March 2026
SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳 STREET ART: FOUR EYES by ALEX PAWSON
March 2026
SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳 STREET ART: SMILING PEZ PAID A VISIT
March2026
SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳: Chùa Linh Sơn Temple
Chùa Linh Sơn is a Buddhist pagoda in District 1, built over 200 years ago, making it one of the oldest temples in the district. It also has a significant role in modern Vietnamese Buddhist history. The Southern Association of Buddhist Research, founded in 1931, had its office at Linh Son Temple , which made it a center of the Buddhist reform movement in colonial-era Saigon. So this wasn’t just a prayer hall. It was where Vietnamese Buddhists organized intellectually under French rule.
Though small and relatively simple in its architecture, the main hall is adorned with statues of Buddha, Bodhisattvas, and other deities. Outside, lush gardens and quiet courtyards provide a peaceful environment to meditate. Despite being in the heart of District 1, it retains its timeless charm.
SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳: Chùa Lâm Tế Temple
Chùa Lâm Tế. 212A Nguyen Trai Street, Nguyen Cu Trinh Ward, District 1.
Named after the Lâm Tế (Linji) school of Zen Buddhism, the dominant Buddhist lineage in southern Vietnam. The Linji school originated in 9th century Tang Dynasty China and came to Vietnam through Chinese monks. It teaches sudden enlightenment over gradual study, direct experience over scripture.
The location matters. Nguyen Trai is the main road running through Cholon, Saigon’s Chinatown. The Lam Te lineage arrived in the south largely through the Chinese community. The oldest temple in Saigon, Giac Lam Pagoda from 1744, became a Lam Te temple when Zen Master Vien Quang of the Lam Te lineage became its abbot in 1772. So this isn’t just a neighborhood pagoda. It carries the name of the root lineage that shaped how Buddhism spread across southern Vietnam.
24march26
SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳 STREET ART: MISS SAIGON by AREK
March 2026
SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳 STREET ART: SAVE RHINOS
March 2026
SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳: THIS WEEK IN COFFEE
This week in coffee felt less like hunting for caffeine and more like wandering into tiny human moments scattered around Saigon before the city fully wakes up.
Before 6am one morning, I found a coffee lady tucked into a little hem off Lê Thị Riêng. She was the only one operating for blocks.
A nice dark iced milk coffee. I love that first violent hit of iced milk coffee. 😆 But after days of it, I started craving the cleaner intensity of cà phê đen đá — straight black Vietnamese coffee over ice. There’s a focused kind of energy in it that feels almost medicinal. Sharp. Motivated. Slightly concerning. Probably unhealthy in quantities I’m currently exploring.
One morning I walked out with no destination at all. Just the intention of letting coffee find me. After wandering through streets I’m fairly certain I was never meant to be on, under brutal heat, I ended up at another completely unassuming stand on Bùi Viện.
I ordered in Vietnamese and her entire expression changed. Suddenly there was smiling, correcting my pronunciation of “Bùi Viện” while I filmed, asking if I wanted the coffee in a glass mug instead of takeaway plastic. Yes. Absolutely yes. That tiny gesture somehow said everything. Respect given, respect returned. I love a glass mug!
What struck me this week was how quickly attitudes soften when people realize you are trying — even badly — to meet their culture where it lives instead of demanding it come to you.
I never see any foreigners sitting at these tiny sidewalk coffee stands. They stay inside cafes with air conditioning and playlists curated in Stockholm or Melbourne. Meanwhile, the real pulse of Saigon is sitting six inches above the pavement on a blue plastic chair while scooters scream past your knees.
And honestly? That is the only way I want to experience this city.
Straight Black Coffee
One stand gave me the exact opposite of what I ordered — black coffee arrived sweetened with sugar and no ice. Did I complain? Of course not. I know I’m lucky to even be sitting on a sidewalk in Saigon drinking coffee in the first place.
May 2026
SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳 STREET ART: 🦄 INSTAGLOENN
21march26
HO CHI MINH CITY / SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳: HUYEN SY CHURCH
Nhà Thờ Huyện Sỹ (Huyen Sy Church), on Ton That Tung Street in District 1. Built between 1902 and 1905, it was funded entirely by Lê Phát Đạt, one of the wealthiest landowners in colonial Cochinchina and one of the first Vietnamese to be granted the French noble title “Huyện Sỹ.”
He and his wife are buried inside the church.
The architecture is Gothic Revival, built with granite brought from Biên Hòa, and the steeple rises about 57 meters. It’s one of the oldest Catholic churches in Saigon still holding active Mass. The pigeons on the gate angels are a permanent fixture.
21march26
NONTHABURI, THAILAND 🇹🇭: NO EXPLANATIONS
Nonthaburi Doesn’t Explain Itself.
There is a giant metal pyramid bolted to the front of a shophouse on one of the main roads in Nonthaburi. It rises three stories, corrugated panels in layers of teal and rust, like someone welded a temple spire to a strip mall. The sun was sitting right behind the power pole when I walked past, and for a second the whole thing looked like it was on purpose. Like someone planned this composition. Nobody planned this. Someone just built a pyramid on a shophouse and never took it down.
I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it was. A sign for a business that closed. A design choice that made sense to one person at one point in time. A leftover from something. I’ve walked past it and I can’t figure it out, and I’ve stopped trying. That is the thing about Nonthaburi. It does not explain itself and it does not care if you understand.
Two blocks away, a bird built a nest on top of a phone top-up machine. She was sitting on it like she owned the place, tucked between the antenna and a can of Birdy coffee somebody left there. Birdy. The coffee brand. Next to an actual bird. You cannot make this stuff up. 🤣
The machine is still plugged in. The screen is still lit. People are still walking up to use it. And this bird just decided that the top of a vending kiosk in a concrete alcove was the right place to raise a family. She’s not wrong. It’s covered, it’s warm, it’s elevated, and nobody is going to bother her because this is Thailand and you do not disturb a nesting bird. You just work around her. You top up your phone and you let her be.
I think about this a lot when people ask me what it is like to live in Southeast Asia. They want to hear about temples and street food and islands. And those things are real and they are fine. But the actual texture of daily life here is a metal pyramid nobody can explain and a bird on a vending machine next to a coffee can with her own name on it. It’s not exotic. It’s not curated. It’s just ordinary life being stranger and more layered than anything you could stage.
Nonthaburi is not trying to impress anyone. That is what I like about it. It just keeps going, building pyramids on shophouses and letting birds nest on machines, and if you are paying attention, it gives you more material in a ten-minute walk than most cities give you in a week.
You just have to look sideways.
March2026