#iAMHCMC January 2018 - Arts & Entertainment

BY LOCALS, FOR LOCALS

1/2018

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EDITOR’S NOTE

By Locals, For Locals

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURES 4. Dancing in Circles: “Teh Dar” Behind the Scenes 5. Finding Vietnam’s Cinematic Soul.

8. A Brief History of Indie Cinema: What you should watch 9. Get the Gossip: Know your Celebrities 10. Vietnam Abroad: Acting in Hollywood 12. Vietnam’s Best-Kept Secret: Its Music 16. The Stand-Up Kids 21. Reading Through Vietnam 22. Take a Dip: The Best Pools in Saigon

ART FEATURES 18. Inspired to Create: Expat Artists in Vietnam 20. Painting Outside the Lines: The Story of Le Minh Chau

SOCIETY FEATURE

What would our lives be without entertainment? A bit of fun and escapism adds spice to life, and that’s what we’re honouring in this edition.

From movies to music and comedy, art to literature, we’ve put together a grand overview of the celebrated aesthetics in Vietnam—and how you can partake in them too. And, above all, here’s what we found: Vietnam’s artists are truly starting to find their creative voice, both in this country as well as abroad.

After all, what exactly do you need to foster a strong, creative force in a developing country? Arguably, three things more than anything: an improving economy to fund potential projects, a culture of experts to help train the next generation’s movers and shakers, and a public ready and willing to support these creative endeavours. While Vietnam isn’t perfect in this regard, the country is well on its way. In the next 10 years, chances are all three of these points will be fulfilled in spades.

While the entertainment industry develops, it’s up to you, the esteemed consumer, to pick what you want to see, to hear and to experience. If you think a wall looks bare, try going to one of the local galleries to pick up a Vietnamese-made painting, rather than ordering a poster off Lazada. If you’re in the mood for some live music (OK, maybe not Vinahouse), local bands and DJs are making themselves heard all across this city, in bars and clubs alike.

And if you’re trying to decide between the new Hollywood superhero movie and a recently released Vietnamese film, take a chance on the latter; you’ll probably leave happy.

The creativity in this city is here; now it’s just a matter of developing the infrastructure to support it. So, flip the pages, get inspired and enjoy your next weekend with some local entertainment. Cheers to having fun.

Best,

24. Saigon Expat Groups: Social Balm or Bane?

Keely Burkey

REAL ESTATE FEATURE 26. The Gentrification of District 4

BUSINESS FEATURE 27. Betting on Bitcoin

TRAVEL FEATURE 30. The Solution for Phu Quoc’s Hot Development

RECIPE OF THE MONTH 28. Braised Beef with Kopyor Coconut

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This Month in #iAMHCMC

“It was very overwhelming. It was like 10 bucks.”

“I have had some incredible offers here… like, almost close to the cost of the materials I have in the painting.”

Comedien Trang Hoang Phuc, remembering his first paying comedy gig.

Artist Ignacio de Grado, recalling the tendency to undervalue paintings in Vietnam.

“I can’t win, even though my name is Nguyen.”

“I go back to Saigon every month for a sanity check.”

Actress and model Nguyen Stanton, discussing the difficulty of recognising her American and Vietnamese roots at the same time.

Artist Bridget March, talking about the differences between Hoi An and Saigon.

“You’ve got to weed out as many bad movies as you can, develop new talent, develop better scripts—get the faith back.”

“There’s a lot of bipolar associations with Vietnamese women.”

“U are getting new skills, spiderman could shoot spider web, u can create bubble.

Soon u can fly [sic]”

Filmmaker Stephane Gauger, discussing the changes Vietnam’s film industry currently needs.

Actress and comedian Rosie Tran, noting the different stereotypes she’s asked to play in Hollywood.

“You live and die by the theatrical release.”

“The Vietnamese music scene is actually much more diverse and interesting than what is known outside.”

Director and producer Timothy Bui, noting the lack of ancillary film distribution markets in Vietnam.

Sean Trace, a local music video producer, on the hidden depth of local artists.

by Thien Nguyen

“This is my living room—more than the one at my home.”

Tuan Le, Director of Lune Production’s Teh Dar, commenting on the Saigon Opera House, the main venue for the acrobatic show.

A user of Expats & Locals in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), offering his or her opinion on a photo of a spider bite, posted to the group page.

“The concern is still there, to be honest.”

Trang Bui, Head of Markets at Jones Lang Lasalle, on the safety measures of new companies moving operations to District 4.

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Pictures by Nguyen Hoang Thanh Nghi

Dancing in Circles:

“Teh Dar” Behind the Scenes Lune Production’s Teh Dar is just the latest acrobatic marvel taking Vietnam by storm. But will they have the same level of success on their world tour? By Keely Burkey Walking up the stairs to the grand Saigon Opera House and finding your seat is a journey that might happen in any major European music hall, from France to Germany to Vienna.

This perception pops, however, when the show begins, and this is a good thing.

Over the next hour, Teh Dar presents an international-level nouveau cirque gone Southeast Asia. Rhythmic beats accompany acrobatic marvels, musical numbers and routines taken straight from the dance circles of the ethnic minority groups of Vietnam’s Central Highlands.

“Teh Dar, in K’ho, means going in a circle,” Tuan Le, the show’s director, told #iAMHCMC. “With this specific ethnic minority people, the culture is still about the circle.” Focusing ethnic minorities in the Tây Nguyên region, Teh Dar is a celebration of a culture both neverending 4 | iamhcmc.com/gazette

and at constant risk of being lost: they celebrate the idea of the circle, so that it may not be broken.

The Man in the Lune Forty-year-old Tuan Le is a man young in years and wise at heart. As he sits on the balcony of the Saigon Opera House during one of Teh Dar’s afternoon rehearsals, he looks down at the young performers practising their moves with a look filled with both paternal love and a kind of weariness.

The second emotion is understandable: besides directing the youngest cast in Lune Production’s five-year history, Teh Dar is a risk.

After the tremendous success of crowd-pleasing favourites like AO Show and Lang Toi, shows that toured a combined 12 countries during

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

Embracing the Spontaneous Teh Dar was released in August 2017, but for Tuan it was a long time coming: “We first came up with the idea 10 years ago.”

“Our goal is, whatever show we pick to do, we go to the new locations and pick local people from there. We focus on different cultures [of Vietnam], so the value of the show should be from there.”

For Teh Dar, this meant heading to the Central Highlands, and specifically the tribes in Tay Nguyen. Here he held castings for acrobatic performers, singers and musicians—professions some of the current performers had never considered before. For Tuan, this is part of the show’s beauty.

Rather than focus on what Tuan refers to as “too common” acrobatic ability, he and his partners prefer to search for something more raw, more real. their tours abroad, he wonders if this highenergy rendition will pass muster as well. Teh Dar is scheduled to start its world tour in a year.

“I think the audience would expect something more,” he said. “I have to see about [the performers’] condition also. Not just physically; it’s also in their mind.”

For anyone who has seen a Lune Productions show, this balance between spontaneous audaciousness and established professionalism is par for the course.

For Tuan, it’s more about trusting his own performers rather than establishing guidelines or strict choreography: “Whatever story happens in each show, even I don’t know before.”

“When I was searching for a singer for Teh Dar, the ones who came to the audition, they were all the same. They all wanted to be pop singers.

When Sier [the current singer] auditioned, she ... just sang a pop song. I took her to the window. The wind was blowing. I asked her to just sing something, anything, when she felt like it. She started to cry, and she sang a song in K’ho, and even the men in the room, they could feel the emotion too, even if they couldn’t understand the words. Some of them had tears in their eyes.”

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been the lack of high-quality entertainment.

Besides the near-obligatory water puppets, most spectacles in HCMC are architectural rather than performative.

As the Department of Tourism works to ramp up this sector, high-quality cultural performances will be necessary.

Earlier this year, entertainment mega company, the Tuan Chau Group, opened Quintessence of Tonkin, a cultural stage show about 40km from Hanoi’s city centre, set entirely on an outdoor, water-covered stage, complete with an extravagant light show and a pagoda that rises from the stage floor.

Dao Hon Tuyen, the billionaire entrepreneur who spearheaded the lavish production, expects it to become the go-to cultural event for tourists passing through the capital.

It might sound like stiff competition for Lang Toi, the Northern-inspired Lune Production playing regularly at the Hanoi Opera House, though this is like comparing cabaret to black-box theatre.

More important for Tuan is showing foreign audiences what Vietnamese culture is really like.

When asked if the show is meant to be a look into the past, he shakes his head and frowns.

“Even today, these small villages are still new.

If you go to the mountain, if you go to a real ethnic minority area, you could maybe sense it, there’s nothing here real like that.”

Raising the Bar The authenticity and skill level of the performers and producers of Lune stage productions are welcome additions to Vietnam’s cultural offerings. A common lament of tourists has

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ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

by Keely Burkey

Picture by Timothy Bui

Finding Vietnam’s Cinematic Soul When you go to the movies, do you opt for international fare? Here’s why you should be paying more attention to domestic cinema instead.

This summer, history was made. Audiences in Vietnam flocked to Jailbait (Em chưa 18), a romantic comedy chronicling the devious machinations of a 17-year-old girl as she attempts to blackmail an older man to make her ex-boyfriend jealous.

The film, released in late April, shattered box office records by raking in almost US$9 million and became the highest-grossing film in Vietnam’s history, international as well as domestic. It might seem obvious that a Vietnamese movie would hold the box office record in the country. However, in recent years, as more foreign movies have been shown alongside domestically made counterparts, Vietnamese movies had fallen by the wayside.

Does Jailbait’s enormous success mark a turning point for Vietnamese cinema?

