Lush tropical canopies drape shade across exacting balconies and geometric Brise-soleil. Next to these stellar examples of Vietnamese Modernism stand modern structures where students engage with advanced technologies in cool, air-conditioned classrooms and laboratories. While Saigon’s central streets, with their cavalcades of traffic, commerce, and commotion, charge ahead just beyond the gates of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT) in Diên Hồng ward (formerly District 10), the campus within provides a calm cocoon of education.

Spacious classrooms bathed in natural sunlight have become a core memory for students.

Amongst local Vietnamese, HCMUT is widely regarded as one of the nation’s top public technology institutions, with metrics, accolades, and successful graduate trajectories to support the word-of-mouth reputation. For example, each year, it receives applications from more than 15,000 candidates, but only around 5500 are offered admission. However, HCMUT receives little to no attention from expat communities in Vietnam for its STEM degrees taught entirely in English, let alone the fact that the program is of worldwide value. Foreign students who already live in Vietnam, or have family working here, or recognize Vietnam as one of the region’s fastest-growing technology hubs and thus a great place to explore, are surprised to learn that the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs comparable to those in western or East Asian nations at a fraction of the cost.

Having one of the largest campuses in the city center, Campus 1, located on Diên Hồng ward, covers approximately 14 hectares with lecture halls, self-study spaces, laboratories, workshops, and sports complexes.

HCMUT, known colloquially as Bách khoa, dates back to 1957 when it was founded as the National Technical Center. While Campus 2 is located in the VNU-HCM Urban Area with other member universities, Campus 1, or the so-called main campus, caters to international curriculum, professors, and students. The STEM courses, which combine theoretical knowledge and practical application, prepare graduates to be competitive on the international stage with a strong understanding of the fast-evolving work culture in Southeast Asia.

In addition to four-year undergraduate programs, HCMUT offers 12 majors within the Articulation program that partner with global universities. Students can study in Vietnam to build a solid academic foundation at HCMUT and then complete their degree at a prestigious university abroad. Partner universities include most universities in Australia’s Group of Eight, The University of Auckland, The University of Otago, The University of Birmingham in the UK, the University of Kentucky, and other options in France, Denmark, Korea, and Japan. Such an arrangement allows students to maximize their global flexibility and adaptability, spend less money on tuition and living expenses, and receive a degree from one of the world’s top-ranked universities. Students can also complete an accelerated 3-year Bachelor’s degree from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). This is a best-of-both-worlds opportunity for students to study in Vietnam while receiving a world-class degree.

The Transnational Education program, established by UTS and HCMUT in 2025, is among UTS’s pioneering fully offshore degree programs, focusing on AI and IT fields.

Beyond the rigorous academic training, students develop essential professional skills through required courses in communication, leadership, and interview skills. What distinguishes public institutions like HCMUT is their strong adoption of the Triple Helix model, in which academia, industry, and government work together to promote innovation, economic growth, and social development. Some dominant industry connections that HCMUT works with include Intel, Marvell, Synopsys, and NVIDIA for semiconductor engineering; Bosch for mechanical engineering, Petrovietnam and VPN for energy; Viettel and FPT for telecommunications; and GSK for chemical engineering.

Such collaborations create valuable opportunities for students through government-backed programs, field trips, internships, and industry-sponsored projects, which enable scientific discoveries to turn into real, impactful applications.

A useful degree obtained at a great value is important, but so is one’s quality of life. Chances to experience “uni life” typically only happen once. HCMUT has its way to ensure international students make the most of their time here in Vietnam through a range of comprehensive activities. Saigoneer visited the campus around noon, and the harsh midday sun ensured the basketball court was empty, but come dusk, it would surely be filled with students laughing and playing. In addition to informal activities, the university has 15 clubs across academics, sports, arts, hobbies, and self-development. Events and exchange sessions encourage students to showcase and engage with their own and other cultures, while volunteering campaigns foster connections with local communities. Last but not least, Vietnamese language courses empower international students to connect with the local culture, people, and way of life here.

Last year, hundreds of international students across Europe and Asia visited for exchange semesters, internships, and immersion programs.

2026 is truly an exciting time in Vietnam, particularly for engineering and technology. As companies, sectors, and fields become regional and even global leaders, helping to fuel staggering national economic growth and development, academics are right in step. With an increase of foreign professors, funding for modern facilities, and deepening ties with international universities alongside more opportunities to apply global-standard education in a local context, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology is more than ever an ideal place for international students. These efforts coincide with official government resolutions and policies to enhance internationalisation in education via investment, reform, and global partnerships. The quiet, shady campus might not yet be on families' minds, but there is every reason for that to change.

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

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

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

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

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

View looking down onto Quy Hoà.

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

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

Mentioning Chinese and Chinese-speaking tourists to businesses in Vietnam elicits a number of assumptions and misconceptions. Large tour groups consisting of matching shirts following a leader-raised flag to pre-approved and Chinese-owned businesses are largely a disappearing relic of previous generations. Mainland tourists, particularly younger ones, are much more likely to travel independently as couples, families, friend groups or solo and do all their planning themselves. In this way, they are similar to the western tourists that Vietnamese restaurants, resorts, and spas are familiar with.

China is, of course, a massive country, and the travel preferences and requirements of its citizens are diverse. But if one narrows the focus to educated millennials and older Gen Z at a certain income level, typically dwelling in tier 1 and 2 cities, there emerge enough similarities to market towards them effectively. Some of the 50 tier 1 and 2 cities have populations equal that of Hong Kong and the segment coincides with Chinese-speaking tourists from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and diaspora communities from around the world.

Food, shopping, selfies, and cultural activities are amongst the top activities of this segment

Vietnam welcomes over five million Chinese-speaking tourists per year, and the nation is the top travel destination for mainland Chinese. These numbers are consistently increasing and represent a large market for local businesses, particularly in hospitality, F&B, and retail. However, various cultural and logistical barriers make it difficult for small and even large businesses to truly tap into this group. Within this context, locally-tailored services and strategies are emerging to bridge the gap.

To learn more about this group and how businesses in Vietnam can reach them, Saigoneer spoke with Hồ Chí Minh City-based Beast Group, a marketing agency specializing in connecting local brands with the Chinese-speaking market. The group’s founder, Denzel Zhang, explained that modern Chinese-speaking tourists from this middle and upper-class group are generally very appealing to local businesses. They tend to spend, on average, 1.5 times as much as other tourists. Moreover, motivated by FOMO, they particularly gravitate towards special-menu or limited items.

Photos that attact attention should be high-quality but feel authentic.

“Photos,” Denzel responded immediately and emphatically when asked what attracts the attention of these Chinese-speaking travelers. The photos have to be high quality, but not so professional as to appear commercial. This typically comes down to images of meals, resort views, luxurious spa interiors, and chic city hotels that are captured on phones by someone who knows what angles and minimal prep will be flattering and how to do minor in-app editing, but isn’t using a lighting setup, extensive post-production, or a DSLR camera.

Having the photos is only the first step. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, the platforms most Vietnam-based businesses rely on, are inaccessible to users in mainland China. Instead, they have domestic alternatives, including RedNote (Xiaohongshu), which Denzel explained as a hybrid of Instagram and TripAdvisor. These are the places where Chinese speakers go to share about and discover travel destinations. Chinese speakers in countries without app restrictions use them as well because they are optimized for the Chinese language and foster communities that share cultural values that manifest in dining preferences and resort requirements. 

Pictures say a lot, but businesses that succeed find a way to speak Chinese as well.

In addition to appearing on these apps, Chinese menus and Chinese-speaking staff are important for attracting this powerful group of tourists. Denzel says their English fluency is somewhat limited, and thus, they are hesitant to go anywhere that cannot accommodate their language at least a bit. Moreover, they are shy to make reservations or ask questions over the phone and prefer to text for communication.

If a local business can deliver its message with impressive but authentic photos via these particular Chinese-language apps, such as RedNote, it can tap into a powerful market. However, Denzel cautions against trying to do so without intimate knowledge of the communities and the rules and norms of the platforms. Going alone can ultimately cause more harm than good. Such a reality is why agencies like Beast Group exist. Founded by Chinese speakers in Vietnam and having developed relationships in mainland and diaspora communities as well as local Vietnamese and Western businesses, they understand the landscape and what is needed to navigate it fluently.

As Chinese-speaking tourists continue to arrive in record numbers, Beast Group will play an important role in ensuring restaurants, retail shops, resorts, hotels, spas, and service providers can take advantage. 

Denzel Zhang, Beast Group's Founderc.

In a forthcoming article, Saigoneer will explain exactly how Beast Group targets Chinese-speaking tourists successfully as well as the dangers of going alone with a few case studies. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The impact of EV adoption

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

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

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

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

Gas as a stable transition fuel?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nước mắm — that ruby-hued elixir; that salty, fish-flesh-sweet open secret in your favorite recipe; that indispensable icon of Vietnamese culture and, by extension, identity — owes itself to Commerson’s anchovies. That’s right, if your fish sauce comes from the central region, where it was first developed, the fish pressed with salt to produce it are Stolephorus commersonnii, a species named in 1801 after Philibert Commerson, a white Frenchman. Picture all the hardscrabble village homes suffering under the yoke of colonialism, where one of the day’s few pleasures was a humble meal made delicious by a carefully rationed dash of fish sauce and an ingredient whose name pays homage to their colonizers. 

Left: Philibert Commerson. Photo via wikimedia.
Right: Stolephorus commersonnii. Photo via Arobid.

Sadly, naming endemic creatures after foreigners is a convention not unique to Commerson’s anchovies. Scanning lists of animals native to Vietnam yields a great number of western men (it’s always men). Delacour's Langur (Trachypithecus delacouri), Lichtenfelder's gecko (Goniurosaurus lichtenfelderi), Osgood's rat (Rattus osgoodi), and Griffin's leaf-nosed bat (Hipposideros griffini) are all Vietnamese animals, as much as an animal can be claimed by a nation, with names honoring non-Vietnamese. 

