Adult Choco Mint: A Singapore Traveler's Custom Saigon Perfume

NOTE – The Scent Lab is a perfume workshop in Saigon, Vietnam, where a Singapore tourist perfume Saigon session recently produced one of our most talked-about bottles — an “adult choco mint” fragrance built from a blind guess, a Singaporean uncle’s ice-cream cart, and a joke that became the perfume’s name. On a bright Saturday morning at 10am on 20 December 2025, a solo traveler from Singapore named Kai Wen sat down at our 34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu studio in Thảo Điền and walked out ninety minutes later with a 30ml bottle he called SYBAU — short for a punchline only he, our staff, and now you, will understand.

Names in this story have been changed to protect our guests privacy. Details of the workshop experience — the perfumes made, the studio, the conversations — are authentic.

This is how the bottle got made.

A Singapore tourist perfume Saigon morning at 34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu

Most of our Singaporean guests arrive the same way Kai Wen did: they’ve cleared customs the night before, spent the first evening walking District 1 with a bún bò dinner and a cold sugarcane juice, and then looked at the morning of day two and asked themselves what they actually want to bring home. Not fridge magnets. Not another silk scarf. Something that will still be on their skin in February, when Singapore’s rainy season finally lets up and everyone goes back indoors.

That’s the shape of traveler who books our Thảo Điền studio. Thảo Điền, for visitors who haven’t crossed the Saigon River yet, is District 2’s leafy expat neighborhood — five minutes from the metro, a world away from the motorbike roar of Nguyễn Huệ, and exactly the kind of room a solo tourist goes looking for on a hot morning. Our 34NDH address is an enclosed, air-conditioned studio with a single long workbench, warm Edison-bulb lighting, and the low, continuous background hum of a working perfume lab.

Kai Wen had booked online a few weeks before his trip. He told us he almost didn’t. He’d seen a friend wearing a scent that didn’t quite suit her, asked where she got it, and she’d said — offhand, the way people talk about things they loved but never got around to recommending — “I made it in Saigon.” That was the lead. He wrote it down on a napkin. He chased it.

Why our staff starts every session with a chocolate-mint story

The first ten minutes of any perfume workshop Vietnam session, at any of our three studios, follow the same rhythm. Introductions. A walk-through of the perfume pyramid. Then a small, strange story our staff tells guests to loosen them up before the blind-guess game begins.

The story is true. A previous guest, months earlier, had sworn in front of the whole table that one of our raw materials smelled exactly like chocolate mint. Our staff had nodded politely, written down what the guest thought, and revealed at the end of the game that what she had been smelling was cedarwood combined with a trace of leather — two of the most classic base notes in perfumery, neither of them anywhere near a dessert menu. It was an honest mistake. It was also, if you think about it, kind of a beautiful one: cedarwood’s cool green-wood top and leather’s warm animal-sweetness really do, on the right nose, add up to something the brain might translate as chocolate with a breath of mint over it. The story gets laughs. The story also quietly teaches every new guest, without lecturing, that scent is interpretation — that your nose is not a scanner, it’s a storyteller.

Kai Wen laughed at the story. Then he sat down to the blind-guess game. Then something unusual happened.

The blind guess that became a signature

Kai Wen picked up the cedarwood strip, brought it to his nose once, and said — immediately, without the polite pause most guests use — “No. This is chocolate mint.” Our staff, who had just told the earlier guest’s story ten minutes before, exchanged the smallest of glances. He had walked straight into the joke. Better still, he was doubling down. He kept saying it. “No, this is chocolate mint, I’m telling you, this is chocolate mint.” He wasn’t being difficult. He wasn’t performing. His nose had decided, and his mouth had simply followed.

Kai Wen, it turned out, was the kind of nose that doesn’t just smell a material — he smells a memory through it. Tell him a scent is cedarwood and he’ll argue with you, because what his brain has already pulled up is a specific freezer cabinet in a specific coffee shop in Singapore, where an uncle of his — a real uncle, the kind who remembers your birthday with a dollar coin — used to scoop out chocolate mint ice cream for kids on a hot afternoon. That’s what cedarwood smelled like to Kai Wen. That was the top of the pyramid he was actually smelling.