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A Rocky History

Vietnam since 2015. “2015 was the recession of Vietnamese cinema,” Bui said.

Or maybe a more pertinent question: why was Jailbait so enormously popular to begin with?

After all, it fell in the vein of the majority of Vietnamese romatic comedies released since the early 2000s, when the country’s mainstream movie industry began to gain ground.

“Up until then, you could have made a movie for US$200,000 in your bathroom and it would sell out, because it was new. And then all the studios, without progress, kept turning the same product out, while the audience’s taste got more advanced.”

Timothy Bui, international film director and founder of the Vietnamese developing company Happy Canvas, has a theory. “It was strong storytelling,” he said. “It dealt with a prom, which you don’t have in Vietnam—just in international schools. It gave audiences a glimpse of something foreign, but also really universal. And it felt fresh.” Fresh is the keyword here, according to Bui, and exactly the quality that the film industry has missed in

An article published in 2016 by VietnamNet estimated that Vietnam’s film industry was worth US$100 million, a drop in the bucket compared to Thailand and Korea.

“The main argument is, ‘Why would I pay VND60,000 for a Vietnamese film when I can pay VND60,000 for The Avengers?’”

Bui asked.

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

What Does Vietnam Want?

Talk to an expat, or even a Vietnamese filmgoer, and chances are they will choose to see the latter over the former, though it wasn’t always this way. Bui said that the Vietnamese audience is nationalistic, takes pride in the country’s creations and wants to support their homeland’s artists.

This might just be the problem. “I had a talk with a theatre,” he said. “I told them they have to be more selective. Their response to me was, ‘We’re going to give them three showtimes, because we’re trying to support and encourage’.”

After a deluge of low-budget, poorly developed domestic movies entering theatres in the past few years, Vietnam’s audience has come to expect this low level of quality. As Stephane Gauger, Vietnamese-American director, said simply, “[The audience] got burned, and now they don’t trust the movies people are putting out.”

For Gauger, who as been developing movies for the Vietnamese audience since he first worked on Three Seasons in 1997 (released in 1999) as the cinematographer (a movie that Timothy Bui produced), has come up with a broad list of do’s and don’ts for the Vietnamese audience.

According to Gauger, first and foremost, the movie’s got to have comedy, paired with the right amount of heart. “They need the laughs; they need the relief,” he said. Due to the budget restraints, he considers it a bad idea to delve too deeply into action, a foray that a well-funded Hollywood movie can accomplish much better.

Horror might work, although there’s a cap— rather than feeling thrilled, he suspects many Vietnamese will just feel uncomfortable instead.

But romantic comedies? This is a genre that’s been around for decades, so the savvy director had better do something different. “That’s why stuff has to be high concept now,” he said, referring to larger-than-life themes like body switching and time travel.

“People want something different from the standard boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. They need a little bit of a twist.”

Gauger’s newest movie, Kiss and Spell (Yêu đi, đừng sợ), is a case in point: based off the Korean movie Spellbound, the romantic comedy tells the

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tale of a magician who is afraid of ghosts, courting a girl who has seemingly paranormal abilities.

The movie, released in August, won the Audience Prize at the Danang Film Festival in November.

Training for the Future For Bui and Gauger, two directors who first made their name in Hollywood and who are now committed to developing Vietnamese cinema in-country, the differences between the two working atmospheres go beyond budget and climate. Both noted, for example, a lack of experienced, professional crew people, which can ultimately hinder the success of a project.

For Gauger, who’s currently writing a treatment for a situational comedy that takes place in a Vietnamese university, his current obstacle is finding a suitable writing partner.

“My production company will say that they have a great screenwriter available, but she’ll just be really good at thrillers, not comedies. Or, there’s another girl who’s done great work, but she’s shooting in England right now. So, there’s a need, a demand for writers.” Bui said he constantly yearns for a consistent and dedicated assistant director. Rather than seen as a career in and of itself, like in the United States, in Vietnam, “It’s a placeholder. Everybody wants to direct, so they might take the job for one project, but they’ll be directing the next year.”

Another occasional fly in the ointment, censorship, tends to affect three categories in particular—sex, violence and politics—though Bui noted that his newest movie, the horror film The Housemaid (Cô hầu gái), marked a turning point for Vietnamese cinema in general. “Before The Housemaid, if you were to make a ghost story, then at the end of the movie, the ghost couldn’t exist. It had to be in your imagination. But we were able to find a middle ground.” Bui has recently opened a development company, Happy Canvas, to help young Vietnamese screenwriters develop their scripts on a deeper level than previously expected; Gauger is focused on making crowdpleasing movies that entertain but don’t pander.

Will Vietnam’s audience learn to embrace their country’s cinema once again? “It’s hard,” Gauger said. “You’ve got to basically weed out as many bad movies as you can, develop new talent, develop better scripts… You’ve got to get the faith back.”

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ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

by Sivaraj Pragasm

A Brief History of Indie Cinema:

What You Should Watch Although the indie has started small, it’s growing rapidly thanks to awardwinning filmmakers.

When the Huong Ky Film Company was founded in 1920 by a group of Vietnamese intellectuals in Hanoi, it produced documentaries on the funeral of Emperor Khai Dinh and the enthronement of Bao Dai. But the country’s first feature film arrived at the end of April 1924 with the release of Một đồng kẽm tậu được ngựa (A Penny for a Horse).

With the creation of the Vietnam Film Studio in 1956 and the Hanoi Film School in 1959, the first feature film produced in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was Chung một dòng sông (Together on the Same River) directed by Nguyen Hong Nghi.

Footprints Outside Vietnam Documentaries and feature films from Vietnam were starting to gain attention in Eastern European film festivals, with the documentary Nước về Bắc Hưng Hải (Water Returns to Bắc Hưng Hải) winning the Golden Award at the 1959 Moscow Film Festival and the 1963 feature film Chị Tư Hậu (Sister Tư Hậu) winning the Silver Award.

As Vietnam went through changes with reunification and a shift to a market economy in the ’80s, it was only until the 1990s when the film industry showed a clear difference between mainstream films produced for the cinema.

Most of these were comedies released during Tet and drama films, and arthouse films that saw more airplay outside Vietnam than in the country— mainly due to censorship and a lack of interest by the general public.

Vietnam saw a new wave of contemporary cinema in the 1990s with foreign-based Vietnamese directors such as Tran Anh Hung, whose debut film Scent of the Green Papayas 8 | iamhcmc.com/gazette

Picture by Stephane Gauger

won the Camera d’Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival, and was also the first Vietnamese film to be nominated for an Oscar. Tony Bui, Nguyen Vo Nghiem Minh and Nguyen Viet Linh were also prominent film directors who made critically acclaimed films.

Increasing Interest According to Michael Nguyen, a producer in Ho Chi Minh City, “the interest in filmmaking has risen over the years with many young Vietnamese filmmakers taking part in film competitions in the country, such as the 48 Hour Film Project, where the best films from the country will be screened at the short film section at the Cannes Film Festival.” Films from this competition have twice gone on to Cannes, with Turtle Soup by Vietnam-based, Tibetan director Tsering Tashi Gyalthang going on to win second runner-up at the 2011 finals of the competition in New Mexico, USA.

The recent production of Hollywood film, Kong: Skull Island in Vietnam has also raised awareness among local filmmakers about the expertise behind making films.

Indie filmmakers who had so long been muddled in funding issues are also starting to venture into film financing labs provided by international film festivals and networking with overseas producers. One such project, Vị (Taste)

by Le Bao, won the Arte International Prize and TFL Co-Production Award at the Torino Film Lab earlier this month.

As more Vietnamese filmmakers start to make their mark outside the country, it’s only a matter of time before the world will get exposed to a new wave of Vietnamese cinema.

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

by Tran Thi Minh Hieu

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Get the Gossip:

Know Your Celebrities Vietnam’s entertainment industry might be young, but that doesn’t mean it’s boring. Here are the celebrities you need to know about.

Vietnam has a relatively young entertainment industry that only started three decades ago, when the Doi Moi reforms lifted economic and cultural barriers. Since then, the Internet has given rise to a host of new celebrities.

According to statistics gathered by Socialbakers, singer Khoi My, MC Tran Thanh and singer M-TP are the three most celebrated personalities, each with over 10 million Facebook fans.

Khoi My Khoi My is a singer, actress and MC, who stepped on the big stage in 2013 by participating in and winning the first season of reality show Gương Mặt Thân Quen (the Vietnamese version of Your Face Sounds Familiar). She is widely loved for her energetic personality and cute expressions, and her love story with singer Kelvin Khanh, ex-member of boy band La Thăng. The famous couple also produced music together, including Gửi Cho Anh, which won Music Video of the Year at Zing Music Awards 2013, and Người Yêu Cũ, Most Viewed Music Video at POPS Award 2014.

MC Tran Thanh Tran Thanh is another celebrity with an exciting love life. In 2015 he started dating Hari Won, the Korean-Vietnamese singer and actress who ended her nine-year relationship with rapper Dinh Tien Dat. This became a scandal; many fans were shocked about Hari Won’s seemingly sudden change of heart. However, their love survived the storm, and a year later Tran Thanh and Hari Won got married. His career includes acting in comedies and movies, voice acting and TV show hosting.

He and his wife starred together in the horror

movie Bệnh Viện Ma (Ghost Hospital), where their love sparked.

Son Tung M-TP Born in 1994 in the Northern province of Thai Binh, Nguyen Thanh Tung, known by his stage name Son Tung M-TP, became famous thanks to YouTube. His popularity among Vietnamese teenage girls is comparable to Justin Bieber’s in North America. He is probably the only celebrity of the digital age that even the elderly have heard of.