Left: Delacour's langur. Photo via Orangepopp.
Right: Lichtenfelder's gecko. Photo via Biolib.

Binomial nomenclature, the globally accepted standard for naming organisms, includes a first, “generic” name that identifies the genus and a second, specific name that distinguishes the species within that genus. Unlike common names, which differ across languages (i.e. tiger or cọp are the common names for Panthera tigris), scientific names allow for a precise, relatively simple means of discussing organisms across regions and disciplines. This is particularly important when it comes to plants and animals that may have medicinal qualities or be poisonous. The system, developed by 17^th-century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus during his ill-fated attempts to identify every living creature on Earth, is currently governed by various internationally agreed-upon codes of rules, including the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). 

Binomial, also called scientific names, and their conventions are as messy as one might expect from scientists working before the advent of electricity, gas engines, refrigerators, typewriters or telephones. The second halves of the names often reference physical characteristics, geographical locations, or behaviors to aid in accurately identifying an organism. But sometimes they are simply used as a means of paying respect to individuals. While the science community frowns aggressively on naming any animal or plant after oneself, specific names, since their advent, have been a way to compliment a mentor, peer, friend or loved one. More than one scientist have used them in attempts to woo a woman or land a promotion. 

Left: Beyonce's horsefly. Photo via NBC News.
Right: Darth Vadar's isopod. Photo via Pensoft.

In addition to all the names of scientists that appear in the records, there are more playful examples that involve puns and pop culture, such as the Darth Vader isopod (Bathynomus vaderi); a genus of crustaceans named Godzillius; a large-eyed, swamp-dwelling fish named after a Lord of the Rings character (Galaxias gollumoide); and even a horsefly with a golden bum named after Beyoncé (Scaptia beyonceae). Considering the vast number of beetles, worms, fungus and microscopic sea creatures in the world, not just now, but across all time in the fossil record, it’s easy to understand how Diego Maradona has a damselfly (Librelula maradoniana) and Lady Gaga has a wasp (Aleiodes gaga). 

Sanqiaspis vietnamensis, an ancient, jawless fish that lived over 400 million years ago, was formally described in 2009. Illustration by Stanton Fink.

Let’s return to Vietnam. Because of many reasons including the western origins of the naming conventions, global inequalities that have historically placed western science at the forefront of discoveries, and accepted racism, references to Vietnam are relatively rare in the records, despite the thousands of opportunities. Certain geographical references do appear, including countless annamensis, tonkinensis, and cochinchinensis. More recent examples include Rhacophorus hoanglienensis, a frog found within the Hoàng Liên National Park; a gecko (Gekko badenii) whose name references the Bà Đen mountain where it lives; an ancient, jawless fish (Sanqiaspis vietnamensis); and even our beloved sao la (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), as noted by researcher Khôi Nguyễn.

Scientists are more likely to name new species after Vietnamese locations, as opposed to individuals, but a few do reference the immense impact of Vietnamese researchers, including Dr. Ngô Văn Bὶnh and Dr. Nguyễn Văn Sáng, who were honored with snakes (Dendrelaphis binhi and Coluberoelaps nguyenvansangi, respectively). Historical figures make appearances as well, including a moth (Marcopoloia leloi) named after Lê Lợi; a beetle (Cyphochilus leducthoi) after Lê Đức Thọ; and an ant (Xymmer phungi) for Phan Đình Phùng. Hồ Chí Minh, meanwhile, received the privilege of having both a spider (Pholcus hochiminhi) and a beetle (Oedichirus hochimini). 

Commonly called Bình's bronzeback snake in honor of Dr. Ngô Văn Bὶnh, Dendrelaphis binhi is a rather charismatic critter. Photo via iNaturalist.

I think the names could be doing even more, however, and experts agree. A recent paper from the Royal Society concluded that: “Because the nomenclatural Codes impose surprisingly few constraints on the formation of a new scientific name, naming is one of the most creative acts in all the sciences. The results of unleashing scientists’ creativity have been fascinating, with species bearing scientific names coming from many source languages and with a remarkable variety of etymologies. Scientific names (like the scientists who confer them) can be beautiful, irritating, amusing, poignant, provocative or infuriating. They raise important issues of social justice and equity in the history and practice of science. Finally, they can apparently have a role in directing our scientific attention to study.” If scientific names can make people excited about the natural world, aware of important issues, interested in local history, or proud of their heritage, we should embrace creative naming with great enthusiasm. 

A few recent namings give me hope that things are headed in the right direction. A Central Highlands hedgehog was given the name Hylomys macarong, because its front teeth resemble the fangs of a vampire (ma cà rồng), and any use of non-western languages helps decolonialize science and invite young people here to envision a place for themselves within it. Meanwhile, a dainty bird, the Actinodura sodangorum, honors the Södang (or Xơ Đăng) ethnic minority group that lives in the forest where it was found, and promotes Vietnam's multi-ethnicity. 

Left: The so-called vampire hedgehog. Photo via Discover Wildlife.
Right: Actinodura sodangorum, commonly called the black-crowned barwing in English. Photo via Wikimedia.

But where is the whimsy? Where is the child-like joy and silliness that accompanies rigorous thought and logic to uphold humanity? It is here: Banhxeochelys trani. Named in 2019, Banhxeochelys describes an extinct genus of turtle that lived in Vietnam 39 to 34 million years ago. Thin, flat, and cracked, the fossilized shells found in the Na Dương coal mine in Lạng Sơn reminded the Vietnamese scientists of bánh xèo, and thus, the entire new genus was named Banhxeochelys (the Greek word chelys means "turtle"). The first, and so far only species within the genus was given the specific name trani to honor Đặng Ngọc Trần, a retired director of the Department of Geology and Minerals, who helped the nation make great strides in geological research.

The shells of Banhxeochelys trani as described in the 2019 scientific paper. Photo via Wikimedia.

An interpretation of what Banhxeochelys trani would have looked like alive. Artwork by Alain Beneteau via Facebook.

A prehistoric turtle named after a delicious Vietnamese meal: could such a whimsical name attract attention to Vietnam’s important and vulnerable biodiversity? Could it inspire hesitant young Vietnamese to dream about their rightful place in global scientific discourse? Does it at least make you chuckle and want to go out for bánh xèo? If even one of these is true, I hope you’ll join me in my desire to see many more such names in the near future. With hundreds of new species identified every year in Vietnam, there are plenty of opportunities.

Have you ever walked past a plant and wondered "Hey, I wonder what that could do?"

Such curiosity is what ultimately led Henry Herbert to spend two years writing the new book, Wild Medicinal Plants of Central Vietnam. Herbert, who lives in Huế, took a fairly circuitous route to get to this point. "After graduating in the United Kingdom, I went to work as a web developer in London," he tells Saigoneer in a call. This was six years ago, and he quickly discovered that he was deeply unhappy: "I just felt completely devoid of meaning in my life, utterly down, depressed actually. It was a really difficult time in my life." 

Eventually he quit, sold most of his belongings, and decamped from London in order to volunteer at farms, initially in South Africa, and then in Columbia. "I immersed myself in that and through working alongside people who are much more knowledgeable than me, learned about plant life and farming," Herbert says. "I'd top that up with courses and intensive reading, but most of it came through experience."

After spending the early part of the pandemic in Columbia, Herbert moved to Hanoi, where he struggled with the stress of a major city for a year before relocating with his wife, Linh, to Huế. "It's a beautiful place," he says. "The nature is majestic and lovely, and there's lots of space to walk around. It was much, much more suitable."

Herbert walking in a forest outside of Huế.

The duo then began volunteering at a series of local organizations including the Lotus Education Farm, and at the same time Herbert launched a Facebook page called Đom Đóm Permaculture in order to share information about the region's native flora. This is where the seeds of the book took root.

"The whole book thing started then because I'd started to learn more and more about wild plants just through working with people," Herbert recalls. "I also have a dog and I'd often take him on walks in the forest, and I'd meet local people harvesting various plants in the forest or in the fields."

Herbert, who, in his words, speaks "decent, not perfect" Vietnamese, would stop and ask people what they were collecting and what they used it for. "My curiosity was to just know more and ask more questions and do my own research," he said. "It took about two years of asking a lot of people, a lot of research, a lot of trying things myself, because I wanted to back up what people were saying with what has been scientifically proven." 

The result is a book featuring 203 different species of flora found in the wild around Huế, broken down into annual herbs and grasses; perennial herbs, succulents and cacti; shrubs; vines and climbing plants; trees; and ferns and aquatic plants. Accompanied by color photos, each species includes the local name, any other Vietnamese name and, if available, the English name, as well as details on how to identify the plant, which areas and when to find it, and the traditional medicinal uses it has. There are also chapters on how to respectfully harvest plants in order to avoid taking too much, and how to clean and ultimately prepare a plant for medicinal use. 

Herbert gathering medicinal plants.

As Herbert dove deeper into his book research, he realized that most of the knowledge related to these plants and how they can be used had a single repository: members of elder generations. "Traditionally, it would pass down from generation to generation; that's how the knowledge got there in the first place," he said. "But increasingly, that's being ignored. Young people would rather go to the city and earn money or watch TV and not listen to grandma's knowledge." 

Herbert had first-hand experience with this, as his grandmother in the UK was a keen botanist: "She loved to teach me about certain plants, and mostly I just remember not really listening and not really caring, and that's increasingly happening. It would be an absolute shame if this knowledge is lost." 

While he hopes the book can be a humble contribution to the storage of this expertise, Herbert was also routinely astonished by just how accurate the wisdom the people he spoke to was.

"I'd ask someone what they're using a plant for, and they'd tell me, 'I'm picking this one and using it to wash my skin because of scabies or some kind of infection,' and on multiple occasions I would go back and look the plant up online," he explains. "And eventually I'd be able to track down the scientific name and do a whole host of reading in English and find scientific studies, and it's always exactly what they said it is."

"It's amazing," he goes on, "what they say they're using it for is exactly what it's for, whether anti-inflammatory properties or good for bathing sores on the skin or ringworm. That just absolutely blew my mind, the fact that these people have never read any scientific paper or book, it's just known." 

