many small villages, little changes day-to-day there.

The future of Quy Hoà is unclear. Its time as a medical facility specializing in the care of leprosy patients and survivors is probably nearing an end considering the country’s dwindling infection rates. It may transition into a more conventional small village inhabited by the families of former patients. And as nearby Quy Nhơn continues to grow, it is hardly the isolated outpost it once was. It can now be reached via a pleasant stroll that includes a side-trek up a mountain and several years ago, a few kilometers away, a state-of-the-art science and space facility opened that welcomes esteemed experts in a variety of fields from around the world.

Given the beautiful locale, unique architecture, and history, it’s impossible to imagine it won’t attract increasing numbers of visitors. It sounds morbid to consider a leprosy hospital to be a tourist attraction, but it has become a popular destination for youths to come take photos. The idea that the site of much former misery and suffering could become a desirable day trip locale is an inspiring idea.

Notes From the Hiking Trail to Catch the Morning Sun in Quy Nhơn

2023-04-20T10:00:00+07:00

Do you prefer a view of the beach or mountains?

This clichéd question found on dating apps and ice-breaker questionnaires is fraudulent in its attempts to present the two choices as mutually exclusive. Certain locales, like Bình Định’s capital city Quy Nhơn, contain both, after all.

Xuân Vân on the southern cusp of the city is a lushly covered mountain that tumbles directly into the sea. In addition to providing an impressive backdrop to the city’s developing skyline, it contains a pleasant hiking trail that culminates in stunning views of the town and its recognizable horseshoe coastline.

From delicious seafood and other local specialties to the incredible Tây Sơn Museum and important Chăm architecture to pristine stretches of vacant beaches, Quy Nhơn has many activities to keep visitors entertained. Anyone that loves fresh air and a bit of exercise should put a hike up Xuan Van on their itinerary as well.

Not long after I moved to Quy Nhon in 2015, I was introduced to a local hiking group. While the city was still dark and errant dog barks were the only thing to break the 5am silence, we would travel to one of several trails in the city. The hike on Xuan Van was always my favorite because of its convenient location, strenuous but not overwhelming difficulty and inspiring summit.

To reach the trail, one should head to Hàn Mặc Tử’s grave on Gềnh Ráng. The road winds past his grave and a cafe overlooking the sea and then enters the forest. You can reach it by motorbike or on foot but pay attention to the right-hand side as it nears Quy Hòa. The town where Hàn Mặc Tử died and was originally buried is also home to southern Vietnam’s largest leper hospital.

The hiking trail that veers off the main road elevates quickly. It’s mostly stairs and you’d be wise to pace yourself and not take the journey in the middle of the day when the sweltering heat is at its most unrelenting. Dawn or dusk are the best times and make sure to bring along some water.

When you reach the top after a 40-minute-or-so climb, you can thank whatever wise and generous soul thought to install hammocks at the top. There is also a large statue of the Virgin Mother whose size and weight will stun you when you realize that someone had to haul it all the way up there. The comfortable top makes for a perfect spot to snap some photos of the city. It also makes for a great place to picnic if you thought ahead to pack some cold beers, quail eggs and dried squid.

Hiking trails are few and far between in Vietnam, especially so close to a city. Xuân Vân’s path is an ideal way to spend a few hours on your next visit to Quy Nhơn. If you time it right, you can hit the top for a breathtaking sunrise and be down in time for some beef bánh khọt with peanut sauce for breakfast.

Go Through Centuries of Ceramic History at Hanoi's Bát Tràng Museum

2023-03-15T12:00:00+07:00

The Pottery Museum in Làng Gốm Bát Tràng (Bát Tràng Ceramics Village) showcases the cultural heritage of the village through its exhibits of the works of past and present artisans.

It took 30 minutes to get to Bát Tràng from Hanoi, even my Grab driver seemed a little disappointed to have to drive 20 kilometers on the motorcycle. This hamlet boasts a rich history of ceramic production, dating back to at least the 14^th century. Today, the village remains dedicated to this traditional craft, with nearly every household actively involved in the production and commercialization of ceramics. As I strolled through the streets, I was surrounded by an array of colorful jars in various shapes and sizes.

The museum's unusual exterior.

The village’s Pottery Museum stood out thanks to its unique architecture. Its brown facade is reminiscent of clay and its curved lines resemble vases stacked one top of one another, a striking contrast to the typical tube Vietnamese houses. Later on, I learned that the architects were inspired by the shape of potter's wheels, but to my eyes, the building also looks like a traditional kiln. Inside the museum, the interior brings to mind the contours of a canyon, with craft stores at corners and within the pillar structures.

Glazed plates dated from the Trần Dynasty, circa 14^th century.

The exhibition began with a presentation of ceramics dating from the 10^th to 19^th centuries. It aimed to show the public the importance of this art in the cultural history of Vietnam. A highlight of the display was a beautiful model of the boat that brought the original settlers of Bát Tràng here.

Types of furnaces used in pottery making, and a bike for transporting finished products.

After a few minutes of looking around, one thing became apparent: despite the beautiful scenography, visitors like me would not be able to learn anything for there was no complementary information. There was no guide on the history of the area with dates, no descriptions of the different methods of firing, nor the different iconographies on the ceramics.

A collection of recent ceramic works produced by families of Bát Tràng Village.

The exhibitions continued with a room dedicated to a man named Lê Văn Vân. Judging from the beautiful altar, I guessed he must have been an extraordinary character. Though with the persistent lack of information, his contribution to the Vietnamese craft remained a mystery to me. The following corridor featured the diverse range of ceramics produced by the families of Bát Tràng Village. Visitors can admire an array of colorful vases in different styles and shapes, showcasing the unique artistic traditions of the community.

Samples of ores after heat treatment, and tools for shaping pottery.

What I found most interesting about Bát Tràng was its ability to adapt and evolve its ceramics, keeping up with changing tastes, whether it's for foreign or Vietnamese tourists. From sleek, modern pieces with clean lines and solid colors, to intricately adorned ceramics, there was something for everyone. Unfortunately, my visit came to an abrupt end as the contemporary art exhibit required a separate admission fee at the front desk.

Tourists try their hand at making pottery at the museum activity corner.

Luckily, the basement of the building saved my visit. There was a workshop where you can learn pottery for VND70,000. Local artisans guided people through the process step-by-step. And the little ones could also have fun coloring ceramics.

An outside terrace at the museum.

I took a break at a nearby cafe to reflect on my experience. Although the Pottery Museum didn't offer in-depth information about Bát Tràng's rich ceramics history, its whimsical architecture and stunning porcelain displays made it a worthy stop for anyone visiting the village. The museum served primarily as a commercial space, but it still honored the talented craftsmanship of the local community.

The Unbearable Delight of Watching a Live Football Match at Hàng Đẫy Stadium

2023-03-08T13:00:00+07:00

“The government sells it for VND100,000. Just give me VND150,000. Gate 3, right in the center.”

The lady thrust the tickets at my face; I hesitated. It was to be my first time in Hàng Đẫy Stadium, as well as my first-ever time watching a live football match. Hanoi, my home team, would be playing Thanh Hóa. They were both sharing first place in the league, so I really wanted to be there. I went to the stadium one day before the match to buy tickets, but I couldn’t find any ticket booths. I only saw two women — scalpers — sitting on their plastic stools, waiting for their prey.

Night vibes outside the stadium before the match.

“How about VND220,000 for two?” I replied. My friend at Saigoneer was coming to Hanoi to join me, and I tried buying in bulk as a bargaining tactic. It was a feeble attempt; the lady didn’t deign to reply and just turned away in disgust. But her partner chimed in: “For that money, give him Gate 4 tickets.”

Thanh Hóa FC fans hyping people up.

“Fine, here!” The first lady grunted. “Gate 4, just give me the money so I can have some breakfast. Do you want Section A or B?”

“Which one is Hanoi’s?” For the first time, I wanted to sit with the home fans for the full experience.

“A, of course!” And with that, the transaction ended. The prey was caught.

A bus ferrying fans from Thanh Hóa to Hanoi.

Match day. My friend and I went to the stadium early and walked around to feel the vibe. Already we could see we weren't gonna get the experience we hoped for. The most hardcore fans, with their flags and face paint and songs, were all in the B section, for both teams. Even from outside, we could feel the vibration of their drums. I looked at that section longingly, wondering if we should just get another pair of tickets. My friend assured me it was ok, and we walked to our gate.

A Hanoi FC fan getting snacks.

I handed the guards our tickets. He scanned it, looked at me, scanned again, then asked: “Where did you get this ticket?”

“From a couple of ladies outside yesterday,” I replied.

“Sorry, they are fake.” He showed me a red message on the scanner.

Into the stadium.

Of course they are fake, I thought in resignation. It looked like we weren’t gonna have any experience at all. My friend and I were wondering what to do when a man next to us spoke up: “Here, you can have these tickets. My gift.” We were dumbfounded. The man, our guardian angel, handed us the tickets with a smile. He was wearing a mask but I was sure he was smiling. We thanked him and went inside.