Vietnamese audiences pointed out similarities with Charlie Puth’s We Don’t Talk Anymore and Korean band BTS’s Fire.

Despite the scandals, Son Tung M-TP remains one of the most popular Vietnamese singers who have reached an audience beyond Vietnam. He has been mentioned in Chinese and Taiwanese newspapers, and recently received the highest votes for Favourite Vietnamese Artist at Mnet Asian Music Awards 2017. He also won the Best Solo Star by Australia’s SBS PopAsia Awards 2017 by popular vote.

However, M-TP has faced criticism about the originality of his music. At the start of his career, when he was still an underground artist, he frequently sampled background music from Korean songs. As he became more famous, the public eye started to allege similarities.

The release of a 2014 movie in which he starred and composed the soundtrack, Chàng Trai Năm Ấy (Dandelion), was delayed due to allegations that the soundtrack was too similar to Korean singer Jung Yong Hwa’s Because I Miss You. This claim was dismissed later by the Korean company that manages the singer. In another hit of M-TP in 2016, Chúng Ta Không Thuộc Về Nhau (We Don’t Belong Together), 9

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ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

by Keely Burkey

Picture by Nguyen Stanton

Vietnam Abroad:

Acting in Hollywood Diversity in Hollywood has always been a problem. We spoke to two Vietnamese-American actors to find out what it takes to work in an industry with a white-washed history.

Vietnamese-American comedian Rosie Tran, 33, loves phở and isn’t afraid to show it. During a comedy routine at The Comedy Palace in Los Angeles, she told the crowd, “For those of you who don’t know, we take all the weird [stuff] off the cow that white people don’t eat and we put it in a soup. And the lower the number on the menu, the weirder the [stuff].” The joke killed, and she quickly moved on to another bit.

With parents who moved to the United States during the American War, Rosie Tran has never been to Vietnam herself, though she speaks Vietnamese, can cook Vietnamese food and has a foot in two different cultures. Negotiating both identities is anything but easy.

Tran grew up in New Orleans, and laughs when she talks about her experience during a Skype interview.

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“A lot of people have asked me if it was hard growing up Vietnamese in [southern US], if there was a lot of discrimination. I tell them that I’ve had more discrimination and stereotypes in LA, which is supposed to be a huge progressive hub.”

Does it Pay? Her identity as a Vietnamese-American, as well as her place in Hollywood’s dog-eat-dog entertainment industry, relies on dualities. “I would say it’s hard and easy,” she said. “It’s quite a niche. There’s very few roles for us, but there’s less competition.”

Nguyen Stanton, a model/actress based in Austin, Texas, feels similarly. Although Austin

has a large Vietnamese-American population, she only knows of three fellow Vietnamese actors in the region, and they’re all younger: “I’m 48. So if they need someone to play the Vietnamese mom, guess who gets that role! I’m not complaining.”

Stanton and Tran acknowledge the heavy societal pressure put on them by their family, and especially their parents, who grew up in Vietnam. “I don’t think my mom really understands or knows that I act,” Stanton said.

Speaking about her older sister, she said, “Every time I talk to her about a film, she always asks, ‘Does it pay?’”

For Stanton, who holds down a regular 9-5 office job in the IT industry, this question misses the mark; since she began acting in theatre and films in 2009, she has seen performing as a

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

powerful creative outlook. She suspects that Hollywood will soon see an influx of AsianAmerican millennial actors, who she notes are much more confident than peers in her age group, after growing up in the United States.

director and the producers that I don’t, and they asked if I spoke other languages. I said I spoke Vietnamese, and they said, ‘That’s fine, just speak Vietnamese; nobody will know the difference’.”

Pushing Past Mean Girls

Reality vs. Caricature

There might be limited competition for AsianAmerican performers, but that doesn’t mean it comes without serious hurdles. For Rosie Tran, getting the audition is easy, but dealing with the stereotypes is harder.

Nguyen Stanton sees things differently. For her, many roles she’s asked to play aren’t so much stereotypes as just reality. She remembers playing a Vietnamese doughnut shop owner in the movie Zero Charisma, a role she effects with a heavy accent. “[The filmmakers] were more troubled by it than I was. They kind of asked me for approval of this character having an accent. We know that the reality is that anybody my age or older will most likely speak with an accent, so for me that’s just reality, not a caricature.”

“Typically, I would say over 80 percent of the roles are a little bit stereotypical,” she said.

She points to the comedy classic Mean Girls (2004) as one example, a movie that features a group of Vietnamese students, dubbed the “Cool Asian Kids”. “[The movie] had them as snobs. They were kind of cliquish,” she said.

Throughout the film, the Vietnamese characters spoke no English, spoke nonsense Vietnamese (“Anybody that actually speaks Vietnamese would realise they clearly weren’t,” Tran said) and only interacted with one another.

Towards the end of the movie, it was revealed that one character, Trang Pak, was having an affair with the high school’s gym teacher.

“I’ve had that a lot in Hollywood, where they’ve had Vietnamese women portrayed as very slutty, or as prostitutes… Or I’ll go out for the very intelligent role, the valedictorian,” Tran said.

“And then there’s a stereotype that Vietnamese women are very aggressive—dragon moms.

Or, they’ll be very submissive. There’s a lot of bipolar associations with Vietnamese women,” she said with a laugh.

Tran channels these stereotypes in her own stand-up comedy. During one set, she quips, “I don’t understand why people think Asian women are so submissive… Just go to a nail salon—those women will get in your face.”

Tran finds the most offensive stereotypes not with the roles so much as with the casting directors themselves. She recalls one particularly offensive audition three years ago.

“I auditioned for a role where I needed to speak Chinese, and I don’t. I told the casting

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Stanton herself speaks with a Texas twang, having spent most of her life in the Lone Star State; she mentions playing similar roles as nail salon technicians, a popular profession for Vietnamese-Americans across the US.

For her, diversity in Hollywood has gone a long way since Rambo: First Blood Part II, in which Vietnamese soldiers were portrayed

by Hispanic actors in the jungles of Acapulco, Mexico.

Tran, on the other hand, has not seen as much of a change since she moved to Los Angeles 14 years ago.

“I have noticed that there’s more awareness and talk about the stereotypes against minorities and women, with things like #OscarsSoWhite,” she said, referencing a Twitter campaign in 2016 protesting the lack of diversity in the Academy Awards.

Stanton touches on the struggle of living as an American while trying to retain her Vietnamese roots.

“In their eyes, I’m still the hyphen: AsianAmerican, instead of just American. But when I go to Vietnam, I’m not 100 percent of a fit, I’m too Americanised.” She pauses, and jokes, “I can’t win, even though my name is Nguyen.”

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ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

by Sivaraj Pragasm

Vietnam’s Best-Kept Secret:

Its Music Beyond V-Pop and Vinahouse, there is an entire world of music produced by talented Vietnamese. However, it’s not largely known to the world...yet.

Vietnamese music, just like its food, is complicated, diverse and yet still largely unknown to the rest of the world.

Due to the country’s turbulent history, the subject matter and the types of music that appeal to different demographics tend to differ.

From pre-war tunes, to music echoing the Western ideology of individualism, Vietnam’s musicians have, over the years, been able to champion their own brand of music while at the same time gathering influences from America, as well as regional powerhouses like Korea and Japan.

The History Historically, Vietnamese music consisted mainly of folk tunes featuring traditional 12 | iamhcmc.com/gazette

musical instruments such as the monochord zither and various two-stringed instruments with a diverse range of forms such as Quan họ, which consists of alternate singing and Ca trù, which is performed mainly by females and is widely known as the Vietnamese equivalent of the Geisha movement.

Another prevalent form of music was classical music, with composers such as Do Nhuan whose work, Cô Sao, is credited as the first Vietnamese opera. Another composer, Frenchtrained Nguyen Van Quy, wrote nine sonatas for violin and piano.

Between the 1940s and 1980s, when the country experienced the French and American wars and the end of the Vietnam War, notable composers such as Pham Duy and Trinh Cong Son, and singers like Khanh Ly and Le Thu started an era consisting of musical pieces inspired by the

plight of Vietnamese refugees that eventually became ‘anthems’ for the Vietnamese people.

As nationalism reached an all-time high during that period, many composers, especially in the North, also composed Vietnamese revolutionary songs known as nhac do, or “Red Music”.

The Birth of Vietnamese Mainstream Music The transition towards modern music didn’t happen overnight, as musicians retained the essence of their music and incorporated them into ballads or emotionally-driven slow numbers. However, when radio and television started to reach more households and networks bought into the age of music videos, it also

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My Tam, Ho Ngoc Ha, Lam Truong and many others were blazing the trail in the local music scene and it was not long until regional organisers such as the Asia Music Festival in South Korea invited these artists to perform, thus resulting in the expansion of V-Pop outside of Vietnam, and to the world.

This generated interest and inspired many other talented artists, and with the improving standards of music production, mixing and mastering, V-Pop was now getting recognition in many other countries.

Although not as huge as K-Pop or J-Pop, it was enough to inspire a new wave of artists who performed other genres such as hip hop, R&B, dance music and rock.

The advent of the internet and the ability for home-based musicians to produce and release music online with minimal costs also propelled the likes of M4U, Bao Thy, Wanbi Tuan Anh, Khong Tu Quynh, Radio Band, Tran Khoi My and many others to fame. heralded the beginning of mainstream music in Vietnam.

Vietnam does not have an official music chart, nor does it have digital sales figures, therefore the definition of mainstream here reflects artists who enjoy airplay on radio or music video channels. The quirk here is that the songs are based on a “favourites” list, instead of “what’s new”. Therefore, evergreen tunes from decades ago can sometimes end up at top spot on the list.

