Become a Member for $9.99/month

Thirteen years ago, my path into activism began. For more than two decades, I had lived in denial, self-contempt, and secrecy because of my sexuality. More than anything, I longed to be heard, seen, and accepted.

So I entered activism for sexual and gender equality — a cause that served not only myself but also many others. It was where the personal and the collective became deeply intertwined. Organising something that speaks to your core is one of the most self-fulfilling things one can do. I was passionate, and I was happy.

It was a landmark era for the LGBTQ+ movement in Vietnam, marked by the country’s first Pride march, positive legislative changes, and an increasing visibility of queer lives in the media and public spaces. Yet the landscape of activism in Vietnam in the 2010s was deeply uneven.

LGBTQ+ activists were granted more space than the rest of civil society. We could gather in the streets and raise the rainbow flag, while others — those protesting China’s aggression in the South China Sea — were violently dispersed, detained, and harassed long after their demonstrations ended. The same fate befell people opposing unpopular state policies. Meanwhile, we were invited to policy consultations — a rarity in Vietnam’s policymaking tradition.

Many of us, myself included, chose to protect these privileges by distancing ourselves from the more repressed parts of civil society. Even when those activists reached out in solidarity, we turned away. Whenever our public events happened to coincide with theirs, we moved ours elsewhere. In our minds, we were not political — they were. We were safe; they were dangerous.

But with time, I came to realize there were limits to how far the rainbow flag could fly. Crossing that invisible line would expose us to the same consequences as others. Once you’ve been a protester — regardless of the cause — you understand the street’s power: a space where invisible minorities become visible, where isolation turns into connection, and connection into movement. Though I began as an LGBTQ+ activist, I tasted that power and freedom, and I wanted more. The authorities would not allow it.

That tension grew within me. I began to wonder how much harder it must be for other minorities, or for ordinary citizens, to speak up when the right to peaceful protest is denied. Gradually, I understood that our silence made us complicit — that protecting our privileges meant accepting the exclusion of others. And once I saw it that way, I could no longer look away.

In the midst of this reckoning came the Formosa environmental disaster. The protests that followed were unprecedented — a true display of people's power. They revealed that collective action is a natural expression of conscience. When the Formosa company finally issued an official apology and compensation, I was convinced that it was the protests that had moved the powerful to act.

Around that time, my sense of identity also began to expand. From focusing primarily on sexual and gender equality, I grew more and more concerned with the struggles of others: the people who helped Formosa’s victims seek justice and were prosecuted for it; those beaten for protesting peacefully; those whose land was seized through forced eviction. I wished I could do something to help them.

The peak years of protest — between 2016 and 2018 — marked my transition from LGBTQ activism to defending the right to freedom of association and peaceful assembly. When only the LGBTQ community is allowed these rights, they cease to be rights at all; they become privileges granted at the mercy of the authorities, to be revoked whenever convenient. Unfortunately, few in my community shared this view. We remained an isolated, depoliticised island within Vietnam’s civil society. And so, I left.

The eight years that followed carried me across a wide terrain. I worked with pro-democracy activists and others whose causes the Vietnamese government deemed subversive. I traveled between Hanoi, Saigon, and the central provinces before eventually finding a more permanent base in Europe. I became a researcher, but at times also a campaigner, reporter, and educator.

Looking back, those eight years were meaningful. Yet, as with any good journey, they raised deeper questions — about change, integrity, and what truly makes a better world.

How could one advocate for democratisation in Vietnam while supporting Donald Trump’s persecution of dissenters and marginalised groups in the United States? How could many patriots tolerate the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule so long as it delivered economic growth? How could people condemn the North’s invasion of South Vietnam, then celebrate the current regime’s military parades every April 30 and September 2?

And such contradictions are not confined to Vietnam. Even in long-established democracies, many now admire the efficiency of authoritarianism, criticising the deliberation and checks and balances that democracy requires. In prosperous societies, the pursuit of wealth and power is as relentless as in poorer ones — and the gap between rich and poor only widens, generation after generation.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho tells the story of Santiago, a young shepherd from Spain who dreams of finding treasure near the Egyptian pyramids. He sells his flock and sets out for Tangier, where he is robbed and forced to work for a crystal merchant. After achieving success in the crystal trade, he leaves once again to cross the desert in pursuit of his dream. Along the way, he learns many lessons. At one point, he takes refuge at an oasis, falls in love, and nearly abandons his quest. Yet in the end, he continues his journey — and discovers that the treasure he sought was not gold, but transformation itself.

In 2025, I too found myself packing up and riding once more into the desert — continuing the search for my own “pyramids of Egypt,” leaving behind the comfortable places where I might have stayed. This new chapter takes a more personal turn. The world has grown noisier and more chaotic than ever: truths contested, certainties crumbling, controversies multiplying. In such turbulence, insecurity festers — giving rise to fear, cynicism, anger, and distrust. My turn inward is not a retreat from this chaos but an attempt to find an antidote: to explore what helps a person find peace, and what keeps compassion alive, amid the storms of our age.

Could I have skipped some of the earlier chapters? Perhaps, in a technical sense. But in every other sense, that would have been unwise. Each experience has shaped me in its own essential way and led me to where I stand today.

In sharing this personal journey, I hope to offer a window into the transformation of Vietnam’s contemporary social movements — and to encourage a new generation of Vietnamese activists to keep searching, growing, and transforming, until they too discover the treasure within themselves.