W.Minh Tuan
In 1990, I went from my newspaper headquarter Dai Doan Ket in Hanoi to Saigon for a few months to work. After a few days in Saigon, some colleagues from newspapers in Saigon invited me to the Coconut Tree Restaurant to listen to the story of Mrs. Tu Huong, the owner of the Coconut Tree Restaurant.
At that time, the Coconut Tree Restaurant was at 54 Le Lai Street, not far from Ben Thanh Market. (Later the Coconut Tree Restaurant has been moved to 154 Le Lai, exactly 100 house numbers away from the old location. At 54 Le Lai nowaday, there is now the New World Hotel, one of the most modern hotels in Saigon today).
The Coconut Tree Restaurant is a Vietnamese restaurant, a little above a regular restaurant. In front of the restaurant are several very green coconut trees. That is why people call this restaurant as Quan Cay Dua-Coconut Tree Restaurant.
Here, there are very famous dishes such as braised fish in clay pot, hotpot with fish sauce, bitter melon soup, pickled eggplant,,,. But what is more special is that all the waiters and chefs of this restaurant are only homeless people, from children to the elderly.
Mrs. Tran Thi Huong – Aunt Tu Huong, is the owner of this restaurant.
Mrs. Tu Huong opened Cay Dua restaurant in 1964-1965, when the Vietnam War was very fierce. Mrs. Tu Huong opened this restaurant with the purpose of helping poor students who did not have much money, and helping street children, homeless people, and even homeless elderly people.
Mrs. Tu Huong took in street children, lonely elderly people, taught them vocational skills, and created jobs for them. Cay Dua restaurant is both a restaurant and a House of Benevolence, a shelter for many street children and lonely elderly people.
After the liberation day in 1975, Mrs. Tu Huong still maintained Cay Dua restaurant, because every society has people in difficult, in unfortunate circumstances who need help. During the daytime, the shop is open to serve customers, at night, when the shop is closed, the tables and chairs are put aside, and used as a sleeping place for everyone.
In 1990, when I came to Cay Dua restaurant, this shop was taking care of about 30 children and the elderly. At that time, the shop was quite big, the first floor was used for cafeteria, and for customer service, the second floor was used for accommodation, sleeping, and education for the children. Mrs. Tu Huong invited teachers to come to the shop to teach the children, teaching English, French, German, music, dancing, and singing.
Some children were given money by Mrs. Tu Huong to go to school. Many international humanitarian organizations visited the shop, and many foreign humanitarian organizations and benefactors helped some children and young people of Cay Dua Love-Charity Rest, sending them to school, settling down, getting married, and finding jobs abroad. Many of Aunt Tu Huong’s “children” are currently studying and settling in the US, UK, France, Australia, Canada, etc. Many domestic and international marriages of the children at Cay Dua Charity House have been successful.
However, in 1990, when I met Mrs. Tu Huong, Cay Dua Restaurant was being mobilized by the Ho Chi Minh City government to move to another location to make room for the construction of the New World Hotel.
Mrs. Tu Huong did not oppose the plan to build the New World Hotel, but Mrs. Tu Huong and her “children”, and journalists who sympathized with Cay Dua Charity House, opposed the plan to relocate Cay Dua Restaurant – Cay Dua Charity House, which is also the residence of homeless children and lonely elderly people in Cay Dua Restaurant.
At that time, the press all spoke out in support of Mrs. Tu Huong, criticizing the plan to relocate the restaurant of the Ho Chi Minh City government. This policy was proposed by Mr. Duong Van Day, director of the Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Department, and he resolutely sought every way to implement it.
During the Vietnam War, Mr. Duong Van Day was active in the student movement against the US and against the old Saigon government. And now, after the war ended, Mr. Duong Van Day is the director of a very lucrative Department, mainly dealing with foreign countries.
How could it be that from a young man as of Duong Van Day, who was enthusiastic and brave in fighting against US intervention, against the Government puppet Thieu-Ky-Khiem, now, having won the government, having power, he changed so quickly, becoming a person with authority, shouting out fire, vomiting out smoke, considering money more important than charity.