However, this didn’t deter artists from releasing new pieces, and the rise of J-Pop and K-Pop introduced a much faster paced, bubblegum pop music that took root in Vietnam.

During the turn of the century, Vietnamese musicians, influenced by Westernised music, together with the fashion styles of Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, created what is now known as V-Pop: a combination of bubblegum pop and fashion. Popular Vietnamese singers such as Ho Quynh Huong,

The other genres of music that have surprisingly done well in mainstream circles are rock and metal.

First introduced to the country by American soldiers, rock and roll was popular in the South during the American War and the genre evolved over time to modern rock and metal.

Buc Tuong, a Glam Metal band made up of students from the National University of

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Civil Engineering, was formed in 1995 and introduced Hanoi to the heavy sounds of metal.

They became so popular that in 2003, they were chosen as Vietnam’s representative for contemporary music at the Vietnam Festival Faces – Face of the French language in the city of Cahors, France.

by Tuoi Tre, there is a dearth of ‘new’ songs in Vietnam.

The band has since gone on hiatus after the death of lead singer Tran Lap in 2016.

“In most education authorities’ current thinking, music remains a tool to teach other subjects, such as politics, ethics and hygiene,” she said.

However, it had helped start Vietnam’s rock revolution with bands like Unlimited, Ngu Cung, Microwave and Black Infinity currently ruling the country’s moshpits.

Another genre of music that has featured prominently around the world over the last decade is EDM, and in Vietnam, there is a knock-off version known as Vinahouse.

One of the most divisive genres in the country, you’ll either love it or hate it but the often campy tracks have featured prominently in mainstream and Vinahouse-dedicated clubs across the country and the genre shares a huge popularity among young locals, and mixed reactions from foreigners.

However, as mainstream music is reaching, or has reached its peak, there are concerns on how this can be maintained. According to an article 14 | iamhcmc.com/gazette

Dr. Van Thi Minh Huong, head of Ho Chi Minh City Conservatory of Music, pointed to the inadequacy of music education as one of the main reasons for this.

“Therefore, though elementary students do learn music at school, they are provided simply with brief glimpses of music, leaving most of them unable to appreciate good music or choose which music to listen to,” she said.

However, that doesn’t mean there is no room for autodidacts, or talented musicians who are ready to break boundaries because beyond the mainstream, there is another layer that has already been breaking new grounds.

The Indie Music Scene Beyond bubblegum pop and pre-war oldies, there is another component of music in Vietnam made up of musicians who produce and market their music independently. These artists

by Sivaraj Pragasm

generally stay away from traditional broadcast media and focus on distributing their music online, or in small-scale live performances.

With genres ranging from hip hop to house to rock, most of these musicians are still mainly known among like-minded music-lovers in the country, although they do have followers across the world via sites like SoundCloud, MixCloud and BandCamp.

Ran Cap Duoi project consists of members from Vietnam, USA and Canada, and blending post-rock with experimental sounds, has built up a unique sound in the country’s already diverse soundscape.

Another artist who has been making waves with his music is Touliver, whose meaningful lyrics and highly polished music videos have led to a cult following among Vietnamese youths.

With his music spanning the genres of house and hip hop, and his refusal to “sell out” to the mainstream, he represents the archetypical artist who values artistic integrity over making money.

Another notable independent singer is Thuy Chi whose brand of music appeals to the younger

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demographic, and her popularity is evident with her endorsement deals with international brand names, as well as her inclusion in Vietnam’s Top 10 Artists of the Year.

She currently has over 10 million Facebook fans from countries such as South Korea and the USA. However, not all artists currently plying their trade in Vietnam are Vietnamese. American Sean Trace moved to Vietnam, and with his wife, singer and the winner of the first Vietnam Idol competition Phuong Vy, have been performing as a musical duo since 2014.

Although their fan base is largely local, Sean promotes their music by producing their own music videos and releasing them online, as well as producing a steady stream of vlogs, garnering a strong online following.

“The Vietnamese music scene is actually much more diverse and interesting than what is known outside,” he said.

The Rise of the Underground Vietnam’s underground music scene is not only diverse in the range of genres available, but also in the range of artists themselves consisting of a mix of locals and foreigners based in Vietnam.

This is most prominent in the electronic music subgenre which has seen its diversity and popularity in Vietnam rise crazily over the last five years. Heart Beat, formed by a trio of music

aficionados, started the techno movement in Saigon in 2012 with monthly shows held at the city’s more underground venues like The Observatory. From their connections with Europe’s underground labels like Dekmantel, Token and many others, they have managed to invite DJs who have featured in prominent underground music festivals and venues like Berlin’s Berghain to Saigon.

Now in its fifth year, and with a new sub-label called HRBR (Harbour), the team is still going strong with shows featuring both international guest DJs as well as young local DJs like Huy Truong and Max Cleo, who are starting to make a name for themselves both locally and regionally as serious upcoming musicians.

This ascent is also mirrored in the country’s trance and psytrance scene with promoters such as Asian Rave Connection and Chillgressive Saigon organising monthly events, as well as venues like The Lighthouse, La Fenetre Soleil and most recently, Shaka, playing host to musical acts.

Other than electronic music, there are also prominent artists such as Andree Right Hand, Big Daddy and Shadow P who have dominated the underground music circuit over the years; and with hip hop groups like the G-Family featuring rappers based in Saigon and many other such groups sprouting up across the country, Vietnamese rap is getting increasingly popular, even without mainstream broadcast support. The metal scene also contains an underground movement that’s populated with much more extreme subgenres from grindcore

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to death metal. Shows are held at rundown malls at the edge of the city and even in living rooms.

Made up of a small community of not more than 200 who are mostly youths, they focus on more than just producing music with antiestablishment themes but rather, creating a sense of escapism from the realities of life.

Vietnam-based photojournalist Neil Massey chronicled the scene with the help of the founder of Bloody Chunks Records, Vietnam’s only record label dedicated to underground extreme music, in a series of black and white film photos titled Bloody Chunks released in 2014 that made its rounds in magazines around the world.

Vietnam has a very bright and diverse music scene with extremely talented artists across the country, but it will still take some time and effort working beyond strict civic and moral regulations before the full extent of what the country’s artists has to offer can be seen by the world.

Until then, it’s the country’s best-kept secret.

Opening January 2018

An inspired library designed to meet the needs of children 18 months to 4 years old; • Promoting connectivity with books and the environment • Spaces to collaborate with each other • Flexible seating allows children to develop inquiry skills

(028) 2222 7788 / 99 www.issp.edu.vn

From 18 months to 11 years old

92 Nguyen Huu Canh Street Ward 22, Binh Thanh District Ho Chi Minh City

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ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

by Jesús López-Gomez

The Stand-Up Kids What do you get when you mix disaffected youth with a night-time coffee shops and bars? A burgeoning comedy scene.

A law student, a Hanoian and a group hawking something called “chicken beer” walk into a bar.

No, it’s not the set up to a joke. It’s a real encounter: a stand-up comedy contest at Yoko Bar in November.

It was not only the place for local entertainers to prove themselves as Saigon’s best comics. It was also the culmination of years of work by Ben Betterby and others who’ve worked closely with Saigon’s comedy scene creating what is today a blossoming segment in the local arts scene.

Class Clown to Trained Performer Trang Hoang Phuc started his set at Yoko as he’s started many previous sets: introducing himself by name, “Berk Mark, but that’s a fake name,” and inviting the audience to make fun of him for wearing what he unashamedly reports are his dad’s clothes.

Trang boasts about his 8.0 IELTS score on stage—“which is the Asian way of saying I’m better than you”—and has the breezy cleverness of the casually brilliant.

“I was kind of a class clown already,” Trang said, recounting his first foray into comedy in 16 | iamhcmc.com/gazette

late 2016. He messaged Keithy Howard, an established Saigon comic, for more information about the comedy scene. “And he said…there’s a comedy open mic happening that night.”

Unprepared though he was, he went and did eight minutes—for comparison, new comics who complete months of training in Comedy Saigon’s workshop get five minutes—of jokes about his family killing a rat. “[Attendees] were obviously horrified by it,” Trang said.

One year later, he’s moved to his first compensated comedy show. Before the Yoko show, Trang had opened for travelling Scottish comic Phil Kay at Game On Saigon Sports Pub, his first paid show.

“It was very overwhelming” being paid, Trang said, adding, “It was like 10 bucks.” Even wearing his dad’s flannel and a ruthlessly bored expression—or maybe because of it—Trang said he’s been told his work is unique, that “there’s not a lot of people out there that are doing what I’m doing right now.”

If there’s anything wrong with Saigon’s comedy scene, it’s that it can be a little stagnant.

“There’s not a lot of shows to do,” Trang said.

“So you have the same kind of audience…over and over again.” Trang said since the audience is the same, I have to bring new jokes to keep them entertained. But “by doing that you kind of fall into the trap” of presenting unrefined,

half-formed ideas created out of necessity to keep things interesting.

Trang said his mentors told him “you should work on your old material.” Small though the local comedy scene may be, new Saigon comic Vu Minh Tu said it’s still venue-rich compared to Hanoi.

“In Saigon, we definitely have more open mic and more opportunities for comedians to sharpen their skills,” she said.

After performing at Game On Saigon Sports Pub, Kay flew to Hanoi to perform with Vu as his opening act. Overall, Hanoi doesn’t compare to the number of Saigon’s open mics—“maybe once a month” in the capital, she said—nor does the sister city have nearly as many working comics.

New Talent Proving Itself Early Vu began telling jokes after she took the Comedy Saigon workshops in August. The training courses culminate in a comedy showcase. Vu and other graduates got to step on stage for the first time then and, “I just never stopped.”

