01 · Guides
Guides
Written so a city page is worth reading before anyone has posted to it. Every piece names its sources and says how far it has been checked.
21 pieces
Answer4 min read
Which Vietnamese accent should my kids learn?
Short answer: whichever one their grandparents speak.
Guide5 min read
Sending money home without losing six percent
The advertised fee is not the cost. The spread is, and almost nobody quotes it.
AnswerVietnam5 min read
First trip back: should I start north or south?
Start where your family left. The rest of the trip lands differently afterwards.
GuideVietnam10 min read
Moving back: the parts nobody warns you about
Not the visa threads. Banking, being read as a foreigner in your own language, and what your family will expect.
Explainer6 min read
What “Việt kiều” actually means
A word that changes temperature depending on who says it and which side of the ocean they are standing on.
GuideHouston7 min read
Where to spend Tết in Houston
The lion dance schedule, the parking situation, and which bakeries take orders in advance.
Explainer9 min read
The boat people, in order
Fifteen years, three million people, and the camps that most communities abroad passed through.
GuideNew Orleans6 min read
Saturday morning in Village de l’Est
The market starts before dawn in a New Orleans East car park and is finished by the time most people are awake.
Answer3 min read
Is the expensive fish sauce worth it?
For dipping, yes. For cooking, you are pouring money into a braise.
GuideSydney6 min read
Cabramatta for the first time
The most Vietnamese suburb outside Vietnam, and how to spend a morning in it without wasting the good hours.
Explainer5 min read
Why “ma” has six meanings
Vietnamese tones are not decoration on the vowel. They are the word.
GuideWestminster9 min read
A morning on Bolsa Avenue
Little Saigon between six and eleven, in the order the street itself wakes up.
Explainer6 min read
Why the north and the south season differently
Sugar, chilli, herbs and history, and why your family’s phở is not the one in the textbook.
GuideLondon6 min read
The Pho Mile, end to end
Kingsland Road has about a dozen Vietnamese restaurants in a row. Here is how to walk it.
GuideFalls Church7 min read
Eden Center, shop by shop
A hundred-plus Vietnamese businesses under one clock tower, and what each corner of it is for.
GuidePrague8 min read
Inside Sapa, Prague’s Vietnamese town
A wholesale market that turned into a neighborhood, with a kindergarten, temples and the best bún chả in Central Europe.
GuideBerlin7 min read
The Dong Xuan Center, explained
Wholesale halls in Lichtenberg that double as the meeting point for two Vietnamese communities that used to live on opposite sides of a wall.
WriteupNew Orleans4 min read
Dong Phuong bakes bánh mì and king cake, and is famous for the wrong one
A New Orleans East bakery that became a Carnival institution without ever stopping being a Vietnamese bakery.
WriteupWestminster4 min read
Phở 79 has not changed the broth in forty years
A James Beard America’s Classic in a Little Saigon strip mall, and the argument for never updating anything.
WriteupHội An3 min read
Bánh Mì Phượng is a sauce with a sandwich around it
Hội An’s old-town bakery, and why the queue is a reasonable use of fifteen minutes.
WriteupHà Nội4 min read
Phở Thìn sears the beef first, and that is the entire trick
A Hà Nội stall on Lò Đúc, copied everywhere and matched almost nowhere.