Tech - Saigoneer

On Vietnam's Internet, You're a Mom, I'm a Mom, Everyone Is a Mom

2025-04-25T10:00:00+07:00

I am a mom. Well, not in the most conventional meaning of the word — I am childless, and it’s still biologically impossible for men to give birth the last time I checked, but for most of my existence on the Vietnamese cybersphere, I have been using the designation “mẹ” amongst my closest friends.

A handful of my most enduring friendships have spanned decades, dating back to middle school and college. Now in the tender first half of our 30s, we’re scattered across the globe, leading different lives and careers, and group chats are amongst the few connections that still unite us every time there are gossips or crucial life updates. And for the longest time, our messenger conversations have been peppered with the pronoun mẹ, meaning “mom,” even though none of us has produced any children.

For many Vietnamese millennials, the usage of mẹ as an exclusively virtual pronounce arose during the heydays of internet forums — especially those of one forum in particular, Web Trẻ Thơ. Before the advent of social media, webtretho.com emerged as the leading platform for family and childcare discussion, amassing high volumes of female internet users. Users would affectionately refer to one another as các mẹ, mẹ bỉm, mẹ bầu, or by the formula “mẹ” plus “account name.”

When Facebook arrived in the country in the early 2010s and slowly took over forums as the de facto socialization platform for local internet users, the colorful range of mẹ-related monikers bled into Facebook comments and pages. Web Trẻ Thơ, of course, found its way to Facebook too, but its uniquely maternal lexicon was no longer confined to forum boundaries. The rest of Vietnam’s cybersphere started adopting them too, first as a nod of ironic humor, but over time, the usage has become a tongue-in-cheek inside joke, harkening back to the yesterdays of millennial innocence.

Which brings us to today, the mid-2020s, when the local cybersphere welcomed yet another social media newcomer, Threads, Meta’s supposed answer to the enshittification of Twitter/X. Vietnamese Gen Z-ers quickly embraced the microblogging app with the same enthusiasm us millennials showered on Facebook. Numerous slangs have come out of Threads, but one in particular amused me to no end: mom. We have come full circle.

My hypothesis is that the word also came from childcare content on TikTok or Facebook groups, but how the transition from mẹ to mom happened and how it arrived in Threads still elude me. Vietnamese Threads users who adopted this neopronoun employ “mom” as a replacement for second-, and sometimes third-, person pronouns: mom ơi (hey mom), các mom (you guys), mom này (he/she), etc. I’ve joked with friends that you can tell if a Vietnamese internet person is a Gen Y or Gen Z by their use of mẹ or mom.

Using “mother” in an honorific is a practice that exists outside of Vietnamese internet slang, such as the teknonymy of the Korean language — women are often referred to by the name of their children, plus “eomeoni,” like Soo-hyun-eomeoni (Soo-hyun’s mother). It’s as if after bearing children, a woman’s identity dissolves into that of her offspring. The use of mẹ and mom as neopronouns in Vietnamese internet culture, on the other hand, has much more liberating implications.

For one, even though their roots are feminine, they are extrinsically gender-neutral, age-neutral, and free of hierarchy. I can be a mom, you can be a mom, everybody can be a mom just by virtue of their presence on the Vietnamese internet. As a language, Vietnamese is notoriously context-based, especially when it comes to our library of diverse pronouns that could change based on the age, gender, family side, and professional title of both the speaker and the listener. The omni-neutral “mom” emerged as the direct response to the uncertainties of Internet interactions, where one can’t always get enough information to figure out how to address the person you’re talking to. The fact that this omni-neutral new pronoun turns out to be “mom,” a traditionally gendered role, is both poetic and empowering.

Ride-Hailing Changed How We Commute. Can Ve Chai-Hailing Change How We Recycle?

2025-04-03T10:00:00+07:00

Mentions of ve chai might evoke images of uncles and aunties pushing around their cart or perched on bicycles, ferrying a host of plastic bags and scrap metal, and occasionally calling out: “Đồng nát sắt vụn bán nào…” This familiar scene, no matter how nostalgic, might change soon.

In December 2021, when VECA — Vietnam’s first application linking informal recyclers and Saigoneers — announced their relaunch after a drawn-out pause due to lockdown, I was eager to try the novel service. Prior to this, during the app’s trial period only in Phú Nhuận District in April 2021, my interaction with VECA was merely me placing a selling order and being informed that it was canceled, all because of the pandemic. When Saigon was battered by a massive wave of COVID-19 cases leading to a strict lockdown, the technological startup had to power down for five months.

To my surprise, the relaunch came with an expansion in the app’s operating zone to 10 metropolitan districts of Saigon (now 12), including the neighborhood where the Saigoneer office is. A made-in-Vietnam app by Vietnamese, one that’s not a localized version of a foreign tech giant, and one that’s seeking to tackle a crucial process in our recycling capacity — of course I was excited by it and had a lot of expectations.

A to-the-point UI and smooth usage

After filling in some information like address, contact number and preferred time, I was able to secure an “appointment” with a seller on a Monday. Available on both the Apple Store and Google Play Store, VECA has a simple interface compared to other service-hailing apps, with a color palette of white, green and blue.

VECA's index page.

In a recent interview with municipal TV channel HTV9, Minh Trang, the app’s co-founder, shared that her team was constantly making UI adjustments during the app’s first-year run because it initially was too complicated and not convenient for users.

In the current version, the key function for Saigoneers is the “book a sale” section. There are complementary sections that list an account’s accrued points and how to exchange them. Sellers can opt to receive their money via their Momo wallet, though the app does not incorporate a chat or phone contact function between buyers and sellers. The index screen is designed in an informational way, listing what kind of recyclable materials it accepts and at how much per kilogram they can be sold for. These include: newspaper, document paper, cartons, solid iron, scrap iron, corrugated iron, plastic bottles, aluminum, aluminum cans and Tetra Paks. Clicking on each category icon will reveal more detailed instructions and definitions.

VECA does not directly buy or sell ve chai, so there is some risk in managing what is sold and bought. It might be beneficial to users if the app included more information and caution on hazardous waste. At the time of writing, Việt Nam Tái Chế (Vietnam Recycle) is among a few services in Vietnam that specialize in handling materials like e-waste, with 10 collection points in Hanoi and Saigon.

Users are not totally in control of the booking time

Entering details to make a booking.

Seeking to sell household scrap, Saigoneers might be disappointed to find out that the app only allows two options in terms of pickup time: weekdays or weekends, without specific time selections. There’s some obvious room for improvement here as VECA sets out to improve “flexibility and transparency” in the ve chai collection process. Still, it’s also important to add that once connected, collectors and users can arrange a time for pickup directly via other channels of communication.

Depending on the location, time, and amount to be sold, it might take a while to receive confirmation for the transaction. On a Friday, I placed my booking and chose the pickup time to be during the week. After over two days, my booking was confirmed by a collector, whom I only knew by a name. To be frank, as this was my first time selling ve chai online and the app confirmation was vague, I couldn’t help feeling a little unsure.

Tech-based ve chai collection, a new career path?

On the afternoon of the collection date, a young man arrived at our agreed meeting place with a huge basket strapped on the back of his bike. The “ve chai specialist” was 22-year-old Phong. He quickly sorted my scrap papers into categories, weighed them, and wrote down notes on his phone. Phong shared that he had been working for VECA for two months at the time, though I only noticed him thanks to that humongous basket. The app’s associates did not yet have uniforms or any other branding paraphernalia.

The ve chai collector was a young man on a bike, not a traditional vendor as we've known.

I’ve followed VECA’s Facebook fanpage since it first made the news and saw photos of smiling ladies and their carts with the VECA stickers, so I did anticipate seeing this demographic for my first sale. This would also be in line with what the app aims to achieve: helping traditional ve chai sellers collect scraps more efficiently. However, as Phong explained, young collectors like himself are not rare as one would expect. Some are even in for the long haul because of their tech-savviness.

I was immediately impressed with how well-organized he was in weighing, categorizing and storing my recyclable papers. I was paid in cash right away, though via an electronic wallet was also an option. The price is already set on the app’s front page, so the transaction happened quickly and smoothly.

For the entirety of the process, VECA acts as the middleman without charging any fee from the user or collector, though this means that collectors have to purchase their own equipment and figure out where to resell the scrap materials. To Phong, the output is not an immediate concern because he’s already done some research on collection points in the city, in addition to many leads passed down by senior collectors. “I still resold at a loss many times, because at the beginning I wasn’t really good at dealing at consignment yards, so they didn’t weigh correctly,” Phong recalled.

When asked his opinion on the trade’s stability, Phong was happy to share: “I treat this as my full-time job and not just an additional income. Every day I drive around the districts, there are quite a lot of orders. The income is pretty good now [...] Before, I did ride-hailing apps for a while, but it was so competitive I quit.”

After two months on the job, Phong is happy with how his career is going.

Phong also mentioned that the company set aside some subsidies for days when there are too few bookings due to the elements. Moreover, newcomers without any experience in scrap materials can join a short training course on material categorization and appraising. Seeing how dedicated Phong is at his job, I am glad that the app is able to contribute to the employment pool in Saigon, at least among young workers who have no trouble adapting to smart devices. As I did not experience the service from the perspective of collectors, I will not comment on the other side of the equation in this writing.