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Since August, Vu has been on stage 16 times, the last being her appearance at the Yoko comedy contest where she tied for first.

The Saigon comedy scene seems to draw an overwhelming number of men. The balance is better in Westerners to Vietnamese, but still skews to foreigners.

Vu’s an uncommon figure demographically, but “I need to make it clear that I’m not very local,” the Hanoi-born, Singapore-educated comic said. And “I’m not a typical female.”

Vu’s candour translates to a searing openness on stage. Her jokes deal with her dating failures, making fun of men’s facial hair and various onanism-related accounts.

Vu tends to eschew the contemporaneous and the political. “I try to write jokes that are universal,” she said. “I write about myself.”

A Little Start-Up When Comedy Saigon owner Betterby was approached by Rooster Beer — or “Bia Ga” in Vietnamese, which is “chicken beer” in English — the similarity of his project to theirs was what seemed the most germane to him.

Like the craft brewer, “we’re like a little start-up too,” he said.

Saigon comedy has come a long way from its comics practising material in karaoke bars.

When Betterby was doing stand-up comedy in 2012, he said you could count the number of comics on one hand. Betterby said the open mic shows during those years were rough because “the audiences didn’t know what we were doing. We were going up between singers.

They just wanted to hear songs.” So Betterby

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Where You Can Find Funny People As Vu said, Saigon’s comics have a wealth of places to try their stuff around town. Here’s a roundup of a few places that host comedy shows.

Piu Piu

Look for events there via Facebook or give them a call.

The vibe is a little like Indika, although the place is quite a bit smaller. Be nice to the performers, you’re seated close so they can probably hear you breathing.

Pingoling 58 Vo Thi Sau, D1 — 09 4568 5295

97 Hai Ba Trung, D1 — 0163 603 3222

This centrally located bar is part of a network of venues that regularly host comedians.

This is home base for Betterby’s Comedy Saigon artist community. Located in the rear of Lucas Cafe, this small theatre doubles as a workspace for the stand-up class that are held there regularly. In addition to hosting the graduates of the stand-up workshop during their seminal performances, Pingoling is also a host for other stand-up work, open mics and improv shows.

Johama

Heart of Darkness

This District 1 brewery is one of the most centrally located venues where you can catch comedy. The craft beer vendor’s second floor is an event venue with a bar on side and a wall of glass on the other looking out over Ly Tu Trong. A stage hosts an open mic known to draw out the city’s performers.

Maybe it’s Yoko’s polished charm or it’s larger seating area, but this tends to be the place that attracts the biggest crowds and the strongest comedians. The bar was recently the site of a comedy contest finale, but often hosts Comedy Saigon’s stand-up workshop graduates to give them a taste of the big time. This isn’t the most frequent site of comedy shows, but the ones that do appear there are not to be missed.

Indika

Game On Saigon

43 Nguyen Van Giai, D1 — 0165 658 1648

115 Ho Tung Mau St, D1 — 028 6251 9898

The DIY feel of Indika extends to its stage.

Surrounded by tagged and stickered walls is a stage rising a seat’s height from the floor.

Sometimes, they put a comedian on it.

When this sports pub isn’t hosting televised matches of football, it’s a performance venue for Saigon’s comics. Shows here are less frequent, but higher profile sometimes drawing international acts.

31D Ly Tu Trong, D1 — 09 0301 7596

and other comics started organising dedicated shows, some of which he describes as “pretty bad” because of a lack of performers and original material. In 2014, Betterby started meeting comics at karaoke bars around Saigon to try

341 Cao Dat, D5 — 0163 603 3222

This curiously named bar is sometimes known to host a comedy night. Maybe because they’re more infrequent than others — and maybe because it’s out in the hinterlands of District 5 — these tend to draw more seasoned comics.

Yoko 22A Nguyen Thi Dieu, D3 — 028 3933 0577

out their material, the first iteration of what would become the Comedy Saigon courses.

Over 200 individuals have graduated from Betterby’s workshops.

“Me, too - All my worldly goods are going to me!”

Your Will?

Specialists in Wills + Estate Planning for Expats in Vietnam

Tel: +84 28 3520 7745 www.profwills.com 17

Painting by Ignacio de Grado

Inspired to Create:

Expat Artists in Vietnam The many wonders of Vietnam extend to the aesthetic. Say what you will about the pollution and rubbish: these artists know how to find the most beautiful sides of the country. By Keely Burkey

Ignacio de Grado

Not Here

“I never wanted to be an artist,” de Grado, 44, said in his art studio in District 2. High ceilings, walls decked with paintings, an abundance of natural light and miniature easels to suit his young students all belie how de Grado now spends his days.

Never one to self-market, de Grado is adamant that his main role in Saigon is that of a teacher, not a professional artist. Although he does work on his own projects, which he occasionally exhibits abroad and will hang for sale in his studio. Vietnam’s tepid art market has made substantial sales all but impossible.

Originally an industrial engineer in Madrid, de Grado moved to London to attend graduate school and later moved to Vietnam with a business partner to open VinGallery, at which he worked for his first two years in the country.

“People get used to this place when they arrive.

In a Western country, if I tell you a painting is US$3,000, you would probably believe me. But here, the problem is that even foreigners after some time get used to the cheap prices,” he said.

Three years ago, de Grado set off on his own, opening his studio where he works on his paintings and teaches children and adults.

“I have had some incredible offers here… like, almost close to the cost of the materials I have in the painting.”

18 | iamhcmc.com/gazette

In the five years de Grado has lived in Saigon, he asserts that he hasn’t seen any change in the art market, even as the economy has been growing steadily. One reason might be the priorities of the emerging middle class.

“The Vietnamese, they don’t have such an interest in art,” he said. “Probably they would choose to spend that money on good furniture, or on a good floor, instead of a painting.” He considers a moment.

“There’s probably a percentage of wealthy people that buy art, but they probably buy it as an investment.

The real art market is probably in Singapore, Hong Kong, Jakarta, maybe Kuala Lumpur. But not here.”

ART FEATURE

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Her friend asked why she didn’t just move to Vietnam to do her art here. March said, “Yes, I’ll do that!”

The next five years were a series of adventures, including a short stay in Sapa painting in a hotel run by a man who single-handedly spurred the education of 160 ethnic minority children; exploring Ha Long Bay with a tour company to create interactive treasure maps for guests; and rescuing her gallery paintings via longboat through the flooded streets of Hoi An, delivering them to the nearest 5-star hotel for safe keeping.

Despite her travels, March still considers Saigon the most productive and energising city in Vietnam.

Painting by Bridget March

And the tourist market? He just shakes his head. As soon as he displays his latest paintings, large canvases that would require complicated shipping to get them home, it’s clear they’re not meant to be simple souvenirs.

The Progress of Time

As he flips through a series of large canvases some 1.5 metres tall, these are statement pieces, not whimsical city scenes or bike riders clad in áo dài and nón lá to hang in the bathroom.

Each painting follows a theme: close-up, almost abstract portions of wall, textured by peeling paint and worn down by Saigon’s tempestuous weather cycles.

These are paintings de Grado could never have produced in Madrid, where a wall is painted every two to three years. It’s Saigon’s grittiness, not its more picturesque sites, that draws the artist in. “What attracts me in these kinds of walls is not Vietnamese culture,” he said. “It’s how does it happen, it’s looking at the process.”

Bridget March Some stories begin with a bang; Bridget March’s begins with a red lacquer tray.

As she gives a talk about her adventures in Vietnam to an audience in Co-Space in District 2, she puts up a projected image of a simply furnished room’s interior, a small red lacquer tray sitting

atop a wooden table in the middle of the room.

March was captivated by the image when she was in her neighbour’s house, taken after the funeral of her local mì quảng vendor in Hoi An. She recalls ushering the vendor’s daughter into her gallery to show her the painting, and the woman’s shock and awe, exclaiming that her house was now famous. The official name of the painting became Red Lacquer Tray: After He Was Gone.

The painting marks a shift in March’s approach to painting in Vietnam. She’s trading the picturesque for the provincial, in the vein of John Constable and the Impressionists.

“I want people to see the beauty in a gate post,” she said.

Listening to Opportunity

March laments that at 24, an opportunity could have knocked her on the head and she wouldn’t have recognised it. As she grew older, she became attuned to the signals, the whispers behind the ear.

A product designer for 20 years, March became a senior art lecturer at Leeds College of Art for nine years but couldn’t make the jump from lecturer to penniless artist. Only after visiting a friend in Saigon did she decide to take the plunge.

“It’s a very stimulating environment; I find the energy here really good. I opened [March Gallery] in Hoi An six months ago, and now I go back to Saigon every month for a sanity check.”

Different Strokes

As March travelled Vietnam, she discovered the country through her paintbrush. For each region, she used different materials to produce different aesthetics, each catering to the feeling, the soul of each region and city. “I want a viewer to look at a building they’ve never seen, and be able to tell if it’s in Hanoi, Hoi An or Saigon.

And I think I can do that,” March said.

For Hoi An, only bright, cheery watercolours would do; for Sapa, a mountainous region— “It’s all green and grey and hard”—she made sure to apply the right amount of pen ink to capture the grit; and for Saigon? “Watercolour doesn’t suit Saigon terribly well,” March said.

“I use pencil and watercolour, and for whatever scene I do, I have ghost riders going across the bottom of the painting. So, all the motorbikes and the pedestrians and trucks and buses are transparent, and move through the space.”

What would the city be without its chaos?

March said the majority of her sales come from tourists looking for something unique to take home, though occasionally she’ll cater to expats from Hanoi and Saigon as well. Vietnamese?

“Not yet,” March said.