Ultimately, Herbert hopes that Wild Medicinal Plants of Central Vietnam can, if nothing else, remind us of the importance of respecting those who came before us. 

"I think we often kind of turn our nose up at what we might think of as homeopathy stuff," he says. "There can be stuff that doesn't work, of course, and there can be ineffective treatments, but there's a reason why this has been passed down for generations for so long."

Photos courtesy of Henry Herbert.

This article was originally published in 2022.

You can order a copy of Wild Medicinal Plants of Central Vietnam through the Đom Đóm Permaculture page. A portion of the proceeds will go towards Tịnh Trúc Gia, a community for young adults living with disabilities in Huế.

Municipal authorities in Hồ Chí Minh City are moving forward with a number of infrastructure projects that will majorly transform the peninsula in the future.

Over the long holiday weekend on April 29, Saigon broke ground on the Bến Thành–Thủ Thiêm Metro Line, which will take passengers from the central interchange at Bến Thành Market to eastern regions of the city. The interchange has already served the existing Line 1 and will also link to the Bến Thành–Tham Lương Line that stretches northward.

A cross-section of a station of the Bến Thành–Thủ Thiêm Line.

The line serving Thủ Thiêm begins at Bến Thành, running along Hàm Nghi Boulevard before crossing the Saigon River to Thủ Thiêm, where it will snake along Mai Chí Thọ to the terminal in Bình Trưng (Thủ Đức City). Six stations are based underground: Hàm Nghi, Tố Hữu, Cung Thiếu Nhi, Bệnh viện Quốc tế, Bình Khánh, and Thủ Thiêm.

A map showing both the first (yellow) and second (teal) phases of the line.

Most notably, Hàm Nghi Station will be Saigon’s deepest at 33 meters underground as the line will need to travel beneath the Saigon River. On the other end, the last station is planned to be a meeting point for other transportation modes, such as a high-speed North-South train and an upcoming metro line linking Thủ Thiêm and Long Thành International Airport.

On the same day, the city also commenced construction on the new administrative hub on a 46.7-hectare plot of land in Thủ Thiêm. The ambitious project, expected to cost nearly VND30 trillion (US$1.12 billion), is designed for administrative, cultural, and civic functions for the city.

The design of the administrative center.

Components of the new hub include a 30-story administrative center, a 2,000-seat multi-purpose amphitheatre and convention center, and a central park and central square.

Ho Chi Minh City is accelerating efforts to form the Thu Thiem urban area as its future financial and administrative hub, with the launch of a VND29.6 trillion (US$1.12 billion) central square and administrative complex, one of four major projects expected to shape the long-planned new urban center on the city’s eastern bank.

Have a look at some renderings showcasing the new administrative hub below:

The central park next to the administrative center.

The performance arts and conference center.

A corner of the park.

The central plaza.

Images via VnExpress.

“Like adding new branches to the same tree,” Mary Malifarges, the Pedagogical Advisor at La Petite Ecole Ho Chi Minh City, describes the opening of a new campus at 22/1 Lê Văn Miến Street, An Khánh Ward (formerly Thảo Điền) and the introduction of two new pedagogical offerings.

For nearly 10 years, La Petite Ecole has offered a truly bilingual education (French-English) for children ages 1 - 11 that adheres to a curriculum established by France’s Ministry of Education and emphasizes critical thinking and a self-motivated search for the reasons behind answers. The school believes that children learn best when they are engaged, confident, and active participants in their own learning, as is best achieved in rich, caring, and stimulating environments, and the expansion is a natural step in the school’s development. 

One new campus, two new pathways

“Ultimately, this new campus is not just about expansion — it is about refining and enriching our educational model to better meet the evolving expectations of families, while staying true to what defines La Petite Ecole,” Mary notes. Therefore, the new campus, also in Thảo Điền, will offer a new, fully trilingual (French-English-Vietnamese) program for Early Years (students ages 3 - 6) that embodies the school’s belief that languages are not subjects to study, but tools for thinking, learning, and interacting. Meanwhile, a new nursery option (students from 12 months) will be conducted in English, as opposed to the currently available French.

Both new programs embody the belief that true immersion via instruction and activities led by native speakers of a language establishes the neural pathways that promote lifelong flexibility for not just learning languages, but learning in general, as well as empathy, confidence, and the ability to navigate a complex world. Science has overwhelmingly proven that the youngest learners are particularly adept at grasping new languages, and in doing so, improve cognitive flexibility, adaptability, and openness to others. Or, as Mary sums it up: “learning multiple languages from an early age is not about learning more… it is about learning better.”

Flexible models to meet families’ unique needs

La Petite Ecole’s new trilingual model is particularly appealing for Vietnamese and mixed-heritage families because it prepares students for international standards while valuing local language and cultural identity. Meanwhile, La Petite Ecole’s nursery option appeals to families who wish to prioritize English from the earliest years before transitioning to multilingual education because it may not be spoken at home. This option maintains exposure to French language and culture, and preserves the same educational quality and structure that is observed throughout the school. 

The essential linguistic, cognitive, social, and motor foundations that both programs lay allow students to enjoy a particularly smooth transition into later years at the school and beyond. Starting with a strong command of multiple languages means children “are not simply getting ahead — they are developing lasting ease, confidence, and the ability to learn in multiple languages … it means giving them the tools to think, learn, and thrive in multiple languages, and therefore in multiple worlds,” Mary notes.

A comfortable cocoon for learning

La Petite Ecole’s new campus is a calm, green, and protected setting, “designed to create a reassuring ‘cocoon’ for young children,” Mary says. It balances nature and accessibility, so students can explore, move, create, and focus. Essential to children’s learning here is physical and emotional well-being, which is understood as a combination of security, self-confidence, quality relationships, and motor development. To nurture these conditions, each school day includes physical activities, sensory activities, and emotional exploration via routines, storytelling, and guided discussions. Most importantly, the committed team of teachers and staff gives personalized attention to each child, which establishes a climate of trust where each child feels safe to express themselves and take initiative. “A child who feels calm, heard, and engaged is a child who is ready to learn,” Mary says. 

La Petite Ecole places great importance on hands-on experiences that allow children to understand, explore, and create through meaningful, real-life situations, and the new campus includes specific elements that allow it to holistically introduce a variety of subject areas, including STEM, eco-citizenship, and creativity. The pedagogical kitchen, for example, allows children to learn through concrete and engaging activities: handling, measuring, tasting, and collaborating so they strengthen language, mathematics, and autonomy skills while recognizing the joys of cooperation. Meanwhile, the sensory room offers a soothing and immersive environment where light, textures, and sounds are specifically designed to stimulate the senses, support emotional regulation, and encourage gentle exploration. And by observing growing plants in the garden, students develop curiosity, logical thinking, and an ability to question the world around them. Even everyday actions such as gardening, sorting, and taking ownership of shared spaces help children build early ecological awareness and respect for living things.

An invitation to understand the school in action

After diligent work, the new campus is ready for its official unveiling. Families interested in learning more about La Petite Ecole’s educational philosophy, including the two new programs, meeting teachers and administrators, and seeing the facilities where their children can learn and play, are invited to an Open House on May 9 from 11:00 am to 01:00 pm. Held at the new campus, it will give parents an opportunity to ask questions and get a feel for the nurturing but rigorous environment that develops students into lifelong, bilingual learners with compassion and confidence. 

 Interested families can register for the May 9 Open day here. 

Between Thủ Thiêm's ambitious new skyscrapers, the planned transformation of Thanh Đa Peninsula and a LEED-standard apartment complex that looks like Marina Bay Sands, Saigon's skyline seems to change every other day.

For this reason, you don't have to delve too far into the past to find a completely different view of Saigon. Just last decade, the city's Tax Center was still a fully functional retail complex and the Quách Thị Trang Roundabout still hosted the central bus interchange.

Perhaps the strongest example of this is the Bitexco Tower. Today, it's Saigon's most iconic modern building, but take a look at the city before 2010 and the lotus-shaped skyscraper is markedly absent from District 1, changing the landscape of downtown Saigon altogether and bringing us back to a moment in the city's history before the current skyscraper boom.

Here is a look at the development of Saigon's tallest building from the very beginning of its construction in 2009 through the first few years of the Bitexco's operation. Photographer Fred Wissink captures in black and white the rapid transformation of downtown Saigon. 

April 2009. Along the canal, facing District 1 from District 4.  

 August 2009. The Khánh Hội Bridge crossing into District 1 from District 4.  

 August 2009. The Khánh Hội Bridge crossing into District 1 from District 4.  

August 2009. The Khánh Hội Bridge crossing into District 1 from District 4.  

View of Bitexco tower from the old pier in District 2's Thủ Thiêm. A ferry crosses the river in the foreground.

February 2010. Construction of the Thủ Thiêm Tunnel entrance in front of Võ Văn Kiệt in District 1.

October 2009. The Bitexco reaches its midpoint. Photos taken from the Khánh Hội Bridge and Tôn Đức Thắng Street.

October 2009. The Bitexco reaches its midpoint. Photos taken from the Khánh Hội Bridge and Tôn Đức Thắng Street.

October 2009. The Bitexco reaches its midpoint. Photos taken from the Khanh Hoi bridge and Ton Duc Thang Street.

October 2009. The Bitexco reaches its midpoint. Photos taken from the Khánh Hội bridge and Tôn Đức Thắng Street.

October 2009. The Bitexco reaches its midpoint. Photos taken from the Khánh Hội Bridge and Tôn Đức Thắng Street.

October 2009. The Bitexco reaches its midpoint. Photos taken from the Khánh Hội Bridge and Tôn Đức Thắng Street.

October 2009. The Bitexco reaches its midpoint. Photos taken from the Khánh Hội Bridge and Tôn Đức Thắng Street.

The Bitexco rises behind the Duxton hotel on Nguyễn Huệ Street on a rainy night.

