My first plate was piled high with shrimp, squid, crab, and mantis shrimp. The second was filled with oysters, salmon, and sashimi. The third was a mountain of grilled meat.
Last weekend, my family went to a popular buffet restaurant in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. The place offered more than 100 dishes, from premium seafood like lobster, grilled oysters with cheese, salmon, and sashimi to a wide range of Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese food.
Many Vietnamese students struggle to speak English clearly, pronounce words correctly, or understand native speakers, even after over a decade of learning the language.
Years ago, a photo of one of Elon Musk's high school physics exercises went viral online. Many people commented, half-jokingly, that even the billionaire Elon Musk had to learn torque problems, so students today shouldn't complain about having to study the same thing.
If the goal is for our students to achieve high English proficiency, the change must start with the language model they hear most often: their teacher.
The flight landed on time. I hurried to the baggage claim thinking I would be out and on my way to a meeting within 10–15 minutes. Thirty minutes went by. An hour passed. My suitcase still had not appeared.
Making English a compulsory subject from grade 1 is undeniably the right direction, but as a parent, the policy still brings me mixed thoughts: I'm worried that my child will be overloaded.
"Half a kilo more, come on! The plane carries hundreds of people, what difference does it make?" a woman snapped as airline staff stopped her at the check-in counter.
A friend of mine, a manager at a trading company, had to make a difficult decision last summer to pull his child out of an international school with tuition and expenses totaling VND450 million (US$17,100) per year.
Many candidates who graduated from top universities, scored an impressive IELTS 8.0, participated in research projects, and achieved remarkable accomplishments still get rejected at my company after the interview round.
Once when I was in Thai Binh, someone asked me in Vietnamese about my "nương". I froze for a second. "Why's he asking me about barbecue (nướng)?" Seeing my confusion, he burst out laughing: "Ah, I meant 'lương', your salary."
Having witnessed the Japanese lining up in perfect order and maintaining a quiet demeanor everywhere, I could not help but compare it to the bustling, noisy conversations I often hear in other places.
Every evening on Nguyen Chi Thanh Street, it takes me 15 minutes to crawl just 400 meters as cars and buses spread across five lanes, forcing motorcycles to climb sidewalks or squeeze through gaps.
For five hours, I lived a nightmare. My “luxury” apartment in central Hanoi, the home I trusted to keep me safe, suddenly became a man-made lake, with water soaking books, bedding, wardrobes, even dripping through electrical sockets.
After a rhino carcass was discovered in Nam Cat Tien, I met village elder Dieu K'Giang (possibly the first person to see rhinos in Nam Cat Tien), hoping to hear it was not the last of them.
Despite everyone's efforts to cheer him and invite him to join the celebration around a beautifully crafted cake, my son could not take his eyes off his cell phone.
The night before heavy rains caused widespread flooding in Hanoi on Tuesday, my son asked, 'Any announcement, Dad?' He hoped school would be canceled. I searched too, for warnings from Hanoi's authorities, but found nothing.
On Sept. 30, it took me six hours to cover 10 km through Hanoi's flooded streets, a night that revealed how unprepared the capital is for every heavy rain.
When I first drove in Bangkok and on its expressways, my immediate reaction was: "These lanes feel a bit narrow." So after reading news about proposals to narrow inner-city car lanes in Vietnam, I was pleased.
At the height of my career two decades ago, I was an HR manager earning a steady VND15 million (US$570) a month, a job many would call safe. But one question unsettled me: What if I lose this job after 40?
The ongoing debate about Filipino teachers not being "native" oversimplifies the real issue and ignores important facts. Let's set the record straight.
A complaint from a VnExpress reader about Filipinos teaching "native English" lessons has sparked strong reactions, with many readers defending Filipinos as highly qualified English teachers and emphasizing that non-native accents are not a problem.
Lan, an excellent infrastructure engineer, has been involved with major projects in Vietnam, his home country. But after moving to New Zealand more than five years ago, he is still struggling to find a job despite a skill shortage in the construction sector.
Each student at my child's school pays VND300,000 (US$11.37) a month to learn English with a foreign teacher, but the school hires non-native English speakers.
Last May, I joined a group of Europeans at a fishing village on Vietnam's central coast. They loved the dawn fish market and homemade lunch, until they spent nearly an hour just trying to find a taxi back to their hotel.
I feel embarrassed by a recent incident at a restaurant in Germany, where a group of Vietnamese guests caused a commotion, banging spoons, screaming out for staff over a missing chili pot, and speaking loudly.
When Vietnam's law changes on Oct. 1 to allow single women to have children through IVF without needing permission, it will do more than update policy.
I used to spend two or three hours every day scrolling through Facebook, reading comments, liking posts, and following everything on the platform. Eventually, it reached a point where I knew I needed help.
Looking at the iced milk coffee that was one-third condensed milk, my friend excitedly took a big sip, only to shake his head and stick out his tongue: "Too sweet."
Years ago at a Bangkok airport, staff let my overweight bag through after finding it was filled with books. That small act of flexibility left me grateful, and made me think about how fragile the balance is between rules, fairness, and service culture in aviation.
On Sunday morning as I drove to a familiar coffee corner, I noticed Hanoi was resplendent as preparations have begun for the National Day celebrations.
I studied English the traditional way, through textbooks and dictionaries. After decades, no matter how long or complex a sentence is, I can still grasp the main idea.
I’ve lived and worked in Vietnam for nearly 30 years. As someone who runs a business here, I've long considered one coffee chain a convenient and comfortable place for informal meetings, casual catch-ups, and a decent cup of tea.
There are two kinds of news: the kind that lifts you up, and the kind that drags you down. Ho Chi Minh City, right now, has both: global love and an airport problem.