For people like Kai Wen, perfume is never about the bottle. It’s about the door the bottle opens. Every oil on the workbench is a small key to a specific hour of his life. And so when we asked him, a few minutes later, what he wanted to build, he didn’t hesitate. He wanted an adult version of his uncle’s chocolate mint ice cream. Something he could wear on a Tuesday at a meeting, something that wouldn’t smell like dessert but would absolutely, unmistakably, on his skin, carry the ghost of that freezer cabinet.

“Adult choco mint,” he said. “Can you do it?”

Building “adult choco mint”: two drops of leather, one surprising ally

Here is what separates a custom perfume Ho Chi Minh tourist session from a candle-making class. The answer is always yes, but the yes comes with a set of technical problems you now have to solve together. Chocolate mint, as a literal note, is a gourmand trap — easy to do badly, almost impossible to do sophisticated. We don’t use chocolate aromachemicals at NOTE for exactly that reason. What we do have, which Kai Wen already half-knew thanks to his mis-identified cedarwood, is a set of woody, mentholated, and leather notes that the right nose reads as dessert without the perfume ever explicitly saying so.

We started with one drop of leather as a base. One drop is usually enough — leather is loud, loud, loud. On most skins it takes over. On Kai Wen’s skin, something strange happened. One drop of leather simply… disappeared. It sank into him like ink into paper. Our staff and Kai Wen smelled the test strip together and reached the same conclusion at the same moment: this is not adult choco mint yet. This is the idea of adult choco mint, whispered. Kai Wen needed it spoken aloud.

Two drops of leather. That’s what it took. The second drop didn’t double the leather — it crossed a threshold. Suddenly the cedarwood wasn’t cedarwood anymore, the leather wasn’t leather anymore, and what rose off Kai Wen’s wrist was exactly what he had been describing with his eyes closed ten minutes earlier. Cool mint green over warm chocolate brown, with a whisper of tree bark underneath. A grown-up version of a childhood ice-cream truck. An adult choco mint.

The moment that sealed the formula wasn’t Kai Wen’s reaction, though. It was Jenna’s. Jenna is one of our staff at 34NDH, and at the start of the session she had declared, with the flat honesty perfumers are allowed when they’ve smelled ten thousand accords, that she did not like chocolate mint. Not as a flavor, not as a perfume theme, not in any form. She had said it out loud so Kai Wen would know where her biases were. And then, after Kai Wen’s two-drop-leather version had been composed and was sitting on his skin for five minutes, she leaned over, smelled his wrist, paused, smelled it again, and said — a little surprised at herself — “actually this is lovely.”

That was Kai Wen’s cue to upgrade. He had walked in thinking he might build a 10ml bottle, a small souvenir, maybe enough for two or three wearings back home. After Jenna’s reaction he asked for the 30ml size instead. “If even she likes it,” he said, “I’m going to be wearing this a lot.”

How a joke became the perfume’s name: SYBAU

The last ten minutes of every NOTE session are the naming ritual. The perfume has been composed, the formula recorded on a card, the bottle filled and labeled. The only thing left is a name. This is, quietly, the hardest part of the workshop for most guests. People who wrote poetry in high school suddenly go blank. People who name their houseplants and their Roombas stare at the empty line on the label like it’s a university exam.

Kai Wen was no different. He stared at the card. He doodled a little on the edge. He said words out loud and crossed them out. Chocolate Mint — too literal. Uncle’s Cart — too sentimental. Saigon Dessert — not his, didn’t fit his sense of humor. He and Jenna and the rest of the staff started trading jokes across the workbench to break his brain loose.

Here, we should pause to explain something to anyone reading this who isn’t Singaporean or isn’t from that specific corner of Asian internet humor. SYBAU is a local slang acronym. It means, very roughly, “shut your [expletive] and understand” — a jokey, mock-indignant way friends talk to each other in Singapore. It is not exactly the kind of word that usually ends up on a perfume label. That, of course, was the entire point.

Kai Wen pictured it. Someone at a Singapore dinner party, a few months from now, leaning in and asking him what he was wearing. And Kai Wen, with a perfectly straight face, answering, “It’s called SYBAU.” He started laughing. He wrote it on the card. He drew a tiny heart next to it. Done.

We have, over the years, watched guests name their perfumes after their grandmothers, after their favorite rivers, after song lyrics, after moods, after colors, after the exact hour of the afternoon they had walked through our door. Kai Wen is the first guest who named his bottle after a joke he can’t explain in mixed company. It’s one of our favorite names of 2025. It fits him perfectly.