November 2010. The exterior of the building has been completed but interior renovations continue. From the rooftop of the Eden Mall building, which came down shortly after the photos were taken.

November 2010. The exterior of the building has been completed but interior renovations continue. From the rooftop of the Eden Mall building, which came down shortly after the photos were taken.

November 2010. The Bitexco looms like an alien structure in a city too small to contain it.

November 2010. The Bitexco looms like an alien structure in a city too small to contain it.

November 2010. The Bitexco looms like an alien structure in a city too small to contain it.

April 2011. The Bitexco set against the 1930s Grand Hotel on Đồng Khởi in the foreground.

April 2011. The Saigon Zoo and the city draped in mist with Bitexco in the background, partially blocked by the Times Square building.

April 2011. The Bitexco set beside the river. Looking from Bình Thạnh District across the zoo.

October 2011. A completed but still mostly unfilled Bitexco is quickly surrounded by other Saigon skyscrapers.

October 2011. A completed but still mostly unfilled Bitexco is quickly surrounded by other Saigon skyscrapers.

April 2012. The Bitexco stands at the end of the newly opened highway and Thủ Thiêm Tunnel.

Photos by Frederik Wissink. To view more of his work, visit Fred Wissink Photography.

This article was originally published in 2015.

In August 2025, Malaysian campaigner Wong Pui Yi stood outside the UN headquarters in Geneva and made an appeal to Global North nations: “Stop treating the Global South as the rubbish bin for plastic waste you cannot handle.”

During that meeting, representatives from 184 countries failed to reach an agreement on a treaty to end plastic pollution. But the need for one has not gone away, particularly for Southeast Asian nations.

The region became the top destination for plastic waste imports following a solid waste import ban by China in 2017. Imports remain at a higher level in some of the region’s countries, according to data from UN Trade and Development. Data from the OECD, a group of mostly high-income countries, found that Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam remained the top non-OECD export destinations for waste from OECD countries in 2023.

Plastic waste washed up on a beach in Sarawak, Malaysia. The country and some of its regional neighbors have implemented bans on plastic waste imports, but experts fear this will lead to a reshuffling of waste to countries with weaker restrictions, perpetuating the cycle of “waste colonialism.” Photo via RDW Environmental/Alamy.

Some Southeast Asian countries have implemented bans on plastic waste imports. But experts fear this will only lead to a reshuffling of waste to other countries with weaker restrictions, perpetuating the cycle of what critics call “waste colonialism.”

This term, first recorded in 1989, suggests that the trade enables the high-consumption lifestyles of the Global North, with countries in the Global South left to deal with the consequences.

Exporting health and environmental harms

The global waste trade emerged in the 1980s as a means for countries with high recycling costs to send waste to countries where recycling could be done at lower cost. In countries like China, imported waste also filled a gap of raw materials to produce plastics, metals and papers.

Looser environmental regulations in importing countries made the plastics trade commercially viable. “They export the pollution to Southeast Asian countries, since we have less regulation and less control because of our historical context,” explains Punyathorn Jeungsmarn, a plastics campaigner and researcher at the Environmental Justice Foundation.

In theory, the trade is meant to create jobs while developing new revenue streams and recycling infrastructure. In practice, however, it has overwhelmed waste management systems in many importing countries.

Thitikorn Boontongmai is a program manager and researcher at Ecological Alert and Recovery Thailand (EARTH). The NGO inspected several “illegal recycling factories” in eastern Thailand and observed waste simply dumped in landfills rather than processed.

With heavy rainfall, much of this plastic ends up in the oceans by way of the region’s long rivers and coastlines: six of the ten highest plastic polluting countries are in Southeast Asia.

In Thailand, the availability of cheap imported plastics has led to lower demand for recyclables. This lowers prices for the waste pickers who collect and trade these materials, Punyathorn explains. He notes that pickers have threatened to stop collecting waste unless the government bans the import of plastics. “If they stop collecting, then the waste in the ground and on the streets is not collected, and you have a situation where the entire domestic supply chain is disrupted.”

An informal waste collector waits to be paid for a delivery of recyclable materials outside a recycling center in Bangkok. The compressed plastic bottles were collected by workers like him, and will be sold on in bulk to make new bottles. Photo by Luke Duggleby/Dialogue Earth.

The plastics trade has also affected human health. An investigation by Greenpeace Malaysia around a dumpsite in Pulau Indah found hazardous chemicals and heavy metals such as cadmium and lead. The report noted that these contaminants may cause health issues including cardiovascular, respiratory and cognitive diseases. Between 2018 and 2019, when plastic burning spiked in Sungai Petani, Kedah, community advocates reported a 30% increase in cases of respiratory diseases.

Southeast Asia pushes back

In response to their environmental impacts, several Southeast Asian countries have rolled out restrictions and bans on waste imports. In January 2025, the Thai and Indonesian governments announced the immediate halting of plastic scrap imports.

Fearing the arrival of waste diverted from those countries, Malaysia restricted the inflow of plastic waste. In July 2025, it banned shipments from countries not party to the Basel Convention on the waste trade. A further ban in February 2026 forbade the import of e-waste, introduced shortly after a six-month blanket moratorium on all types of waste import was proposed.

Sedat Gündoğdu, a marine biologist and member of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, says complete bans work because “shipping companies will avoid carrying any kind of waste to your country. This is what China did”. But some activists and experts note that bans have not always stopped imports. Thitikorn says EARTH had seen cases of imported plastic waste being declared as something else in Thailand. Campaigners in Indonesia have also documented paper scrap imports being contaminated with plastic, with up to 30% of the import being plastic. These have been sold to brokers or burned as fuel.

“At the end of the day, when it comes to a local level,” Punyathorn says, authorities with power to regulate or permit certain things coming in “may have vested interests that allow them to just… circumvent these [bans]”.

Lukas Fort, who researches Indonesia’s environmental governance at the University of Copenhagen, tells Dialogue Earth that the recycling industry’s dependence on imported plastics “raises the possibility that imports may continue in some form if enforcement is uneven.” He says this is especially so due to the often competing interests of government bodies, for instance the environment ministry and the trade or industry ministry.

Even if bans are effectively implemented, campaigners raised concerns that they would just change where plastic waste ends up. “Every year it’s a new destination,” says Kaustubh Thapa, a post-doctorate researcher at Radboud University’s Faculty of Environmental Science. “Waste traders always will find [new] destinations to exploit.”

An example of this can be seen in 2023, as plastic waste import restrictions were tightening in countries like Thailand. An investigation into customs data during this period revealed that much misreported waste from Europe and North America had been illegally dumped in war-torn Myanmar, transiting through Thailand.

Though Punyathorn thinks the effectiveness of restrictions are limited, he is hopeful about other measures being considered. In Thailand, these include the Sustainable Packaging Act, in which producers will be responsible for post-consumption management of waste, such as recovery and recycling. This act, along with proposed policies on circular economy and a pollution register, show that there is a “growing momentum towards trying to use domestic waste rather than imports,” he notes.

The global plastics treaty

As Southeast Asia deals with the continued influx of imported plastic waste, a global plastics treaty still hangs in the balance. The most recent round of negotiations in Geneva in August 2025 ended with a weakened draft text. Chief among the challenges faced were efforts by oil-producing states to block measures to curb plastic production and regulate chemical additives to plastic.

Even nations pushing for an ambitious treaty have avoided confronting the waste trade directly, Gündoğdu notes, referring to member states of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution (HAC). “How can a high-ambition group not be ‘high-ambitious’ about strict control of plastic waste trade to [countries in] Africa and other countries?” he says, noting that European HAC members are some of the largest plastic exporters to developing countries. Similarly, some Southeast Asian states have had to balance their petrochemical industry ambitions with resolving the negative impacts of imported waste.

“The last negotiation left off on a very uncertain note,” says Punyathorn, highlighting the resignation of former treaty chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso after nations were unable to agree on two drafts he proposed. Since we spoke to Punyathorn, a new chair was elected, revitalizing hopes of momentum towards an effective treaty.

An art installation of a tap spewing plastic sourced from a slum in Nairobi, displayed at the UN Environment Assembly 5.2 that took place in the city in 2022. The most recent round of negotiations in Geneva in August 2025 ended with a weakened draft text. Photo by Ahmed Nayim Yussuf / UNEP, CC BY-NC-SA.

Existing international legislation could provide a guideline for what an effective plastics treaty could look like. In 2019, the Basel Convention was amended to strengthen control of the trans-boundary movement of plastic waste, notably requiring prior informed consent before such waste crosses borders.

However, being voluntary, the convention is insufficient, says Gündoğdu. A treaty should address the waste trade in a manner aligned with the convention, while consolidating the existing codes for hazardous, non-hazardous and plastics under a single definition of plastic waste to make it more difficult to exploit loopholes, he notes.

One of the key dividing lines in the negotiations — for which next official rounds are anticipated at end-2026 or early 2027 — is whether the treaty will include a cap on plastic production, which is where the harms of the waste trade begin, Punyathorn says.

He explains that countries with more natural gas and oil than needed for energy production will use it to produce plastics, particularly disposable single-use items such as bags, spoons and straws, in order to flush out a high supply as quickly as possible. Once disposed of, these low-quality plastics are harder to collect, recycle and manage, and so are often exported to poorer countries.

He says the best way to stop this is to turn off the fossil fuel tap causing this overflow, “make plastics more expensive, and then you would only have necessary products that can be properly managed throughout the value chain.”

Top image: An officer from Malaysia’s environment ministry examines a container of non-recyclable plastic which was held by authorities at a port in Klang. The country restricted the inflow of plastic waste in July 2025, months after Thailand and Indonesia announced the halting of plastic scrap imports. Photo by Vincent Thian / Associated Press / Alamy.

This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth and was republished with permission. Visit the Dialogue Earth website for more.

During February and March, a group of volunteers from Saigon spent five days cycling up the coast, starting in Thảo Điền and ending up in the mountainous district of Trà Bông, nestled deep in Quảng Ngãi Province.