A portrait of the nicest football fan in Hanoi who gifted us our tickets.

Section B was laid out before us. Most people there wore one of two colors: purple, for Hanoi, and yellow, Thanh Hóa. Flags were flying everywhere. I could see the Hanoi drumline: ten drums, the kind they used in schools. Thanh Hóa didn’t have as many, but they played with just as much passion. Fifteen minutes before kick-off and Thanh Hóa already fired their first fireworks, spraying silver sparks in the air.

In our own section, people wore all sorts of different colors. Here, everyone was less enthusiastic, but you could still feel the anticipation — the collective waiting that I would never have felt if I was watching at home alone.

"Proudly Hanoi!"

Before long the players filed out, wearing matching colors with their fans. An announcer came on and asked us to stand for the national anthem. I bellowed the words — “Đoàn quân Việt Nam đi, chung lòng cứu quốc…” — with a surprisingly earnest spirit. Then the referee whistled, and the game began.

Playing the national anthem.

Gate 4 landed us near the left goalpost, where Hanoi defended in the first half. Barely five minutes in, Hanoi fans had a reason to gasp collectively. Our defender passed the ball a little too lightly to our goalkeeper and their striker rushed forward trying to intercept. Luckily our goalie was on point and kicked the ball up just in time.

Hanoi FC fans wearing the team color.

For most of the first half, the away team controlled the ball more than us. And when we did have the ball, Hanoi wasn’t able to do much except for losing it to Thanh Hóa again. The score was still 0-0; if I had been at home, I would have lost interest and started scrolling my phone. But here at the stadium, I found myself screaming and signaling directions as if I was the coach. “Go to the right!” “Offside!” “Just shoot the ball already, damn it!”

During the match.

Suddenly, a voice from behind joined my ravings: “Thanh Hóa is too solid. We cannot make a play!”

“If it goes on like this, we’d be lucky for a draw,” I said.

“Lucky for a draw,” agreed the voice. “If we tie then our goalie must be the MVP.”

Stadium staff on standby to provide medical assistance or security enforcement.

That would be fair I thought; twice already our keeper had saved the day. What’s more, I realized how fun it was to not only watch football but also have others to comment with. For the rest of the half, we kept on spewing remarks. I had yet to turn around to see who I was talking to.

Only at halftime did I meet my fellow commentator, Thế Anh. It was also his first time at Hàng Đẫy; he and his brother had brought their parents to the game. “Mom doesn’t really watch, she just came for fun,” he shared. “My dad usually watches at home. Now he’s retired with not much to do. So we thought to bring him here whenever Hanoi plays for some entertainment.”

Joy and excitement in the bleachers.

The second half came and went. Nobody scored; our goalie saved our butt a few more times. I enjoyed every minute of it. My friend told me he had never seen me this wild before. I had never felt like this before. It was the feeling of sharing something with my friend, with Thế Anh and his family, and with 7,000 people there that day.

Congratulations to Thanh Hóa.

The Vietnamese football league is now on a break and won’t continue until April. When it comes back, I will try to go to another game. Thế Anh showed me how to buy tickets online, so goodbye, scammers. Next time maybe I’ll pick Section B.

Amid Phố Cổ, the Unassuming Cultural Exchange Center Tells Stories of Hanoi's Heartland

2022-12-10T10:00:00+07:00

In the heart of the Old Quarter, the Hanoi Cultural Exchange Center carries a rich repertoire of knowledge and stories of the city’s architecture and history.

While strolling the bustling street of Đào Duy Từ, a building caught my eye. Amidst the thousand activities of the old district, a building with yellow lanterns, rows of flowers, and delicate silk threads adorning its facade stood out as serene. It is the Hanoi Cultural Exchange Center.

The yellow-tinged entrance to the museum.

In contrast with the bright colors of the exterior, everything inside is dark and quiet. In the main room, I saw some ladies weaving silk on their impressive handlooms while surrounded by finished products. With no information that I could read, I thought I was lost in another space-time dimension with ancient craftsmen.

Silk weaving in action.

I later learned that the Hoàn Kiếm District People's Committee had set up this space as an exhibition to promote Vietnamese heritage. There are two sections of exhibitions. The first, the temporary exhibition, celebrates the traditional silk weaving craft of the Northern Delta. While this showcase is lively with artisans and colorful products, the heart of the center lies on the second floor, and the permanent exhibition "permanences and metamorphosis."

Tradition costumes and textile techniques.

Upstairs, in a small and nondescript room, rows of tables look empty at first. But upon getting closer, one recognizes a wealth of knowledge regarding the urban planning of Vietnam’s capital.

The information, written in Vietnamese, French, and English, traces more than 1,000 years of history of the well-known 36 old craft streets of Hanoi. It starts with the story of how Emperor Lý Thái Tổ chose Hanoi to be the capital of his kingdom in 1010. Legend has it that the Emperor saw a golden dragon taking flight here, and so he named the new seat of power Thăng Long, or Soaring Dragon. There was also a commercial reason to locate the capital here, for Hanoi was located at the junction of the mainland and river routes, which made it ideal for transporting goods. Then little by little, craftsmen and merchants left their villages and settled here, creating streets that specialized in the craft of their origins.

An old map of Hanoi from 1885.

The arrival of the French marked a major turning point in the history of the district. The exhibition illustrates this transition. With early photos joining text come lessons about how colonial forces attempted to clean up the city, having deemed the rural characteristics of the "natives" unhygienic and sordid.

Houses in Hanoi are usually an interesting blend of old structures and modern utility.

The central part of the exhibition focuses on the architectural evolution of the old quarter with models and drawings of tube houses, so called because they are often very long (up to 60 meters) and were once made of wood. During colonial times, some buildings were inspired by the neoclassical style, using elements of old architecture, or in the 1930s, the art deco style appeared with the use of concrete.

Dioramas showing past architectural styles.

The architectural evolution continued with the war with America, during which neighborhoods were not only affected by the bombings but also suffered from wartime and planned economies. Cement was restricted, so extensions of existing houses were allowed, but only with recycled materials. Once private trade resumed following economic reforms in the 1980s, and the country experienced extremely rapid population growth with neighborhood changes to match.

Vignettes of Hanoi streets.

The exhibition comes to an abrupt end with an empty glass room and a turned-off television. Some final bits of information let visitors know that the city is undergoing profound changes. Hotels and office buildings are replacing old houses, thus breaking the harmony of the district. To preserve its identity, the government classified the old quarter as a national heritage site in 2004 and adopted in 2013 regulatory measures to protect its architectural and urban heritage.

Hanoi during the French occupation.

I was pleasantly surprised by the exhibition's critical and objective portrayal of Hanoi's heritage history. Despite one simple scenography that ended awkwardly, the rather brief exhibition offers us the true history of the district marked by colonization and the breakneck expansion that disfigured the district.

A range of architectural styles in Hanoi.

This center of the city remains a very popular tourist area, and many know only superficially the secrets of these streets. The Cultural Center offers a glimpse of the phase-by-phase urbanization of the old district, and also the necessity to protect the cultural heritage of the buildings within a place that remains one of the last examples of traditional market districts in Southeast Asia.

The Hanoi Cultural Exchange Center is located at 50 Đào Duy Từ Street, Hàng Buồm, Hoàn Kiếm District, Hanoi.

Hanoi's Literature Museum Is Not Neglected, but It's Not Thriving Either

2022-11-14T14:00:00+07:00

From the side road of Âu Cơ Street, I turned into ngõ 275.

The building I was looking for should have stood at the end of the alley, but I couldn't spot any signage at all. Even the ngõ itself was hidden behind the shoulder of the road. It seems almost like whoever built the building didn’t care if others could find it or not.

The main gate was closed and it wasn't until I reached the parking lot that I realized that the phrase “Vietnam Museum of Literature” was displayed at all: one sign hidden behind a side gate and the other facing the back of neighboring buildings. The chance for a pedestrian to stumble upon this place was close to none. I only knew about it because a friend who had once lived nearby saw it through a window.

On the first of the museum's three floors, a big stone stands in the middle of the room. Like me, the large rock didn't seem to know what it was doing there. There wasn’t any label for it. In fact, it seemed its only job was to obscure the three lines of text on the wall that consisted of a single phrase from The Tale of Kiều written in three separate languages: “The heart is worth threefold the talent!” A staff member told me that the lines represented the evolution of the Vietnamese written language, from Chinese script, to Sino-Vietnamese, to the modern Vietnamese that we know today.

One had to stand a bit off to the side to read the verse.

The first floor contains many artifacts and displays depicting ancient and medieval Vietnamese literature. There are displays focused on famous writers like Nguyễn Trãi, Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương — names from the previous millennia that still live on the street signs and in people’s hearts.

The display of works by Nguyễn Trãi.

The first floor also has a lively exhibition of the feudal education and examination system. Stepping into an exam, students had to build their own huts before beginning the test. The judges had their own lifeguard-style chairs from which to watch the charges below. Those who won the highest awards were honored in the palace and in their villages. I realized the Vietnamese tendency to glorify exams had been a tradition for a thousand years.

