At a Glance: Sóc Trăng, Vietnam Vibe: Laidback, spiritual, quiet, and deeply Khmer. Best For: Photographers, culture seekers, and foodies. Time Needed: 2 Days / 1 Night. Getting There: Approx. 5 hours from HCMC (Futa Bus). In April 2018, I crossed the border at Móc Bài, leaving Cambodia behind for the noise and neon of…
There is a particular kind of conversation that only happens over dinner, late, when the food is finished and neither person is in a hurry to leave. I was sitting with a friend somewhere in Sóc Trăng, the kind of evening where the ceiling fan is doing its best and the street outside has gone…
What Tet Teaches You About Family When You Don’t Have One Tet is coming. You can feel it building in Sóc Trăng like a tide. The kids in my classes are vibrating with it—counting down the days until they get on the back of their parents’ motorbikes and head to their grandparents’ villages. The streets…
The Tiger on the Door Two years ago, I moved into a house in KDC Sáng Quang, a quiet residential neighborhood about 1.2km from where I teach. It’s a world away from the noise of Trương Công Định street. Here, life moves at the speed of the older couples taking evening walks and young families…
The Landlords of the Sky I remember the first time I saw them. It was 2017, and I was rattling along on a local bus from Sihanoukville, Cambodia, to Trat in Thailand. Staring out the window at the passing countryside, my eyes kept snagging on these strange, brutalist structures rising out of the fields. They…
How Climate, History and Belief Shape What People Eat Vietnam is shaped in many ways like a long bamboo pole, with a basket at either end (north & south). People describe Vietnam in similar terms as well – the cooler climate, historical northern area and warmer southern area are linked together by a thin strip…
The Technicolor Ghost: Finding the Divine Eye in the Middle of Nowhere I had absolutely no idea where I was going. It was April 2018, and I was fresh off the boat (or rather, the plane). I had just been hired by an agency and “dispatched” to a teaching post in Xuân Lộc District, Dong…
It was 2018, and my agent, Phước, had his camera ready. We were in between teaching location changes, and he had taken me out for Bún đậu mắm tôm. If you know Vietnamese cuisine, you know that mắm tôm (fermented shrimp paste) is the ultimate litmus test for foreigners. It’s pungent, purple, and aggressive. Phước…
Is Mũi Né Worth the Hype? Scroll through Instagram, and Mũi Né looks like a mirage. Massive white dunes that could be the Sahara, red canyons that look like Mars, and not a soul in sight. But if you ask travelers in Saigon, you get a different story. You hear about the plastic trash, the…
Why I Skipped the Brompton for a Bike Half the Price I’ve spent the last few weeks in a bit of a research loop. If you’ve ever looked into folding bikes, you know exactly where that road leads: straight to the Brompton. They are beautiful machines—compact, iconic, and holding their value incredibly well. For a…
