In 2015, as usually occurred annually, my family and I hopped on a train running across our country from South to North and stopped by a fishing village in Lăng Cô, Huế to pay our visit to relatives. It was the most memorable vacation. While having a chance to talk to my uncle about the difficulties in self-learning of an illustrator, I also found out an interesting fact that he is also a “player” who loves to collect and archive what he found around the village for more than 30 years: CD covers since wartime, Vietnamese letter-making guidebook, handcrafted wedding invitations, labels, postcards received from his friends, or even my mom's ex also asked him to keep some of his…

He put all those things into a box and handed it back to me, attached with a torn-cover stamp collect book. Those stamps have come a long way with my uncle's youth, dating back from the days when he usually went to the post office to ask for used postal envelopes - a simple pleasure when living in the countryside during the days of war-zone evacuation with the family, the days when there was no electricity.

"Look closer at these stamps, observe the way those artists portrayed their art, the palette, or their thoughts and concepts during their contemporaneous time. I hope you will find your own joy while exploring them”, he said.

After two years, I created a site called ‘Bưu Hoa Việt Nam’ to share the stamps that I have found along with the story behind or related to each stamp.

“One or two stamps go hand in hand, affixed to the envelope like a guardian of the letter inside, it is a greeting between members of a family that was temporarily separated, a word of encouragement for an unfinished love affair, or even a congratulatory message for college admission.”

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