Author Archives: itsaphanlife

Two happy hour hotspots in Saigon

10 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Food and drinks

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H
appy hours are typically seen as a way for alcohol hounds to maximize ratio of booze for money spent. The best happy hours, however, combine good alcohol pricing with numerous other variables.

This review aims to give a bit more than just a practical treatment of the happy hour scene in Saigon, a city with a burgeoning craft cocktail and beer environment. Ambience, milieu, general vibe all matter for this version of an enjoyable happy hour, for we are epicurists, gentlefolk of taste and refinement, after all:

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Saigons of the future, part 1

04 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Saigon life

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There is a fantastic book by Italo Calvino called Invisible Cities, in which the author describes cities both imaginary and real, hypothetical and actual, existing in the imagination and in the realm of the historically true. Cities of the future, cities of the past, cities filled with trash, cities clogged with pollution spewing cars, cities traversing the length of one’s thought, that run as far as one’s mind can run, Calvino’s imagination creates them all.

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Augmented or virtual reality, which do you pikachuse?

17 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized

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Recently, I had the good fortune to be shown the virtual reality playroom in the Google offices in New York where my brother works. My brother and I spent about an hour and a half trying out some incredible virtual reality hardware, testing out zombie shoot em ups, plane landing games, fruit ninja games (the controller becomes a three dimensional sword in your hands and the fruit sprays bucketloads of colorful juice onto your eyes!) and most wonderfully, a 3-D painting game that was a much cooler, more permanent version of light painting. Continue reading →

On Imitation and Authenticity in Vietnam

24 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Saigon life

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*versions of “ca chien”

During my first full summer back in Vietnam, I paid 100 USD to a local friend and for the money was able to a) rent a motorbike, b) attain an owners’ certificate, c) possess two rain jackets for biking in the downpours that dropped so frequently during the rainy season, and d) possess one real and one fake helmet, the latter used in case I need to drive a friend around. Within one week, someone took my real helmet and replaced it with a fake one costing one tenth its value. Two weeks later, my original fake helmet too, was stolen, and I was left with the substituted fake helmet that the first thief left me to use during my last few weeks in the city.

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