Salon Kien Nguyen

Readers of Destination Saigon will know that much of the action there takes place in or around a hairdressing salon in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City.



So many people have asked me where the salon is and what it looks like, so I thought I'd put up all the details here and some very recent pics.  

Saigon hair stylist Kien Nguyen and his wife Cham

If you are interested in visiting, Salon Kien Nguyen is open from 9 am till about 9 pm.

Kien Nguyen and senior stylist Duy

It is situated in Tan Binh District, about a 20 minute taxi ride from downtown Saigon.

Head stylist Nghi puts the finishing touches on Kien Nguyen's hair

It's worth visiting during the day because it is directly across the road from Vien Giac Pagoda, one of the most interesting and beautiful Buddhist temples in Ho Chi Minh City, though it is rarely visited by western tourists.

Even the motorcycle attendants are hunks!

My nephew Kien Nguyen is the maestro, and he heads a team of fabulous, chatty and fun stylists who can do absolutely anything you need to make you more beautiful!




Details:

Beauty Salon Kien Nguyen
152C Bui Thi Xuan, Phuong 3
Q. Tan Binh
Ho Chi Minh City

Important note: make sure you tell the taxi driver or xe om that it is Bui Thi Xuan Tan Binh - there is another, more famous, Bui Thi Xuan street in District 1.   

Saigon hair stylist Kien Nguyen with Walter Mason, author of "Destination Saigon"

A Vietnamese Temple in Phnom Penh

There was once a large Vietnamese population in Phnom Penh.
When I first visited in 1996 I heard Vietnamese spoken often on the streets. Restaurant owners, cafe proprietors, market-stall holders - all were frequently Vietnamese. The city boasted several Vietnamese Mahayana temples with resident monks, as did outlying areas.
This has been gradually changing. More and more Vietnamese return home, despite having lived in Cambodia for a generation. The Vietnamese temple close to Olympic Market is the last one I know of in the inner-city area, and that seems to be on its last legs. Of course, no-one knows where it is, and most Tuk-tuk and moto drivers will tell you that there is no Vietnamese Wat in Phnom Penh. The only one they know of is in a fishing village about 15 kilometres outside of the city. I knew it was there somewhere, though, and eventually I went out to the Vietnamese restaurant next to the Mai Linh bus stop that sells tickets to Ho Chi Minh City. The kindly owner affirmed there was a Vietnamese temple nearby, and the waiter drove me there on the back of his bike, having stopped to ask directions several times.


When I visited last year there was still a resident monk, albeit a very grumpy and not particularly outgoing one. But even he has left, leaving the temple more or less deserted. The temple-keeper seems to be an 18 year-old boy, helped by some of the surrounding families and kept company by a shifting cast of ne'er-do-wells that sleep in hammocks in the prayer hall.
It's a shame, because it is a beautiful little place, displaying a unique amalgamation of the two religious styles. The usual wall murals common in Theravadin temples across Southeast Asia are here, but with the addendum of murals depicting Mahayana concepts of hell and the cultivation of merit that one might see at a Chinese or Vietnamese temple.
The main shrine contains the usual Vietnamese mix of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, but also a Khmer-style image of the Buddha that you would never encounter in Vietnam.








Outside the temple are a number of small shrines, including one devoted to a local Goddess from Ca Mau in Southern Vietnam - I have never encountered her before.



The temple is well worth a visit, though prepare for a struggle to find it. It is actually centrally located - it's just that no-one knows about it.

Ask the driver to take you to Wat S'nyay (Wat Vietnam).
He may not know where it is, in which case ask him to take you to Street #134 and ask directions from there.

Bitexco Tower, Ho Chi Minh City

I have a confession to make. I am not particularly enamoured of big towers.
My Freudian readers can make of it what they will, but I am largely uninterested in the enormous concrete and steel erections that seem to be springing up all over Asia.
But I couldn't resist a trip up Saigon's new-ish Bitexco Tower, a quite beautiful building that is the tallest in Ho Chi Minh City and is said to symbolise a lotus bud.

Saigon hair stylist Kien Nguyen and a pictorial representation of Bitexco Tower inside Bitexco Tower. Very po-mo.

I don't quite see the bud myself, but it is nonetheless a striking-looking building that stands out in a reasonably low-rise city.
Getting up costs around $10, which is a bargain by big tower standards (you need to mortgage your house to take a trip up Sydney's sad old Centerpoint Tower).
Once up there it is cool and slick and almost empty. My Vietnamese companions loved the outing, though they were perplexed by what they saw - the Vietnamese inability to read maps (it doesn't seem to be taught in schools) meant that viewing the city from this elevation seemed to confuse them.

