The Latest Breaking News from Saigon

In central locations of three major Asian cities -- Singapore, Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City -- stand bronze elephant statues. If they could talk, these statues could tell of imperialism, civil war, invasion, anti-colonial struggle, independence, nationhood, and more recently of rapid urban and economic development. Perched high up…

“This recipe has been in my family for generations. I first remember my grandmother making this at her restaurant back in the 1950s in Saigon,” says Sushi-san’s chef Kaze.

Those images of four-mile, six-hour long queues to get into and through the Port of Dover. They’re not quite the last helicopter out of Saigon, but they tell a story of their own.

I was born in 1979, so any anecdotes about the rise of disco or the fall of Saigon have come, at best, second hand. So too are the stories of inflation on a scale so epic it makes 2022 seem like a consumer paradise.