A recent VnExpress article reported a young teenage Vietnamese girl sending a message to her parents across the internet: “Back off, or I’ll kill myself!” The pressure to succeed is taking its toll. Words by Paul Rowe

Intimacy and meaning. Jesse Meadows muses on the wonders of Skype and other communications mediums used to help us keep in touch

For the next two issues, Word is presenting excerpts from Wilfred Burchett’s seminal account of the American War. A close friend of Ho Chi Minh, Burchett was the only westerner to be embedded with the Viet Cong frontlines in the early 1960s. This work was written in 1964

With the immigration crisis in full swing, we raise a question. Why do expats coming from lands of plenty choose to live in countries such as Vietnam?
Words by Alex Smyrnos

If you’re Vietnamese, getting a visa to travel to the West is hard. Getting a visa to the US is even harder. Owen Salisbury helped a friend who went through the visa application experience and was turned down

For the next three issues, Word is presenting excerpts from Wilfred Burchett’s seminal account of the American War. A close friend of Ho Chi Minh, Burchett was the only westerner to be embedded with the Viet Cong frontlines in the early 1960s. This work was written in 1964

How could we improve our traffic system? Simple, says Devin Monaghan. Replace motorbikes with ostriches