Be that as it may, I think VECA could be another app that young Saigoneers should introduce to their parents, as handling household ve chai has long been something older adults are familiar with. The app’s expansion to 12 districts even as the city undergoes an economic slump and unheard-of hardships was a considerable feat for its founders. Most recently, VECA’s creators became one of six winners in the Thành Phố Không Rác (City Without Trash) competition organized by Circular Economy Network and WasteAid, receiving EUR10,000.

Compared to other tech-based entities that have significantly shifted the way we travel and consume, VECA still has some big hurdles to overcome, like how to get more collectors and buyers to adopt the technology in their daily work, and, as a more lofty goal, how to encourage waste-sorting among urbanites to make selling ve chai more substantial and efficient. Perhaps, there will be a day when we stop saying “ve chai money,” and switch to “VECA money,” just like there are now fewer “call a xe ôm” suggestions compared to “call a Grab.”

This article was originally published in 2022.

Typing Vietnamese, Part 2: The Vietnamese Diaspora, Unicode and the Ubiquity of Unikey

2025-01-17T10:00:00+07:00

This is part 2 of our two-part series on the history of Vietnamese-centric typing technologies. Part 1 can be accessed here.

Voices from the diasporas: Early virtual communities and the emergence of VIQR

After 1975, there was a significant wave of Vietnamese migration to North America, Europe, Hong Kong, China and Australia. In the United States, the Vietnamese immigrant population, which was once only several thousand, increased to 245,025 in 1980. By 1990, the number doubled to 593,213 and, by 2000, it reached 1,122,528. Displaced from their home country and otherized within their new nations, they faced an increasing need to reconnect to aspects of their native identity and culture. The Vietnamese language was a very concrete way to achieve this, as exemplified by Anh Tran's observation in Vietnamese Language Education in the United States that, several years after 1975, there was a surge in Vietnamese language schools in the US.

Efforts to maintain connections to Vietnam through language was playing out during a time of major technological advances. The computer industry underwent a change from mainframe computers to personal microcomputers. IBM released its first home computer model in 1977 named Altair 8800, and in 1981 it introduced the mass-produced IBM-PC which resembled a modern day PC. The computer gradually became a more personal and individualized device.

The Vietnamese diaspora gained fairly early access to these computer advances in the United States in the 1990s, thanks to a large number of Vietnamese immigrants, especially women, working as low-level technicians in Silicon Valley and later, engineers working in the Information Technology industry. Vietnamese were IT pioneers in Australia as well. For example, students at Australia National University worked on a project that eventually brought internet connectivity to Vietnam.

In the book Transnationalizing Vietnam: Community, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora, Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde introduces computer programmer Tin Le, a member of a group of Vietnamese American computer scientists that worked on establishing links via wide area networks. In 1986, they created an email list called Vietnet, with the purpose of connecting members of Vietnamese diasporas via electronic communication. In an interview with Valverde, Tin Le said: “It was pretty hard to connect, especially in regions where few Vietnamese resided. We wanted to talk to each other and reach out to one another.”

The administrators of Vietnet later moved the mailing list to a Usenet newsgroup, a type of discussion forum, called soc.culture.vietnamese (SCV). Both the Vietnet mailing list and SCV predated the internet as both relied on smaller network precursors to the world wide web. The Google archive of the newsgroup discussion suggests that soc.culture.vietnamese was created as early as April 1991. One can find literally everything Vietnam-related on soc.cultural.vietnamese — Vietnamese poems, lyrics, recipes, advertisements, searches for relatives, academic project announcements, as well as discussions of larger issues.

Computers at that time period only supported the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) character encoding standard. The set of codes could only represent English alphabets on computers, which didn't include diacritics. In order to communicate with each other in the newsgroup, Vietnet and SCV members used a set of rules that allowed members to write Vietnamese using the characters available in ASCII to connote Vietnamese diacritical marks. The set included ( .+ ^ ? and ' ). The rules were often collectively called quy ước Vietnet (Vietnet convention) or quy ước SCV (SCV convention) or quy ước VIQR (VIQR convention, in which VIQR was short for Vietnamese Quoted-Readable). VIQR conventions became the de facto standard for many Vietnamese online citizens during the heyday of newsgroups and forums and is still used by a modest proportion of the population today.

A Usenet post listing some Vietnamese names that sound derogatory in English for parents to avoid when naming their child in order to prevent being mocked by Americans. Screenshot via Google Group.

The flux of technological solutions

The handy VIQR conventions were only a temporary solution, however, as the Vietnamese texts displayed were unrecognizable to the uninitiated. There remained a need to establish standard Vietnamese character encoding for web pages and fonts, which is why during the late 1980s and the early 1990s, a plethora of software packages, character encodings and Vietnamese fonts entered the cybersphere. While some of these solutions worked well, the large number of them created yet another problem. As Kim An Lieberman explains in Asian America.Net: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Cyberspace, “The problem has not become how to put Vietnamese on the internet, but which Vietnamese to use.”

One popular encoding standard and input method produced during this time was the VNI standard, developed by a Vietnamese software engineer Ho Thanh Viet who was living in Westminster at the time. In 1987, Viet proposed using numerical keys to represent diacritical marks. The input method was popularized and commercialized by Viet and his company VNI Software via a package that included a font and word processor designed for the MS-DOS operating system. The method took off and became the standard for dot matrix printing which improved the landscape of Vietnamese-language newspapers in the US. VNI was even adopted by Microsoft in their Windows 95 operating system in the 1990s. However, VNI Software sued Microsoft over unauthorized use, forcing the tech giant to remove it. Today, VNI is taught in computer textbooks and used by many Vietnamese in Vietnam.

It was also during this time that The Unicode Consortium was created. Established in 1987 in Silicon Valley with members belonging to many technology companies such as Apple, Xerox, Sun Microsystems, IBM and Microsoft, the consortium aimed to create a universal standard for encoding and displaying every language including Vietnamese. It enlarged the 8-bit standard often found in character encoding at the time to a 16-bit character set in order to increase the number of characters it could hold.

For Vietnamese, the consortium's original plan was to assign a code to each diacritical mark instead of assigning a code to a precomposed combination. The reason for this decision was that Unicode wanted to save space and avoid encoding anything that could be created through a combination of two or more characters that was already assigned a code. However, doing this would prove to be problematic. According to a memo written by the non-profit Viet-Std Group whose aim was to standardize Vietnamese for computers: “The heavy use of diacritical marks in Vietnamese text calls for a keyboard input scheme that does not require extra keystrokes such as a special ‘compose’ key to generate accented letters.” Dr. Ngo Dinh Hoc, one of the Viet-Std members, noted that the practice was unfair as French and German enjoyed the privilege of having every precomposed character encoded in the Unicode set.

Viet-Std Group sent a complaint to the Unicode committee for reconsideration, which the Unicode Consortium rejected on the grounds that the language didn't have a nation-wide character encoding, and therefore there was no need to ensure compatibility like other Latin-based languages. Not accepting Unicode's argument, Viet-Std Group developed its own character encoding standard VISCII (Vietnam's Standard Code for Information Interchange) in 1992. VISCII was a modified ASCII character set, in which the least problematic characters in the original ASCII were replaced with Vietnamese diacritical marks.

In 1993, Unicode finally agreed to encode every character in Vietnamese. From that year onwards, more typing conventions entered the cybersphere. Non-profit organization Vietnam Professionals Society (VPS) released its own input method software, VPSKey, in 1993 designed for Windows 3.1. In the same year, Vietnam's Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (now Ministry of Science and Technology) issued TCVN 5712 — an 8-bit national standard character encoding for Vietnamese. The TCVN 5712 character encoding was called VSCII (Vietnam's Standard Code for Information Interchange) and included three versions: VN1, VN2, and VN3. The first was a modified ASCII set and the other two utilized the extended ASCII. TCVN 5712 was widely-used in northern Vietnam.

TCVN 5712 code charts: VN1 (left); VN2 (middle); VN3 (right). Images via Van Ban Phap Luat.

Web pages could finally properly display Vietnamese and users could write Vietnamese on the web if the output and the input were compatible with each other. However, typing and reading Vietnamese on computers remained a headache because the plethora of solutions allowed different web pages to use different encodings and fonts that were incompatible with one another. Therefore, users not equipped with the right tools were unable to neatly read and write Vietnamese.

Moving toward a unified standard: the story of Vietkey, WinVNKey and Unikey

Software and word processors continued to use 7-bit and 8-bit Vietnamese character encoding before Microsoft Windows included the Unicode encoding for Vietnamese in its 2000 version. WinVNkey was the first computer program to allow users to type Vietnamese on Windows 3.0 — the first version of the Windows operating system after MS-DOS. WinVNKey was designed and offered for free by TriChlor — a non-profit group that promoted the use of VISCII as a unified standard. WinVNkey started to support Unicode in 2000 after recognizing its potential. The project was taken over by Ngo Dinh Hoc, who was working with Unicode and designing a Vietnamese keyboard driver for Macintosh at the time. The program then became a multilingual input method software which facilitated more than 30 international languages that don't usually translate well into a computerized environment. Nom characters and Vietnamese ethnic minorities languages were also included.