The group covered more than 820 kilometres of coastal winds, took on steep central highland climbs, and long stretches of highway before arriving in Trà Bông physically tired and emotionally spent.

Stunning views appeared often during the ride.

Not stopping there, their captain and founder of the organization Anh Chi Em, Colin Dixon, continued on to complete a second leg of over 1,700km. This time, he went from Hanoi back down to Saigon with Trâm, who was representing and raising funds for Blue Dragon. Both Colin and Trâm arrived safely back after two weeks of arduous peddling. All in all, over US$7,000 was raised for the work of Anh Chi Em and Blue Dragon.

Trà Bông District spans roughly 760 km² of forested terrain and is home to around 50,000 people, many of whom belong to ethnic minority groups. Anh Chi Em has been operating there for the past six years to help those cut off from the grid. At first, Colin’s army of volunteers brought rice and cooking oil. Now, the organization has its sights set on funding permanent homes for dozens of families living in precarious conditions, faced with seasonal floods.

The region's harsh and unpredictable weather is made worse by housing conditions.

The communities in Trà Bông don’t just face yearly flooding. Their day-to-day struggles are many. In their neighborhoods, roads are narrow and sinuous. Rivers thread through fertile valleys, and coffee and cinnamon plantations patch the hillsides, reflecting the region’s long history of smallholder agriculture.

However, in many ways, it is the limitations of that geography that define life there. Commerce moves slowly. Healthcare is sparsely distributed. School attendance is inconsistent, and access to schooling can be limited, with a number of secondary students dropping out.

Homes and roads in the area are in significant need of development.

Rice is the staple food, and clean potable water is sourced from streams. Most dwellings are makeshift: corrugated iron roofs, rough-hewn timber walls, patched together with whatever material could be found. Extended schooling pathways are not equally accessible for some youth, and early marriage is still observed in certain cases.

Anh Chi Em’s new Bricks for New Houses campaign has a simple yet profound logic: housing provides more than shelter. It delivers stability against storms, health risks, and the tenuousness of daily subsistence. A solid home is a foundation for education, safety, and the possibility of pursuing opportunities beyond mere survival.

Each home built through the project will cost around US$6,500 — a sum that would barely cover construction costs in an urban center, but that, in Trà Bông, can transform lives. So far, several houses have been commissioned, and funds from our cycling challenge have already contributed to the cost of building more.

Numerous national and provincial strategies aimed at inclusive development, climate resilience, and poverty reduction have been articulated, particularly in highland and ethnic minority regions. Programs like the National Target Programme on Sustainable Poverty Reduction and long-term planning for rural infrastructure and climate adaptation are intended to narrow development gaps.

Local creativity and resourcefulness can only go so far.

At the provincial level, Quảng Ngãi has emphasized agro-forestry value chains and community-based forest protection as pathways to economic resilience. Policy implementation outcomes vary, however, across locations. Remote districts like Trà Bông are often constrained by logistical challenges, limited public investment flows, and the sheer inertia of geography. In such contexts, localized initiatives such as community organizations, volunteer-led campaigns, and partnerships with grassroots actors still play a critical role in bridging gaps.

This cycling challenge was powered by many things: adventure, personal commitment, curiosity, and a desire to raise funds. But what it uncovered was more essential because it offered a visceral reminder that development is ultimately about relationships, not projects. Opportunity does not arrive as a headline or statistic. It arrives in the form of a solid roof over a family’s heads, a child’s ability to stay in school, and roads that stay open in the rainy season. Systems must be established that enable people to build resilience, not just cope with hardship.

Future generations stand to benefit most significantly from opportunities that result from concerted care and attention.

As Colin always reminds the group: "People here don’t need charity; they need opportunity.” And that distinction matters. A safe home is not everything, but it is the beginning of everything.

Photos courtesy of Tim Bishop.

If you’d like to find out more about Anh Chi Em’s work and donate to their Bricks for New Houses initiative, you can find more information here: bricks.anhchiemvn.org

Imagine being born one color, and growing up into a very differently hued adult.

Such is the life of the Cát Bà langur (Trachypithecus poliocephalus), or voọc Cát Bà, which lives on the island of the same name off of Hải Phòng. The Cát Bà langur is one of the rarest primate species in the world, and they can only be found on their home island. 

The Cát Bà langur is one of the rarest primate species in the world, and they can only be found on their home island.

According to the Cát Bà Langur Conservation Project, which works to protect all biodiversity on the karst-strewn island, there are currently as few as 76 individuals — down from nearly 3,000 in the 1960s, a population that has been decimated by poaching and habitat loss in the decades since. The conservation project closely monitors the voọc, who live deep in the national park, and any new births are announced on Facebook. 

A newly born voọc Cát Bà is a striking sight; their fur a bright, uniform orange that stands out from the grey limestone and green foliage of their environment like an unexpected ray of sunshine on an overcast day. As the young langurs grow, their coat turns black, with the exception of their cheeks and neck, as well as the crown of their head, which turns into a golden-white tuft. I sometimes wonder how this fairly dramatic transformation impacts the langurs: do they recognize their color change? Do they wish they had stayed orange? 

At this stage, I can’t actually remember when I first learned of the Cát Bà langur, but over the last few years they’ve become quite possibly my favorite of Vietnam’s many wonderful and often critically endangered endemic animal species. In early 2019, I visited the island and spent time with the conservation project, though I didn’t actually see any langurs — which didn’t come as a surprise.

The closest I’ve come to seeing an individual is the two rather frightening taxidermy specimens at the run-down, minimally informative museum at Cát Bà’s national park. I do have a voọc sticker on my desk, so a youthful primate is always looking at me, but at times I feel odd liking an animal that I’ve never actually laid eyes on so much.

Video by Fauna & Flora International

But given their appearance, and the fact that they are found in only one spot, why doesn’t the voọc Cát Bà have a more prominent image in Vietnam? China, for example, has its pandas, a headline species that has received immense conservation investment even though they prefer not to mate and have a wildly inefficient diet. 

Now, voọc aren’t quite as goofy as a panda: if it snowed in their enclosure at a zoo, they wouldn’t slide down it for footage tailor-made to go viral. Unfortunately, they also don’t fall under the “charismatic megafauna” label — in fact Vietnam has almost no megafauna left — so they don’t act as an umbrella for large-scale conservation efforts that benefit the entire ecosystem, the conservation project’s amazing work aside.

I’m taking this opportunity — with no actual power — to nominate voọc Cát Bà as Vietnam’s national animal, which is currently the water buffalo, an ungulate that is neither endemic or endangered. 

To be sure, we don’t need more tourists flocking to Cát Bà to see langurs, as well over two million people already visit every year, and Vietnam’s finest purveyor of cable cars, Sun Group, opened their latest sky-car rope-a-dope contraption, linking the island to a major highway, last summer.

As a symbol, however, I think the langur would be outstanding. Their unique appearance would surprise many who are unaware of their existence, though the critically endangered red-shanked douc langur of Đà Nẵng (voọc Chà vá chân đỏ) also competes here. This would simultaneously highlight a rare positive conservation story for the country, as the Cát Bà langur population is slowly growing after bottoming out in the 2000s with only about 40 individuals remaining at the time.

Overall, this would be an aspirational move: the chances of you seeing a voọc in the wild are infinitesimal, but perhaps that’s the way it should be. Vietnam could use their furry visage to raise funding for conservation work, and what child wouldn’t a bright orange baby langur stuffed toy, but let’s leave them at peace in the rocky forests of majestic Cát Bà.

Considering the fact that humans almost wiped them out, it’s the least we could do.

The chances of you seeing a voọc in the wild are infinitesimal, but perhaps that’s the way it should be.

Photos courtesy of the Cat Ba Langur Conservation Project.

This article was originally published in 2021.

Having gotten a wee lumpy around the middle, In 2020, I decided to start hitting the gym, but I needed a bit of extra motivation to make it there regularly. Luckily, I had a friend, Tu Anh (who also goes by Ana), who was reinventing herself. She became my first personal trainer, and I became her first client. More than half a decade later, she has gone from a fitness hobbyist to a professional, a journey that saw her completely reroute her career path and remake her own body in the process.

By the time she entered her late 20s, Tu Anh had long been aware of challenges caused by her weight. Chronic knee pain and low energy became more common, but she ignored her body’s warnings and those of her doctor as well. For her, food was a source of comfort and way to relax. “I just loved eating since I was a kid and exploring different types of food that were often carb- and fat-heavy,” she told Saigoneer.

Trying new restaurants became a favorite activity and an escape from the stresses of work. Despite sputtering attempts to improve her health, like hiring a personal trainer, consistency proved elusive.

She was so focused on money and developing her career that she never thought about the long term. Tu Anh knew that dramatic lifestyle changes would need to start with her job as working long hours at an agency was both stressful and time-consuming. In 2020, the universe provided the jumpstart she needed to make serious changes.

For Tu Anh, like many others, the Covid-19 pandemic changed the trajectory of her life, and fear proved to be the best motivator. “I had a bad immune system and I easily got sick for long periods of time. I was afraid it would hit me hard. I was afraid to die and didn’t want to die early.” That mindset was shared by one of her inspirations a few notches above her in her family tree. She regularly visited her grandfather, who always talked about eating healthy and doing sports. She remembered his common refrain: “I want to live for 100 years.” He lived to be 102, beating his own ambitious benchmark.

It started with walks, 3–5km per day. “That sounds easy, but Saigon isn’t really a city for walking.” But she stuck with it and, for the first time in her life, was able to find consistency, even adding walks to her work calendar. This also proved to her that through consistency, change was possible, and she dropped 20KG.'

Throughout our conversation, consistency was a central theme of both struggle and success.

It was around this time that she felt fulfilled in a way she never had before, and realized exercise and fitness were more than just a routine. When she got out of bed each morning, she felt good rather than lethargic. It was a feeling of liberation, one she wanted to share with other people.

With her newfound confidence, Tu Anh put a plan in motion. She saved money from her job in the first few years of the pandemic. And she began meeting friends to try her hand at personal training, not charging anything as she learned her craft and figured out how to motivate people.

