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Vietnamese by heritage. Texan by birth. World citizen at heart. Currently writing from Austin, TX.
10 stories
Ănthology
“I was in a creative writing program for grad school at the time, and I thought, as an artist, going on MasterChef would give me something to write about.”
Ănthology
France’s Vietnamese population is one of the largest outside Vietnam. From colonial assignments to refugee migrations, the community has grown, shifted, and evolved since its beginnings in the 1860s. Meet the new generation of French-Vietnamese creatives — chefs, authors, cultural consultants — who are reimagining and representing Vietnamese culture in Paris in fresh and deeply personal ways.
Saigon
An unassuming street named Phan Đình Phùng runs through Saigon’s Phú Nhuận District. It is named after a Vietnamese revolutionary who led rebel armies against French colonial forces in the 1880s and 1890s. He is also my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.
Ănthology
“Charles Phan had more impact on Vietnamese food than any other chef in the country.” — Michael Bauer, San Francisco Chronicle .
Ănthology
The first time I bought rượu , it was from Lang Giang , my tour guide in Sa Pa. We were staying in a Red Dao village known for its rice liquor production, and that night I received three water bottles, stripped of their original labels, each filled with a mysterious liquid.
Ănthology
Twenty years ago in America, tofu was considered, at best, a bland, tasteless, hippie meat replacement, and at worst, a dangerous, highly processed food product that would allegedly cause men to grow breasts and women to develop breast cancer (even though the opposite is true ). It was at that time that one Vietnamese refugee decided he would take back tofu .
Culture
“You forgot to say ‘Uno’!” Lang Giang cheerfully exclaims before covering her mouth in laughter. It’s the twelfth time she’s caught me this trip and blocked me from winning. By this point in our trek, day four of six, Giang feels more like a friend than my tour guide through Sapa.
![[Photos] In Saigon's Labyrinth of Alleys, Textures and Typographies Galore](https://media.urbanistnetwork.com/saigoneer/article-images/legacy/05fRSM4b.jpg)
Arts & Culture
Saigon, like New York or Tokyo, is a city renowned for its crowds—the chaotic jostling of people pressing past other people that occurs whenever millions of lives inhabit the same few square meters. Throw motorbikes carrying families of five and toppling with oversized cargo into the mix and you've got a show. This city is a photographer’s dream.