Left: An examination site with invigilators in 1897. Right: A diorama portraying exam candidates working on their scripts.

The second floor showcases writers who had won the Hồ Chí Minh award. Visitors will recognize many familiar names like Văn Cao, Xuân Diệu and Vũ Trọng Phụng. Each person is honored with a bust of their likeness as well as personal relics such as Tú Mỡ’s bicycle, Nguyễn Tuân’s cane, or Xuân Diệu's tea set.

The exhibits on the second floor.

Aside from the writers, the second floor also brings to life some characters from famous stories. One can recognize Tô Hoài's cricket, the fortune teller from Vũ Trọng Phụng’s Dumb Luck, and the bowl of shallot porridge that Thị Nở cooked for Chí Phèo.

Left: As a member of the National Assembly, Tú Mỡ could travel by car, but he still rode his bicycle to meetings every day.
Right: A collection of typewriters donated to the museum by past authors.

Going up the stairs to the third floor means traveling forward in time, from when Quốc ngữ was created, through the war era, to the modern day. The higher the floor, the fewer names I recognized. Of the dozens of writers on the third floor, I knew only Trần Đăng Khoa.

Leaving the museum, I wondered why I knew so little of today’s authors. It could be that I am not an avid reader of Vietnamese literature. But when I asked friends and family, most didn’t know the names on the third floor either. Could it be that the reading culture in Vietnam is declining and the golden age of Vietnamese literature has passed? Or simply because not enough time has passed for the names to have garnered fame?

Those questions left me feeling blue. But I reminded myself that there are still people who are working hard to produce beautiful literary works, like the stories of Nguyễn Ngọc Tư, or poems of Nhược Lạc. As long as there are writers, Vietnamese literature will continue to grow and hopefully flourish. And maybe, in my children's time, those names will be honored in this museum.

The Vietnam Museum of Literature is at 275 Âu Cơ, Quảng An Ward, Tây Hồ District, Hanoi.

How a Plane Carcass Became a Museum and Community Hangout in Hanoi

2022-09-22T08:00:00+07:00

The massive chunk of metal greeted me as soon as I stepped through the gate.

Once hailed as a “fortress” in the sky, the metal now lay in ruin, rotting. It was like the carcass of a gigantic bird, its skin peeling, its bones baring. Instead of being buried, this corpse was proudly displayed by the people who shot it down. An understandable thing, really, for the bird was a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, and I was standing at the B-52 Victory Museum.

Growing up, I had heard stories of the B-52s and Hanoi’s 12 days and nights of “Operation Điện Biên Phủ in the air.” My dad was a medical intern at St. Paul Hospital when the B-52s bombed the capital. He witnessed stretcher after stretcher bringing in the wounded and laying them down separately from the dead.

Wreckage of a B-52 bomber shot down during the “Operation Điện Biên Phủ in the air.”

For my part, I didn’t know much about those days in Hanoi. I was taught about them in school, sure, but the memorized names and dates left my brain as soon as the exam was over. I had passed by this museum many times, and now I finally decided to go in and educate myself a little.

The museum opened at 8am, and I walked in at 9am. There wasn’t a ticket office as I'd expected, and I didn’t even know if there was a parking lot; I just left my motorbike next to a couple of others. Aside from me, there was another trio whom I took to be fellow visitors. Then a black SUV with a red license plate plowed through the gate and parked confidently next to the B-52 display; a few men in military uniforms spilled out. Probably here to relive the glorious olden days, I thought.

The tail and engines of the B-52 plane.

The men took out a measuring tape and began discussing moving the B-52 here or there. I realized they were planning to renovate the museum — a commemoration for the 50^th anniversary of the victory: 1972-2022. The trio that I had seen earlier weren’t visitors either, they were contractors surveying the site. It seemed I was the only one who was interested in history that day.

Aside from the B-52 corpse, the museum’s yard contained other artifacts, mostly equipment used to bring down American planes. Six anti-aircraft guns with calibers from 14.5mm to 100mm; a radar device for scanning the air; and the prized exhibits: two surface-to-air missiles. All looked to be well-preserved, unlike the B-52. I like seeing big guns as much as any other boy, but there wasn’t any information about the battle itself. I hurried to the museum’s main building in hope of learning more.

(Left) A 14.5mm Anti-aircraft Machine Gun used by the Van Dien Fertilizer Plant's Militia. (Right) The SAM-2 Missile Launcher used by the 72nd Battalion of the 285th SAM Regiment to shoot down a B-52. The plane crashed in the lake at Hoang Hoa Tham street.

The first floor proved to be a disappointment. I guess the curator’s intention was to show an overview of Hanoi’s militia, but the exhibits seemed random and uninteresting. Aside from one mural, there wasn’t much about the B-52 battle. I wandered around hopelessly until, finally, I saw a sign through a glass door: “Exhibition continues this way.” Excited, I rushed to the door. I could see a staircase leading to the second floor, but alas, the door was locked. I tried all the doors I could find, but none were open. There was no staff anywhere to ask questions of either. Guess I’m not gonna learn anything today, I thought while leaving the building dejectedly.

(Left) Phạm Thị Viễn of the Hoan Kiem self defense team. Her team shot down an F111A aircraft on December 22, 1972. (Right) Phạm Tuân, the MIG 21 pilot who shot down a B-52 plane on December 27, 1972.

As I walked out to the yard, I overheard the contractors asking a museum employee about the second floor. The staff insisted that the door should be open, so I jumped in the conversation and confirmed that the door was indeed locked. “Then go to the admin building and ask for Ms. Mai,” the staffer told us and then walked away toward the military men. The contractors seemed to think the second floor wasn’t worth the trouble, because they just walked away. But I wasn’t going to pass on the chance; I went to the admin building and asked around. While I couldn’t find Ms. Mai, another employee helped me unlock the door.

The second floor was way more interesting. It actually had relevant information about the battle. Immediately upon entering I saw a mannequin recreation of the headquarters of the Hanoi People’s Anti-Aircraft Forces, which used to be at 4 Yec Xanh Street. There were artifacts from both sides: equipment from shot-down American pilots and broken possessions belonging to the Vietnamese who were bombed. I took a cursory look around before following the museum employee who had just unlocked another door.

(Left) An ejector seat and parachute of a downed B-52. (Right) Model of Hanoi People’s Anti-Aircraft Forces headquarter.

One step into this room and I was stunned. The room looked like a small opera hall. There were benches for an audience, but instead of a stage, a huge sa bàn, or scale model, stretched from floor to ceiling. The model was of Hanoi and its surrounding areas. There were miniatures of guns, missiles and airplanes, all intricately laid out. The wall and ceiling were crisscrossed with flight paths. The Vietnamese sure do love their sa bàn, I thought.

I had seen scale models like this before, but none were quite as big and most were broken. “Does this work?” I asked the staff.

“Sure it does,” she replied, “would you like to see it?”
“Yes, please!”

She walked over to a control booth and switched things on. Above my head, not one, not two, but three projectors whirred to life, projecting images on the wall. A narrator’s voice boomed through the speakers, but before I could understand what he was saying, everything stopped.

“I’m sorry,” the staff said, “The images, the voice, and the model have to be in sync. It is a bit tricky to do and I am not the main technician here. Let me try again.” She fumbled a few more times but it seemed not to be working out. “It’s ok,” I assured her, “please just let it play, I’m grateful to see it either way.” She seemed relieved and left me to the show.

A deep and heroic voice began to narrate Hanoi’s “Operation Điện Biên Phủ in the air” — a battle named as a callback to the decisive yet bloody victory over the French in 1954. Now, in 1972, North Vietnam was in a quarrel with South Vietnam and America. There was an attempt at a peace treaty in Paris, but the negotiation went nowhere. The Americans decided the best way to pursue peace was to keep dropping bombs.

“On December 14, 1972,” the narrator said, “the American President Nixon officially approved the strategic air raid, with mostly B-52 planes, over Hanoi and Hải Phòng. The operation was called: Linebacker II…The enemy wildly waged destruction with the modern B-52. But with a wise way of war, and the skillful leadership of the Party and President Ho Chi Minh, we had long guessed the enemy’s plot and actively prepared in every way, ready to return the lightning strikes…”

Aside from the familiar airy propagandizing tone — which almost always inspires me to stop listening — the narrator did give some good information. “At 19:20 of December 18, hundreds of B-52s flew to the capital’s airspace, aiming at airfields and other strategic targets. Hanoi's sky lit up.”

While the sound of airplanes boomed through the speakers, the sa bàn came to life as well. Lights flashed around the miniatures; green for American planes on the ceiling, red for Vietnamese guns and missiles on the floor, yellow marked the spots where a plane crashed. It was an impressive display, despite the fact that the lights flashed out of sync with the narrator's story.