After about a year, she decided it was time to quit her job and pursue her fitness career professionally. She had plenty of self-doubt, echoed by her family, who found it difficult to accept her leaving a well-paying job. But Tu Anh knew that if she were to find success and long-term health, she’d have to go all-in. She gave herself one year and never looked back.

She slowly built her client base, offering both in-person and online sessions for individuals and groups. She also broadened her knowledge by studying nutrition. Another huge driving force was the community. She sought out like-minded people in Saigon, some who had long been into fitness and others who were just starting their journey, and started a Facebook page, Saigon Healthy Lifestyle. Community has become a central source of inspiration and motivation for Tu Anh.

Community wasn’t a way for her to find clients, however, as Tu Anh instead needed it for consistent motivation. “Sometimes I’m still lazy, but activities with others force me to get out of the house.” Meeting so many different people also made her understand just how different everyone is, from what motivates them to their genetic and physical challenges. Tu Anh says that beyond the personal fulfillment the community has given her, it has made her better at her job by helping her better understand how to tailor workout and dietary plans for her diverse roster of clients.

Intimate community involvement has also impacted her philosophy on how to help clients achieve the best results. She’d seen many people fail by trying to change too much at once, creating nearly impossible expectations that would ultimately collapse. After training over 100 clients, Tu Anh found that beyond gradual changes, the best way to create lasting lifestyle and habit shifts was to identify healthy activities that people either enjoy or that give them a sense of accomplishment, and then build from there, step by step.

She pointed to her proudest accomplishment: working with a client who was over 20kg overweight at 21 years old. Her parents had tried a number of times to help her lose weight, to no avail. After a few sessions, they discovered that weight training was her passion. After a three-month course, her young client lost the rest of the aimed for weight on her own. In a poetic twist of fate, that client has since become a personal trainer herself, and sometimes helps Tu Anh train clients when she’s overbooked.

Five years into her career as a personal trainer, Tu Anh continues to evolve her business. She plans to optimize her time by keeping a few in-person clients, while extending the reach of her message through online group classes focused on exercise and nutrition. Though my tummy is not yet taut, I’ve slowly found consistency in my workout and dietary habits and point to my time with Tu Anh as the starting point for my own healthier lifestyle.

If you’re interested in joining Tu Anh’s community or learning more about her services, you can visit her website.

In 2021, the first Hoa title came out just in time to soothe our pandemic anxiety. Five years later, will Hoa 2 be up for the job in this new era of fuel crisis and global instability?

Hoa is a platform game by independent Vietnamese studio Skrollcat, first released in 2021, featuring a series of puzzles. Players control a tiny fairy that wakes up in the woods and has to navigate the wilderness to find her way home, while befriending other forest creatures and meeting old friends.

The game was well-received by fans, who praised its lushly illustrated art and tranquil soundtrack. It even won Best Art Direction, Best Music/Sound Design, and People’s Voice Best Art Direction at the 2022 Webby Awards.

Earlier this month, Skrollcat announced that they have been hard at work on Hoa’s second iteration, to be available to play at an unspecified date in 2026 on Windows, macOS, Nintendo Switch, XBox Series X/S, PS4, and PS5.

According to the team, Hoa 2 will take the whimsical world of Hoa to a 3D environment, alongside more creatures to solve puzzles with and a range of adorable costumes to collect.

The mellow soundtrack, one of the stand-out parts of the first game, is also returning with new tracks: “Immerse, explore, relax, unwind, all while accompanied by new original soundtracks from the award-winning team behind Hoa 1, recorded live.”

Have a peek at Hoa 2 via the images below:

Photos courtesy of Skrollcat Studio. 

Since the mid-20^th century, Vietnamese architecture has started to be made from industrial materials such as concrete, steel, glass, etc. This resulted in Vietnamese modernism, a branch of global modernism.

Vietnamese embraced the new architectural aesthetics of the epoch while retaining a taste for traditional architecture. One of the most important, and also the least observable, characteristics is the use of shadow.

Since the 1950s, reinforced concrete has been commonly used in institutional buildings, factories, shophouses, villas, and rural houses in southern Vietnam thanks to its versatility, convenience, and low cost. 

In addition to creating a more permanent shelter, concrete offered creative homeowners a new material to compose diverse and abstract facades. Simple architectural elements like planters, brise-soleils, louvers, and pergolas were used to make a new “taste” that extends beyond their function. Saigon is a reservoir of this phenomenon.

Articulation of shadow started primarily to mitigate direct sunlight in living spaces. Thanks to abundant sun rays and frequent downpours, exterior corridors or balconies are omnipresent and indispensable elements in all shophouses, rural houses, or villas. Putting suspended structures over a house to provide shade and block rainfall has created regions of shadow over facades. For example, bẩy — the final overhung beam that supports a roof's extension — in traditional Vietnamese houses, temples and pagodas are hung on columns to extend the roof further, increasing shade in interior spaces.

In vernacular modernist architecture, bẩy has resulted in contrasting extrusions and intrusions on a building's facade. In fact, mid-century homeowners may have considered a facade to be canvas to create sculptural compositions by including various architectural elements, such as louvers, rails and planters.

Besides serving a structural function, these elements have an aesthetic role. Becoming mindful of the stylistic effect of shadow-casting elements like pergolas that provide shade to outdoor walkways, is a special phenomenon emblematic of Vietnamese architectural culture. It reveals the country's ability to conduct architectural experimentation and evolve its style. 

The structural combination of beams, posts, louvers, and planters of the 61-63 Võ Văn Kiệt building is a great example of structural design. All of these elements lie over the suspended part of the building to shade the space beneath. But the way light and shade interacts above the elements  are also carefully designed as well. The dense row of louvers at the edge, the blander surface of the balcony spreading over the front, and the delicate slices at the beams' ends and the distance between them were de-conceptualized in such a way that their structural framework becomes a sculpture. Viewers cannot separate function from art.

A special talent of Vietnamese builders regarding reinforced concrete is the ability to seemingly hide gravity. For example, the relationship between a planter and the edge beam on which it's anchored are always hidden, so the plants seem to float in the air beyond the facade. This is achieved by controlling or adjusting shades.

Repeating this design over and over resulted in it becoming a trademark of Vietnamese architecture. In almost all homes and shophouses, every floor has at least one planter suspended in front. This means a floating-over-shade effect appears in almost all Vietnamese modernist houses, not to mention other experiments by architects in public buildings such as floating roofs.

 Even though the louver, planter, brise-soleil and pergola in modernist architecture may no longer bear imagery of sacred animals, folktales, or spiritual stories as in traditional architecture, its the equilibrium of shade persists. The shade it provides is constant in the consciousness of new compositions.

Common Vietnamese modernist architecture separated itself from global modernism thanks to its instinctual design choices that reveal the carefree identity of Vietnamese architecture.

From the overall to the minute, shade has been at the center of Vietnamese modernist architecture. All decisions during the design process seem to revolve around it. Shade has become a “material” — intangible but adjustable — developed and reproduced. Modernist architecture, therefore, became a new form of craft that preserved and developed a particular taste and aesthetics unique to Vietnamese.

Mostly created by homeowners or contractors spontaneously without any participation from architects, modernist dwellings in the mid-twentieth century have captured Vietnam's personality that shares lifeblood with art, cuisine, and culture. It not only preserves aesthetics but also lifestyles formed in accordance with local environments. The need to respond to sun, rain, and heat has helped balance the role of artistic interpretation and result in a stylistic consistency. Analyzing the result of this craftsmanship helps us investigate better the architectural authenticity of Vietnamese modern history.

This article was originally published in 2021.

With hues of orange and black on its wings and a furry, fluffy face, the painted woolly bat is a stunner. But its beauty has become a deadly liability. People want to hang the bats — dead and stuffed — on their walls, display them as collectibles and even set them in jewelry.

In recent years, taxidermied and framed bats have become popular as Halloween décor and, oddly, as Christmas tree decorations, sold to customers in the US, as well as Europe and Canada. This macabre trade first came to light in 2015 when scientists found dead bats, including painted woolly bats, for sale in Vietnam’s largest metropolis, Hồ Chí Minh City. Then, nearly a decade later, scientists realized that it wasn’t just a few stores selling bats: There’s also a huge online market.

In 2024, researchers from the Bat Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, documented nearly 800 bats for sale on Amazon.com, eBay and Etsy over a three-month period. Their “Dying for décor” study, published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research, suggests that the trade is global. A quarter of the bats sold online were from a single species: painted woolly bats, or dơi mũi nhẵn đốm vàng in Vietnamese (Kerivoula picta).

After a successful awareness campaign by conservation organizations, eBay and Etsy banned the sale of bat products on their sites in 2025.

Painted woolly bats are nocturnal and sparsely distributed in the landscape, roosting in small groups. Image by faridmuzaki via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Now, a new study finds that this ornamental trade continues to thrive in Vietnam. Two surveys conducted in 2024 in HCMC’s tourist markets found more than 50 taxidermied and framed painted woolly bats in souvenir shops, sold alongside other wildlife products.

Painted woolly bats, also known as butterfly bats, “are one of the most beautiful bats there is,” said study author Chris Shepherd, a senior conservation advocate at US-based nonprofit the Center for Biological Diversity. Native to 11 countries in South and Southeast Asia, they’re classified as near threatened, and populations are declining. A 2020 survey found that their numbers had dropped by 25% over the last 15 years, largely because of this trade.

While it’s illegal to hunt them in each of their range countries, commercial cross-border trade isn’t regulated or monitored, as they’re not protected under CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty.

The US is the biggest importer of these colorful bats and other related species, with more than 1,000 dead individuals entering the country yearly. So in 2024, Shepherd and his colleagues petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the painted woolly bat under the Endangered Species Act, which would prohibit its import, export, transport, trade and possession within the US In August 2025, the agency announced it was initiating a review of the species status based on the petition.

A taxidermied and framed painted woolly bat for sale in a shop in HCMC beside insects, documented as part of research quantifying the scope of the trade in bats. Image by Joanna Coleman.