If that sounds like the kind of afternoon you’d like to have to yourself — book a slot at our Thảo Điền studio, show up early, and give yourself permission to name the bottle whatever you want. Nobody is going to correct you.

Why a memory scent workshop Vietnam works for Singaporean travelers

Singaporean travelers are, in our experience, unusually good at this workshop. Part of it is practical — Singapore is a two-hour flight away, the flights are cheap, English is the working language at both ends, and a long weekend in Saigon is a thing Singaporean friend groups plan over WhatsApp the way other people plan brunch. Part of it is deeper, though. Singapore is a city built out of imported scents: Peranakan kitchens, Little India spice stalls, hawker center smoke, condo-block laundry detergent, MRT air-conditioning. Singaporeans grow up smelling a lot, and remembering what they smelled, even if they don’t have the vocabulary for it yet.

Kai Wen had that vocabulary. It was buried, sure, but it was there. It came out the second he smelled his uncle’s cedarwood and said “no, chocolate mint.” Every Singaporean guest we’ve had has some version of that moment — a material from our shelf that unlocks a specific corner of childhood they haven’t visited in a decade. For one recent guest it was sandalwood and an aunt’s living-room cabinet. For another it was fig leaf and a specific park in Clementi. For Kai Wen, it was cedarwood and an ice-cream scoop.

Guests tell us this afterwards on TripAdvisor, too. As one previous traveler wrote after her session with us: “I loved my fragrance making experience. I have a beautiful souvenir to take home and every time I smell it, I will remember Saigon. Thanh was an excellent teacher.” The phrase “every time I smell it, I will remember Saigon” is the quiet engine of this workshop. A quirky souvenir Saigon travelers actually keep wearing.

Another visitor, writing about her own afternoon with us, put it this way: “Ember and Maria did an amazing job explaining the perfume wheel and how all the scents go together. This perfume will always remind us of this trip in Vietnam.” That’s the same engine in different words. The perfume doesn’t just come home with you. It comes home as a time machine.

Fun things to do Saigon singles can do in a morning — alone, not lonely

Thảo Điền, before and after our workshop, is one of the easiest neighborhoods in Saigon for solo travelers to spend a slow day in. Kai Wen walked in from a nearby café. He left, he told us, heading for lunch at a bánh mì shop down the street, then a quiet hour in a used bookstore two corners over, then back across the river to his hotel. That’s a perfectly reasonable Saigon Saturday for one person.

We’ve written before about unique things to do in Saigon in 2026, and Thảo Điền shows up in that guide more than any other single neighborhood for one reason: it’s walkable. You can thread together a morning of very different experiences without ever needing to flag a Grab between them. A perfume workshop is one of them. A vinyl café is another. A small local gallery is a third. Our studio happens to sit in the middle of the walkable radius.

Solo travelers also appreciate that the workbench is designed for individual attention. As one TripAdvisor guest wrote of her own solo afternoon: “Great experience! Fun activity for yourself to figure out your scent.” The phrase “for yourself” is load-bearing. When you’re alone at the bench, you’re not compromising with a partner or a group — you’re just building exactly what you want to smell for the next six months.

And as another traveler put it after spending her time here: “Very friendly stuff and interesting workshop! You need to spend time here.” That line — you need to spend time here — is basically the one-sentence brief for how Kai Wen’s session went. He spent time. He got a bottle named SYBAU out of it.

If you’re still mapping out your own version of this afternoon, our ultimate things-to-do-in-HCMC guide pairs the workshop with nearby meals, walks, and low-pressure sights — the kind of itinerary a solo Singaporean traveler can follow without needing to consult their phone more than twice.

What Kai Wen’s SYBAU will smell like in six months

Here is something we tell every guest at the end of the session, and something worth repeating for anyone thinking about booking. The bottle you leave the studio with is not the bottle you’ll be wearing in July. Custom perfume ages. The alcohol continues to marry the oils for roughly six months after it’s made. The base notes settle. The top notes mellow. The whole composition, if we’ve done our job well, gets a little quieter and a little deeper over time — the way a well-built room fills out with use.

In Kai Wen’s case this is going to be especially fun to predict. The two drops of leather, which currently sit squarely at the base of SYBAU and announce themselves clearly, will probably soften and sink further into the cedarwood over the next few months. The mentholated green note at the top will lose a fraction of its initial chill. What he’ll have, come June, is an adult choco mint that’s even more adult — less ice-cream-counter, more after-dinner espresso.