Somehow the mistiming made me love the show even more, like a charm hidden beneath a flaw. I was captured by the lightworks while the narrator proudly counted how many planes the Vietnamese shot down each day. The Americans took a break for Christmas, and resumed the day after. This time the bombers hit Khâm Thiên Street, one of the most populated areas in the city. Some 300 people died, more were wounded, and 2,000 houses were destroyed.

(Left) A crashed B-52 near Thanh Oai district. (Right) Phạm Tuân (red) flying through American planes (green) to attack a B-52.

The bombing stopped on the 12^th day, December 30, 1972. Negotiations resumed in Paris and a peace treaty was signed one month later, at the end of January 1973; the Americans were out of the Vietnam War, and South Vietnam was left on its own. The fighting resumed almost immediately after the peace signing though. And the narrator proudly proclaimed North Vietnam’s victory in the spring of 1975.

Leaving the sa bàn room, I was dazed by sunlight. As I made my way back outside, the yard had surprisingly come alive. Children were running around, riding bicycles, climbing on the B-52 carcass. Their grandparents came, too, just sitting and enjoying the moment. It turned out that the museum had long ago become a public space for those who live around there. I felt a surge of joy to see so much life in a place that was a memorial for war.

(Left) A girl guarding her bicycle while her grandmother (right) walks with her little brother.

I sat down next to the carcass’s engine and reflected on what I had seen. Earlier, the contractors had told me that the renovation would just consist of patching cracks, cleaning mold, maybe adding a roof over the B-52. Whatever they do, I just hope the space remains open for children to ride their bikes, for adults to take a walk. Maybe they could make the sa bàn room more prominent, too. A field trip here would be infinitely more interesting than a history lesson in class.

Then a thought came to me. During the air raid, Bạch Mai Hospital was one of the places that the bombers hit, and if my dad was working there, instead of St. Paul, then maybe I wouldn’t even be here today. I felt deep gratitude to be living in a time of peace, and maybe there will come a day when all the instruments of war that we have today are, just like that airplane, relics of a distant past.

The B-52 Victory Museum is located at 157 Đội Cấn Street, Ngọc Hồ, Ba Đình District.

Retracing Biệt Động Sài Gòn Hideouts, Where Grenades Were Just Below Your Feet

2022-06-20T11:00:00+07:00

Elements of Saigon’s wartime espionage efforts once relegated to secret basements, hidden crawl spaces and elaborate double lives lurk throughout downtown to this day.

Saigoneer typically refrains from covering topics overtly related to war and politics. Beyond the fact that we’re personally more interested in animals and poems, curry and board games, such subjects simply don’t cross our minds that often. One passes monuments, banners and museums on a daily basis, but they easily go unnoticed, like the taste of the roof of one’s own mouth. Interestingly, artifacts of an armed conflict whose success relied wholly on not being noticed are what caught our eyes.

Weapons hidden by the Biệt động Sài Gòn in downtown Saigon in 1968.

Biệt động Sài Gòn, an insurgent group that carried out raids and sabotage missions, was founded during the war against the French and experienced a revival in the early 1960s to undermine the control and effectiveness of the American troops and their allies in Saigon. Their story was immortalized in the movie Biệt động Sài Gòn, with Trần Văn Lai serving as the inspiration for the film’s charismatic owner of Đông Á Paint. In real life, he was an important figure in the group, and a few of the homes he owned in the city reveal his commitment to the cause.

A photo of Trần Văn Lai.

Why did Trần Văn Lai learn how to sew and build furniture? To have a steady and respectable profession with which to provide for one’s family? Because it was what one’s father did and his father before him and his father before him? To follow one’s passion in accordance with the adage “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life?” Those would all be sensible reasons, but he spent years learning the trade with the sole aim of aiding the revolution.

Furniture crafted by Trần Văn Lai, now on display at 145 Trần Quang Khải Street.

Tools that Trần Văn Lai used to make furniture.

A few weeks ago, Saigoneer headed towards a section of District 1 best known for offering good deals on the latest smartphone models to learn more about Trần Văn Lai. The home at 145 Trần Quang Khải Street was one of many that he used to make fine curtains and furniture in so he could gain easy access to the Independence Palace and attack the regime from the inside.

Today, the home serves as a coffee shop and museum dedicated to Biệt động Sài Gòn.

The tube house, built in 1963, has been transformed into a coffee shop in recent years, but the ornate iron French elevator with manual doors and locks that one enters upon arrival announces that the building is more than just another fabricated retro cafe peddling trendy nostalgia and plant-filled balconies. Lai’s living relatives have turned it into a museum dedicated to Biệt động Sài Gòn and amongst the artifacts on display are the tools that he used for a career that served as camouflage so he could move in and out of the government stronghold unsuspected. A set of leather couches on the ground floor are the same type that he once hid weapons inside. Various items including military radios, a typewriter once owned by Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, an accordion and motorbikes relied upon to transport secret messages have since been added as further touches of the time period and the revolutionary spirit of the home’s occupants.

Artifacts from the 1960s including the typewriter that once belonged to Nguyễn Văn Thiệu.

Before Lai was able to ascend to the position of trusted contractor, he had to first establish himself as an esteemed man around town. Thus, a marriage was arranged. Phạm Thị Chinh was born into a wealthy Hanoi family with connections to the gold trade. When she joined the revolution and married Lai, she was able to provide him with the connections and funds that allowed him to enter Saigon’s bourgeois society and thus earn the trust of his enemies. They bought more than a dozen homes around the city that were used for clandestine meetings and later for storing weapons.

In 1964, Chinh was captured and tortured for her revolutionary activities which included helping prisoners escape from prison on Côn Đảo. Following her death, Lai needed to re-marry to maintain his cover as an unassuming businessman. Đặng Thị Thiệp was only 21 when she married the then-44-year-old. Like his previous marriage, it's been said that it began as one of convenience, but true love blossomed between the pair. Lai fathered six children with his second wife.

Đặng Thị Thiệp speaks with Saigoneer in their former home.

During their first years of marriage, Lai continued to purchase homes throughout the city for revolutionary purposes while working as an interior contractor and with a dignified reputation amongst the highfalutin members of the former regime. The pair bought three homes on what is now Nguyễn Đình Chiểu Street. Beneath the houses, they spent several years surreptitiously digging a tunnel that they filled with weapons brought in little by little from National Liberation Front-controlled areas. By 1967, they had amassed over two tons of guns, explosives, grenades and munitions in the hidden basement.

A model home with a hiding space, and Trần Văn Lai in the entrance to the hiding space below the floor.

The area has since been restocked for visitors to get a sense of what it looked like. Removing a panel of nondescript floor tile reveals the dank space where shadows fall across various means of insurrection — which have been disabled, one assumes. To accommodate peacetime visitors, a staircase has been built, but even with the added convenience, stepping down with the commotion of commonplace traffic spilling in from outside underscores how dangerous Lai’s undertaking was. Considering the gossip that gets passed around in the average neighborhood, it's astounding to witness the armory Văn Lai was able to create in what presented itself as an average family home.

Weapons stored in the tunnel, which includes special panels designed to concteal and transport grenades, guns and explosives.

The group’s planning came to its conclusion in 1968 on the second morning of the Lunar New Year, when 15 fighters arrived at the home to collect weapons hidden inside baskets of vegetables. They then carried out an attack on Independence Palace as part of a larger assault on various strategic targets in the city, including the US Embassy, the main radio station and numerous military posts. That morning, Lai transported members and equipment to the Palace and returned to his home to assist other Biệt động Sài Gòn members.

When the plot failed, his secret arsenal was discovered and the Biệt động Sài Gòn was disbanded; Lai was forced into hiding on account of a US$2 million bounty placed on his head. He didn’t go far, however. Rather than run away, he simply assumed the identity of his children’s uncle and lived with them in a home on Nguyễn Kiệm Street while rumors spread that he had run off with a mistress. His young children at the time were not even aware that they were living with their father and referred to him as Bác.

An entrance to the secret storage area between the homes.

In hiding, life was difficult for the family as they struggled for daily necessities without the ability to blend into aristocratic society. After 1975, it didn’t get any easier. Đặng Thị Thiệp told Saigoneer that the family was given a certificate proving their activities during the war which prioritized them for food and various goods during the difficult post-war years. Still, Lai had to work various jobs including driving customers to the local market to sell goods and raising pigs in a cramped home near Tân Định Market.

Despite their poverty, Lai strived to provide his children with strong educations, and they all went on to successful careers. They have recently helped to collect many of the tools, documents and even houses that were part of his wartime efforts for the museum.

Another home owned by Trần Văn Lai used as a restaurant and hiding site.

After visiting the first two homes, we headed to 113A Đặng Dung. In the 1960s, it was a restaurant that also had several hidden chambers used for exchanging messages and storing revolutionary materials.

Being around in the hot sun all morning had given us an appetite, and we were thus pleased to learn that the cafe served cơm tấm. When it arrived, however, we were quite confused to see that the typical broken rice, pork chop and egg was accompanied by kimchi. For a morning ensconced in authenticity, it was a bizarre deviation from norms. But we had underestimated the ingenuity of Lai and his allies. The Biệt động Sài Gòn rightly assumed they could avoid suspicion if they operated as a restaurant that was filled with the very people that could foil their plots. They thus catered to the many South Korean soldiers who lived in the area by infusing the Saigon staple with the foreign side-dish.