The viewpoint of the Saigon press, and the Vietnamese press in general, is very supportive of the policy of encouraging foreign investment in Vietnam, very supportive of the project to build the New World hotel in Saigon.
New World is a large hotel group in the world, headquartered in Hong Kong.
But there are many different opinions about the location of the hotel. Cay Dua Restaurant is located in the very center of Saigon, many people “drool” over the location of the restaurant. Mrs. Tu Huong said that when there was still war, before 1975 year, the district chief of District 5 of the old Saigon government also looked at the location of Cay Dua Restaurant many times, many times wanting to move the restaurant to another place. But because he was afraid of public opinion, and because Mrs. Tu Huong fought very hard, this district chief had to abandon the plan to move the restaurant.
After the liberation of the South, Mrs. Tu Huong did not escape abroad, even though her two daughters had evacuated and settled in the US. Mrs. Tu Huong said she wanted to stay with her “children”, the children and the elderly who had no place to live. She wanted to continue her humanitarian and charitable work.
The first time I met Mrs. Tu Huong, in 1990, I immediately had a good impression of her. At that time, Mrs. Tu was over 60 years old, looked very kind, wore glasses, was plump, healthy, had a very pleasant Southern accent. And most importantly, Mrs. Tu always smiled.
I thought to myself, “Mrs. Tu Huong probably never becomes pessimistic, succumbing to the harshness of life”.
I was also very surprised when I met singer Quang Hung at Mrs. Tu Huong’s house. I had never seen singer Quang Hung, only heard his name, and had heard his voice many times on the Voice of Vietnam radio waves in Hanoi during Vietnam war.
During the Vietnam War, Mr. Quang Hung was a battlefield singer. He and many other singers went to the battlefield to sing for the soldiers, with songs that “sung out to subdue the sound of bombs”.
Many times while performing for the soldiers, American planes came to drop bombs, the Vietnam communist soldiers and singers hid in the shelters to evade bombs. When the American planes flew over, the soldiers and singers crawled out of the shelters, the singers stood right on the edge of the bomb craters, singing for the soldiers.
That was the heroic image of “singing out to subdue the sound of bombs” during the Vietnam War. Singer Quang Hung was one of those singer-soldiers, with very famous songs such as “The Truong Son Stick”, “Ho keo Phao”, “Light the fire, my lover”,,,.
His voice was very strong.
After the South was liberated, singer Quang Hung went to Saigon to perform, and went to Cay Dua restaurant to eat many times. Then the singer and Mrs. Tu Huong got to know each other. Very moved by Mrs. Tu Huong’s kindness, singer Quang Hung accepted Mrs. Tu Huong as his adoptive sister, and Mrs. Tu Huong accepted singer Quang Hung as her adoptive brother.
In 1990, when we arrived at Cay Dua restaurant, Mrs. Tu Huong invited us to the living room on the 2nd floor of Cay Dua restaurant. A tall, bony man in the living room welcomed us.
Mrs. Tu Huong introduced him as singer Quang Hung.
I felt very happy and honored to meet the famous singer Quang Hung in person for the first time.
“- Now I don’t have the heart to sing anymore, guys”, singer Quang Hung said straight to the point.
“- I’m focusing on Ms. Tu’s struggle. If you journalists think it is right, please speak up in support.”
We sat silently listening to singer Quang Hung present all the arguments and legal basis of the Tinh Thuong Cay Dua restaurant. Singer Quang Hung said in general:
“-We are not against the Sai Gon city’s policy of building a hotel. But this is a hotel, not an airport, a port, or any other extremely important welfare project. The location of Tinh Thuong Cay Dua restaurant is also not a strategically important location for national security. Relocating Cay Dua restaurant is only to build a hotel, not to build a missile station to protect the country. So there are many places to build hotels, why do you insist on moving this poor restaurant? If we move this hotel back a little to the South, leaving this restaurant out, what’s the problem? However, some powerful people in Ho Chi Minh City think that this restaurant here will ruin the landscape of the hotel, so they want to move it away. Is that big and beautiful hotel as beautiful as this charity restaurant? There may be many hotels, but the Charity Coconut Tree restaurant, with more than 20 years of experience, with so many memories, so many abandoned people, raised and educated by this restaurant, is there anything more beautiful?”