A notable WinVNKey equivalent is Vietkey. It was developed in 1991 and released in 1997 by Vietkey Group, a company based in Vietnam and founded by Đặng Minh Tuấn, who was a young engineer at the Ministry of Defence at the time. The program was first offered as freeware and later commercialized in conjunction with the company's other products. Vietkey supported Vietnamese, English, French, German and Russian. There was a version compatible with the Linux operating system as well. Just like the team behind WinVNKey, Tuấn was an advocate for a universal character encoding for typing Vietnamese. Tuấn and Vietkey offered the Unicode support in 1997 and fine-tuned it into more efficient software in 2000. However, the fact the Vietkey was not freely accessible was a drawback for many.

Seeing the need for a widely accessible software that supported Unicode other than Vietkey, Phạm Kim Long — a graduate student in Prague at the time — had the idea to develop his own input method software, which resulted in Unikey, released in 2000. The compact freeware is now ubiquitous among Vietnamese computer users. Long had been toying with the idea since 1991, when he and his classmates at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology challenged each other to write the most lightweight Vietnamese typing program using the Assembly language. Long won the challenge with a program that only weighed 2 kilobytes called LittleVNKey. However, LittleVNKey" did not support Unicode.

In 2000, Long decided to work on a Vietnamese input program with Unicode support after seeing online conversations about Windows 2000's multilingual support which included Vietnamese. He spent two days writing the program and released the first version of Unikey online. He then spent the next four months receiving feedback and fine-tuning the software. In 2006, through a Việt Kiều friend, Phạm Kim Long gave Apple the rights to integrate the software in its operating system. Unikey remains a free and accessible software now.

Although Long and Tuấn are the two most credited with making Vietnamese compatible with modern computers, the development of typing technologies is much more multi-faceted, and reflects the sociocultural and historical needs of a population yearning for connection with the world and with itself.

This article was originally published in 2018.

Typing Vietnamese, Part 1: Language, Identity and Technology at a Crossroad

2025-01-10T12:00:00+07:00

My first exposure to the computer traces back to my primary school years when computer classes were conducted once a week. In order to study computers, students had to migrate from their usual classrooms to a multimedia lab — an air-conditioned room filled with computers. Computer classes were generally more popular among us than most subjects thanks to that satisfying cool breeze and the delight of operating something one wasn't privileged with at home.

Beginner computer lessons often involved practicing mouse and keyboard skills. While the mouse was easy to handle, the keyboard involved greater challenges. The first year of computer class includes learning to type using ten fingers, sometimes with the aid of entertaining typing games. By the time one finds themselves on the brink of secondary school, Vietnamese typing was introduced.

Vietnamese characters, albeit rooted in the Latin alphabet, have an additional seven characters thanks to diacritics (Â, Ă, Đ, Ê, Ô, Ơ, Ư), and five tonal marks including acute (á ó í), grave (à, ò, ù), hooked (ả, ỏ, ỉ), tilde (ã, ẽ, ĩ), and underdot (ụ, ọ, ị) strung together. My fellow secondary school students learned from the start that the facile QWERTY keyboard can't understand the nuance and complexities of their mother tongue.

Chữ Quốc Ngữ

Vietnam underwent a change from a logographic writing system that places Chinese, character-based chữ Nôm, and chữ Hán at its forefront to another system that relies on the Latin alphabet with added diacritical marks. This writing system, called chữ quốc ngữ, is now the de facto writing standard for most Kinh Vietnamese today. Popularized by Portuguese missionaries during the 17^th century as a tool for their evangelical mission, chữ quốc ngữ is the romanization of the Vietnamese spoken language.

Despite its original use, during French colonialism, many Vietnamese scholars saw a different opportunity in chữ quốc ngữ — a tool for liberation from Chinese imperialism and the feudalistic system of thought that could lead the country to modernism. Despite opposition by rigid Confucian scholars and nationalists as a reaction against French and Western culture, several anti-colonial movements by the intellectual class in the early 19^th century such as the Duy Tân movement, Đông Du movement and Tonkin Free School (Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục in Vietnamese) promoted learning chữ quốc ngữ and using it as the official language of Vietnam.

Quốc ngữ was legalized as the official language of Vietnam as the result of the Decree 81 issued on April 6 in 1878.

Quốc ngữ found itself in an odd position. It was supported by both French colonizers and some of their Vietnamese opponents. For the French, due to its Latin tradition, chữ quốc ngữ was integral to their cultural homogenization efforts and a convenient compromise between chữ Hán (Chinese script) and French. For several anti-colonial movements and scholars, because chữ quốc ngữ reflected the complexities of Vietnamese tonation, it was both a manifestation of a national identity and the nation's road to modernism. In a country that was trying to claim its own voice at the intersection of two imperialist regimes — China and France — chữ quốc ngữ was an inevitable option.

Colonial technologies, local ownership: the birth of Telex

As a result of France's economic exploitation and efforts in gaining systematic control and a monopoly over public services and goods, a wide variety of new technologies were brought into Vietnam. The typewriter is an example of an everyday technology advertised to Vietnamese. It's unclear when the typewriter first appeared in Vietnam; however, a look through several newspaper advertisements suggests that the typewriter was available in Vietnam as early as 1929.

While the QWERTY keyboard is the most well-known layout for the Western world, the first typewriters in Vietnam followed the Franco-centric AZERTY layout.

The AZERTY keyboard layout. Screenshot via Larousse mensuel illustré (top).

The Hermes Baby. Photo via Retro Tech Geneva (bottom).

In “Cycles of Empowerment? The Bicycle and Everyday Technology in Colonial India and Vietnam” and “Everyday Technology in South and Southeast Asia: An Introduction,” David Arnold and Erich DeWald make the case for considering colonial technology changes from local perspectives rather than viewing them as one-way transfers from European and American countries. This shift from seeing technology as wholly Euro-centric gives more credit to the bargaining power indigenous people can have against colonial control. The modified AĐERTY aligns well with this angle.

When and how the curious typewriter layout emerged is an arbitrary matter. According to Arnold and DeWald, quốc ngữ keyboard has been around since the late 1920s and early 1930s. A 1960 proposal written by Daniel Loren Carmicheal from the Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group suggests that it has been around since 1947. An article penned by journalist and translator Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh suggests that since 1922, typewriters from brands such as Underwood and Royal had been altering the traditional keyboard layout to fit chữ quốc ngữ. Vietnamese typewriters existed through the American War — when it was used by the national liberation front of South — until the late 1980s, when being a typist was still a viable career option in many newsrooms and offices.

The Olympia Splendid 33 with an AĐERTY layout used in the 1960s currently displayed at the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Photo via WikiCommons.

The typewriter is not an exclusive example of technological appropriation that made Western technologies compatible with Vietnam. Many printing technologies such as linotypes and the letterpress were adapted to be able to print chữ quốc ngữ. French type foundry Deberney & Peignot created 127 typefaces for chữ quốc ngữ, some of which were printed and recorded in book three of its typeface catalog series Caractères Étranger (loosely translated to "foreign characters" in English) in 1930.

Screenshots via Caractères ètrangers.

Technology appropriation that involves typing served important logistical functions. In the early 1860s, the French built telegraph networks throughout Vietnam and Indochina to establish a coherent communication connection between different colonial authorities. The first post office was built by the French in 1862 in Saigon. In his memoir L'Indochine Francaise, former Governor of the colony Paul Doumer states that at the end of 1901, the French's telegraph network had covered 18,000 kilometers of Indochina. Local Vietnamese called French telegraph posts nhà dây thép, which translates to “house of steel wires,” referring to the method of sending messages using wires with steel conduits. Sending a telegram was commonly known as đánh dây thép, which literally translates to "hitting the steel wire."

The telegraph's clientele in the early days was exclusively French officers and elites. However, as the number of Vietnamese staff in French postal offices increased and telegraph service got cheaper, there was a need to communicate quốc ngữ via Morse code, the common telegraph language. Vietnamese used a system called Telex, which is a set of rules that can convey Vietnamese diacritical marks that are not available in Morse code. The person commonly credited with coming up with Telex is Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh.

One of quốc ngữ biggest advocates, Vinh was a nationalist and anti-Confucian modernizer who believed that the future of Vietnam rested on quốc ngữ. A narrative account suggests that after witnessing a local Vietnamese receive a telegram sent from Nam Dinh that only read “vo de” — which could either be interpreted as vỡ đê (“the embankment broke” in English) or vợ đẻ (“wife is in labor” in English) due to the lack of accented marks — Vĩnh came up with a set of rules to include diacritical marks using the Franco-centric keyboard.

In 1929, Vĩnh published his ideas in an article in Trung Bắc Tân Văn, a paper of which he served as editor. The gist of his argument was the value of replacing diacritics with alphabetical characters that either didn't exist in Vietnamese or would never be placed together. Vỉnh even went to the extent of proposing that in traditional writing, these alphabetical characters should replace diacritical and tone marks altogether, in order to make the language even more compatible with Western telecommunication standards. However, his idea was rejected as many wanted to reserve Vietnamese tonal marks.

An article in Khoa Học Tạp Chí about changing quốc ngữ. Screenshots via National Library of Vietnam.

Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh was not the first person to think of replacing Vietnamese tonal marks with alphabet letters. According to a 1933 article in Khoa Hoc Tap Chi, in 1919 a scholar named Phó Đức Thanh wrote an article in Trung Bac Tan Van proposing that the characters B, D, K, L, Q could be used to convey quốc ngữ tonal marks. A response published on the same page argued that using the five letters B, D, K, L, Q would only be effective in some cases and could not be applied as a general rule that works every time. The response also suggests that there were some similar systems that were already proposed by the managing editor, F. H. Sneichder.

