A newsletter from Saigon
Dispatches from an American Dad in Vietnam
Stories, observations, and hard-won lessons from raising a family 9,000 miles from home. Delivered to your inbox every week.
What to expect
What You'll Get
One email a week. No fluff. Just honest writing about dad life on the other side of the world.
Expat Dad Life
The real, unfiltered experience of raising kids abroad — the wins, the chaos, and everything between.
Saigon Insider
Restaurants, neighborhoods, weekend trips, and the stuff guidebooks miss. Tested by a family, not a backpacker.
Parenting Abroad
Schools, healthcare, cultural navigation, and keeping your sanity 9,000 miles from grandma.
Perspective Shifts
How living in Vietnam changes how you think about money, work, ambition, and what matters.
About the writer
Hi, I'm James.
I'm an American dad raising my family in Ho Chi Minh City. I came here from the US with a background in tech, a toddler, and a lot of questions about what life could look like if we designed it differently.
This newsletter is where I write about what I'm learning — about parenting far from home, about Saigon's hidden corners, about the ways living abroad rewires how you see everything.
It's not advice. It's dispatches. Honest writing from someone figuring it out in real time.
“The best part of living abroad is that ordinary Tuesdays become stories worth telling.”
James Elkins
District 2, Ho Chi Minh City
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One email a week. Stories, tips, and the occasional dad joke. Written from the other side of the world.