“Maybe the odd wealthy Vietnamese family who has a vacation home in Hoi An.” 19

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ART FEATURE

pictures and story by Keely Burkey

Painting Outside the Lines:

The Story of Le Minh Chau Internationally recognised artist Le Minh Chau has dreams, and he isn’t afraid to pursue them, no matter the obstacles.

The ultimate goal of Tu Du Peace Village was to enable the children to graduate and attend vocational school, most often with a career in computers in mind.

Severely affected by dioxin contamination, Le Minh Chau will never be able to stand upright, walk on his own two feet or lift his arms above his head.

Instead, Chau continued to enter an annual children’s drawing competition put on by the War Remnants Museum centred around the theme of world peace, and has come a long way since then. At 17, he left Tu Du Peace Village to return to his parents in his hometown in Dong Nai, though didn’t stay for long.

As an artist who reached international success thanks to the Oscar-nominated short documentary about his life, Chau, Beyond the Lines (2015), Chau’s oil-based, realistic artwork, painted entirely holding a paintbrush in his mouth, represents much more than just a way to make money. For Chau, it was a way to independence.

Bordering on Obsession Sitting in his small studio in District 2, Chau told #iAMHCMC through a translator that he became interested in art when he was nine.

Living in Tu Du Peace Village in District 1 with other dioxin-affected children since he was six months old, Courtney Marsh, the director of Chau, Beyond the Lines, told us by telephone that the nurses at the facility meant well, and thought they were doing Chau a service by telling him to be realistic. “The nurses thought, ‘Being an artist is hard enough,’” Marsh said. “‘You need to stop daydreaming.’”

But what marked Chau, above all, was his determination, which at times bordered on obsession.

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“I don’t have a lot of affection for my family,” he said in his studio. “It was not until I was 11 or 12 that I met my parents.”

The Lightbulb Moment Chau returned to Saigon, where what Marsh calls the “lightbulb moment” occurred: after seeing the fame a dioxin victim garnered after learning to paint with her feet, Chau developed his own technique, painting with his mouth, partly because it gave him more control over his technique, and partly to show up his artistic adversary.

With the help of a friend, he was hired by an interior design company to paint pictures for staged rooms.

And when Marsh’s film received international recognition, Chau was able to support himself entirely based off commissions he received from around the world. “Most of my clients are from America. They heard about me from the movie,” he said.

Today, Chau says that he works around 12 hours per day, often throughout the night so he can chat with fellow artists in America as he works. (“I can type quite well in English,” he said. “But I’m not good at speaking it.”)

Though Chau enjoys his work, he’s ready for a new challenge.

“I’m moving forward to… becoming a fashion designer,” he said. “I’ll start with a collection of clothes for women. I plan to register to launch the collection at New York Fashion Week next year.”

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

by Tran Thi Minh Hieu

Reading Through Vietnam Looking for your next read? Check out these classics published in 2008, and has since gone through over 50 printings. This is a story told by a man who looks back on his childhood, alternating narration with the child version of himself.

Nguyen Nhat Anh said that he didn’t write this book for children, but for those who were children once. He won the S.E.A. Write Award for this work.

The Quiet American (1956)

by Graham Greene A classic of English literature, Greene’s novel is set in the final years of the French Indochina War in Vietnam, mentioning in particular Hanoi, Nam Dinh and Saigon.

It is well worth reading for its masterful storytelling and haunting reflections on war and love.

While there are plenty of travel guides and cookbooks about Vietnam, serious reads are somewhat lacking. However, we put together a list of our favourites to deepen your knowledge of Vietnam while entertaining you at the same time.

The story is narrated from the cynical viewpoint of British reporter Fowler, showing sympathy for the Vietnamese people whose lives were was disrupted by the war - He objects and objection to the idealistic innocence of young Pyle, an America sent to carry out a mysterious mission in Saigon.

Ticket to Childhood (2014)

by Nguyen Nhat Anh

Dumb Luck (2002)

by Vu Trong Phung

The best-selling book by the best-selling author of Vietnamese contemporary literature, the original version of Ticket to Childhood was

First published in Hanoi in 1936, the novel is a satire of the modernisation rage in Vietnam during the late colonial era. It follows the absurd

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and unexpected rise within colonial society of a street-smart vagabond, Red-Haired Xuan, while providing a panoramic view of late colonial urban social order.

Dumb Luck is the most famous work by Vu Trong Phung, a book banned in Vietnam until 1986, translated by Peter Zinoman and Nguyen Nguyet Cam of the University of California, Berkeley.

Vietnamese Children’s Favorite Stories (2015)

by Phuoc Thi Minh Tran Published in 2015 by Tuttle Publishing, it won two children’s book awards that year.

It is part of a series of children’s folktales from the East.

The stories are retold in English by librarian Phuoc Thi Minh Tran. As introduced on the publisher’s website, “stories in which integrity, hard work and a kind heart triumph over deception, laziness, and greed—as gods, peasants, kings and fools spring to life in legends of bravery and beauty, and fables about nature.”

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ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

City Pass Guide

Take a Dip:

The Best Pools in Saigon Ho Chi Minh City is full of quality hotels, and there’s no lack of delectable pools. Here’s where you should spend the next sunny day.

Van Thanh Pool Victory Hotel

48/10 Dien Bien Phu, Binh Thanh District | 028 3512 3026 Pool Hours: 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

14 Vo Van Tan, District 3 028 3930 4989 | victoryhotel.com.vn

Day Pass: VND70,000 for adults Monday through Friday, and

Pool Hours: 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Monday through Friday, and VND50,000 on Saturday and Sunday

Day Pass: VND60,000, which includes access to the gym

Drawback: The deck chairs fill up quickly, and the floor mats aren’t

Drawback: No sauna or steam room here

the most hygienic of options.

What makes it special: You’d be hard pressed to find a hotel pool in

What Makes it Special: You get a great mix of expats and locals. Plus,

the centre of the city for this price.

the huge kiddie pool makes it ideal for your child’s next birthday party.

This quaint 3-star hotel in District 3 has an admirable rooftop pool, with a decent view to match. You won’t be treated like royalty here, but this is a great place to chill under the sun and take a dip. Plus, a monthly pass to both the pool and the gym costs a very reasonable VND800,000.

One of the most celebrated and visited pools in Saigon thanks to its low prices and relative level of comfort. While there’s no gym, sauna or steam room to complement your pool routine, you can enjoy the other amenities the Van Thanh compound has to offer, such as tennis courts and lakeside restaurants.

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VND80,000 on Saturday and Sunday; VND40,000 for children

Thao Dien Village 189-197, 197/1 Nguyen Van Huong, District 2 028 3744 2222 | thaodienvillage.com Pool Hours: 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Day Pass: VND295,000 during peak season, and VND235,000 during the off-peak.

Drawback: People love this place, perhaps too much. If there’s an event, bring your earplugs.

What Makes it Special: If you’re looking for a memorable place for your next get-together, there’s a small pool you can book for private events.

District 2’s finest frequent Thao Dien Village weekly, making it part relaxing atmosphere, part Saigon’s who’s-who. The riverside views and exceptional facilities make this place a gem.

It’s easy to spend an entire day rotating between the sauna, pool and bar. Just bring a lot of cash.

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

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Le Méridien Saigon 3C Ton Duc Thang Street, District 1 028 6263 6688 | lemeridiensaigon.com Pool Hours: 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Day Pass: VND490,000, which includes access to the sauna, gym and steam room.

Drawback: Although it’s quite long (26 metres), it’s also narrow.

Great for swimming laps, bad for a game of Marco Polo.

What Makes it Special: The view! Right on Ton Duc Thang, look over your shoulder and see the best of the Saigon River snaking through Ho Chi Minh City.

This pure salt water pool is a true (salty) taste of the finer things in life. When you’re not swimming, lounge on the futuristic, ultra-chic lounge chairs both poolside and on the deck below, chuckling as the traffic crawls on the street below.

Intercontinental Asiana Saigon Corner of Hai Ba Trung & Le Duan, District 1 028 3520 9999 | ihg.com Pool Hours: 6 a.m to 9 p.m.

Day Pass: VND520,000 for adults and VND312,000 for children under 16 Drawback: The lounge chairs are sparse here, so if it happens to be a busy day, you might be out of luck.

What makes it special: A pool bar and restaurant are on site in case you’re feeling peckish, and bottles of water are free of charge.

Right in the middle of District 1, this pool is a gem amidst the chaos down below. Higher walls prevent any spectacular views from taking over; this pool is really more of a hidden refuge. The clear glass end makes for a particularly special treat when you’re halfway done with your lap SILA Urban Living 21 Ngo Thoi Nhiem, District 3 028 3930 0800 | silaliving.com Pool Hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Day Pass: VND300,000 per adult to use the pool, with one child allowed in free of charge. VND500,000 will give you full access to the pool, jacuzzi, steam room and sauna; VND600,000 will give you access to the gym on top of that.

Drawback: It’s almost absurdly shallow on one end of the pool— your arms might scrape the bottom if you’re doing the backstroke What makes it special: Attentive waiters from Twenty21One Restaurant mere feet away will ensure you get all the quality food and drink you need.

This aparthotel in the centre of District 3 caters to business travellers who like things done well, simply and elegantly. This means you’ll be able to enjoy a beautiful pool to suit every level of swimmer.

Lotte Legend Hotel 2A-4A Ton Duc Thang, District 1 028 3823 3333 | lottehotel.com/saigon/en/Default.asp Pool Hours: 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Day Pass: VND452,000 for adults, VND252,000 for children.

Adults can use the pool, gym, sauna and steam room for VND578,000.

Drawback: If you’re looking for a place to swim for exercise, this isn’t it.

Shaped as a giant circle, this is a lounging pool through and through.