These attempts to come up with a rule set for communicating Vietnamese in Morse codes were later adapted to the Anglo-centric and Franco-centric keyboards. The postal industry shaped the Telex rule many Vietnamese are using to type Vietnamese on a computer today. The current Telex rule can be seen in the images below:

Screenshots via Wikipedia entry of Telex.

The computerized war

The early development of computer science and information technology in Vietnam happened when the country was partitioned after the Geneva Conference in 1954. While the north was building a socialist society, with help from Soviet Union countries, the south was backed by France and the United States. The partition put the status of early computers in Vietnam during the 1960s and the 1970s on two different trajectories: one influenced by the computing tradition in the Soviet sphere and another influenced by the Americans.

The first computer to ever arrive in northern Vietnam was the Minsk-22, produced by the Byelorussian SSR — a federal unit of the USSR whose territory is now shared between Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Russia — in 1965 and imported to Vietnam in 1968. The Minsk-22 was a model of the famous Minsk family of macro computers that were employed in planning and economic calculations. Like most early computers at the time, the Minsk was mostly used for research and calculation purposes. Vietnamese system engineers during this time had to learn to operate the Minsk-22 and later computers such as Minsk-32 or the Polish-made ODRA 1304 using Russian.

A scene in a 1979 movie Con Chim Biết Chọn Hát showing a computer scientist operating a mainframe computer produced in the Soviet sphere.

In southern Vietnam, the role of computers and computing possesses was important for the US military as tools to computerize the war and to collect and process data on northern Vietnamese troops. In a journal article titled “Computers, Electronic Data, and the Vietnam War,” historian Donald Fisher Harrison argues that the American war was the first war in history to be aided by full-scale electronic data. The US military built many computer centers and stations throughout Vietnam where data processing of the war was conducted. In After Pinkville, Noam Chomsky described the American War as the country's intention to “to turn the land of Vietnam into an automated murder machine.”

The computerization project of the American troops was supported by International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), the leading computer manufacturer that was producing America's most advanced computer technology at the time. Some of these advanced IBM mainframes and smaller computers that were imported to South Vietnam included the IBM 1400 series and various models of the IBM System/360.

An article published in The Misc in 1970 about IBM's involvement in the Vietnam War (left) and a photo showing Nguyen Thi Nhin fetching information from the computer's memory bank (right). Image via Vassar Archive (left). Photo by Douglas Pike via Vietnam Center and Archive (right).

According to a New York Times article from October 1, 1969, on the Combined Intelligence Center in Saigon (where most of the IBM mainframes were based), the facility was rather complex: “Day and night in its antiseptic interior, a family of blinking, whirring computers devours, digests, spews out a Gargantuan diet of information about the enemy.”

The amount of data that the American troops were collecting on its opponent was astounding, as the Times articulated: “The landscape of Vietnam and the border regions are studded with electronic sensors that beep information into the banks of computers. Radar, cameras, infrared detectors and a growing array of more exotic devices contribute to the mass of information. Not long ago reconnaissance planes began carrying television cameras.”

During this turbulent period, one of the first attempts to make the Vietnamese language compatible with early computers started to take shape. In When Big Blue Went To War and White Shirts and Ties, a former IBM expert who used to work in Saigon, Dan Feltham, recalls that from 1965 to 1973, there were 250 IBM computer experts working in the city. These experts' jobs often included writing software applications, building computer centers and training data-processing and programming skills for Vietnamese professionals. Some of the computer languages taught included FORTRAN, COBOL and PL/1.

A group of Vietnamese keypunch operators, most of which were top students. Photo by Douglas Pike via Vietnam Center and Archive.

On March 26, 1970, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) supported a project which called for printing in Vietnamese. Because the machine was incompatible with Vietnamese diacritics, technicians working on the project had to print the unaccented Vietnamese writing first using the IBM 1403 — a computer equipped with a line printer and a keyboard — then add the diacritical marks by hand later. However, the IBM system engineers figured out a solution that would allow typing Vietnamese documents with Vietnamese diacritics right from the machine. It was called the 1403 Vietnamese print chain.

The 1403 print chain at work. Screenshot via When Big Blue Went To War.

Keypunch operator Tran Thi Minh Huong transfers data onto punch cards. Photo by Douglas Pike via Vietnam Center and Archive.

The 1403 print chain required translation, a unique program and a special type slug. The engineers would encode the English into Vietnamese with diacritical marks and punch that encoded data into punch cards. Each letter with Vietnamese diacritical marks would need two spaces representing two bytes on a punch card as opposed to one for the English alphabet due to the added marks. This caused the computer to read the letter as two characters, so a program in Assembly was written to manipulate the process by instructing the computer to read the accented letter as one character. A special type slug manufactured for the Vietnamese language was then needed to print out these accented letters.

This is the end of part 1 of our two-part series on the history of Vietnamese-centric typing technologies. Read part 2 of the series here.

This article was originally published in 2018.

Honda to Cease Production of Super Cub 50cc, Vietnam's Beloved Bike, in November

2024-06-27T12:00:00+07:00

By the end of 2025, Honda will cease the manufacturing of all motorbikes with 50cc engines, including the beloved 50cc Super Cub, to comply with stricter emission standards.

Honda Motor Co. announced that the move is to comply with Japan's new emissions regulation that will take effect in November 2025. The rules, which aim to align with global standards, make it difficult to produce small engines in a cost-effective way as component prices have soared.

Moreover, demand for the fuel-effecient machine has been on a steady decline due in large part to the increased popularity of electric bikes. From a high of 2.78 million units in 1982, Honda sold only 92,824 last year.

Since its introduction in 1958, the Super Cub has sold more than 110 million units, making it the world's most popular motorbike. And while beloved in its native Japan, Super Cubs have aways had a special relationship with Vietnam. Since Americans military officials first imported them in 1960s, they have been praised for their reliability. Evolving from being cutting-edge to capturing nostalgic cool, their style has inspired lavish celebration over the years.

A TVC, filmed in Vietnam and released in 2017, by Honda to celebrate the Super Cub. Video via Video Lucu@.

While most will mourn the loss of the iconic bike, some fans of the iconic style may look to Honda's 150cc version of the Super Cub, which will continue to be manufactured and sold. In addition to a larger engine, the pricey vehicle has modern features such as smart keys and LED turn signals. Vietnam recently saw its first genuine import from Japan, a notable development as previously the less-popular model had to be imported from a factory in Thailand and many believe those are of lower quality.

The discontinuing of all of Honda's 50cc bikes also means an end to Honda Giorno, Honda Dio, Honda Dunk and Scoopy 50cc.

[Photo: A father taking his son on a ride along the Nha Trang coast on the family's trust Honda Super Cub in the 1960s. Photo via Flickr user manhhai.]

Grindr Once Again Names Vietnam Amongst Nations With Highest Percentage of Bottoms

2024-02-29T11:00:00+07:00

Started by Spotify, Unwrapped has become one of tech companies’ favorite marketing campaigns in recent years; LinkedIn, Duolingo, and even Vietnam’s own Zalo are amongst some revelers of this trend in recent years. Last year, gay dating app Grindr continued the tradition with their own annual insights, and Vietnam managed to claim a spot in the roundup.

In late December, the black-and-yellow hookup app released their internal data chronicling how their 13 million monthly users have engaged with the app in 2023, including some fascinating statistics into the queer community worldwide. Did you know that Italy has the most enjoyers of feet? Or that Bangladesh tops the chart in number of bears, and we’re not talking about the ursine version here.

Apart from the quirkier categories, Grindr Unwrapped 2023 offers a glimpse into the sexual identities of gay men around the world. Interestingly, Vietnam came 3rd in the Top 5 countries with the highest percentage of bottoms, behind South Korea and Japan and just ahead of Denmark and Finland. Yay? It’s also important to note that this wasn’t the first year we’ve made the ranking: Vietnam was honored for the first time back in 2020.

On the other end of the spectrum, Trinidad & Tobago, Kenya, China, Myanmar and Greece reported the most tops. Highest concentrations of vers can be found in Finland, Austria, Australia, Germany and Hungary. Reflecting the rise of sides in recent years, the report also includes a category for the butt-averse amongst us, with Singapore, the Philippines, China, Kenya, and New Zealand rounding out the Top 5.

While this report might be a lot of fun to peruse, we must recognize that the data only reflects the sexual dynamics of 13 millions queer men globally, and even then, not all Grindr users include these labels in their profiles. “And remember, Grindr Unwrapped is not meant as a comprehensive or scientific report on global queer sex & dating behaviors,” the app writes in their Unwrapped announcement blog post.

Some whimsical stats from the report. Images via Grindr.

As a nation, Vietnam’s LGBT rights advancements have been slow in the past years, but at least the climate hasn’t regressed. Some positive highlights have shown the government’s changing attitudes towards queer rights.

In 2022, Vietnam’s Ministry of Health made global headlines after it issued a nationwide memo to medical professionals to treat LGBT patients with respect and make sure they are not discriminated against. The directive stressed that being LGBTQ+ “is entirely not an illness” so it “cannot be ‘cured’ nor need[s] to be ‘cured’ and cannot be converted in any way.”

