Global dancefloor: Saigon

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

Frank McWeeny heads to the dancefloors of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) to uncover what Vietnamese alternative culture looks and sounds like today. With 70% of the country under 35, young people are the driving force behind a different image of Vietnam, far away from poverty and war. They are asserting their identity through music, fashion and their own take on traditional values. They are changing perceptions of what it means to be Vietnamese in 2025. We hear from DIY music collective Dismal, forward-thinking underground club The Observatory, and members of the nightlife and fashion scenes.

Producer/presenter: Frank McWeeny Editor: Susan Marling A Just Radio production

Transcript

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0:00.0	In club, I'm free.
0:07.0	You get to be whatever you want to be.
0:09.0	We do it good. It's so fast-paid, energetic.
0:13.0	We have a lot of people. It's kind of intense.
0:16.0	Vietnam is a new country.
0:19.0	We get to be with the world. We don't have war anymore. It's fun now. We can create a new country. We get to be with the world. We don't have war anymore. It's fun now.
0:23.4	We can create a new country. Keep moving forward. Keep growing. That's a new image of Vietnam, I think.
0:29.7	We're at the very beginning of the club culture. Where is the local? It's the one who built the scene.
0:36.9	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Frank McQueen and I'm in Vietnam's biggest city, Ho Chi Minh.
0:44.5	Everyone here calls it Saigon, its official name until the end of the Vietnam War in 1976.
0:50.8	To say Saigon is a vibrant place feels like an understatement.
0:55.2	It's busy, chaotic and loud.
0:57.4	It's wild and intense in so many ways.
1:00.1	But if you let yourself be taken by it, you'll realise that it's alive.
1:04.5	It's exciting.
1:05.7	And it's become a place where Vietnam's alternative culture is thriving.
1:09.5	With a booming economy over the last decade and
1:12.3	70% of the country's population under 35, young people have become the driving force behind a new
1:19.1	and different image of Vietnam, far away from poverty and war. They're asserting their identity
1:26.1	through music, fashion, and their own take on traditional values,
1:30.2	changing perceptions of what it means to be Vietnamese today.
1:34.5	This is Global Dance Floor, Saigon.
	...

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