The view over Saigon from the Bitexco Tower

There is also a monster telescope which is meant to be amazing at night, but apparently is useless doing the day.

Kien Nguyen checking out the big telescope

The standard telescopes arranged around the viewing tower are free to use and excellent.
It's actually quite fascinating to view this constantly developing city from above, and I think it was money well spent.

Cute tattooed Japanese guy we flirted with

The boys pose for a shot outside the tower inside the tower. I love this stuff.

The Bitexco Tower (centre) viewed from a ferry on the Saigon River

My friend Hai looking out over Saigon from the Bitexco Tower observation deck

Go now before the locals discover it and it becomes insanely crowded.

Feast Magazine: Cabramatta Feature, February 2012

My other and better half Thang Ngo has a fantastic article about our hometown Cabramatta in this month's Feast Magazine. It's in stores now, so make sure you get yourself a copy!  Here's a brief preview, from Thang himself:

 

Noodlies, Sydney food blog writes a Cabramatta feature for the current edition of SBS Feast Magazine.  I feel so privileged that the amazing people behind all the wonderful Vietnamese food in Cabramatta have trusted me to tell their story.

People like the remarkable Bac Cang Nghieu (pictured above with noodlies) who mortgaged the family home to take over Bau Truong in 1995, at the height of Cabramatta’s drug problems.  Back then, she was terrorised by drug dealers and addicts, but with a steely determination, Nghieu and her family traded on.  Now Bau Truong is one of Cabramatta’s most popular restaurants. She’s one tough cookie, at 67 years, she still walks 1.5hrs to work every morning, seven days.
Or the courageous Thi Nhu Pham of Pho Tau Bay (video above), winner of Sydney’s best pho poll conducted by noodlies in 2010.  In 1978, she fled Vietnam by boat while two months pregnant.  She started to cook and sell pho from her house on Sundays and within a couple of years saved enough to open the now famous Pho Tau Bay in 1982.  She then sponsored her husband to Australia in 1984.
Pham and Nghieu’s remarkable success stories are in my Cabramatta feature, one of the many great reads in this month’s SBS Feast Magazine. The feature also details six of my favourite Cabramatta restaurants and my recommendation of dishes to order.

Le Quyen - Mưa Nửa Đêm

Le Quyen is a popular young singer in Vietnam.
In 2010 she released a beautiful album called Khuc Tinh Xua in which she sings old-fashioned village songs.



Such nostalgia is rare among Vietnamese pop stars, but it is the most exquisite album, and one that would have great appeal amongst the Vietnamese diaspora all over the world.
It's probably going to be hard to get in the Vietnamese areas of Australia or America, where CDs of artists from Vietnam are normally not stocked.
But if you're in Vietnam, grab a copy of this lovely CD for a nice, updated introduction to some of the more traditional sounds of Vietnam.
Here are a couple of tracks from the album:

Karaoke Night

My father-in-law has just returned from Vietnam, bearing an unexpected gift - a pic of me at the karaoke night I hosted for all the employees at Salon Kien Nguyen. Thank God no pics of me actually singing or dancing.
It was an eventful night. Two of the people were having a romantic tiff, which ended in a motorcycle accident, a streetfight and a kidnapping. Just another Saigon night.
Phuoc, the man in front, had just had a rose tattooed on his elbow to commemorate his divorce.

Vietnamese Foot Cream

Call it a limitation of interest, but I just haven't spent much time checking out the feet of Vietnamese people. When I travel in Vietnam I am too distracted by the beauty of faces and the sweetness of personalities to have much time for my eyes to stray footward. Something must be seriously amiss, though, because foot cream and cracked heel balm is everywhere, and supermarkets carry a half-dozen varieties, local and imported. In Australia they don't even carry one.
The continued existence of local cosmetics companies is heartening, and Thorakao, who make this variety, is one of the biggest. I have some tangential involvement in the cosmetics industry in Vietnam, and it seems to me that local companies are thriving.
So what can I tell you about this particularly lovely Vietnamese foot cream? Well, it's creamy, with a nice herbal/menthol kind of smell. And it's very cheap - about 70 cents. You can keep your feet lovely on a budget in Vietnam.
I bought this tube at the Maximark supermarket on Cong Hoa road in Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City. It was one of the original big supermarkets in Vietnam, though these days it's looking a bit run down. I still think it is the best, however. Particularly if, like me, you are a hunter of exotic cosmetics. Shelves and shelves of the stuff.