We were really convinced by singer Quang Hung’s argument. Is it true that Vietnamese society, after the war ended, is a society of money, not a society of warm humanity anymore?
Is that so? But it is not really so.
Don’t talk about society in such a general way.
Vietnamese people in general are still people who value honor, dignity, love for others, and love for people. But some people with positions of power, in the name of the party and the state, do not value that human value, but only value money. For those people, the noble ideals of socialism and communism have given way to the ideal of money.
Now, looking back at the flooding of Tan Son Nhat airport in 2016, due to the construction of a golf course right next to the airport, it is even more clear that the “socialist ideal” is just a beautiful slogan to enrich interest groups.
And now, in 2025, Tan Son Nhat airport is moved to Long Thanh, 40 km from Sai Gon, and Tan Son Nhat airport location is what to become? Golf course? Hotel? Or Domestic airport only?
At Cay Dua restaurant, I met and talked to many children being raised and educated by Mrs. Tu Huong.
One child was picked up by Mrs. Tu Huong in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, someone had abandoned her there. When I met her, she was quite grown up, had gone to school, and was a good child who was very much loved by Mrs. Tu.
I met Linh, the daughter of a poor family in the Cuu Long Delta six provinces, who did not have enough money to raise their children, Mrs. Tu took both sisters in to raise since they were young.
Now Linh is a very beautiful girl, being taught music and English by Mrs. Tu, and is a waitress who is very loved by customers. (In early 2004, I went to Saigon to visit Mrs. Tu Huong, she said Linh had married a Vietnamese Canadian, and has settled in Canada).
I met Kieu Ai, a dark-skinned, very intelligent girl. Kieu Ai is in charge of the weekly task of giving gifts to poor patients at the Saigon Oncology Hospital. One day I followed Kieu Ai to the Oncology Hospital.
Kieu Ai held a big bag in her hand, went to each bed of the poor patients, gave them gifts, gave them money. They all knew that these were gifts from Cay Dua restaurant.
Just a few months later, I learned that Kieu Ai and several other children from Cay Dua restaurant had been sent to study in the US by Mrs. Tu Huong.
I also visited a seriously ill patient who lived in District 4 and had no money to stay in the hospital. Mrs. Tu invited Dr. Kim to treat this patient at home, and often sent people to take care of this person. Dr. Kim was also a homeless child who was adopted by Mrs. Tu, then given food and education, then went to medical school, became a good doctor, had a family, and is currently working in a famous hospital in Saigon. And now Dr. Kim has followed Mrs. Tu’s footsteps, taking advantage of his free time to go to the hospital to treat the poor for free.
That was the story of 1990.
After that, when I went back to Hanoi, I wrote an article defending Cay Dua restaurant, suggesting that Ho Chi Minh City should not relocate Cay Dua restaurant.
For Cay Dua restaurant to exist in the heart of Saigon would be a proof of a society that respects love, dignity, charity and justice, a proof of a moral society.
And if in the future there is a New World hotel that grows right next to the small, humble Cay Dua restaurant, then it is very likely that tourists will come to the restaurant every day to enjoy Vietnamese dishes, visit and learn about the Cay Dua Charity Restaurant, interact with children and the elderly who once had no place to rely on, but now have a loving home to protect them, to see a developing Vietnamese society that still respects humanity, a society where money is not the most important.
Is there a more attractive tourist destination? Is there a more beautiful tourist destination? Is there a more sacred tourist destination?
