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.
10 pieces
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.
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.
GuideHouston7 min read
Where to spend Tết in Houston
The lion dance schedule, the parking situation, and which bakeries take orders in advance.
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.
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.
GuideWestminster9 min read
A morning on Bolsa Avenue
Little Saigon between six and eleven, in the order the street itself wakes up.
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.