The creativity of the kimchi exemplifies Biệt động Sài Gòn’s diligence. Not only did they concoct the dangerous plan to invite their enemy into their midst, but they had put in the time and effort to learn how to make kimchi that tasted good enough to keep the South Koreans coming back; a task restauranteurs struggle to achieve even when that is the main objective and not simply a ruse to facilitate their actual goals.

A bullet-loading chain from the L’Escarmouche taken by revolutionaries during the colonial period.

Another candidate for most emblematic item of the day would certainly be a heavy chain used for loading bullets displayed at 145 Trần Quang Khải. We were told it was taken from the L’Escarmouche, a French frigate that fought victoriously at the battle of Normandy as part of World War II and later found itself in Vietnam to aid in the colonialists’ plunderous rule over the country. Allegedly, early members of the Biệt động Sài Gòn snatched the chain during a 1946 attack in the Saigon harbor. Verifying this history is difficult, however. The chain itself only appears in Vietnamese materials discussing the ranger group, and while the L’Escarmouche certainly was sent to Vietnam after WW2, there is no easily located information describing the attack in any language.

Perhaps details surrounding the chain and its origins changed slightly during the nearly 80 years of re-telling. Maybe the French and their allies purposely avoided publishing reports of the attack on the ship to avoid embarrassment. Or possibly it never made it into much news because it was not particularly noteworthy compared to the other skirmishes at the time. But this nearly forgotten history is similar to Trần Văn Lai’s. He was one man amongst countless people who sacrifice greatly to ensure eventual peace throughout the nation and his contributions, despite vestiges of them remaining in central Saigon, go largely unnoticed today. One assumes he might be happy to see a thriving, vibrant city so free that people can go about their busy days without needing daily reminders of his efforts.

Saigon's Mobile Laminators Preserve ID Cards, Licenses, and Occasionally, Memories Too

2022-06-09T14:01:21+07:00

How much would you pay for a memory? What is it worth to ensure that you’ll forever be able to recall a certain moment of happiness, important gathering, or achievement? What if I told you that all you need is a couple of bucks and some good timing?

It begins with a chug, then a whirring, the twirling viscera of a combustion engine churns, the machine’s rollers turn and in moments a once-vulnerable memento has been given greater permanence. Saigon’s mobile laminators are one of those gloriously commonplace pieces of everyday life that usher in a multitude of meditations: street-level economies, scrap and scramble methods of hustling out a living, the essence of human civilization.

A stand-in for the human condition

A mobile lamination cart in Saigon.

I love the city’s mobile laminators, but it's difficult to articulate why. On the surface, there is an inherent novelty to any ingrained practice that doesn’t exist where one grew up. A degree of nostalgia-by-proxy exists when I hear the fond memories of friends and their childhood experiences with laminators. Pondering how there could be so much demand for lamination that one is able to make a living off it allows me to reflect on how little I know about local household needs and document habits (one should confront their utter lack of knowledge as often as they wash their hands, after all). Perhaps my shoddy memory compels me to appreciate efforts to do what my own brain so often fails at. It may be connected to the lopsided sadness that fills me whenever I walk across a discarded photo on the street that’s been laminated, or rummage through old papers and find a laminated document well past its expiration date.

This special contraption preserves memories (and other important documents).

But like many things I prize, a whimsical strangeness lies at the core of mobile laminators. Humans have taken a very technical, mechanical device — whose invention was dependent on the trial-by-error wisdom of countless individuals — and put it on wheels so as to make it more efficient for the storage of scratched-down glyphs that we can make meaning out of. Powered by the sludge of millennia-old organisms, the lamination process helps to prove that authority has been granted to me to inhabit certain parcels of land or operate exceedingly complex configurations of steel at stupefying speeds. As a material, plastic is strange enough, but heating it to encase tatters of paper that only have value because we have deemed it so is just simply strange. If mobile laminators don’t serve as stand-ins for the human experience as a whole, I don’t know what does.

From tattered paper sheets to covered keepsakes.

Sometime in 2020, I had the idea to see my love of laminators manifest by embarking on a personal conceptual art project. The premise was straightforward: every time I passed a mobile lamination machine, I would have something laminated. It could be a receipt in my pocket, a page from a book in my backpack, an expired coupon, or even a banknote. My humdrum daily existence would thus be chronicled. Perhaps some future archeologists would find my work and be surprised to learn life in the early 21^st century involved great pleasures exceeding those afforded by Egyptian empires, yet they were taken completely for granted.

The project got off to a smooth enough start: I laminated an advert from a theatre production I’d attended, an old business card, a passport photo that had been flatteringly Photoshopped, and a blank strip of paper that had been a receipt, but apparently the heating needed to activate the adhesive in the lamination process removed the ink, so I now have no proof of my 7-Eleven onigiri and Saigon Specials.

A budding art project.

Lamination as a timeless trade

Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic scrubbed the streets of sidewalk barbers, roving recycling collectors and mobile laminators. I worried that once the city re-opened, the mobile laminators would be gone. After all, seemingly more infallible enterprises never resumed business in my neighborhood, and routines are different post-lockdown, as exemplified by the increase of people working from home or shopping online in Saigon. So would the laminators be back?

Unlike brick-and-mortar shops whose Facebook pages I can check or food stalls that I can drive past, assessing the survival of mobile laminators is a difficult task. Their schedules can be irregular, and prone to whims or conflicts. If I didn’t see the mobile laminator stroll past my house on any given day, it is impossible to know if I had happened to be away during his route, if he had taken the day off for some personal reason, or if he’d given up the trade entirely.

Nguyễn Thị Hoàn is among many of Saigon's laminators. She shares that the trade helps her make ends meet.

It was thus a great joy to not only see my ward’s regular laminator roaming again, but also notice the woman who set up her lamination machine under a bridge near my home was back. Saigoneer paid her a visit to satisfy some of our lingering curiosities about her trade, as well as the industry’s adaptions to societal changes.

Nguyễn Thị Hoàn was born in 1967 in a small village in northern Vietnam. Everyone in her community was a farmer, but long ago many of them decided to move south for economic reasons. Curious to explore a more lucrative profession than farming, they originally began traveling around neighborhoods with scales to weigh residents. People who lived in Saigon two decades ago will likely remember the loud cân điện tử as accompanied by a pre-recorded jingle spoken in the northern Vietnamese dialect.

Thị predicted rightly that the mobile-weighing industry couldn’t last forever, and she and her fellow villagers looked for a similar skill to pick up. One of them had learned the relatively simple job of lamination and passed it along to the others. This was the same reason that ear-piercing and bike helmet repair is included in the cart’s services; they are united only by the fact that somebody knows how to do them, and that they are fairly easy, in-demand, and require little overhead.

Not only can you get your stuff laminated here, you can also have your ear lobes pierced and your helmet fixed.

Besides a cornucopia of bike horns and car engines, Thị chatted with us about the life of a laminator. She doesn’t regret her decision to take up the profession, but also isn’t so enamored with it as to have hoped her adult children took it up. She is frank when describing it as a decent way to make a living that isn’t as physically demanding as farming. This is especially important considering her husband, who joins her, suffers from several health ailments that make walking difficult. His condition and their age explain why they are stationary and not mobile laminators. She originally strolled with her cart through neighborhoods near where she lived, but moved to her place beneath a major bridge when it was opened over a decade ago. She has been there long enough now to attract repeat customers and people that drive by expecting to see her.

To respect Thị’s time we had brought a random smattering of items to have laminated: a postcard, a polaroid, a birthday card, a bookmark, a ticket stub from a cat show in Kyiv, etc. Gathering them reminded me of my more ambitious plans for what my art project might include based on the policy of laminating whatever I had with me: caution tape from when my apartment was sealed for COVID-19 protocols, sliced cucumber from a bánh mì, a sock off my foot, a seashell from Quy Nhơn. What was the strangest thing she had laminated? Nothing very odd; mostly important documents and various official identification cards, certificates, photographs of loved ones, and the occasional lucky fortune from a temple.

If mobile laminators don’t serve as stand-ins for the human experience as a whole, I don’t know what does.

“If you go to work, there is work to do,” she says regarding her schedule and any changes in demand she has seen over the years. She went on to liken the laminating market to fishing in the sense that there are good days and bad days, and rain often serves as a spoiler. Of course, lockdown was disproportionately difficult for street vendors, but she received financial support and groceries from the ward and other charities to provide for her family. She noted that during the time spent “between four walls,” she was eager to get back outside and continue her work, as much to have something to keep her occupied as to make money.

A selection of laminated works.

In the coming weeks, I will likely restart my lamination project. Maybe it will be so meta as to include this article printed out and given to Thị to make it more permanent than the slippery tubes of the internet could ever do. But while such piffle may keep me entertained, far more pertinently, when I announced to the Saigoneer office that I was going to the mobile laminator, two fellow writers handed me insurance cards they needed laminated.