What makes it special: A large kid’s pool sits adjacent to the larger pool, so everyone can have fun in the sun.

The largest pool in the city by area! It’s not just the pool itself that makes this venue great. The landscaping around the water is pure tropical bliss, topped off by a vine-covered pool cabana on one end.

Want some more? Head to City Pass Guide for our full list.

Here’s the URL! citypassguide.com/en/travel/ho-chi-minh-city/accommodation/blog/best-swimming-pools-in-saigon-hotels Or here’s the QR—scan it with your phone!

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SOCIETY FEATURE

by Jesús López-Gomez

Saigon Expat Groups:

Social Balm or Bane?

An Englishman abroad reaches out to the local expat community via Facebook in a time of need and is savaged online. Why are these groups terrible?

Tom Braley had just been in Ho Chi Minh City a scant four days before a large, worrying blister appeared on his foot.

Feeling a bit marooned already and now with visible infection, Braley was feeling, in his words, “a bit down” and was doubting his decision to leave the United Kingdom to come to Vietnam.

A Little Bit of Everything The city’s Facebook groups are higher in headcount and output than quality. It’s an atmosphere that has pushed some to start smaller gated communities of users.

To ask about his foot, Braley went to the 51,942-member group Expats & Locals in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), one of the largest clusters of people with Facebook accounts in Ho Chi Minh City.

treatment, links to web materials detailing similar infections—to the callously wistful: “u are getting new skills, spiderman could shoot spider web, u can create bubble. soon u can fly [sic],” one user wrote.

Like the wall of a bathroom stall that’s over the years become a community board of sharpied in wisdom, whatever Facebook was made for probably wasn’t this.

So, he did what everyone who’s been lonely since the mid-aughts has done: he logged on to Facebook.

What Braley got in response was the Saigon Facebook community’s mix of camaraderie, trolling and the typo-laden amateur comedy the city’s social media groups have made themselves known for.

“[E]veryone’s always got the guards up, ready for an argument,” Nguyen Dang Khoi, one of Expats & Locals in Ho Chi Minh City’s administrators, wrote to us, adding “theres [sic] always too much drama, negative behavior in these groups its [sic] frustrating and sad.”

But because Braley’s in Saigon, he sought refuge in the bee’s nest that is the city’s expat Facebook groups.

Each of the post’s 100-ish comments came within 24 hours. Responses ranged from supportive—suggestions for where to go get

Khoi said it narrowed down to a mix of boredom, jadedness and a want for attention.

He said “generally people who are always

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SOCIETY FEATURE

by Jesús López-Gomez

Curating Positivity The skeletal staff contrasts with the larger oversight body in Vietnam is Awesome: the group’s two admins are supported by a team of eight moderators.

Phillip Veinott, the founder of Vietnam is Awesome, said he sees some of the same users who troll there “but they don’t act like that” inside his group.

“I just think it’s a really positive group,” he said.

Veinott explained that Vietnam is Awesome has to be a little more “on brand” than others because at the time he was anticipating the launch of an associated business: Saigon Expat Services—an online triage centre for expat service needs from real estate to personal assistants—officially went active just before the close of 2017.

itching for a fight online… seek validation to a point, I guess.”

Khoi is one of two admins who manage the over 50,000 members who belong to the group. Khoi said the group’s activity can be overwhelming for a small monitor group like theirs, “so the trolling and inappropriate posts fall thru more often than other groups.”

As Veinott created Vietnam is Awesome to make a better space for Ho Chi Minh City’s social media users, female expatriates created the group Females Expats and Locals of Ho Chi Minh City in summer 2014. The group has around 10,000 members.

Susan Li, a founding member and admin, said the group is a “safe space” where females on social media can “discuss with our girlfriends [subjects] we wouldn’t discuss with our guy friends. We created a forum where we can help each other.”

But why a group for females only?

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“I guess it comes down to females feel safer with other females. If men were in the group, many of us wouldn’t feel safe asking questions” like where to get a pap smear or find tampons.

“Men should not be offended!” she asserted.

To the question of why men are excluded: “There were plenty of groups for expats and locals, which include both sexes. Why create something that’s already out there?” she said.

Nguyen wasn’t speaking directly to the question of men’s role in the failure to engender an online civil society in Ho Chi Minh City’s social media groups, but he theorized that trolls’ output online is meant to “project whatever issues they have personally to wider audience.”

Veinott said his group was founded on and has retained a distinction for being a positive space.

“We started it to get people to share positive stories and photos from their trips all over vn and not city based only,” he wrote to #iAMHCMC. Nearly 10 percent of Vietnam is Awesome’s 46,000 or so members are located outside of Vietnam.

The greatest share of the group’s members, 22 percent, are older millennial men aged 21 to 34.

Braley said his experience on Expats & Locals in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) was mostly positive.

“One dickhead, but that’s to be expected.”

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#iAMHCMC

REAL ESTATE FEATURE

The Gentrification of District 4 As luxury properties spring up alongside crumbling tube houses, will District 4’s infrastructure match the rising demand?

by Keely Burkey

ventures are also appearing. She pointed to the office building e.Town, which will officially open this year, with leasing prices around US$20 to US$24 per square metre, compared to District 1’s US$35 to US$40 for a similar space.

Persistent Challenges Flooding is still a concern, however. District 4 was named one of the three most flood-prone districts in the city, along with Tan Binh District and Thu Duc District.

Last year, plans were set to spend US$41.8 million to build three large-scale reservoirs in the districts, the District 4 one to cover 4.8 hectares and cost US$2.2 million. #iAMHCMC couldn’t get information about its progress.

Along with water, current residents have also proved difficult to developers. Buildings must be torn down and residents must be compensated, a slow process in many cases.

As land prices rise, District 4’s old reputation hasn’t completely gone away.

Ten years ago, if you mentioned you lived in District 4, chances are you would get more than a few raised eyebrows. The small district between District 7 and 1 was known first and foremost for its gangs and mafia personnel.

For the past two years, this land has become a golden real estate opportunity.

Pham Ngoc Thien Thanh, Manager of Research & Consulting Services at CBRE, said, “Our ex-Managing Director, Mark Townsend, talked about District 4’s potential 10 years ago, because of its proximity to District 1, and because of its low land cost.”

A Strong Two Years

Both Thanh and Trang Bui, Head of Markets at Jones Lang Lasalle, have reported good sales for new residential buildings with hefty rental yields.

In early December, Tuoi Tre suggested that most buyers were looking to rent the apartments out for a profit, and that tenants were harder to find with the influx of competitive luxury and mid-end options in Districts 1 and 2.

In late October, Singaporean development company Capitaland closed a US$38.9 million deal to acquire a 14,474m2 site in District 4, where it plans to build an apartment community for mid-end to luxury users, with an average apartment size of 79m2. Capitaland expects the property value to increase to US$177 million.

Other recent luxury developments include Phu Long’s Rivergate complex, which went online this year, along with Thao Dien JSC’s Masteri Millennium, Novaland’s Icon 56 and Trung Thuy Group’s Lancaster Lincoln on Nguyen Tat Thanh, and Lancaster Residences on Ton That Thuyet.

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Thanh explained that land costs in District 4 are only one-fourth or one-fifth of comparable land in District 1, an area easily accessible by four vehicular bridges and one pedestrian bridge. It might not technically be the central business district (CBD), but it’s certainly CBD Lite.

While most of the recent projects here are residential, Trang said that a few key commercial

As Trang said, “The concern is still there, to be honest. Especially for large multinational companies—they worry about the safety of their staff because of its reputation. However, I don’t see that much concern from the local buyers with the new developments. They see the vibrant road along the riverside [Ben Van Don], and they see things have changed.”

BUSINESS FEATURE

by Jesús López-Gomez

Bitcoin’s legal status? Despite a strongly worded official decree, Bitcoin advocates are reading between the lines of an apparent ban on the cryptocurrency.

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Betting on Bitcoin

Let’s cut past the noise and excitement around Bitcoin to ask a simple question: are cryptocurrencies legal in Vietnam?

“From 1-1-2018, the act of issuing, supplying and using illegal means of payment (including Bitcoin and other similar virtual currency) may be subject to prosecution,” a government decree released in October last year stated. “As such, Bitcoin and other similar virtual currencies [Ethereum, Bitcoin Lite, et al.] are not legal means of payment in Vietnam,” the decree reads.

Leadership at cryptocurrency exchange Bitcoin Vietnam countered in a blog that— in somewhat circular logic—since Bitcoin is not legally defined as a currency, the decree cannot apply. “An illegal means of payment must be (1) a means of payment, and (2) NOT included in the list of approved legal means of payments used by the State Bank of Vietnam,” they wrote (emphasis theirs).

So, since Bitcoin isn’t legally defined as a currency, a means of payment, it cannot then be defined as an illegal means of payment.

Intellectual Acrobatics The lexical and intellectual acrobatics may be justified by the cryptocurrency’s startling appreciation. Bitcoin blew past a new record

just before December started: US$10,000 per one unit of the digital currency.

To put that in context, the Dow Jones industrial average went up 82 percent in its biggest year, 1915—one-tenth of Bitcoin’s growth in 2017.

The digital currency’s growth has come under scattered scrutiny and attempts at regulation by state actors. In October last year, the Chinese government banned residents from trading the cryptocurrency, which appears to have had little effect on the stateless fiat currency.

In the same month, the Vietnamese state bank said payment for services in Bitcoin is illegal. The move was a response to clarify local university FPT University’s allowing foreign students to pay with Bitcoin. The decree came with a fine: violating the law will cost between VND150 million and VND200 million.

Parsing the Facts So, using bitcoin to pay your tuition as FPT University wanted to do is a no-no. But is trading and mining—offering computing resources to maintain the cryptocurrency’s ledger in exchange for Bitcoin crumbs—okay?

