I’m a sucker for romantic stories. And when Mai and I met Nguyen Thi Van, she provided a doozy. It seems that Van was working on the same road crew as a guy named Vinh (In Vietnam, women do the heavy-lifting, right alongside the men in construction projects etc.)...

    Not only does Vo Nguyen speak English well, his delivery has a pronounced western flair. I had a hunch he’d spent time in the USA…     “Actually,” he conceded, “I spent a year as an exchange student at Iowa’s Cornell College. I think I picked up a lot of the...

Cua Lo wakes up with the rising sun. People pilgrimage to the beach to swim under the multi-colored morning sky as it reflects off the glassy sea. But when the sun goes down, Cua Lo emits another kind of charm—a noir beauty that softens and shadows even the most...

Talk about romantic… Dinh Truong Son met his future wife (Nguyen Thi Loi) when he came to her house to fix the families television set. It was a case of the young electrician meeting the young seamstress—two years later they were married… Son grew up in Vinh City (14...

The first Cua Lo restaurant I visited (almost 4-years ago) was Lien Thu—Thuc Quyen (aka #68). Before I introduce the proprietor, let me explain the number thing. Restaurants line the promenade that runs along the beach in Cua Lo—each has a name and a number. I find...