Thuy Chi Nguyen says that her motorbike, a 20-year-old Honda Dream balanced on a kickstand beside her, is her best friend. Nguyen, in her late 50s with a ready smile, has been driving a xe ôm moto taxi in Hanoi for 17 years; today, she rarely has a passenger whom she doesn’t already know. “Most of my customers, like me, live in this alleyway,” she says, sitting on a low blue stool at a tea stand in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. “Some work in banks, and they don’t have time to pick their kids up, so I do

There are many clumsy shoe prints beyond the foot-high metal boundary, next to a small sign that screams out in all caps ‘PLEASE, DON’T TOUCH THE ARTWORK’. They appear on the pile of sand that makes up Bu Bach Lien’s The Tale of Human, an installation at the 3rd ASEAN Graphic Arts Competition and Exhibition, which saw its final day at the Vincom Center for Contemporary Art’s (VCCA) this week. But while the exhibition presented thought-provoking art, left behind was a room of shattered mirrors,

Floods and landslides in Vietnam are reported to have left at least 102 people dead or missing, while tens of thousands of people have lost their homes to rising water. Two storms that hit central Vietnam in the first two weeks of October, Storm Linfa and Storm Nangka, brought six times higher than average rainfall, flooding 136,000 houses and forcing 90,000 people to evacuate their homes. A third cyclone is expected to hit the coast in the coming days. Worst hit is Hue province, some 700km (4

You smell it before you see it. Black tarpaulin stretched over a mountain of solid waste, cranes and trucks moving endlessly over untreated trash, and smoke billowing from behind banana trees. This is Nam Son, Hanoi’s biggest landfill site, sitting alongside a village that 2,000 families still call home. The Vietnamese capital produces around 6,500 tonnes of trash per day. Around 5,000 tonnes of that – a weight equivalent to around 4,000 cars – is collected and shipped off up to the Nam Son, ju

As a look back in history for the 75th anniversary of Vietnamese independence, the Globe reflects on how prisons became a symbol for colonial oppression, a breeding ground for communism, and ultimately gave life to the 1945 August Revolution There’s a prison at the heart of every story of Vietnam’s revolution. They’re in every memoir of Communist Party leaders, and eventually every school curriculum in the country. For former prisons like Hoa Lo in the centre of Hanoi, they became symbols of Vi

For people living on the capital's streets, Vietnam's Covid-19 lockdown has made basic survival even more difficult. Now, as the country rides a second wave of infections, vulnerable people and their advocates are holding tight to what they have Vietnam has a no-nonsense approach to Covid-19. Security guards don’t need to ask customers twice to wear a mask, and the wrong cough could see a house, street or city in lockdown. But as doors shut, some are being left out in the blazing heat without

A new directive further tightening restrictions on Vietnam's wildlife trade was met with much fanfare last week. But from vague wording to lax enforcement, some conservationists have their doubts about how much impact it will have Last week, Vietnamese prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc issued what has been widely heralded as a much-needed ban on the wildlife trade in the country. Some rules rehash old ground, while others seem to represent genuine progress. The 12-point document, issued on 23 Ju

Following the release of a report late last week highlighting the devastating impact of snares on wildlife across Southeast Asia, the World Wildlife Fund has called on governments in the region to up their efforts to catch and punish perpetrators Following the release of a report last week highlighting the devastating impact of snares on wildlife across Southeast Asia, the World Wildlife Fund has called on governments in the region to up their efforts to catch and punish perpetrators By Ashley

Every year, thousands of Vietnamese women leave their homes to venture across the border to China in search of hard, laborious work. For people from minority cultures, like Hmong, Nung and Muong, living deep in the mountains doesn’t provide jobs with enough income to support their families, and they’re often forced to find money elsewhere. Many will be gone for months on end, working long days in succession with little rest, wilting over a hot sewing machine.