Rain or shine, Thị is waiting on the side of the street for customers.

A few days later, our photographer was distraught over needing his driver's license to catch a flight, but the paper was so tattered that removing it from his wallet one more time may have resulted in complete disintegration. The solution? Send it to Thị. The fact that he will be able to cruise at 500 miles per hour, 30,000 feet above the earth thanks to a former farmer who rolled her machine to a shady spot beneath a bridge is all the explanation I need for why I continue to love Saigon’s mobile laminators.

Finding Fun and Revelation Aboard Saigon's Wayward Waterbus

2022-01-13T16:00:00+07:00

Cement, clay, clapboard, spackle, rebar, piping, plaster smears, paint drips, pencil scrawlings: to witness the rise of a building, observe its innards, is to marvel at the pretense of an ego, for what are those constructed with?

Stepping through the unguarded construction site surrounding the Bạch Đằng Waterbus Station last month, I attempted to put aside my ego. After all, could I design, implement and operate a Waterbus system that carries people up and down the Saigon River? Certainly not. So how is it my place to be critical of it?

Then again, I am not a transportation expert, nor was I given an initial estimated budget of VND120 billion (US$5.28 million). So in the same way that one eats dessert only after eating their vegetables, before I profess my appreciation for the Waterbus, I must get a few things out of the way.

To be blunt, the Waterbus is an enormous failure, at least when judged against what it was intended to be.

Plans for the Saigon Waterbus unveiled in 2017 included a 10.8-kilometer-long first line with nine stations in District 1, Thủ Đức, Bình Thạnh and District 2. A second east-west line was reported to be in the works with 11 stops along the Tàu Hũ Canal, and authorities followed with approval for a third line connecting downtown with District 7. Officials and representatives from Thường Nhật, the route’s operator, claimed it would help reduce the city’s traffic woes, giving commuters a faster and more efficient means to travel to and from work every day. This was cause for celebration; not only would it help reduce pollution and the pains of sitting in traffic, but a functioning water transit system would elevate Saigon’s charms and experiences for locals and tourists alike.

Expectations Meet Reality

The Bạch Đằng Wharf is undergoing a construction overhaul, so to make it to the station several weeks ago, I swerved past cement mixers and wheelbarrows, avoided a shower of welding sparks and tip-toed through an obstacle course of fencing strewn across the sidewalk. It is not too far of a walk from my home, so the journey is reasonable, and living in Saigon necessitates cohabiting with construction, but the faults of the Waterbus system more than four years after its launch were clear in how my colleague joined me.

Each Waterbus information kiosk features a list of the stations inside with associated lights to signify where on the route one is; standard for any means of public transit. Yet, the lights no longer turn on for many of the stops. For example, Bình An, which provides relatively easy access to Thảo Điền residents, has been out of commission for months. Whisking past the stop, one notices that despite the boats at Bình An, the station is a shambles of construction equipment rendering it wholly inaccessible. You wouldn’t know this by visiting the Waterbus' website or social media pages, however. There was no announcement that only four stations had resumed service after four months of COVID-19 closure. Rather, all posts still feature outdated, inaccurate schedules. There have been no updates, let alone ground-breakings, for the new routes, or even all of the stations originally planned for the first route.

When contacted regarding the Bình An station’s status, a Waterbus representative said they would update the page when the stop resumed operations, despite, bafflingly, never announcing they had been suspended. So to ride the Waterbus, my coworker had to book a Grab bike from District 2 to Bach Dang. This is clearly not the easy, affordable transportation the project promised.

For our Friday morning ride, we were not joined by men and women in suits, briefcases in hand, busily e-mailing important KPI, SEO, or ROI-related updates on their commute to the office. Rather, the dozen or so other riders were all college-aged young adults enjoying a pleasure cruise. There was plenty of selfies, laughter and chatter, but like us, the majority of them remained on the Waterbus until its final stop, and then rode it back into the District 1 pier we disembarked from. And why not? The boat is quiet, the chairs relatively comfortable, the views nice, and the atmosphere conducive to joviality.

The experience of our fellow riders is not unique. I have ridden the Waterbus half a dozen or so times, with friends, on dates, even by myself once for a change of scenery while reading. I have never ridden it for transportation, and judging from the other passengers on those journeys, very few do. Instead, it serves as an alternative to bars, coffee shops or parks for people looking to hang out in their free time. Waterbus officials have said just as much, citing weekends as the busiest times to ride. And further underscoring it as a leisure activity but not a realistic mode of daily transportation, the Waterbus recently unveiled nighttime cruises filled with music and alcohol; hardly accompaniments to a regular commute.

Witnessing Another Side of Saigon

If one puts aside the Waterbus’ failures as functional transportation and accepts it as a calm outdoor activity in a city seriously lacking such opportunities, it is incredibly delightful. But the greatest value of riding the boat is the rarely seen views of Saigon it provides. One gains a greater appreciation and understanding of the city when viewing it from the river.

The unglamorous construction site quickly slips from my mind as the boat begins its journey. The Thủ Thiêm 2 Bridge is approaching completion, with great progress having been made during the pandemic, and it immediately comes into sight as we make our way up the river. Perhaps assisted by anticipation piqued during years of delays, it is a sight to behold. Strung between sleek towers, its suspension cables stretch like the plucked bones of an especially sumptuous fish at the end of a feast. Gliding underneath it, it’s impossible not to marvel at its sheer size and the complex engineering behind it. And while transportation follies will never be far from one’s thoughts when riding the Waterbus, the bridge serves as a testament to the city’s progress and potential.

Not long after the bridge, Landmark 81, that unimaginative spire of stodgy stacked blocks, comes into view. While it always sticks out in Saigon’s skyline, Southeast Asia’s tallest finished building seems even more immense when seen from the water. Hardly unique in its design, the tower and its surrounding Vinhomes Central Park embodies Vietnam’s attempts to copy and compete with economically successful neighbors such as Singapore and Malaysia.

In addition to Landmark 81, which forsakes style for record-breaking size and its shopping mall filled with gauche global luxury brands, the park features imitations of Singapore’s iconic Garden by the Bay Supertrees. Yet, lacking the Supertree’s verdant vegetative skin, the ones in Central Park seem cynical and soulless. Some of Saigon’s initiatives, such as its sidewalk-cleaning campaign, have been criticized for eschewing the vibrancy that makes Vietnam unique in exchange for efforts to keep pace with or one-up other nations. The Vinhomes Central Park statues serve as monuments of caution to such efforts.

Vinhomes Central Park also features a marina where a dozen or so private yachts are docked. Cinema seating, bars stocked with top-shelf liquors, kitchens with personal chefs: for those accustomed to having to split rent with roommates, subsist on instant noodles while waiting for payday and trudging through a rainstorm because taxis are too expensive, what life must be like for their owners is unfathomable. This is not the only example of extreme affluence one encounters when riding the waterbus. Kept behind gates on secluded streets, often-garish neo-classical homes with elaborately landscaped lawns filled with statues, luxury cars, ornate balconies, pools and the occasional boat dock are rarely seen, unless traveling along the river as the Waterbus motors beside District 2.

This great wealth is a stark contrast to some of the cramped dwellings just across the water. Cluttered, multi-color homes and apartments hodge-podged together tumble towards the banks. One observes their inhabitants fishing, hanging laundry and washing dishes, the turbid water lapping against their dwellings’ stilts, a tangle of hyacinth clumped with discarded bags, Styrofoam boxes, beer cans, and trash tattered beyond recognition. One should need no reminder of the economic disparities in Saigon, nor how drastically different the “haves” live compared to the “have-nots,” but few activities put it in starker contrast than a ride on the Waterbus.

One can, of course, conjecture about how the mansion inhabitants got so rich, and certainly the barges loaded with sand and gravel that traverse the river are involved somewhere in the flow of capital. Dredged and quarried from the Mekong Delta, the raw materials required for skyscrapers, roads, resorts and building projects fueling economic growth in the country’s metropolises are increasing erosion, flooding and water degradation in impoverished rural areas. “The industrial world destroys nature not because it doesn't love it, but because it is not afraid of it,” isn’t that so, Mary Ruefle?

Amongst those barges and container ships that one passes on the Waterbus are smaller wooden boats used to transport various agricultural goods. Their owners often reside on them, and passing in such proximity gives a peek into their daily lives. Tiny makeshift gardens rest in the rear, a dog or two lounging beside various pots, pans and cooking utensils, changes of clothes flapping in the breeze beside hammocks, some reading material, a charging phone. Before the COVID-19 lockdowns, I might have imagined such a lifestyle to be equal parts lonely and inspiring. Now I know it to be so.

Filling the Quietude

“Our imagination flies — we are its shadow on the earth.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

A ride on the Waterbus invites more than ruminations on the city’s economic disparities and architectural aspirations, however. I’ve already acknowledged its value as a social activity, but it’s also a top-tier provider of quiet moments during which you can crawl into your imagination and explore.

