A magical city steeped in history

A meeting held over a good table has a way of going better than one held across a desk. The setting relaxes people, the pace slows a little, and the conversation finds room to breathe. But the wrong room can undo all of that: a table wedged beside a loud one, a kitchen that lands […]

You can usually smell Christmas before you taste it. Warm cinnamon, a curl of orange peel, cloves pushed into fruit, a little ginger heat at the back of the throat. Those are the flavours the season built its drinks around, and once you know them you start to recognise them in every glass. This is […]

Saigon does Christmas its own way. There is no snow, no frost on the window, just warm strings of light down Đồng Khởi, families out taking photos, and an evening air that in December finally turns cool enough to want a jacket. It is a fine city to be out in at the end of […]

Dinner is done, the plates are cleared, and here comes the small question that decides a whole evening: home, or not yet? On a Christmas night in District 1 the answer is easy. The streets are lit, the air has that rare December cool, and the best part of the date is often the hour […]

Dinner is done, the plates are cleared, and here comes the small question that decides a whole evening: home, or not yet? On a Christmas night in District 1 the answer is easy. The streets are lit, the air has that rare December cool, and the best part of the date is often the hour […]

Standing in front of a bar for the first time can feel like reading a menu in a language you never studied. Old Fashioned, Negroni, Sazerac, the list keeps going, and none of it tells you what will actually taste good. The good news is that you do not need to know any of it. […]

Saigon is a city best understood from a little height. Down at street level it is all motion, horns and neon and the smell of grilled somewhere close by. Rise a few floors and the same city softens into something you can actually take in: rooftops, river, the long gold of a District 1 sunset. […]

A day by a rooftop infinity pool sounds like something reserved for hotel guests, a perk you unlock only after checking in for the night. It is not. At ROOTY Bar, on the fifteenth floor of The Myst Đồng Khởi, you can buy a day pass and spend the whole afternoon by a 24 metre […]

Every 2 September the city tilts toward the river. Families pack the promenades, motorbikes fill every side street near the water, and by early evening the best of the riverbank is already three deep with people waiting for the National Day fireworks. It is a wonderful, noisy, shared thing to be part of. It is […]