Goodbye Halico Plant

Featured Post

• Goodbye Halico Plant

  My friend Steve recently visited the old Halico factory - a liquor plant that the French built more than a century ago in Hanoi. He managed to get some wonderful photos of the old place, which is due to be torn down in the near future.

• A walk in the park

  At around 7p.m. the other night, my husband and I had just pulled into the small parking lot beside Saigon’s Le Van Tam Park when I spotted a group of youngish and middle-aged women sitting around, eating snacks and apparently enjoying the nice evening. We parked the car and a woman popped up and asked [...]

• Six…sux…CX

  Today, my five-year-old son and I went to Saigon’s Tan Son Nhat Airport and found utter chaos at the Cathay Pacific check-in counters. After waiting for more than an hour I was informed that my flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver had been “cancelled because there’s a storm”. When I questionned why the flight from [...]

• Press it

  I was having coffee at an outdoor cafe in Saigon’s District 2 when my friend’s nine-year-old son spotted this cryptic sign, which reads “LIGHTNING PROTECTION TEST LINK” and has what looks like a doorbell beneath it. “Do you think we should press it?” said the nine-year-old. “Better not,” I said. For the next week, every [...]

• In Vietnam’s bookshops

  My bilingual Vietnam-themed picture books, Vietnam A to Z and 1,2,3 Vietnam!, are now stocked by Vietnam’s major bookshops. The easiest place to find them is at PNC Books in Vincom Mall, Ly Tu Trong Street, D.1, HCM City.