Cynical British journalist Fowler falls in love with a young Vietnamese woman but is dismayed when a naïve U.S. official also begins vying for her attention. In retaliation, Fowler informs the communists that the American is selling arms to their enemy.
Follows a young cyclo driver on his poverty-driven descent into criminality in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. The boy's struggles to scratch out a living for his two sisters and grandfather in the mean streets of the city lead to petty crime on behalf of a mysterious Madame from whom he rents his cyclo.
A Vietnam war veteran writes a series of articles about his war experiences for a local newspaper. As he does so, another veteran, drawn by the articles, begins randomly appearing in his life.
The residents of Ho Chi Minh City face modernization amid widespread poverty. A retired American Marine arrives on a search for his daughter, whom he abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War. Elsewhere, a cyclo driver falls for a troubled prostitute and schemes to raise money so he can spend time with her. Additionally, a young women begins harvesting lotuses for a writer suffering from leprosy, and a child trinket seller loses his traveling case.
Vixna and her two children are lured from the safety of Paris by her husband, a officer in Pol Pot's army, back to Cambodia where they undergo brainwashing and enslavement by the Khmer Rouge.
A small traveling circus from Hanoi arrives at a village struck down by famine, trying to sell magic and dreams.
Set along the southern coast of Vietnam during the French occupation in the 1940s, water is everywhere, giving life and bringing decay and rot. Kim is 15; his father and step-mother have two buffalo, their lifeline as subsistence rice farmers. During the rainy season, there's no grass and the buffalo are starving. Kim volunteers to take the beasts inland to find food. On this coming-of-age journey, Kim sees men mistreat women, men fight with men, and French taxes rob the poor. He works for Lap, a buffalo herder whose past is entangled with Kim's parents, and he makes friends who will lead him to his place in the world.
Hanh is a dutiful wife and school teacher in a rural Vietnamese village who appears to enjoy a happy marriage. Childless, she insists her husband Phoung, the local school headmaster, take a second wife to bear him a baby. But in the small village, their secret is impossible to keep for long and in the ensuing scandal she and Phuong separate. Following the breakdown of the marriage, Hanh loses her grip on reality and begins to question the very fundamentals of life. Through a friend, she meets a spiritual guide in the guise of an enigmatic fortune teller, who sets about transforming the beleaguered Hanh's life.
Sai is forced to marry Tuyet at the age of ten and leaves his home by the river wharf to live with an old man named Kien. As the war against France accelerates, Sai enlists to fight and falls in love with another woman named Huong. While the affair is fated not to last, Tuyet struggles to keep her marriage together.
In early 20th century Vietnam a nobleman scorns everything Western after his beautiful fiance dies in an auto wreck and forces the poor villagers to destroy all their "modern" possessions.
In Dong Thap Muoi during the days of the Vietnam War, Ba Do, Sau Xoa and their little child live in a small shack in the middle of an abandoned wetland zone. They are entrusted with the mission of maintaining Viet Minh's lines of communication in the area. Daily life goes on as the small family looks out for death from above.
Phuong Ly, a poor, beautiful Vietnamese woman, falls in love with an attractive, kind and wealthy man who wants to take her hand in marriage. Her life is seemingly perfect until her boyfriend's mother purposefully sabotages their relationship. Heartbroken and fragile, Phuong Ly travels to Ho Chi Minh City to work as a cleaner at a marriage agency. There she meets Mitch, one of the men seeking an arranged marriage. He takes a strong interest in her, and coerces her to marry him with the promise that he'll support her family in Vietnam and that she'll receive a better life. However as soon as she arrives in America, Phuong Ly realizes she has been brought as a slave. She is violated and abused with no hope of escape. The only ray of light is the bond she develops with the American's young, autistic niece; both of them prisoners needing to escape.
Two brothers are separated by communism and a sister, a former imperial concubine turned Buddhist nun