At the front of the boat, the captain steers without so much as a door separating passengers and the controls. In no way am I advocating one actually storm the cockpit, overpower the captain, take the reins, instruct all passengers and personnel to take a life-preserver and abandon ship so that you can commandeer the vessel and live out a carefree Huckleberry Finn fantasy. The Saigon Waterbus may be the city’s most hijackable form of public transportation; but you’d not only eventually get caught — it’s also highly immoral. Still, in the cabin’s shady calm, it’s fun to think; to let your imagination soar and dive like a famished hawk above a battlefield strewn with bodies.

What lurks down nondescript roads, huddles in hẻms, shelters beneath awnings and scavenges behind shuttered doors Regardless of how long you have lived in Saigon, there are endless creases to explore, crevices to root around in. What will you find? A type of tree you’ve never seen before growing in a churchyard that drops a fruit whose flesh can be used to make cloth dye? A small shop unknowingly selling an endangered species of bird or turtle? A cơm tấm cart that has stumbled onto a transcendent new sauce few will ever have the pleasure of tasting? Perhaps a new best friend or lover? The Waterbus slips past such potentials. You can get out at one of the stops, wander around an area you’ve likely never visited before; or you can remain on board, let your imagination travel there and bring back trinkets: some postcards, a keychain, a refrigerator magnet.

Or play a game. I’m reminded of the hours I spent in the car as a child when my parents, to shut me and my siblings up, would give us a list of things to look for out the window for, and the first to spot them would win a nominal prize. Why not such a scavenger hunt for things seen from the Waterbus? A few items I’d suggest:

Any living animal (bird, fish, butterfly, etc.)
A garden growing fruits or vegetables
Someone who will return your wave hello
A section of river you would like to swim in
A slick of spilled oil with reflected sunlight that shimmers like a saxophone solo
A piece of plastic likely to end up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Any dead animal (bird, fish, butterfly, etc.)
An abandoned construction project
A flourishing construction project

The last stop on the Waterbus route rests next to one of the city’s last remaining ferries. Workers of all types on motorbikes board the boat alongside delivery drivers and transportation vehicles to cut across the river and continue on with their menial tasks a few minutes later. This scene was once commonplace all across the Saigon, so maybe a trip aboard the Waterbus will transport you back in time, to a Saigon before bridges sutured riverbanks, when ferries hummed past floating markets. When Thủ Thiêm was a snarl of swamp, and the skyline rose only a few stories. When crocodiles and caiman sunbathed in sight of boats carrying letters people anxiously anticipated for weeks. When banana leaves wrapped all items for mang đi and not a single foreign word stretched across a billboard. When people sang long into the night without microphones or accompanying tracks, songs pulled through time with nothing but the fragile voices strung between sips of rice wine. When Saigon was nothing but a provincial town slowly filling with migrants. When the introduction of a motorized boat would be such a marvel that people would line up simply to ride it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, no concern for the destination, no greater transportation purpose. Imagine that.

A Case for the Coexistence of Convenience Stores and Tạp Hóa

2021-04-11T09:00:00+07:00

One day after work, I stopped at my local tạp hóa to pick up a bottle of rice wine, a bag of chips and a can of beer. The man who runs the shop, as he does with all customers, tallied up the purchase on his calculator and, despite it totaling VND51,000, asked me simply for năm mươi. It’s possible he didn’t want to fuss and fumble with making change, even though I had the exact amount already in hand, but I’d like to think that it was a small discount earned after years of weekly visits to his shop to buy everything from beer to batteries, pens to toilet paper. Though we exchange little more than pleasantries, the husband and wife who own the shop situated beneath their home have become familiar. If one considers tạp hóa important community institutions, that 1,000 felt like a subtle sign that I was further ingratiating myself in the neighborhood. As an outsider in Vietnam, this is no small matter.

A typical mom-and-pop shop in Vietnam

I’m not so mawkish to attach so much sentimentality to the scene that I saved the banknote. But I did pause to look at it a bit before placing it in my wallet. The depiction on the back of an elephant hauling lumber seems preposterously out of place in a time when massive trucks rumble down Saigon’s highways beset by an increasing number of private cars ferrying the nation’s emergent middle class. Living in Vietnam, perhaps more than in many places, one bears witness to constant reminders of the pace of societal change, the confluence of tradition and modernity and the intersection of familiarity and foreignness. One recognizes all of these elements in tạp hóas and their role in Vietnamese society.

If you need it, the tạp hóa probably has it: deodorant, shaving cream, cream-filled crackers, powdered milk, plastic toys, packaged pastries, chili flakes, toothpicks, toothbrushes, toothpaste, pickled plums, popcorn, juice, napkins, nail clippers, cooking oil, canned sardines, ceramic bowls, candles, chopsticks, coconut milk, eggs, sacks of sugar, salt, baking powder, hand sanitizer, diapers, chewing gum, cashews, adhesive, shredded pork, peanuts, umbrellas, insect repellent.

Strings of shampoo and body wash packets hang on either side of many tạp hóa entryways like absurd aluminum moss or perhaps the beaded curtains that once concealed the seedy backrooms of Saigon’s GI bars. The single-use sundry items fill me with a certain sadness. Larger bottles are certainly much cheaper per ounce, but many people live in such economically precarious situations that such a purchase is unfeasible. Some days, I’m able to convince myself that no, the sachets are actually aimed at people so afflicted by wanderlust and a thirst for adventure that they can’t be certain they’ll use the same shower for more than a day. But neither reality nullifies the environmental impact of the packaging, and I detect great guilt and arrogance wafting off humanity; a stink that can’t be soaped and scrubbed away.

Thread, buttons, needles, scissors, strings, clippers, cords, and tape-measures. Once the circular Royal Dansk tins have been emptied of their mid-tier cookies, they become holders of household sewing materials. Your mom or grandma probably has one in her house right now and there is a good chance it was purchased as a gift from a tạp hóa. But what will happen to these metal containers when fewer and fewer people know how to stitch? We can’t let them go empty! I propose a few other uses: art supplies, makeup, jewelry, cash, contraband, blockchain wallet passwords, or perhaps even a loved one’s ashes.

One buys a small packet of salt at the tạp hóa without giving much thought to the common cooking product or its nearly negligible price. Yet, if you lived in Europe 500 years ago, you’d think about that purchase very differently. Thanks to the scarcity of spices, and the rigors of ocean trade, a single kilo of salt would cost more than US$2,000 in today’s currency. Sometimes I pick some up at the tạp hóa and sprinkle a little on my tongue to remind myself of the riches I enjoy in the modern age. I do the same with MSG, a glorious substance that was only invented in the 20^th century, to celebrate the splendors of science, innovation and the evolution of the human experience made possible through collective knowledge.

What is the lifespan of a plastic poncho?

The type of plastic poncho hanging on a hook in front of a tạp hóa that you buy for VND10,000 when the cloudy sky shudders and you’re still three clicks from home and lack the patience to shelter beneath a bridge or building even — how long do those last? Do you get only one use out of them? Two? Three? And then what happens to them? I haven’t heard of anyone repurposing them. Certainly not to be used as replacements for a pillow cover. No, they get tossed into the trash and contribute to our dizzying plastic waste problem that chokes sea turtles and poisons porpoises. Is that worth staying moderately dry for? What’s wrong with a little rain — you’re not made out of sugar, you won’t melt.

There is no uniform system governing what a tạp hóa carries. The proprietors make the decisions based on personal preferences and prejudices, local customer needs, relationships with distributors, suppliers, and product availability. There are the standard items one will find at each, like bottled water, fish sauce and candy. And then there are the outliers and odd one-offs. Like boiled quail eggs, Japanese durian pastries, Vietnam Airlines napkins and tiny liquor bottles pilfered via a relative who works as a flight attendant.

If you owned a tạp hóa, what oddities would you stock?

If you owned a tạp hóa, what oddities would you stock? I think I’d have a “take a photograph, leave a photograph” box where people could drop a picture with no context or explanation. The snapshots would be simple ways to peek into a stranger’s life and have someone do so in return. They would function like encountering a single sentence of a novel you’ll never get to read the rest of.

An element of Saigon’s tạp hóa scene demanding discussion is the import stores on Ham Nghi Boulevard. These ramshackle assemblies of foreign foods have a dazzling array of sugar-bombed breakfast cereals, jars of gherkins, muffin mix, cake sprinkles, Pop-Tarts, taco seasoning, blended curry, Russian caviar, Kentucky bourbon, blocks of cheddar cheese, frozen bratwurst, blueberry jelly, canned peaches, snap peas, string beans, au jus sauce, dried lentils, linguini, matcha, mustard, chocolate bars, cornbread powder, and so on and so on and so on all crammed on shelves that reach to the ceiling. The buildings' cramped, narrow lanes force shoppers in search of exotic items to shimmy, jostle and shoulder-contort around one another with errant elbows, purses or backpacks sending a cascade of products tumbling to the floor. The city’s newer, more luxurious import grocery chains and malls free shoppers from this chaos, yet do so via significant price markups on each item. Is it worth it? And when buying a foreign product in Vietnam, doesn’t finding it in an exceedingly local store increase the exoticness of it? Aren’t humans drawn to the exotic?

