Here’s Đức Lưu playing Thị Nở (the ugliest woman in Vietnamese literature) from the film adaptation.

Enter the Cham people of central Vietnam. Their towers in places like Quy Nhơn (below) look a lot like what you see at Angkor Wat.

That’s because the Cham had a lot of contact with Angkor (Khmer-speaking) civilization, and guess what Old Khmer has?

Yes! It’s another “neang” (នាង)

Man, Thai is complicated. I’ve got two words meaning roughly “to wrap around” or “coil around” but the usage seems to defy logic for memorization. Any ideas?

China’s controversial “9-dash line map” staking claim to the entire East Sea is known in Vietnam as the “đường lưỡi bò” and translated as: “cow’s tongue line” 🐮👅

Now you can’t unsee it.

Ways to say "pick up" in Vietnamese...