The Vietnamese government is also in the process of bringing forth the Law on Gender Reassignment, which is projected to take effect in 2026, according to a draft version. The draft law stipulates that each Vietnamese national may undertake gender reassignment once in their lifetime and will have their new gender lawfully recognized by the state.

[Photo: Participants celebrate Hanoi Pride in 2022.]

The People Building a Virtual Vietnam in the Pixelated World of Minecraft

2023-12-04T16:00:00+07:00

Minecraft is now a modern classic world-building game allowing players to construct elaborate buildings using isometric cubes. Thanks to this endless stream of materials, one can theoretically build anything in the game world if they have enough patience and attention to details.

A group of Vietnamese Minecrafters called Team Fuho have embarked on the Happy Vietnam project, which seeks to reconstruct a number of famous local landmarks in the game — including but not limited to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Temple of Literature, Vietnam National Assembly, Noi Bai International Airport. After three years hard at work, the team has finished 2,000 buildings of varying sizes, a figure that “even [Team Fuho] can’t believe we could achieve,” as shared by member Hoàng Đạt.

Ba Đình Square.

At the start, Team Fuho only comprised one member and founder Hoàng Đạt. He then opened a server to welcome more players to participate in his project. Their labor of love quickly transcended the initial goal of just building for fun, so they agreed to form Team Fuho to join forces in building bigger projects. From just five members, the collective now features 16 bricklayers.

According to Đạt, the story behind the name is quite simple: it’s a phonetic approximation of the Vietnamese work “phụ hồ,” meaning construction workers. “If ‘phụ hồ’ build housed in the real world, ‘Fuho’ constructs things in the virtual world,” Đạt explained.

Presidential Palace.

National Assembly.

In the beginning, Team Fuho only planned to create new houses and cities in game, but after a while, the members aspired to be a part of something more meaningful: “How about recreating the most special things about Vietnam? This is also a great way to promote the nation’s image. So, we disassembled the custom builds and restarted once again with Happy Vietnam.”

Most of the time, Team Fuho follows four main phases with every new project: first, find out as much as possible about the geographical location, area, and real-life look of the landmark. Second, they build a crude foundation according to a ratio so that it scales as accurately as possible. Then, they begin putting together the basic structure and the raw form of architectural features. Lastly, it comes time for decoration and landscaping.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.

Temple of Literature.

Depending on the scope of the project and what kind of reference materials they can find, each recreation can take from a few hours to a few months to complete. Veteran builders take the lead on more complex parts of the structure, while others help out with supporting features and decoration.

Minecraft places a maximum limit of 255 in height or 320 blocks, depending on the game version. Therefore, for major projects, the team has to scale down the building. The Landmark building, for example, was recreated at 1:4 size with a reduced number of stories and height of each story. “Nonetheless, we try our best to retain the exterior and interior as much as possible,” he said.

“Even then, for some buildings, there are very few photos or the photos are too old, so we struggled in remaking them. In cases where the reference documents are vague, we had to make do with a little bit of imagination,” the team explained.

Ngọc Sơn Temple.

Đoan Môn Gate.

In the universe of “Happy Vietnam,” the Noi Bai International Airport is the most detailed and elaborate structure. The Minecraft version features an international terminal, a domestic terminal, an air traffic control tower, runways, hangars, and more. It took the collective three years to finish building the airport.

At the moment, most buildings are replicas of those in northern Vietnam, but the team is slowly including more architectural icons from the central, northwestern, and southern regions as well. Huế’s Imperial City is an example of something they’re working on right now.

Nội Bài Airport.

HCMC City Hall.

Readers interested in finding out more about Happy Vietnam or joining the team can find more info via this link.

How Going Digital Could Help Vietnam's Farmers Take Their Produce to the Next Level

2022-12-06T11:00:00+07:00

In this digital age, farming, especially in developing countries like Vietnam, has maintained a general perception of being an analog, hands-on practice.

Farmers are unfairly viewed as simple folk who toil away under the blazing sun with rudimentary tools to ensure that we have food on our plates without even needing to think about where it comes from. But contrary to popular belief, farmers need data and digital tools just as badly as ride-share drivers tasked with picking you up from a far-flung hẻm.

A variety of crops, including pepper, stand to benefit from improved technology integration. Photo courtesy of International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Tracking fertilizer use and rainfall or identifying potentially dangerous pests are just some of the areas in which digital solutions can help farmers, their customers, and the environment. This is where agtech (agricultural technology) can come in to help. But while this market is valued at about US$20 billion globally, it is in the very early stages in Vietnam.

A segmented sector

According to a 2021 report from the British Chamber of Commerce Vietnam, the country had just 46 agtech companies, even though nearly 30 million people work in the agri-food industry. By following non-digital methods, many farmers overuse pesticides, adding to their production costs while also damaging the land and hurting the quality of their crops. The nation’s agricultural supply chain also lacks transparency, something that could be addressed digitally.

There are some domestic pioneers in the field, including Demeter, MimosaTek, and Naturally Vietnam, while Viettel has backed an agtech platform called NextFarm that has over 1,000 users in Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Singapore. But the country has few platforms from which agtech practices and applications can be launched. Enter AgTech Vietnam. Created by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) under the World Bank Group, it aims to bring agtech solutions to smallholder farmers in Vietnam.

Vietnam’s agricultural sector is dominated by smallholder farmers, with the General Statistics Office estimating in 2020 that there are about 10 million such farmers in the country. A smallholder has a small parcel of land, sometimes smaller than 0.5 hectares, and operates on a small scale.

Farmers in Bãi Giữa, Hanoi tend to their crops. Photo by Linh Phạm.

"When I came to Vietnam four years ago, we had this issue with multiple clients who were saying that they wanted to deploy digital solutions to smallholders in their supply chains, but it wasn’t working," said Marta Bogdanic, Senior Operations Officer at IFC. "Farmers would provide information for a little while, but then it would stop, as farmers haven’t observed any direct benefit."

Bogdanic and her team had clients working in the rice, pepper, and coffee industries, so they started looking at these sectors, particularly in the Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands, and realized which part of the food production chain needed to be addressed: the farmers. “We went out and conducted a diagnostic study, basically just asking farmers what they needed,” she said. “Because why would somebody use something if it doesn’t have any value for them?”

"Clients had been trying a top-down approach of telling farmers that if they shared enough information after implementing desired production practices, they could, for example, be certified and then receive premium payments for their crop. “But these premium payments were often all over the place, depending on the company, depending on the relationship with farmers,” Bogdanic said. “Some farmers would get less in payments, others would get more, and it wasn’t very organized.”

While engaging directly with farmers to assess their needs, AgTech Vietnam also brought three agtech companies on board for a three-month pilot acceleration program in which the tech firms would show Vietnamese farmers what their products could do. ListenField, SpiceUp, and Plantix provide mobile-based farm management and advisory services aimed at, among other goals, improving yield quality and quickly detecting crop pests or diseases.

Farmers are introduced to a mobile-based farm management tool. Photo courtesy of International Finance Corporation (IFC).

“We listened to feedback from farmers on what they wanted, and we worked with agri tech startups and a tech developer to develop farming advisory applications to help the farmers,” Bogdanic explained. “Basically, they get notifications that are location-, weather-, and crop cycle-specific to what they need to do. Coffee and pepper are perennial crops, so you know when the flowering starts, and you can evaluate the next steps at the right time. You draw data from an IBM weather service and look at things that are happening in the field, and this enables the provision of these notifications to farmers.”

Of course, convincing people to use a new app and change their process isn’t always easy. Especially when it comes to changing business practices, people need to know that something new will create additional value for them.

The rice problem

Rice farmers, who tend to be older than the pepper and coffee farmers that Bogdanic worked with, were particularly resistant to the introduction of digital apps. But the sector, worth US$3 billion in exports, is hugely important financially and thus, despite the challenges, deserving of attention. The information that farmers can upload, such as the amount of water or fertilizer they were using, has to be linked to a greater network. Being able to share data related to their crops with the companies they sell to allows for easier certification audits for organic status and other systems.

Another major challenge is the structure of Vietnam’s rice market, an even bigger problem than the reluctance among rice farmers to go digital. “The rice supply chain is very fragmented, and there are too many people involved,” Bogdanic said. ““There is a middleman at every step, so a farmer doesn’t sell directly to the end buyer; they sell to somebody who collects and then sells that in bulk to a person with a barge, and then someone aggregates a few barges, and so on.””

As a result, it’s difficult for the end buyer — whether a company or an individual — to know exactly where their rice came from and how it was grown. This lack of verifiable information can have significant impacts on domestic and foreign markets.

Moreover, of the three crops, rice presents by far the greatest potential for improved environmental outcomes, particularly because of how it is cultivated. Though methane doesn’t remain in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, it is a much more potent greenhouse gas, and one created by the most basic way of growing rice: in flooded fields. “Rice emits the most methane of any sub-sector in agriculture, and it’s responsible for about 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in this industry in Vietnam,” Bogdanic explained.

Working on the rice field in Sóc Trăng Province. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

“The Vietnamese government took on this obligation to be net-zero by 2050, and they want to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030,” Bogdanic said. “It would be a very nice story if one outcome of this application is for farmers to change their practices based on data to alternate wetting and drying instead of using flooded fields.”

As of now, about 1,800 farmers are using the IFC-backed application, mostly in the coffee and pepper sub-sectors. Millions of people work as farmers in Vietnam, meaning this is a very small start, but Bogdanic believes there is great potential for her work and agtech in general when it comes to farmers and the land they use.

