Ten-year-old Duy Quang from Ha Tinh Province, known for his love of Vietnamese folk music and sweet singing voice, is undergoing life-changing treatment to regain the use of his hands.
Born with a congenital heart defect and radial bone deficiency, Quang has struggled with severe hand deformities since birth. Despite these physical challenges, he excels academically and has captured the hearts of many through videos of his folk singing shared online by his teacher.
His journey toward healing began when his family reached out to the Children of Vietnam Fund at FV Hospital in HCMC. The fund accepted his case, and in May 2025, Dr. Stéphane Guero performed the first of several planned operations. If successful, further procedures will reconstruct his thumb, allowing him to grasp objects for the first time.
A 13-year-old CGO
Nguyen Nam Long, a seventh grader in HCMC, was allowed to learn on the computer by his parents when he was six years old. Out of school time, he could play computer games whenever he liked to. With the help of his father, Long spent his spare time learning English and computer programming.
Over the past seven years, Long has been an outstanding student at school and has had a good command of computer science and English. He told vietnamnet.vn that he spent most of his spare time playing games, writing codes and developing programming skills.
Long has just been appointed Chief Growth Officer (CGO) at Opla CRM, a startup business specializing in developing gamification based in HCMC, in charge of customer relationship management. As a CGO, he is responsible for cooperating with sales, technical and product teams in mapping out growth strategies. He has set a specific key performance indicator (KPI) – attracting 1,000 international software users within 100 days.
Long said he had plans to open his own basic programming courses with a view to sharing knowledge and skills with his peers, especially those who cannot afford to attend costly computer science courses.
Promoting Vietnamese culture via conical hats
Tieu Tuong Huy, 23, a graduate from the HCMC University of Technology, decided to shift to breathing Vietnamese life to nón lá (Vietnamese conical hat) as a way to promote folk culture and to make a living.
With a great love for arts and inspiration by Dong Son bronze drums and traditional patterns such as Lac birds, the sun, lotus flowers, festivities and warriors, Huy depicted such sophisticated, lively patterns on the conical hats. The conical hats depicted with such traditional patterns have won the heart of quite a few young people, characterized by more and more orders from these customers. He has also received a large number of orders for mini-conical hats bearing traditional patterns from tourism companies to be used as souvenirs for foreign tourists.
Huy told tuoitre.vn that he thought of depicting traditional Vietnamese patterns on conical hats, using such materials as waxed paper, used plastic bottles and jute fabric, in 2022. His most favorite collections are conical hats depicted with Dong Son bronze drums and those depicted with lotus flowers.
Huy also studied antiques displayed at museums around the city to make his special conical hats, which he had to order from skilled artisans.
North-South railway named one of world’s best train journeys
Vietnam’s North-South railway, known as the Reunification Express, has been listed among the world’s 24 most spectacular train journeys to book in 2025 by Australian travel magazine Lonely Planet.
“There is no more atmospheric way to haul into Vietnam’s twin metropolises as this train rattles through historic cities and swooshes beside spectacular coastlines,” Lonely Planet wrote.
Stretching over 1,700 kilometers, the route links HCMC and Hanoi with daily departures that take around two days. The journey offers a unique perspective of the S-shaped country, according to the VnExpress news site.
Other incredible train journeys listed by Lonely Planet include the California Zephyr in the U.S., the Lake Titicaca train in Peru, the Beijing-to-Lhasa Express in China, the TranzAlpine in New Zealand, and the Bergensbanen in Norway.
