News
Vietnam digital economy growth expected to be highest in Southeast Asia
Vietnam will achieve the highest growth in the digital economy in Southeast Asia between 2022 and 2025, a report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company has forecast. It will grow at 31% followed by the Philippines with 20% and Indonesia with 19%, according to e-Conomy ...
Dat Nguyen
Climate change and dams force older residents to leave Vietnam’s Mekong Delta
At 63, Nguyen Thi Ngoc got her first full-time ‘company’ job as a security guard in Ho Chi Minh City. She’d never been to a city before taking the job in early 2021, but the former farmer, originally from the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, ...
Nhung Nguyen
Southeast Asia’s Data Localization Push is a Double-Edged Sword
With the publication of the ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025 (ADM 2025), member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have endeavored to promote the digitalization of the region. In this digital transformation process, data is essential because every interaction in the digital world produces and relies on ...
Xirui Li
Why LGBT Rights Trump Environmentalism in Vietnam
Since its adoption of a market economy in the last 1980s, Vietnam has become what some have referred to as a new “Asian Tiger.” Over the last 25 years, Vietnam’s economy has enjoyed an average annual growth rate of more than 6 percent. Between 1994 and 2014, ...
Mekong Delta highly likely to face large-scale petroleum supply disruption
In recent days, many petrol filling stations in the Mekong Delta region have closed and stopped selling, partly because of losses, and partly because of supply shortages, leading to the prospect of large-scale disruptions in the region. Along the Nam Song Hau route from the Mekong Delta City ...
staff writers – Translated by Anh Quan
The Peculiar Gender Dynamics of Hanoi's Male-Dominated Cờ Tướng Scene
On a sunset wander through Hanoi, you may be surprised by the peculiar sight of men haphazardly perched in nooks and crannies playing the ancient game of xiangqi. The strangely spectacular Chinese strategy game has for generations been hugely popular in Hanoi, though interestingly it seems only ...
Elise Luong
Record high tide inundates Mekong Delta capital
Water levels along the Hau River, a Mekong branch, rose to 2.27 meters, breaking the 2019 record and plunging Can Tho City in chaos. Commuters drive through floodwaters on Nguyen Trai Street in Can Tho’s downtown district of Ninh Kieu at 9 p.m. on Wednesday. Tides on ...
Cuu Long, Nguyen Anh
Student contributions sought for better monitoring of Mekong River
A competition has been launched to challenge university students to design technology to monitor the Mekong’s water level, rainfall, soil moisture, and water quality. The River Monitoring Technology Competition, launched by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), is for students in the four regional countries of Cambodia, ...
Minh Nga
In Vietnam, farmers show a willingness to work with the elephant in the room
Solving human-wildlife conflict is a complex issue and a pressing concern for a wide variety of endangered species, none more so than the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). People living around Vietnam’s Dong Nai Biosphere Reserve, however, want to foster coexistence with elephants, not conflict. That’s ...
Sean Mowbray
Gridlocked and flood-prone, Vietnam’s biggest city struggles to keep pace with its own breakneck growth
As soon as the roads are widened a fresh glut of cars moves in to fill them, says lifelong Ho Chi Minh City resident Thinh Pham, who fears urban planning is forever condemned to lag behind the unrelenting growth of one of Southeast Asia’s most ...
Michael Tatarski