“I am a firm believer in farmers getting paid for the quality of the products that they deliver, rather than just emissions reduction,” she said. “But this is all tied up together if you want people to produce in a more sustainable manner.”

What Creating a Sign Language App Taught Me About the Hardships of Vietnam's Deaf Community

2022-10-07T13:00:00+07:00

In neighborhood communities, deaf children are often bullied by their hearing friends, according to my classmate Nguyễn Tài Minh.

Minh learned about this when visiting Xã Đàn Inter-Level School, a school for deaf children between ages six and thirteen. His family often traveled there to visit a friend that had since moved away. The trips allowed Minh to get to know the stories of the students and learn about their lives. He shared with me his desire to create something to help them. In our collaboration, Minh contributed passion and connections with experts while I offered the programming skills I have developed from school classes and independent study. We came up with an idea for an application that could translate Vietnamese sign language into text using AI technology. Minh thought of naming it SIGNTEGRATE, a portmanteau of “sign” and “integrate.”

We began by collecting footage of deaf students at Xã Đàn signing basic sentence structures. Minh contacted and organized professional interpreters, teachers, and students at the school to generate self-recorded videos of simple sign language phrases such as "hi," "nice to meet you." Meanwhile, I worked on the technical details by essentially training our computer model to recognize each hand gesture.

By the end of our work, we had collected more than 250 videos. I scoured GitHub, Stack Overflow, and YouTube for technological tools we could use to track 3D landmarks on the body — elbows, wrists, shoulders — and record their time and space information to train the model to speculate the meaning of each action in real-time. The end product was a primitive model that could translate 10 commonly used sentences with up to 75% accuracy.

Phạm Ninh Giang (left) and Nguyễn Tài Minh (right) with participants and representatives at the National Startup Conference.

After developing the model successfully, we submitted it to the high school division of the National Startup Conference. Our ideas were presented in front of a board of judges and we ultimately received a silver medal. But something gnawed at me.

I developed the application without interacting with a single deaf person. I had naively accepted my friend’s invitation to collaborate because I merely wanted to improve my coding skills. I had not helped the deaf community directly. How could I when I didn’t even know them?

For weeks after, I cringed at the thought of SIGNTEGRATE because I felt like I hadn’t fully committed to the topic. But it did force me to confront my lack of empathy for Vietnam’s deaf and disabled population. Without the project, I might never have thought about them.

Deaf people face a plethora of issues in Vietnam. Their access to education is restricted because Vietnamese sign language instruction typically ends at the elementary level and is rarely offered in secondary education. Their access to daily information through television is also limited. Though the government ordered TV stations to provide captions or live sign language interpreters for TV programs, only a very limited number of news programs have done so.

Moreover, deaf people have a tough time with administrative formalities. For example, it once took a deaf woman 6 attempts to register the birth of her baby with local officials; the registration was only successful after she hired a sign language translator. But not every deaf person has access to translating services. There are approximately only 30 professional sign language translators in all of Vietnam and not only are translators hard to come by, but their service could cost up to VND200.000 per hour, well beyond the means of many in need.

Unfortunately, in Vietnam the hardships surrounding deaf people extend to people living with disability in general. The infrastructure in Vietnamese cities does not support them well. For example, cars and motorbikes are often parked on sidewalks which force people in wheelchairs to travel on the road with other high-speed vehicles. The public bus system is largely inaccessible for the mobility-impaired, and although private corporations like VinBus do offer wheelchair ramps, they’re only available in limited numbers in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Disabled people also face difficulties finding jobs: according to a 2021 article, people with disabilities are employed at half the rate of the population at large.

Used wheelchairs abandoned at a health institute. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

In Vietnam, although there are many charities and organizations dedicated to helping the disabled community, their main objective often stops at providing goods and services, without fighting for rights and laws that would promote inclusive designs that would have wide-reaching impacts. Social policies regarding disabilities and the indifference people show to the issue is a “chicken-or-egg” problem.

If policies created reasonable accommodations for disabled people, they would have more opportunities to take part in society’s functions and that integration would help more people become aware of their struggles. For example, if public transportation were designed to accommodate disabilities, then many with mobility issues might find it easier to join the workforce.

These realizations have helped motivate my desire to consider how future products and software I develop should take the needs of deaf and disabled people into consideration. Extending their utility to include members of those communities will be an important part of the process.

My hope is to inspire and challenge other young designers, artists, engineers, architects, inventors, advocates, and programmers like myself to consider sensory and mobility impairment in their creations and plans. Doing so could help everyone. Text messaging was originally designed for deaf persons and the ergonomic screwdriver was devised for people with arthritis, but they grew to benefit everyone. If we understand that such an outlook might help everyone, including our disabled brothers and sisters, then we can better embody the often-touted dictum: “Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom.”

Phạm Ninh Giang is currently a Grade 11 student at Hanoi-Amsterdam High School. His project SIGNTEGRATE, in collaboration with classmate Nguyễn Tài Minh, won second prize at a national startup idea competition for students held earlier this year.

From the Lab of Forever Wheelchair, Hope for Vietnam's Handicapped Animals

2022-08-12T15:00:00+07:00

The ability to roam and frolic around is essential for our canine and feline companions' well-being, but too often, it can become a privilege for cats and dogs living with disability and immobility from neglect and abuse.

But with a helping hand from Forever Wheelchair, a social enterprise based in District 9 that makes custom wheelchairs for handicapped animals, many of them are being given a new "leash" on life to go on more adventures.

Oscar Fernando Ruiz Bonilla, from Colombia, is one of the co-founders of Forever Wheelchair.

Forever Wheelchair is run by Oscar Fernando Ruiz Bonilla and his wife Trần Anh Thư, who are currently the parents of a household of rescued cats, dogs, and a monkey with disabilities.

An animal lover from a young age, Oscar rescued countless dogs and cats in his home country Colombia and provided them with shelters that he built himself. However, the idea of helping physically challenged pets did not cross his mind until he started his career in Vietnam and adopted Motor, an adorable pug suffering from a leg impairment. Unhappy with the quality of the wheelchairs on the market at the time, Oscar began tinkering to come up with his very own wheelchair, which went on to be the pioneering design that would help Motor, and many other fur babies, to again freely explore the world.

A feline resident recovering from a limb injury.

Lì, a puppy who was paralyzed in an accident that crushed its hind leg and punctured its flesh. On Lì's right side is Motor. These are some of the dogs and cats that are being treated and residing at Forever Wheelchair's shelter.

Taking the measurements of the animal is the first and most crucial step in the wheelchair-making process, according to Bonilla. If an owner is unable to send their pets to FW's workshop in Bình Chánh District, he will have to thoroughly guide them on how to take the measurements of the pet precisely from a distance, due to the fact that “the making process of a right wheelchair can only begin with a correct set of readings,” he said.

Moving onto the second stage, Bonilla and his crew will proceed to select the appropriate frame size based on the measurements received from the owner. The frames crafted at Forever Wheelchair vary in size, the smallest being an XS that would fit a teacup poodle, and the largest being an XXXL that could house an Alaskan Malamute. Once the correct frame has been selected, the crew will collect matching springs, screws, and plastic hinges to begin the assembly process.

Setting up Lì's wheelchair.

It is common for owners to improvise wheelchairs for their handicapped pets, but these makeshift devices often utilize wires and ropes to secure the animals. This inadvertently puts pressure on the lower abdomen, which causes further discomfort for them during physical activities.

FW offers a solution by installing springs between the joints of the wheelchair, a simple but effective change to the design that allows four-legged users to move with ease and balance regardless of the type of terrain.

It is this intricate metal frame that attracts customers from outside of Vietnam to seek out FV's products, even though shipping costs can outweigh the manufacturing costs, says Bovilla.

The wheelchair’s design is also optimized for the animal's age and activeness. For the little ones that are younger and more energetic, the wheel axle is propped backward to provide more pillar support and allow them to lie down and stand up easily. In contrast, for the older ones, the wheel axle will be propped inward and situated at the hip level to reduce the weight load exerted on their shoulders.

The surface of the wheelchair's pads contains tiny holes that help with ventilation and prevent skin agitation.

The edges of the screw heads are rounded off to reduce friction and prevent scratches in case of a collision.

FW's journey hasn't been without derailments, as Oscar and Thư can't count the number of times they had to "evacuate" the family due to complaints about noise from neighbors.

"Our puppies are very excited to see new people, and when one barks, the others 'harmonize' as if they're in a choir. Moving around so often has been tough for them because they constantly have to adapt to a completely new environment." The couple is thus planning their own "sanctuary" where animals with a disability have a bigger playground to recover from injuries and acclimate to their pair of "legs." Vietnam also lacks facilities that do research on and provide care for pets with disabilities, so the founder is left on his own to study the animals' anatomy and 3D printing technique to enhance the appearance and function of the wheelchairs.

Left: Oscar designs the wheelchair’s components using 3D software. Right: A wheelchair coupling created with a 3D printer.

Despite being more specialized in making wheelchairs for dogs and cats, FW also extends support to other members of the fauna kingdom such as birds and monkeys; they even received requests from a farm in Đà Lạt to make prosthetics for their llamas. "But we are still in the process of figuring out how to make our wheelchairs and prosthetics on a bigger scale [...] and it's probably going to take some time."