Thriving trade in Vietnam

In mid-2024, one of the study authors visited HCMC markets to gauge the scale of the trade in the city and the prices that ornamental bats commanded. During an eight-day survey, they visited 85 shops in three different districts: 66 sold souvenirs and 19 others offered traditional medicine. They found 41 painted woolly bats in 13 shops at Bến Thành Market in the city center, dried and mounted in black shadowbox frames. Shops at other markets had none on display. The framed bats sold for anywhere between VND250,000 and 890,000 (about US$10–35) apiece.

The researcher returned to the same market a few months later, in November 2024, and found 18 bat ornaments for sale; six were painted woolly bats, including a pup. “They are mainly marketed to tourists, so this likely amounts to international trade,” said the study’s co-author, Joanna Coleman, a biology professor at the City University of New York in the US and a member of the IUCN Bat Specialist Group.

Since painted woolly bats were extremely popular in HCMC markets — representing a third of all bats sold — she said the demand “must be higher for them than for other bats” because of their striking beauty.

The researchers couldn’t definitively identify the other species for sale, but based on the labels attached, they seemed to belong to the genus, Pipistrellus, a widely distributed group of bats found in Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa. These shops also sold butterflies, beetles, scorpions, moths, lizards, spiders and double-winged true bugs — all dried and framed, just like the bats.

When asked about the origins of the bats they sold, vendors told researchers that painted woolly bats mostly came from the wild. One seller said these shops buy their bats from a wholesale dealer, who hires people to harvest, dry and frame them.

The painted woolly bat is in great demand for the ornamental trade, bought both online and offline for decorations. Image by Vetri Selvan via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Finding young bats in these markets was of particular concern. Baby bats cling to their mothers for the first few weeks of their lives and ride along with her when she hunts or forages. Finding young pups for sale indicates that “[h]unters are taking adults and dependent pups,” Coleman said. “When you remove adult females and their young from wild populations, you are even likelier to cause population declines, especially in animals like bats that reproduce very slowly.” Painted woolly bats birth just one pup a year.

Fieldwork revealed the trade’s impact. When one of the researchers visited the Mekong Delta between June and September 2024 — a region where locals said it’s generally easy to see painted woolly bats — they found just one female after an intensive search. This indicates that local populations are nearly extinct, and those for sale in markets either came from a stockpile or from elsewhere.

Bat scientist Dave Waldien called the findings “unfortunate, but not surprising,” since painted woolly bats are the most popular in trade. Waldien, a member of the IUCN Bat Specialist Group who wasn’t involved in the study, emphasized the importance of this research in highlighting that “the level of threat from the ornamental trade of the painted woolly bat is more significant than previously thought, and that robust and immediate attention is needed to eliminate this threat.”

This image documents ornamental wildlife for sale in HCMC, photographed during a recent study. This shop sold both adult bats and pups. Image courtesy of Nguyen et. al (2026).

Better enforcement and trade monitoring needed

Painted woolly bats are solitary and sparsely distributed, and scientists don’t know much about their life cycle, behavior, or even how many of them are in the wild. “Kerivoula picta is especially hard to study,” Coleman said. “That is exactly what makes the trade a likely conservation concern.” Data on their trade are also patchy; this study is the first to document how many are sold in one of their native countries.

Conservationists say governments of the bat’s range countries should step up to enforce their laws against hunting the species. In Vietnam, those laws come with major loopholes: It’s legal to capture the bats during their nonbreeding season and it’s also legal to sell captive-bred bats, with paperwork to prove it. But there are no known captive-breeding facilities for these insectivorous bats anywhere in the world, researchers say. Since pups have also been found in the trade, scientists say illegal capture is common.

The researchers urge the Vietnamese government to add the species to its national list of endangered, precious and rare animals, which would ban hunting year-round and impose stricter fines and prison terms for violators.

Given that the bats are primarily sold to foreign tourists, experts also suggest regulating trade in this species by adding it to Appendix II of CITES. However, the next CITES summit when that might be considered is at least two years away.

In the interim, range countries can add painted wooly bats to CITES Appendix III, to better monitor international trade from within their borders. That would be “a really big first step in helping regulate the trade and helping countries protect the species in the range countries,” said Shepherd from the Center for Biological Diversity. “Without [Appendix III] listing, there’s no mechanism for controlling or regulating international trade.”

But these mammals face additional threats. Logging and conversion of agricultural plantations into human settlements are erasing their homes.

With striking orange and black streaks on their wings, painted woolly bats are one of the most colorful bats in the world. Image by stingraysilver via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Conservation of this species requires collaboration between governments, conservationists and communities, Waldien said. “In addition to national and international legislation, this should include work with local communities to prevent further collection — and the protection and restoration of the species’ habitat.”

Few people realize the services bats provide. Protecting painted woolly bats — and all bat species — benefits human health and helps produce the food we eat. Like all insectivorous bats, they act as nature’s pest control, keeping insect numbers under check, so they don’t devour crops, and also limiting the spread of insect-borne diseases.

Removing this iconic species from the wild, especially for a senseless trinket trade, will hurt the bats and the ecosystem, Shepherd said. “People don’t need to be hanging this bat on the wall or on their Christmas tree or having it on their desk.”

Top photo: With this species highly sought after as decorations, mostly by foreign tourists, their numbers are dwindling. Image by Abu Hamas via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

This article is originally published by Mongabay. Read the Mongabay article here.

The tide is low tonight. The mud flats, enveloped in the mangrove forest’s darkness, are dotted with the sporadic flares of headlamps. On bundles of exposed mangrove roots, shadows cast by black crabs crowd out one another. In my hometown, we call them “ba khía.”

I’ve never once wondered why these little crabs have that name. The words ba khía are so familiar and deeply rooted in me as natural as being; so I’ve never questioned the name or bothered to ask my parents. According to scientific sources, “ba khía” refers to the three grooves (khía) on the carapace of the species.

Photo via Vietnam.vn.

Ba khía, the tiny crab from the delta

When I was little, a telecommunication company once ran a special promotion for users of the Mekong Delta called “Ba khía SIM cards.” Not rice, shrimps, canals, but ba khía; perhaps because those features are prevalent in the delta, but not as exclusive as ba khía. The species, Episesarma mederi, only proliferates in the mangrove forests spanning along the coasts of southern provinces like Kiên Giang, Sóc Trăng, and Cà Mau.

Still, even if you’ve arrived at its hometown, it’s not a guarantee that you will be able to meet it. My grandma used to say that it’s an “ugly crab,” because it’s tiny, purplish black, and often burrows in mud. Ba khía, of course, doesn’t really care enough about what we think of it to hide away. It’s rarely seen because it’s gainfully employed and busy minding its own business, not free to show its face on the water for human spectatorship. During the day, ba khía is hard at work digging and building nests, and only leaves home at night to hunt and socialize.

Like many other crustaceans, ba khía dines on small species like fish and snails, alongside vegan options like mangrove buds, leaves, and detritus. Veteran ba khía hunters can tell with one look at the shell what the most favorite food of a specific ba khía is: those munching on mắm tree leaves will spot a shiny black shell with crimson tomalley, while a diet of white mắm fruits would produce greyish tomalley. Forest-dwelling ones feasting on mangrove leaves tend to be larger, with yellow tomalley and an attractive burgundy shell.

Thanks to its “organic diet,” ba khía flesh is tight, sweet, and filled with the flavors of the southern jungles, especially those caught from Rạch Gốc, Cà Mau Province. The southernmost locality in Vietnam is blessed with seemingly endless mangrove forests, the fertile breeding ground for ba khía. Living where the Mekong River meets the sea, ba khía that hails from this land luxuriate in alluvium-rich water, becoming the country’s best ba khía that’s well-known everywhere.

How to hunt the mangrove forest's runner

Ba khía is small and swift, quick to escape and hide in the mangrove’s nooks and crannies, so it poses a great challenge to anyone not well-familiarized with its antics. Older generations in the delta have observed their behaviors and habitats to come up with the best time to catch them: the 10th month on the lunar calendar. It is a time when crowds of black ba khía leave their burrows and congregate on mangrove roots to find mates — a time when they let their guard down to party like it’s 1999. Ba khía hunters won’t miss a prime opportunity to get access to a mother lode of crabs, so every year, during the low tides of the 10th month, the mangrove forests welcome groups of hunters packing their tools and baskets to catch ba khía.

Before becoming a delta delicacy today, ba khía was once deemed a poor man’s food, so catching it, too, was not a respected trade, even though it is quite literally a back-breaking job, involving resting and sleeping in the wilderness amongst mosquitoes, leeches, snakes, and countless other creepy-crawlies. It is often said that only the most courageous or the most desperate join this line of work.

Photo via Người Lao Động.

Today’s tech advancements have somewhat lessened the labor of ba khía hunts, but to reach these crabs, one would still need to hang around in the woods at night with a headlamp to examine every root bundle. A quick reaction time is a must, because they are sneaky and would scuttle off inside the mud.

Making mắm ba khía

Since the early days of border expansion, our ancestors have used ba khía as a source of nutrition reserve for a rainy day. To increase its shelf life, they salted freshly caught crabs to produce mắm ba khía in a process that’s just as rigorous as their capture.

Traditionally, crab hunters would bring a few jars of saltwater on their trips. They would give the ba khía a quick wash once caught, then immediately drop them into the brine. One second, they were ferociously resisting with their red pincers, but not long after, they would become unresponsive due to the salinity.

Photo via Người đưa tin.

How much salt to use to make the solution is a tried-and-true knowledge only gained after years in the trade. Not enough salt means the mắm can go bad easily, but too much salt will affect the taste of the flesh and structural integrity of the shell. Salting apparati like claypots and glass jars must be thoroughly sterilized and kept in dry places to avoid rainwater. It’s a tough job that had remained largely unacknowledged until 2019, when it was officially recognized by the Vietnamese government as a national intangible heritage. 

