The Couple Racing to Record Saigon's Disappearing Sounds Before They Vanish Forever

Save

Share 0

urban-heritageBinh Tay Marketstreet sounds

【1-Day Tour Routes】Deluxe One-Day Tour of Cu Chi Tunnels and Mekong Delta (Depart from Ho Chi Minh City)

Available tomorrow

HKD 118 Start

Book now

【1-Day Tour Routes】Ho Chi Minh Local Market Motorcycle Exploration Tour

Book tomorrow before 20:00

HKD 189 Start

Book now

【1-Day Tour Routes】Midnight Saigon Motorbike Tour

Book today before 19:00

HKD 233 Start

Book now

【1-Day Tour Routes】Cu Chi Tunnels Half-Day Tour from Ho Chi Minh City (Optional City Tour)

Available tomorrow

HKD 103 Start

Book now

The Couple Racing to Record Saigon's Disappearing Sounds Before They Vanish Forever

Thwunk. Thwunk. Thwunk. A vendor's cleaver hammers a wooden chopping block at Bình Tây Market in Ho Chi Minh City, each strike captured by a microphone hovering centimetres away. This is the daily reality for Trần Đăng Khoa, founder of the Vietnam Sound Library — a project racing against time to preserve the auditory tapestry of urban Vietnamese life before it's silenced by development and generational change.

"To me, photography and sound recording are very similar," Khoa explains over duck soup — the very meal whose preparation he'd just documented. "They're both ways of preserving memories, just through different senses. Whenever I listen to old recordings, it feels like I'm transported back to that exact moment."

Launched in late 2024, the Vietnam Sound Library now houses over 550 lossless audio tracks, all freely accessible on SoundCloud. The catalogue reads like an aural map of Saigon: the morning drum at a schoolyard, the clatter of metal shutters at market stalls, murmured prayers at pagodas, street vendors calling out for scrap metal, and even the distinctive pop of pickleball rallies in the park.

Khoa approaches every field trip with two guiding questions: "If someone closed their eyes and listened, would they immediately recognise where they are? And 30 or 50 years from now, which sounds from today will still mean something to people?"

In 2025, Khoa's partner Đinh Vũ Thu Thủy joined the project — and transformed it. "The first collection I worked on was traditional markets," Thủy recalls. "That's when I realised sound isn't just data — it tells cultural stories. The street vendor calls, the school drum, children playing traditional games — these were all part of our 1990s childhood. But many of those sounds are gradually disappearing."

Today, the couple records as a team. Khoa captures the audio while Thủy photographs every scene, adding cultural context — specific locations, dates, and nuanced descriptions — that transforms raw sound files into cultural artefacts. She also spots noises Khoa might overlook: sounds that may not serve film productions but are priceless pieces of Vietnam's vanishing heritage.

The project has changed how both of them experience the world. "Before this, I could hear, but I wasn't really listening," Thủy admits. "Now I've learned to slow down and notice the tiny sounds I used to overlook. Sound carries stories about culture, the environment, and people's memories."

For visitors to Ho Chi Minh City, the Vietnam Sound Library offers a portal into a dimension of the city most travellers never experience: a sonic landscape of market haggling, temple bells, motorbike symphonies, and the fading calls of street vendors whose trades may not survive another generation. One overseas Vietnamese student messaged the couple: "I'm studying abroad, and I really miss these sounds. Thanks, bro." That, Khoa says, was the moment he understood their work wasn't just about preservation — it was about reconnecting people with home.

Browse the Vietnam Sound Library at vietnamsoundlibrary.com on SoundCloud.