Without a safe haven yet, therapeutic activities such as walking have to take place in the common spaces of the residential area.

One can now come across Forever Wheelchair's posters when taking their fur babies in for checkups, as their wheelchair is a veterinarian-approved device across Vietnam. "Many overseas customers also prefer our products because the animals we live with have different types of disabilities, and we are able to observe and fine-tune our devices for all these distinct needs."

This is monumental for a grassroots initiative such as FW, since almost no one knew about it during its early stages, and Bonilla and Thư even resorted to using their pocket money to support the animals when times were tough. "At that time, we did not expect that one day, all the sacrifice and support that we have been giving for the past three years would be coming back to us from the community," Oscar gleefully shared.

Profits from wheelchair sales are used to help other unfortunate cases. Through FW's charity program, 10% of the revenue from each wheelchair is donated to affiliated shelters such as Hanoi Pet Adoption and Paws For Compassion which are also doing their part to take care of animals in need. And while it might seem like a small amount, the donations have more than filled many fur-covered bellies with hearty meals. Owners who cannot afford a wheelchair will also be assisted by FW through fund-raising on the organization's social media channels.

Thanks to Forever Wheelchair's products, dogs and cats with disabilities can now comfortably and confidently move with their own “legs,” thereby becoming more “cooperative” during the later therapy process. And for Bonilla and Thư, seeing their babies' tails flicking freely while frolicking around with their wheelchairs is undoubtedly the best reward at the end of the day.

"Our hope is very simple, which is to ask everyone to contribute without criticism, contribute with true enthusiasm. Please sympathize with the hardship that organizations who are providing shelters for abandoned and handicapped animals have to cope with, they are the true unsung heroes of the community," the couple shared.

Bonilla and Thư.

Game Concept 'Vệ Thần' Crafts a Magical Realm From Vietnam's Wealth of Folklore

2022-05-18T16:00:00+07:00

The recent renaissance in Vietnam's game-making market has been strongly driven by independent studios delivering highly acclaimed and anticipated productions.

Among these is Hoa, a Ghibli-like platformer that scored several jury awards for its ethereal visuals and soundtrack; while another high-profile title, Tai Ương (The Scourge), has been on every horror fan's watch list since its eerie trailer came out.

Following in these projects' footsteps, an aspiring graphic designer based in Saigon has devised a mystical game concept called Vệ Thần (The Guardian). Enlisting characters from Vietnamese fables and fairy tales — including Sơn Tinh, Thánh Gióng and Chử Đồng Tử — the game offers a refreshing take on the country's mythical world through its unique character designs and elements typical of the adventure RPG genre.

Trần Xuân Lộc, the mind behind Vệ Thần, is not a game designer by trade, but a visual and graphic artist. He previously authored the viral illustration series "Yêu-Ma-Quỷ-Quái" to introduce some of the most elusive beasts and ghouls of Vietnamese folklore. Lộc explained that it has always been the plan for him to make another fantasy-infused, locally inspired work.

But ideas for the game concept didn't arise until extraordinary circumstances forced him and the rest of society to temporarily "log out" of the real world. With more time to spare, Lộc could explore interests he had never had a chance to try out before. Thus, his social distancing days were filled with adventures, albeit in the digital world of Steam staples like Hollow Knight, Hades and Blasphemous.

“I was just completely mesmerized. Exploring different worlds, solving mysteries, and battling evils…are experiences beyond enchanting. They took me back to the days of my childhood, the era of Megaman X4 and Super Mario World,” Lộc said. As his pre-emptive creative plan and a newfound love for gaming loomed, he began to wonder: "What would an adventure game with a Vietnamese mythology theme be like?" This 'aha' moment, according to the artist, was what gave Vệ Thần its initial push.

The main character of the game is Vệ Thần (The Guardian), the armor of a fallen soldier brought back to life by a supernatural spirit. Apart from the protagonist, there are also other NPC guardians of different sizes, shapes and designs featured in the game. However, all designs are based on the creatures that appeared on prehistoric bronze drums of Vietnam, such as birds, crocodiles and deer.

Players will follow The Guardian on their journey through otherworldly realms, where they will meet allies and foes in the reimagined mythical characters. Through Vệ Thần's demo trailer, we can see nods to Vietnamese culture that have been woven into the game, not only through its NPCs but also through miscellaneous items and scenes. One will be delighted to catch Guardians traversing through Rừng Trăm Đốt, receiving side quests from the Land Genie, and buying supplies from cô Tấm as an entrepreneur.

Although the project currently remains just a visual conceptualization, Lộc said he was already preparing a long-term plan to make Vệ Thần a real game with the help of crowd-funding and actual game-makers. However, he believes that the final product will be vastly different in terms of concept and style, “with a lot of changes and upgrades!”

Until the game is realized, let's immerse ourselves in the world of Vệ Thần through these magical snippets.

One of the key scenes in the game in Rừng Trăm Đốt, or the forest of hundred-knot bamboo.

The protagonist will have to befriend and get help from these special NPCs to complete their quest.

A journey map.

Characters powers and role are tied to their original stories in Vietnam's folklore.

Items such as Túi Ba Gang and Golden Starfruit are also taken from popular fairy tales.

[Images via Trần Xuân Lộc's Behance page]

Vietnamese Indie Game 'Hoa' Wins 3 Awards for Best Art Direction, Music at Webby

2022-05-04T10:00:00+07:00

The dreamy platformer snagged trophies for Best Art Direction, Best Music/Sound Design, and People’s Voice Best Art Direction at the awards honoring the "Best of the Internet."

Hoa, a game produced by Vietnam's PM Studios and Skrollcat Studio, has been captivating gamers around the world since its release in August 2021 and was recently honored with three prestigious Webby Awards.

The game's ethereal, hand-painted scenery and soothing live-recorded score have inspired comparisons to Studio Ghibli films and earned praise from players in search of a peaceful gaming experience. The subtle storytelling and light exploration-based puzzles are just the icing on top.

Webby's criteria for Best Art Direction are simply: "A game whose visual style and language is distinctly unique and elevates the overall game experience." Voters agreed with the views of the judges and made Hoa the winner of the People's Voice category as well. The description of Best Music/Sound Design is similarly broad, taking into account "outstanding audio, including score, original song, soundtrack, and sound design."

The Hoa score by its composer Johannes aka Akmigone via his YouTube channel.

After the award winners were announced, the team behind Hoa posted a straightforward, heartfelt message on their Facebook Page: "Sending our love to everyone who voted and shared, press and friends who helped spread the word. We wouldn't be here without you."

From apps to websites to podcasts, since 1997, the Webby Awards have been honoring all things internet including video games. The award is given by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences through a judging body made up of over 2,000 industry experts and innovators.

Read Saigoneer's review of Hoa here.

Hoa is available on PC, MacOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. Visit the game's Steam page for more details.

Vietnamese Game 'Hoa' Nominated for Best Art Direction, Music in 2022 Webby Awards

2022-04-13T13:00:00+07:00

If you spent your 2021 lockdown escaping into the wondrous, whimsical world of Hoa, the locally developed video game, now is your chance to show your support for the creators.

Hoa has been nominated for the Best Art Direction and Best Music/Sound Design category under Games-Features in the 26^th annual Webby Awards People's Voice, in which people can vote on "the best of the Internet." With voting open until April 21, Hoa is up against Wayfinder, Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition, Lost in Random, and No Longer Home.

Released in August 2021 on multiple platforms, Hoa is among a few existing video games conceptualized and produced by a Vietnamese team. It's a side-scrolling platform game in which players take the role of Hoa, a young fairy, on a journey to return home. With gorgeous art and a soothing soundtrack, Hoa is breath of fresh air for those seeking a relaxing gaming experience. Read Saigoneer's review of Hoa here.

The Webby Awards are presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences through a judging body made up of over 2,000 industry experts and innovators.

The eight current Webby categories are: Websites and Mobile Sites, Video, Advertising, Media & PR, Social, Apps and Software, Games, Podcasts, and Virtual & Remote. Each category has two winners, one chosen by the general public under the People's Voice awards, and one chosen by the judging body.

As is tradition, each winner is allowed to share a five-word acceptance speech during the awards show, which is considered the "Internet's highest honor."

Hoa fans can vote for the game here (Best Art Direction) and here (Best Music). Nearly 800,00 votes have already been tallied across the Webby categories. The winners will be announced during the Webby Awards on May 16.

Vietnamese Studio Builds First Electric Batmobile for $25,000

2022-03-01T10:09:56+07:00

The Tumbler — the Batmobile in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight — has been recreated by 23-year-old artist and architect Nguyễn Đắc Chung and his team at Macro Studios.

According to Zing, the team built the car in 18 months, at a cost of US$25,000. The car is made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), carbon fiber, and steel. Some parts are handcrafted while others were 3D printed for high precision. This Batmobile weighs less than 600 kilograms, seats two and can reach a top speed of 105 km/h. Chung also added four tactical cameras for a nearly 360-degree view, and unlike the original gas-powered prototype, this version is electric — the first electric Batmobile in the world.

Macro Studios is a Hanoi-based workshop that creates cosplay weapons and costumes. But their products are not just for show. Chung said they always want to take things to the next level and “blow people’s minds,” and this Batmobile, for example, is a “fully operational, tactical vehicle capable of freeway speeds.”