However, just a few months later, singer Quang Hung, Mrs. Tu Huong, dozens of people from the Coconut Tree restaurant at 54 Le Lai, dozens of journalists who took the trouble to write articles in support of the Coconut Tree restaurant, and public opinion in support of the Coconut Tree Love restaurant, all lost to Mr. Duong Van Day, director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism.
The Coconut Tree restaurant was forcibly demolished, and Mrs. Tu Huong refused to accept any compensation for the move.
Mrs. Tu Huong moved the Coconut Tree restaurant to location number 154 on Le Lai street, which was also a piece of land that Mrs. Tu bought before the 1975 liberation. The new Coconut Tree restaurant that was built here could not be as beautiful and spacious as the old Coconut Tree restaurant. And most importantly, it could not contain as many memories, marks of time, and could not contain so many changes of the times.
Once I visited Mrs. Tu Huong at the new Cay Dua restaurant, she smiled and said to me
– “My child, (she called me her child), in the past, during the time of Mr. Thieu before 1975, they also planned to move your mother many times, but they couldn’t. But now, with the new government, they can move me, my child.”
A few years ago, I heard that Mr. Duong Van Day, the person determined to move the Cay Dua restaurant, suddenly fell down and died. I heard that he was standing on the stage of a tourism conference, giving a speech about preserving cultural and ethnic identity in tourism development, when he suddenly collapsed and died, right on the stage. So, a person who was once a hero in the “anti-American-puppet student” movement passed away. He had a brain hemorrhage or something. May he rest in peace with his national identity.
After that, every time I went to Saigon, passing by the New World Hotel on Le Lai Street, that huge, beautiful hotel, I would sadly remember the old Cay Dua restaurant. That Cay Dua restaurant, during the reform of private capitalism in 1978, 3 years after the war ended, also encountered “disaster”. At that time, Cay Dua restaurant was forced to become “state-owned”.
Mrs. Tu Huong was the restaurant owner, and was turned into a “technician”, specializing in cooking techniques. The store manager, chief accountant, deputy store manager, treasurer, party cell secretary, etc. were sent by the state.
Previously, Mrs. Tu Huong held those positions alone, and the work ran smoothly. Now there are at least 4 people from the state in charge, but the shop is losing money, then internally there is disunity, quarrel, dispute daily, there are meetings all day, then there are emulation movements launched to promote business, but the loss is still a loss.
Mrs. Tu Huong’s “children” are facing the risk of wandering around begging, picking up trash to make a living.
Fortunately, the “reform of private capitalism” only lasted for a period of five or seven years, then the Coconut Tree shop was returned to Mrs. Tu Huong. Since then, the business has been restored and developed. Now the Coconut Tree shop is in a new location, customers are also coming and going, but I still feel that it is not like before. There is something empty, something very difficult to understand that makes me feel that the Coconut Tree shop is no longer the same as before.
Of course, a broken bowl cannot be mended as before.
In early 1998, Mrs. Tu Huong went to Hanoi. She stayed at the house of singer Quang Hung. My younger brother, a reporter for Lao Dong newspaper, and I went to see Mrs. Tu Huong at the house of singer Quang Hung in Cau Giay, in the area near the Vietnam Dance School. She was very happy to see us again in Hanoi. Mrs. Tu Huong gave us her memoirs, which she had written herself and had just been published by the Vietnam Lao Dong Publishing House, with the title “Misfortune is not of anyone”. In this memoir, Mrs. Tu Huong recounts her entire life of charity work, during the Vietnam War, then after the Vietnam War, until the time when Cay Dua restaurant was demolished to build the New World Hotel. A really good book.
In that memoir, there are many excerpts from newspaper’s articles that supported Cay Dua restaurant in the unequal struggle with the government apparatus to protect Cay Dua restaurant, including excerpts from my article in Dai Doan Ket newspaper.
I heard that the trip to Hanoi was for her to attend an interview at the US Embassy in Hanoi, to complete the procedures so that she can go to the US, at the invitation of her two daughters.
