Tuan Phan

The Bana Hills of Danang are 25 kilometers southwest of Danang’s city center at an altitude of 1,487 meters. Most visitors make their way to the popular surrounding sites via the two-time world-record breaking cable car system. From there, it’s suggested to explore the Bana Hills Fantasy Park, Bana Hills Resort, or the beautifully restored French colonial architectural sites—first discovered by the French in the early 1900’s. And there’s also the Golden Bridge that’s supported by the “hands of the Gods” […]

Rooftop bars are such a staple of Saigonese nightlife now, so much that each skybar seems to have its own distinguishing feature and style. Patrons come for the view, pay extra for drinks, and partake in the thriving scene of a city coming alive at night. While it doesn’t have the scope of Hong Kong or New York, Ho Chi Minh City’s skyline is compelling and its rooftop bars are open year round. Sunsets, cocktails at dusk, streets lit up […]

Monde Restaurant & Bar, which quietly opened three years ago in Ho Chi Minh City, is a modest, tranquil bar for cocktail lovers that wish to remove themselves from the busier, frenetic watering holes in the city. Monde is housed in a spacious two story colonial building branching off a boulevard that runs by the Notre Dame. One walks through an alleyway, then pass by a placid reflecting pool and water cascading down a stone wall feeding it, to enter a […]

A visitor walking deep into the headquarters of property developers Sala and Novaland could see several models of a future Ho Chi Minh City. As given form in plaster models and digitized 3D, a brand new city will arise in District 2 in the next five years, dense in high rises, expansive with wide lane highways, containing a new business and residential district as the new, modern face of Vietnam. Take a motorbike ride down Ben Van Don street in […]

When a list of Asia’s 50 Best Bars came out last year, Ho Chi Minh City was conspicuously missing. In fact, no Vietnamese bar made the list at all. Are Ho Chi Minh City’s best bars simply not good enough for this exclusive club, selected by Drinks International, or are they simply overlooked by the bartenders, owners, and journalists who make up the group? The curators skewed the list towards craft cocktail bars focused on the menus, so while ambiance, […]

Like many other 30-somethings, it’s wedding season for the next few years for me. It’s finally time for me to purchase an honest to goodness suit. Wearing a suit is something I’ve not concerned myself with for many years. For formal events, I’ve always relied on a suffocatingly warm factory-constructed ensemble bought so long ago that the pants has a distinct MC Hammer bagginess. The jacket has two bulging shoulder pads. I wore that suit to every graduation ceremony. The […]