As another past guest at our 34NDH workshop wrote on TripAdvisor: “A wonderful experience! I learnt so much and had so much fun.” The “learnt so much” half of that sentence is the half most guests underestimate when they book. You don’t walk in knowing that two drops of leather can change a composition; you walk out knowing that, and a dozen other things like it, and suddenly every perfume you smell on the MRT for the rest of your life is a little more legible.

Kai Wen sent us a note from Singapore in early January. He had worn SYBAU to a family dinner. His uncle — the real uncle, the one who actually sold chocolate mint ice cream at his cart years ago — had leaned over at the table, sniffed the air, and said “what is that?” Kai Wen told him it was called SYBAU. His uncle, bless him, didn’t know the slang and thought it was a perfume brand. The whole family laughed. The perfume, Kai Wen wrote, had done exactly what he’d built it to do.

Frequently asked questions about the Saigon perfume workshop for Singapore travelers

How long is a Singapore tourist perfume Saigon session at NOTE, and what does it cost?

Around 90 minutes, though solo travelers often take a little longer because nothing about the session is rushed. You’ll choose from 30+ raw materials, play a short blind-guess game, blend a formula with a staff perfumer, test it on your skin, adjust, and leave with a finished bottle. Prices start at 550,000 VND (around $24 USD) for a 10ml bottle and go up to 1,550,000 VND ($64 USD) for a 50ml. Kai Wen chose the 30ml “best deal” size at 1,350,000 VND ($54 USD) — our most-booked size across both Saigon studios. All prices are before 8% VAT.

Is a solo perfume workshop in Thảo Điền good for a Singapore weekend trip?

Especially good. Singapore-to-Saigon is a two-hour flight, the workshop runs in English, and our 34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu studio is a ten-minute taxi from most District 2 hotels. You can book a morning slot like Kai Wen did, grab a bánh mì or Peranakan-style brunch afterwards, and still have the afternoon for the rest of Thảo Điền. The workbench is set up for individual attention, so you won’t feel awkward turning up alone.

How do I find NOTE’s Thảo Điền studio at 34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu?

34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu is in Thảo Điền, District 2 — a fifteen-to-twenty minute taxi ride from District 1 and a five-minute walk from the Thảo Điền metro area. It’s an enclosed, air-conditioned studio, the quieter of our two Saigon locations. Our other Saigon workshop is on the 2nd floor of 42 Nguyễn Huệ (the Cafe Apartment building) in District 1. A third NOTE studio operates inside Lotte Mall Tây Hồ in Hanoi, for travelers continuing north on the same trip.

I’ve never made a perfume before — can I still build a memory scent from scratch?

Yes. Most guests walk in with zero training and walk out with a wearable composition. The staff walks you through top, heart, and base notes before you touch an ingredient, and the blind-guess game quickly trains your nose to tell cedarwood from sandalwood, fig from bergamot, and so on. Kai Wen’s nose was extraordinary, but most of what looked extraordinary was simply paying attention — something anyone can do in a quiet room with a good instructor.

What’s the best souvenir option — a custom perfume or a ready-made NOTE scent?

Both, honestly, and they do different jobs. A custom bottle like Kai Wen’s SYBAU is a quirky souvenir Saigon travelers almost never get elsewhere — a one-of-one object with a story. A ready-made NOTE fragrance, on the other hand, is a quicker pick if you’re short on time or want a gift for a friend back home. Most of our repeat Singaporean guests end up doing both: the workshop for themselves, a ready-made bottle for the sister, the partner, or the friend who recommended us in the first place.

Can I book the workshop for a small group of Singaporean friends instead of solo?

Absolutely — many of our busiest sessions are groups of two to six friends flying in together. The workbench seats up to eight at a single session. If your group is bigger than that, get in touch before you book so we can reserve an entire room for you. As one previous guest wrote on TripAdvisor about coming back with a second person the year after her first solo visit: “I come back with my boyfriend.” That arc — solo first, with someone later — is one of the patterns we see most often.

All guest names in this story are pseudonyms used with permission under our privacy policy. Workshop details and testimonials are authentic and verified.

If you’d rather carry home a ready-made scent in addition to your workshop bottle — or as a gift for the friend who told you about us — NOTE’s handcrafted fragrance collection lives at thescentnote.biz. Same ingredients, same studio, already bottled.