I also heard that the US Embassy refused to grant a visa to Mrs. Tu Huong, on the grounds that she was old and there was no point in going to the US. That’s right, America, which claims to be the most humane and democratic country in the world, refused to grant a visa to Ms. Tu Huong, even though she went to visit her two daughters who settled in the US.
I wonder if the US Embassy staff knew about Ms. Tu Huong’s Coconut Tree restaurant, what would their attitude be?
The US government should not blame why so many people in the world hate America.
Ms. Tu Huong tactfully did not mention the reason why she would not go to America anymore. She did not want to speak ill of a country where her children and grandchildren, and many children in her Love restaurant, were settling, living, and studying.
In March 2004, I returned to Vietnam from Japan to visit my family, and went to Saigon. I visited the Coconut Tree restaurant again at its new location, 154 Le Lai.
The Coconut Tree restaurant now seemed deserted. Ms. Tu Huong was lying in a hammock inside the restaurant. I came, sat down next to the hammock, and greeted:
“Hello, Mom, do you recognize me?”
Mrs. Tu Huong was old, already 80 years old, with poor eyesight and poor health. Mrs. Tu Huong looked at me and said she didn’t recognize anyone.
“No, who are you? I didn’t recognize you.
I said my name:
“-This is Minh Tuan, Minh Tuan from Dai Doan Ket newspaper”. At this moment, Mrs. Tu recognized me.
“Oh my god, is that Minh Tuan? Minh Tuan, Minh Quang?”. Minh Quang was my younger brother, who was a reporter for Lao Dong newspaper at that time.
Mrs. Tu Huong and I sat at a table outside the restaurant. I looked at Mrs. Tu Huong with concern, and wondered, when would she receive the compensation for the relocation of the old Cay Dua restaurant?
But Mrs. Tu Huong seemed very happy, telling me that Prime Minister Phan Van Khai had heard about Mrs. Tu’s Cay Dua restaurant, and had promised to pay compensation for the land to Mrs. Tu. According to Mrs. Tu Huong, the New World Hong Kong Group agreed to pay her $1.2 million in land compensation, but the Saigon Tourism Company did not want to compensate her for all of this money.
Mrs. Tu Huong showed me some letters she had just written in February and March 2004, sent to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and other leaders, asking where the $1.2 million in land compensation was now? When would it be paid to her?
Mrs. Tu Huong said that if she received this compensation, she would use it to expand and develop more charity houses, so that this society would have fewer unfortunate and homeless people.
Now I heard that the compensation amount is up to $5 million.
In the new Coconut Tree restaurant, I saw a picture of Dr. Henry Kissinger hanging, with the words: Kissinger Associates INC, 350 Park Avenue New York, New York 10022-6022.
Mrs. Tu Huong said that Dr. Kissinger had read, in a library in the US, her book “Misfortune is not of anyone”, which had been translated into English. After reading the book, Dr. Kissinger sent a photo and words of sympathy for the fate of Cay Dua restaurant. Mrs. Tu Huong also gave me a copy of “Misfortune is not of anyone”, which was reprinted in 2003, with many comments from readers at home and abroad about the book.
When we parted, I told Mrs. Tu Huong that I was no longer working at Dai Doan Ket newspaper, I have settled in Japan.
She was very happy and wished me to build a new life in the Land of the Rising Sun. “Remember to contact me, my child”, said Mrs. Tu Huong.
In her life of charity, Mrs. Tu Huong helped 312 people, both orphans and friends, to settle abroad. And most of them were successful.
Le Lai was the name of a general in the Le Loi era. When the Ming army was strong, Le Lai “risked his life to save the king”, pretending to be Le Loi to distract the Ming army. Thanks to that, Le Loi was able to have peace for a while to gather his forces, feed his army, and go to the day of victory. As for the Coconut Tree restaurant located on Le Lai street now, many people risked their lives to save the restaurant, but could not save the restaurant.
Only when the leaders know how to respect human love and dignity more than money, only then will society have morality and culture. ///