The Batmobile is available for purchase. And if you live in Ho Chi Minh City, you can see it in person at Van Daryl automotive gallery.

[Photos by Macro Studios via Zing News]

High-End Graphics Cards Stolen in California Appear in Vietnam

2022-01-14T10:00:00+07:00

Paging the Fast & Furious screenwriters.

Last November, PC Gamer reported that a shipment of GPUs (graphics processing units) was stolen from a truck on its way from San Francisco to southern California. The graphics cards were being shipped by EVGA, which produces the well-known Nvidia brand of GPUs, with the stolen goods ranging in price from US$330 to US$1,960 per unit.

At the time, EVGA warned people about purchasing any of the stolen cards if they appeared on the black market, as the company had their serial numbers recorded and any warranty activation could alert the police.

It turns out that the GPUs were destined for a much longer journey post-heist, as the industry site VideoCardz reported this week that some of the cards ended up here in Vietnam, where customers of an unnamed local retailer have reported issues when trying to activate the warranty offered with their new GPU.

PC Gamer adds that the retailer in question is known for creating cryptocurrency mining rigs, which are in high demand globally, contributing to a computer chip shortage that has been exacerbated by global production and supply chain disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

So if you're in the market for a high-end Nvidia GPU, be aware of what you might be buying.

[Top image via BR Atsit]

Vietnam's Undersea Internet Cables Break on Average 10 Times Annually, Experts Say

2022-01-05T10:00:00+07:00

Vietnam’s internet is inconsistent, but very affordable when compared with regional peers, according to experts at the recent Vietnam Internet Day 2021 conference.

Held a few weeks ago, the conference was co-organized by telecom firms and the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority under the Ministry of Information and Communications. Experts presented many important data points reflecting local internet access and how it performs compared to other nations.

Hoàng Đức Dũng, a representative from Viettel Networks, shared that, in the last five years, Vietnam’s submarine cables have ruptured on average 10 times annually. Each break takes around a month to fix, though on some occasions, when one connection is fixed, another is damaged.

Dũng added that Vietnam currently has only seven undersea cables handling international traffic, one of the lowest numbers in the region, compared to Thailand (10), Malaysia (22), and Singapore (30). This handful of global connections means that there are fewer options to fall back on when one goes out of service.

Speed-wise, internet services in Vietnam also leave much to be desired. Data from Ookla shows that the country’s download speed is just over 84MB per second, ranking No. 58 of 181 countries. For mobile internet, the figure is 78.34MB per second.

According to Nguyễn Phong Nhã, deputy head of the telecom authority, the majority of broadband subscriptions in Vietnam (47.17%) is in the 30–50MB per second range. The 50–100MB per second stratum accounts for 35.21%, and 16.86% of subscriptions have speeds of over 100MB per second. A small percentage of users have speeds slower than 30MB per second.

Most Vietnamese phone owners have switched to 4G (89.42%), while 10.05% still use 3G. 5G amounts to less than 1% of users.

A major advantage of the internet in Vietnam, however, is its low price. According to a report published last November, the country ranks at No. 6 among the world’s nations with cheapest internet costs, as users only pay on average US$10.70 a month. Most of the top ten are in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Wallet App MoMo Becomes Unicorn Startup With $200m in New Investment

2021-12-28T11:00:00+07:00

M-Service, the owner of Vietnam's leading payment app MoMo, raised US$200 million during a Series-E funding round led by Japanese bank Mizuho, resulting in a US$2 billion valuation.

M-Service achieved unicorn status when Mizuho acquired a 7.5% stake for US$170 million in the company with further investment coming from Ward Ferry Management and existing shareholders Goodwater Capital LLC and Kora Management. The company had raised an additional estimated US$100 million at the start of the year and the same amount in 2019, but has no plans to go public in the near future.

The money will be used to expand the reach of the financial services it currently offers to its 31 million users; invest in Vietnamese companies that can strengthen the MoMo ecosystem such as the recently acquired AI startup Pique and increase its presence in smaller cities and rural areas. M-Service was founded in 2007 and was initially focused on simple payment facilitation for mobile devices but has since expanded to a wide range of digital financial services.

“The investment shows their confidence and belief in our mission – to improve the life of the Vietnamese people and merchants through technology, by giving them access to superior, simpler, and affordable financial solutions and daily services,” said Nguyễn Mạnh Tường, executive vice-chairman and co-CEO of MoMo.

Mizuho's investment is expected to help facilitate collaboration between M-Service and Vietcombank, which Mizuho also has a 15% stake in. "We are seeking to broaden our retail financial business footprint with particular focus on the ASEAN region, digital transformation, and financial inclusion. We will collaborate with MoMo with the aim of facilitating its future growth and increasing financial inclusion in Vietnam,” said Daisuke Horiuchi, managing executive officer at Mizuho’s retail business company."

MoMo was first founded in 2007 as an e-payment application. Based in Ho Chi Minh City, the app has now expanded its operation to numerous services and commercial platform. It reportedly controls over 50% of the electronic wallet market in Vietnam.

[Photo via MoMo]

Tiki Receives $258m in New Investments for Further Growth

2021-11-09T12:00:00+07:00

The funding pushes the company close to unicorn status.

Tech in Asia reports that Tiki, the Vietnamese e-commerce giant, recently raised US$258 million in a round of series E funding, bringing the company's valuation to almost US$1 billion.

The investment was led by AIA, the insurance corporation, in addition to Taiwan Mobile, Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund, STIC Investments and Yuanta Fund. According to the news source, AIA accounted for US$60 million of the investment. This follows the July announcement that Tiki and AIA Vietnam had signed a 10-year partnership, in which the insurance firm will be the e-commerce group's exclusive insurance partner.

Thanks to that agreement, from next month, customers in Vietnam will be able to buy AIA insurance through Tiki and manage their accounts and claims through the tech platform.

Taiwan Mobile is a previous investor in Tiki, having pumped US$20 million into the company earlier this year. Despite Tiki's impressive value, it lags behind Shopee and Lazada, two regional e-commerce behemoths, in both monthly web traffic and app rankings.

The news outlet quotes a public statement from Son Tran, Tiki's founder, as saying "we want to become a place where Vietnamese people can find every product or service that they need."

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Tiki is considering an IPO in the United States through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) next year.

Made-in-Vietnam Dating App Fika Secures $1.6m in Seed Funding

2021-10-12T11:00:00+07:00

Created as a female-focused alternative to Tinder and Bumble, the dating app Fika recently got financial backing from international investors.

According to a press release, Fika recently secured US$1.6 million during a seed funding round led by Swedish investment firm VNV Global and including a number of angel investors and other tech entrepreneurs.

Fika is a Swedish word denoting a break for snacks like coffee and cakes and to socialize with others. The choice of name is inspired by the country of origin of the app’s creators, Denise Sandquist and Oscar Xing Luo, both Swedes of Asian descent. Sandquist, Fika’s CEO, was born in Vietnam but was adopted by a Swedish couple; she returned to Vietnam recently to look for her birth mother and has been living in the country since.

Fika was first developed by the duo in June 2020 as a platform that empowers users and emphasizes meaningful connections instead of casual relationships. Vietnam is the current focus of Fika, whose team consists mainly of local youths.

After more than a year on the market, Fika has gained over 600,000 downloads so far, according to the press release. About 40% of users are female.

According to Fika, the new funding will be used to “further expand the Fika team, further develop the app’s AI capabilities and increase the brand’s exposure in Vietnam.” An Asia expansion is also on the horizon before the app considers moving to the international arena.

The mobile application market in Vietnam has seen impressive growth in the past few years as internet penetration and smartphone ownership rates rise. A number of homegrown apps have also received funding support, such as the education app Elsa, blockchain game Axie Infinity, and recruitment app JobHopin.

Vietnam Announces New App to Unify All Previous Covid-19 Apps

2021-09-30T13:00:00+07:00

One app to rule them all.

PC-Covid, a new app announced by authorities on September 30 and immediately available through Google Play and the App Store, will replace the dozen-or-so apps with various functions related to the pandemic. The Information Technology Application Authority under the Ministry of Information and Communications has stated that PC-Covid will have nine features, including the ability store users' personal information, facilitate health declarations, hold vaccination and testing information, and hazard mapping.

The QR-code-enabled green card function will be amongst PC-Covid's most important features. It will allow users who have had two vaccinations or proof of recovery from the virus to simply and easily show and scan their status and thus take part in a variety of occupational and recreational activities as part of the easing of social distancing rules.

The new app is in response to the confusion people increasingly endured because of the plethora of apps with different uses, including Bluezone, NCOVI, VNEID, and the electronic health book. Reviews were mixed for the ease of use for many of these apps and people were uncertain which to download and why.

Personal information from the Bluezone app can be automatically updated to PC-Covid, while the other apps will no longer be updated and eventually removed from device stores. Until all relevant data is updated on PC-Covid, Saigon authorities have announced that citizens can temporarily use the apps Y Tế HCM (from the municipal health department) and VNEID (from the Ministry of Public Security) to move around the city.

Users have reportedly experienced difficulties with PC-Covid on the day of its rolling out, including an inability to download it or use the scan function, in addition to it not synchronizing with the Bluezone app. Authorities said they are working on updating and refining the app and attributed some of the issues to the number of people trying to simultaneously access it.

As of the time of writing the app is only available in Vietnamese and English, and no plans for other languages have been announced.