The ruling was mute on the issue. “To the best

of our knowledge, Bitcoin has not been made illegal by legislation in most jurisdictions,” the currency’s official website reads.

In addition to actions by state actors in Vietnam and China, Russian leadership has also chosen to speak up about Bitcoin.

“We consider all cryptocurrency derivatives to be a negative development on the Russian market and do not consider it possible to support it, and will even assume measures to restrict potential operations with such instruments,” Russian central bank deputy Sergei Shvetsov said, announcing a ban on non-Russian websites’ sale of Bitcoin.

At the end of November, the Russian central bank issued a report warning investors of “substantial losses” amidst what it judged as a bubble.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s market capitalisation—the total value of all 16.7 million Bitcoins in the world—stands at over US$160 billion.

That’s roughly the size of General Electric, the US-based technology company, and larger than McDonald’s or entertainment company Disney.

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RECIPE OF THE MONTH

Braised Beef with Kopyor Coconut The kopyor coconut is no ordinary coconut; grown in Tra Vinh Province in southern Vietnam, its thick, soft flesh and jelly-like juice make this fruit oneof-a-kind. When paired with a nice cut of beef, you get one stunning result.

DIRECTION

Prepare the Ingredients Clean the beef thoroughly and cut it into strips, each about 5cm wide. Mix 50g of ginger, smashed with a knife blade, 50ml of rice wine and 5g salt in a pot of water. Bring the water to a boil and poach the beef for 10 minutes, then remove. Peel the carrot and cut into medallions, around 1cm wide each.

Peel the shallots and garlic gloves, and smash them with the blade of a knife. Cut the Kopyor coconut in half; grate the meat of half of it, and scoop out the flesh of the remaining half with a spoon.

Cook the Beef Season the beef with 3g salt, 3g seasoning powder and 3g sugar. Heat a pot with 5ml of cooking oil, 5ml of paprika oil, 20g tomato paste and the smashed shallots and garlic.

When the oil is hot, tip the beef into the pot and stir-fry until the meat is heated through; add 1 litre of coconut water to the pot and cook the mixture on high heat until the liquid boils.

Skim off the foam on top and simmer for about two hours, until the beef is tender.

Add the Finishing Touches Put 5ml of cooking oil in a frying pan and put on the stove at medium heat. Fry the carrot medallions briefly in the oil for three minutes.

Once the beef is tender, add the carrots and the grated Kopyor coconut to the pot, and simmer for an additional 10 minutes. Season to taste.

Add the scooped Kopyor coconut on top, as a garnish.

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THE GOLDEN SPOON AWARDS

Serves: 4 Cooking Time: 2 to 3 hours Difficulty: Easy Ingredients • 1kg shin beef • 1 Kopyor coconut, or large coconut • 1 litre coconut water • 200g carrots • 20g tomato paste • 5ml paprika oil • 10ml cooking oil • 50g shallots • 30g garlic • 50g ginger • 50ml rice wine • 3g seasoning powder • 8g salt • 3g sugar

HEALTH ADVERTORIAL

Filling in the Gaps:

Fighting Against Tooth Loss

Location 1: 51A Tu Xuong, D3 | Location 2: 57A Tran Quoc Thao, D3 inquiry@elitedental.com.vn; info@elitedental.com.vn | 028 7306 3838 | elitedental.com.vn

Elderly people both at home and abroad often suffer from tooth decay and even tooth loss, but they don’t have to.

Healthy teeth long into life just requires the right dental partners.

It’s a familiar sight in Vietnam: an elderly person chatting and smiling, with a few noticeable holes where tooth decay has taken its toll. If you don’t have any problems with your teeth, thank your lucky stars. You might not think about oral health often, but in many ways it’s a major key to your quality of life. Where would you be if you couldn’t eat your food properly? If your jaws hurt and ached with every chew? If you had to endure a smile with empty gaps, marking the places a molar or a canine has fallen out?

Over the age of 60, these concerns often turn into a reality—especially in Vietnam. A survey in 2010 showed that the average 20-year-old in Vietnam has lost one tooth, and citizens over the age of 80 endure life without an average of eight teeth.

Even more tragic? There’s no reason to expect bad teeth as we grow older: with a few precautionary measures, it’s entirely possible to retain all of your teeth into the winter of your life.

Why Do People Lose Teeth?

One of the common misconceptions is that tooth decay is a natural process of ageing.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In

reality, tooth loss and periodontal disease stem from a combination of causes—in particular, lazy hygiene (brush your teeth and floss!), lifestyle factors (smoking is a chief cause) and, more often than not, delaying regular check-ups.

So, if you don’t go to the dentist often, chances are your teeth will decay. But here’s the interesting part: if you stay vigilant and get a dental check-up every six months after you turn 60, you’ll actually need the doctor less!

Regular check-ups with a dental consultant who understands good oral health will nip potential infections in the bud and give you on-the-spot treatment for any issues that arise. The trick is, you need to find a dentist well-versed in geriatric treatments, who won’t charge an arm and a leg.

Good Health Means Good Options Why do we know so much about geriatric tooth loss? Because we’ve made it our business to know, and to care.

Dr. Lam from Elite Dental, a celebrated professional in his field with a PhD earned in

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France, has made himself the foremost expert in geriatric dentistry in HCMC, taking particular passion in patients without teeth.

Last year, he researched 20 cases of complete edentulous (total tooth loss), and has made ground-breaking research in an effort to fight it: Pro Arch, a four-part implant that literally gives patients a second chance at oral health.

The professionals at Elite Dental don’t have just one way to restore an individual’s teeth to their former glory. Depending on each case, and each person’s budget, we might recommend a dental bridge to restore missing teeth or a dental implant to restore complete tooth function.

Each unique case deserves the attention and professionalism on which we pride ourselves.

Dental implants are a last resort once all other options have failed. Preventative measures are by far the better option, and by far the easiest and least expensive. There’s only one step to this process: book a dental check-up every six months!

Our Tips for Life-Long Healthy Teeth 1. Quit smoking

Smoking isn’t just bad for your lungs—it also introduces harmful chemicals into your mouth. These increase bacteria levels, as well as your chance for periodontal disease.

2. Keep up with your hygiene regimen

A bit of a no-brainer, but worth mentioning nonetheless. If you leave food hiding in your teeth, chances are it’ll lead to tooth decay.

3. If something doesn’t feel right, get it checked out.

If you think a sore mouth is just a sign of ageing, think again. Nobody has to suffer with bad teeth, so nip the infection in the bud!

4. If you do experience tooth loss, don’t panic

If you lose a tooth despite your best efforts, we know what to do. From tooth implants to dental bridges, we’ll make sure your smile is whole again.

5. Get regular check-ups

The top reason for bad tooth health is neglect, so this one can’t be overstated. If you’re over 60, we recommend seeing a dentist every six months.

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TRAVEL FEATURE

by Keely Burkey

The Solution for Phu Quoc’s Hot Development Vietnam’s government is banking on Phu Quoc as a major domestic and international travel hub. However, its popularity might just be its undoing.

The first six months of 2017 saw a 77 percent travel increase to the island of Phu Quoc: tourism is booming there. International and domestic travellers have been drawn to the island for its sandy beaches, visa exemption programme and surprisingly affordable travel deals.

By 2020, real estate company Jones Lang Lasalle estimates that 20 million international arrivals will land in Vietnam; the Vietnamese government is hoping that many of these will choose Phu Quoc as one of their stops, expanding from the traditional Hanoi-Hoi An-Saigon route.

The Department of Tourism has earmarked Phu Quoc as a prime destination, aided by an influx of luxury resorts dotting the beaches and, most recently, gambling. One of the island’s first casinos, the aptly named Casino on Phu Quoc, is set to open in the spring of 2018.

For an island with a population of just over 100,000, millions of visitors would understandably stretch infrastructure to breaking point.

As pollution continues to rise, this is exactly what we’re seeing.

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The Specious Beaches The Kien Giang Environmental Protection Office reported that some 300 tonnes of waste is discharged per day into the oceans surrounding Phu Quoc, coming from tourism services and the fishing industry. And the amount increases year-on-year.

Solid rubbish is one thing: though it’s more visible, it’s often easier to compile and clear, unless it gets swept into the sea. Wastewater is different.

At the moment, there’s only one waste treatment plant on the island, able to treat 200 tonnes of sewage per day.

With the increase of resorts and hotels, this isn’t powerful enough. According to VietnamNet, another plant will be built in An Thoi Town, though it can’t come fast enough.

The detrimental side effects of Phu Quoc’s tourism surge might actually lead to environmental degradation— and the environment is one of the main reasons travellers choose the island. Case in point: the coral reefs.

In 2014 Dantri International estimated that 96 percent of Vietnam’s reefs have been damaged by human activity, and 75 percent face extinction.

Activities like fishing with upgraded nets have been shown to cause significant damage.

Further, Vietnam’s Red Book of Endangered Species now lists over 70 species of marine life that are suspected of being adversely affected by increased pollution.

Solutions?

The Kien Giang Government has proposed to fix the problem. Alongside plans to create a second water treatment plant are suggestions to improve waste treatment technology that promote recycling rather than dumping— it’s estimated that 80 percent of household waste is simply discarded rather than recycled or eliminated with environmentally sustainable methods.

More hope has been given by Vietnam’s participation of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security, signed in 2015.

Signed with other countries such as Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, the document is both nebulous and soft; from its chief document, no actual guidelines or missions are mandated.

Seven more luxury resorts are on the roster in the next three years, among them Regent Phu Quoc, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve and Eastin Resort Phu Quoc.

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978-604-64-9441-6

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