Salted ba khía doesn’t take long to become edible, as its flesh is already brackish thanks to its natural habitat. Usually, after about 10 days, if the shells don’t change color, the crabs can be consumed. Freshly caught ba khía might inspire a diverse range of preparation methods, like salt-crusting, stir-frying with garlic, or with a tangy tamarind sauce, but salted ba khía can only be eaten one way. Are delta residents the most loyal eaters, or is this preparation so failsafe that we never thought to invent new ones?

Photo by Huỳnh Anh/TTX Việt Nam.

First, rinse the salted crabs in warm water to wash off excess salt, remove the apron, pluck off the pincers, chop the body in half, and then mix with raw garlic, chili, lime juice, and sugar. My family would make this crab “salad” every meal. My friends’ parents would do the same.

Ba khía is biologically a true crab, but culinarily, not really. Other edible crabs have substantial flesh inside their shell for our enjoyment. Ba khía is very tiny, so you can’t deshell it properly. The only way to enjoy ba khía is biting into the whole crab and sucking off the juice and meager meat inside alongside the sweet-and-sour sauce. The flesh would literally melt in your mouth, because there’s not a lot of it.

Ba khía, the iconic Cà Mau delicacy

Not all Cà Mau inhabitants grow up knowing how to relish ba khía. There were times when I detested the smell of the jars of salted ba khía mom packed for me from our hometown. I was once that person who neglected the plate of ba khía salad in our family meals. Even so, it was very hard to resist the audible sounds my family made when feasting on ba khía. The crispy clinks when my dad shoved rice from the bowl into his mouth. The juicy slurps of the tangy sauce. My grandma carefully poured small spoonfuls of the sauce on her rice and raved about the balance of flavors.

I gave in. I thought that it was worth it to try. The jar of ba khía was the most treasured home delicacy we shared with our closest friends and relatives when they visited. Maybe it’s extremely tasty? For the first time, I welcomed the smell that I once refused. The pungent aroma of seafood resonated with the citrusy notes of lime, the heat of chili, and raw garlic. I reached for a ba khía leg with a fleck of meat on it.

Photo by Huỳnh Anh/TTX Việt Nam.

The entire family watched in triumph as their son was won over by salted ba khía. My dad said that I had then tasted half the value of Cà Mau cuisine. The other half involves slurping up the sauce. It was thick with crab umami, in between the sweet, salty, and spicy notes of the spices. Once again, my resolve was toppled.

During the years living far from home, I rarely eat ba khía. Sometimes, my friends would invite me to try Korean soy-marinated blue crab. The nuttiness of the flesh and the salty soy reminded me a lot of the plate of ba khía salad at home. Of course, it was just a poor substitute. Nothing can replace the salted ba khía in my being, the one that my mom made by hand. She would vigorously shake an entire basin of crab with the spices. The entire kitchen would smell like lime and funky crab.

I would get myself a full bowl of hot rice and sit there waiting for her plate of saucy ba khía. I would leave behind all decorum to passionately suck on the crab legs and crunch through the shells to extract the marinated meat. That and a big spoon of rice — those make up the most satisfying feeling to a child of Cà Mau.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Images via CafeF. 

When people hear that La Petite Ecole Ho Chi Minh is a French school, they assume this means it teaches the French language. While this is true, there is much more to it. Educating students in French and English from Kindergarten through Primary (ages 1–11), the bilingual school adheres to the French National Curriculum established by France’s Ministry of Education. This instills an analytical mindset and a confident, empathetic outlook that transcends any singular language. The value of these skills and traits is reflected in the student population. Half of the students come from families without a single French parent, suggesting that a French education is about far more than merely being able to speak French.

Critical Thinking that Allows Students to Understand Better

“Of course, you need knowledge, but knowledge to do what?” said Bertrand Malifarges, the new Headmaster of La Petite Ecole Ho Chi Minh, when explaining to Saigoneer what constitutes a French education. “You have to be able to think based on this knowledge.”

Bertrand Malifarges, Headmaster of La Petite Ecole.

As a French school adhering to the curriculum established by France’s Ministry of Education, La Petite Ecole follows state-developed frameworks and objectives for conventional subject areas, including mathematics, literacy, sciences, arts, and citizenship. The school’s educational philosophy means that “The French Curriculum does not aim to produce students who know more, but students who understand better,” Bertrand noted.

Critical thinking and a self-motivated search for the reasons behind answers underpins this school’s educational philosophy. Students consider answers and their reasons in the context of history, culture, and art through an open-ended humanist lens, according to Mary Malifarges, La Petite Ecole’s Pedagogical Advisor. Reflection and analysis are stressed alongside the ability to argue one’s viewpoints via written essays, as opposed to tests that simply require memorization.

The Importance of Kindergarten

"In the French education system, kindergarten is a crucial stage,” Mary said when asked how La Petite Ecole differs from the other western education options in Saigon. “It is based on a structured programme of skills to be acquired while also fostering self-confidence and a positive attitude toward mistakes, which are seen as a normal and necessary part of learning,” she continued.

Mary Malifarges, La Petite Ecole’s Pedagogical Advisor.

Bertrand shared an anecdote of his time working to establish a French school in Iraq that underscores the importance of kindergarten in France’s educational approach. The Iraqi Minister of Education was shocked when Bertrand assigned his three most experienced French teachers to the kindergarten. Mary explained that this decision is completely in line with her understanding that the first seven years of a child’s life are “the most important for the development of the child; and before five, it's huge.”

The Power of a Global Community

La Petite Ecole further sets itself apart in the Saigon international education landscape by its inclusion in the Agency for French Education Abroad (AFEA), a network of 600 French institutions across 138 countries. Students can seamlessly transition from and into any of these schools and continue the French curriculum without interruption. This allows families a great degree of flexibility and security; parents who move frequently can be confident there will always be a reputable French school for their children to attend. “Families today are not only choosing a school — they are choosing an educational pathway.”

The AFEA network includes Saigon’s French high school, Lycée français international Marguerite-Duras, which many La Petite Ecole graduates attend. But even if students post-La Petite Ecole transition to schools outside of the French curriculum, they are prepared for success. As Mary explained, the philosophy of La Petite Ecole that stresses creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking, along with soft skills like confidence and determination, will be reflected in programs like the International Baccalaureate.

A Truly Bilingual Education

While adhering to the French curriculum, there is freedom to adapt to the needs of the school and students. At La Petite Ecole, this means a fully bilingual education with half of the classes taught in French and half in English, both by native speakers. While it may seem daunting to learn two or even three languages at once, the science proves students are not only capable but actually learn better when given the opportunity to develop more than one language simultaneously. Doing so establishes the neural pathways that promote lifelong flexibility for not just learning languages, but learning in general, as well as the empathy that comes with being able to enter more conversations and cultures.

To keep pace with the rigorous academic expectations, the lesson materials are not repeated in both languages, but rather alternate while moving forward. To accomplish this, pairs of teachers must work closely to ensure their classrooms coordinate precisely, with all core subjects, including math, science, and art, taught in both French and English. Similarly, La Petite Ecole prides itself on the necessary collaboration amongst teachers and families. This close, committed community ensures that professional monitoring of students can take place as well. Mary stressed that students’ emotional and mental well-being must be ensured alongside high achievement, which is only possible by closely observing each child and responding to their individual needs. Bertrand noted that “Academic success and well-being are not competing priorities — children learn best when both grow together.”

Being able to not just speak but think across languages is likely to prove incredibly useful in the exciting, uncertain decades ahead. Anchored by the French Curriculum and open to anyone, La Petite Ecole could be the perfect environment for students who don’t just know a lot, but understand a lot. Interested families can contact the school to arrange a visit to see the learning in action and decide if it's a good fit for their children.

La Petite Ecole Ho Chi Minh will host an Open Day on Saturday, March 14th. Interested families can register here.

Plans for eventual metro access to the Long Thành International Airport are taking shape.

With Sagion’s new international airport having already received its first flight and regular operations expected to begin in the middle of this year, authorities are moving forward with plans to establish access via urban railway. Notably, this month, the Hồ Chí Minh City People’s Council approved a resolution to extend the currently operational Metro Line 1 to Long Thành International Airport under a public-private partnership.

The need for rail access to the airport is obvious, as current transportation options are limited. Travel via the HCMC–Long Thành expressway, National Highway 1, and National Highway 51 already experiences congestion that will be exacerbated by airport traffic. Conservative estimates place current travel time at 2–3 hours.

Đồng Nai Province will be the executing agency for the recently approved line extension, set to run 41.4 kilometers across three sections. Beginning at the Suối Tiên Station, it will stretch 6.1 kilometers to the Đồng Nai provincial administration center, then 28.2 kilometers to Station SA, which is planned to connect to the Metro Line 2 Bến Thành–Thủ Thiêm section, and then 7.1 kilometers to the airport. Implementation is expected to last from 2026 to 2029. 

The extended line is designed to operate at 110 kilometers per hour in the open and 80 kilometers per hour in tunnels. Funds for the plan, which is estimated at more than VND60.26 trillion (US$2.29 billion), include VND3.41 trillion for site clearance in Đồng Nai and VND915 billion in HCMC.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Thaco announced ambitious plans to have the metro line from Bến Thành to Thủ Thiêm and a connecting railway from Thủ Thiêm to Long Thành Airport operational by 2030. Authorities have yet to decide on who will implement or fund these projects, but Thaco, an urban development and residential real estate company, is preparing for the responsibility, as evidenced by the addition of a Railway Project Investment and Construction division.

Plans for the portion of Metro Line 2 extending from Thủ Thiêm to Long Thành Airport. Image via VNExpress.

Of course, these plans and proposals, including a direct connection to Tân Sơn Nhất, are nothing new, with discussions of them going back at least a decade. Dates for opening operations have similarly been offered and revised over the years, alongside vigorous calls to speed up implementation. In the meantime, a robust expansion of bus lines is in the works, with seven proposed lines connecting to urban hubs alongside various road, bridge and overpass embellishments.

[Top image via HCMC Tourism Magazine]