A man hops the curb, and without getting off his motorbike or even turning the engine off, shouts chị ơi at the front of the tạp hóa. Inside, a woman rises from the floor where she and her family are having fried fish, pork omelet, stir-fried morning glory, and rice for lunch.

The living space tucked behind the storefront contains a child’s desk, ancestral altar, TV blaring some singing competition and a hammock swinging above a stack of newspapers. She sells the man his pack of cigarettes and returns to her meal. This common scene is a visual manifestation of the way tạp hóa conflates an owners’ family life, leisure time, labor and community. But how much longer will society work this way? As more and more people move to 9-5 jobs in offices or factories, one’s professional and private roles and relationships become more clearly delineated, like an atlas slowly filling in with borders during the age of exploration.

Walking in the middle of the night, the roads devoid of traffic, sidewalks free of pedestrians, restaurants darkened, the city’s emptiness can feel overwhelming; the buildings above start to resemble surreal cuspids in the maw of some beast eager to swallow you whole. The families that run tạp hóa have long since gone to bed and shuttered their storefronts with heavy metal gates and padlocks. And then, from the blackness emerges a bright white light — a soothing spill of warmth that is less a beacon than a soft voice calling to you: Here, over here, you’re not alone. The convenience store is always there for you.

7-Eleven, Mini-Stop, Circle K, Family Mart, Champs and even VinMart do a lot that tạp hóa don’t. Not only are they open 24-7, they also feature an array of hot food items and snacks while providing an essential space for people to congregate. Many feature expanded seating areas that fill up with uniform-clad students bent over homework, scrolling social media or simply chatting. "We used to study at coffee shops before we discovered the convenience store. It has air-conditioners, WiFi and cheaper drinks," explained student Tran Hoang, currently studying at the HCMC Medicine and Pharmacy University.

Around 78% of those occupying convenient store seating areas are teenagers or those in their 20s. It makes sense. Where else are they going to go? Parks are few and far between and become sketchy at night, bars and restaurants expensive, family homes sometimes oppressive and without privacy. Free internet, air conditioning, bathrooms, just enough jaunty pop music to keep conversations private and not overwhelm a person reading a book, it’s almost as if teenagers were designed in response to the existence of convenience stores, and not the other way around.

If the items at tạp hóa allow nostalgic reminders of items from childhood, the shelves at convenience stores reflect the new products arriving in Vietnam: Doritos, hanami Kit Kats, BBQ-flavored popcorn, Thai shrimp chips, craft beer, banana milk, iPhone cords, Exploding Kittens card games, facemasks, sexual lubricant, ice-cream bars shaped like fish, natto, string-cheese, frozen pizza, and a smoldering vat of mild broth with meatballs, sausage and eggs and upfront.

Perhaps the most emblematic item on offer is the ubiquitous triangle sandwich. Assembled in some unknown, distant warehouse, they come in a variety of flavors: egg salad, tuna, sauteed chicken, and “mixed.” They are easy, affordable, and packed with enough precisely balanced chemicals and preservatives to tickle the pleasure centers of one’s brain. Like drinking and smoking, one could forgive, even embrace, their unhealthiness if they were honest. They are anything but. Peeling the pieces of bread apart confirms the canard: while the ingredients are stuffed to the front to look robust in the packaging, the back half of each holds hardly any filling, just two dry pieces of bread touching with all the titillation of holding your grandma’s hand in church. The contrast between what it looks like you’re buying and what you actually get is an affront to one’s intelligence.

If not a restoration of hope and trust in the world, the convenience store sushi offers a better culinary experience. Delicious and lacking any deception whatsoever, it also allows you to feel like the apex predator you truly are. Imagine a 200-kilo tuna — the top of its food chain, zooming at 40 kilometers an hour — being ripped from the depths by little more than a string, a pole and a human hand. The fish then travels from a stretch of open Pacific to port to processing plant to packaging center to your palate. Your australopithecine ancestors could never imagine you reclining on a couch in some air conditioned hovel in Phú Mỹ Hưng snacking on such a monstrous sea creature. The convenience store affords you this pleasure.

It’s not just tạp hóa that convenience stores are competing with. In addition to the restaurants that their foods are fighting taste buds for, they are pulling business away from beauty shops and pharmacies via their selection of cosmetics. Thanks to influences from abroad and increased spending power, Vietnamese are buying more skincare products than ever before. Complex rituals involving creams, masks, moisturizers, scrubs and washes have replaced the arduous task of applying shining lacquer to one’s teeth. The literal black and white difference reveals that while fashion changes, one’s willingness to endure lengthy rituals for the sake one’s appearance remains.

Convenience stores can also be portals

At night, Thai Van Lung Street is quiet: as District 1 empties of its office workers for the day and the streets clear of the food carts that cater to them, the road becomes desolate, save a group of men drinking on the corner, a stray dog scavenging through trash piles, or someone entering a luxury hotel. Thai Van Lung’s Family Mart is similarly dead: the staff idles beneath the fluorescents before a lone businessman plops a bottle of tea and instant noodles on the counter. Yet, there is a back exit. Passing through it, one becomes immediately overwhelmed with the chaotic, almost synesthetic assault on the senses that is Little Tokyo: the cacophony of clinking glasses clattering out izakayas and echoing through the narrow alleyways; oily smoke wafting off sizzling pork slathered with teriyaki sauce alongside takoyaki, those moist tentacle-laden morsels; red and blue lights strung overhead blend in the humid light to give the entire scene the same purple hue seen on a bruised fruit that’s still fit to eat.

For all the joys they offer, a precise misery accompanies the modern convenience store

A misery in the beep of a scanning gun, of an ever-changing labor force consisting of young people earning a paltry VND30,000 or less per hour with profits going to overseas corporations, the bananas sold in plastic bags, eggs in plastic wrap, straws encased in plastic, the plastic sleeve that circles a plastic cup that contains artificially colored sugary drink poured from a giant vat behind the check-out that spins, spins, spins, spins, spins; staring at it while waiting in line can induce a certain meditative trance.

Your mind seems to leave your body, perhaps slipping into someone else’s, perhaps the staff member working the register, perhaps the character in the novel, Convenience Store Woman who proclaims: “When you work in a convenience store, people often look down on you for working there. I find this fascinating, and I like to look them in the face when they do this to me. And as I do so I always think: that's what a human is.”

Vietnam hasn’t sold its soul to the convenience stores quite yet, though. Tạp hóa and traditional wet markets represent 75% of fast-moving consumer good (FMCG) sales and a recent survey revealed that 92% of locals prefer buying basic necessities there. Respondents and experts cite a great variety of reasons for the preference, with convenience near the top of the list. After all, one seems to pass one at every turn when walking in any neighborhood — rural or urban — across the country. They also accept debt, meaning the local kid the owners have seen grow up can come in for candy his parents will pay for later, or a family down on their luck can have their canned milk put on layaway. And a person can purchase small portions of whatever they need. If you find yourself lacking a few pinches of sugar to finish making dinner, just pop next door and get the precise amount. No need to splash out for a large container that will linger in the cupboard.

But times may be changing. There are an estimated 1,200 convenience stores in the country and, despite having failed to meet previously set goals, experts expect significant growth in the coming decade. As the youths who grew up on convenience stores constitute a larger share of the economy, the market may shift to cater to their preferences.

The ability to use credit cards and pay electricity and water bills may lure them. Or maybe it will be the store’s expanded array of international products. Or maybe the soft, comforting light and hum or air conditioning that will elicit nostalgia for simpler, teenage days.

The future is perhaps best summed up by a scene that played out last week at a tạp hóa near my home. A shopper selected a typical assortment of products: cartons of yogurt, bar of soap, bag of peanuts, and placed them in a tote bag emblazoned with a Family Mart logo no doubt given as promotion for having achieved some spending threshold or point system. As with many aspects of modern society, the traditional will continue to co-exist with the modern. Women will have both an áo dài and a pants suit hanging in their closets; buses will fill with people wearing nón lá and baseball caps; there will be cải lương shows and hip-hop concerts; youths will wash down bowls of phở with bubble tea. Vietnam has always looked to simultaneously embrace the past while adapting to the future.

If a tạp hóa’s chaotic nature and variety of community purposes mean it can be likened to a symphony, then perhaps a convenience store is a cleaner, more straightforward concerto? Different moods demand we listen to different records.

Written by Paul Christiansen.
Graphics by Hannah Hoang and Uyen Ngo.
Production by Alberto Prieto.
Photos by Le Thai Hoang Nguyen and Alberto Prieto.

In Plain Sight is a Saigoneer series exploring overlooked or under-appreciated places in the city. We hope it inspires you to notice the many fascinating stories, histories, and ruminations waiting right in front of your eyes. Have a place that you cherish and want more people to notice it? Write to us via contribute@saigoneer.com.