Perfume Workshop Saigon: Forest of Memory, a Việt Kiều's Afternoon at 42 Nguyễn Huệ

NOTE – The Scent Lab is a perfume workshop in Saigon, Vietnam, where Vietnamese travelers coming home — and Vietnamese diaspora returning for family — create, not buy, their own custom fragrances. This is a perfume workshop Saigon has kept quietly open to Việt kiều from Prague, Berlin, Sydney, Houston and San Jose for six years. On a morning in June 2025, a man who had lived most of his adult life in the Czech Republic walked in with four friends and walked out ninety minutes later with a 10ml bottle he named Forest of Memory — a scent that, for him, bridged two forests separated by nine thousand kilometers.

This is how it happened.

A perfume workshop Saigon Việt kiều quietly tell their friends about

Every month, a handful of our guests arrive carrying two passports and two accents. They grew up in Brno or Melbourne or Garden Grove or Paris. They return to Vietnam every few years to see parents, uncles, childhood houses, noodle stalls that smell the way they always did. They are not tourists, exactly. They are not locals, exactly. They have come to create something they can take back with them. They are Việt kiều — Vietnamese abroad — and when they come home, they come looking for something the brochures don’t list.

On 11 June 2025, Mr. Sơn was that guest. He had grown up and lived most of his life in the Czech Republic, and had flown back to Vietnam to see family. A few friends back in Prague had been to our workshop on an earlier trip and would not stop talking about it. They had booked his afternoon as a gift — the kind of gift that doesn’t try to teach you anything, just hands you a room and says here, take some time. He came into our studio with four friends, who were not signed up for the workshop themselves. They were along to drink coffee, chat about perfumes in two languages, and watch him create.

The room that morning smelled of old Vietnamese fig tree, Czech pine, and slightly burnt caramel drifting in from the cafe three doors down. Mr. Sơn put down his jacket and said, in Vietnamese with a Central European cadence, that he didn’t really know what he wanted. He just knew he’d been thinking about forests.

Two forests, one bottle

The Czech Republic, for those who have never been, is built on forest. Nearly one-third of the country is trees — spruce, pine, oak, beech — and the seasons are loud. Autumn smells like wet leaves and wood smoke. Winter smells like cold pine and a fireplace somewhere far away. Spring smells like green sap, the kind that gets sticky on your fingers when you brush against a young branch. Mr. Sơn had spent most of his life in that air, and his nose had been trained by it without him noticing.

Vietnam’s forest is different. It is louder in a different way — cicadas, rain, the sudden perfume of frangipani opening after a shower, the layered scent of incense and wet stone near the temples. It is greener in the tropical sense, not the alpine sense. And for Vietnamese people who grew up abroad, the forest of home is almost always a memory of the forest — not the forest itself. Something a grandparent described once, or a film they watched at eight years old, or a single trip when they were twelve.

Mr. Sơn wanted both. He wanted a scent that smelled like the forest he lived in now, and the forest he half-remembered from the country he had returned to. Two forests in a 10ml bottle. He hadn’t put it that way to our staff — he just kept smelling the wood notes and saying, quietly, “this one too.” He kept pairing each wood with a floral note, which was the unconscious half of the composition. The flowers were the Vietnam half. The woods were the Czech half.

This is how a memory becomes a perfume: not by describing it, but by reaching for the raw materials that somehow match its shape.

Four friends, one workbench, and the conversation in two languages

Mr. Sơn’s four friends sat around the workshop table with their coffees and their tea. They were there for him, and they were there for themselves — because watching a friend build a scent is, in its own way, also a workshop. One of them kept switching between Vietnamese and Czech mid-sentence. Another friend, Vietnamese but Prague-raised, kept translating both directions for a third friend who had grown up in Saigon and never left. The conversation drifted across patchouli, honeysuckle, the price of apartments in Prague, childhood songs, a grandmother’s kitchen in Phú Nhuận, the way rain sounds different on a tile roof than on a snow-covered pine.

This is one of the quiet gifts of our workshop that we can’t put on a booking page — and it is one of the quieter reasons guests keep coming back to create here. A 90-minute perfume session, for a group that includes a returning Vietnamese visitor and the friends who love them, turns into a bilingual conversation about home. Nobody rushes anyone. Nobody interrupts. The perfume, somewhere on the workbench, slowly becomes a third language — one that both Prague and Saigon can agree on.

As one of our past guests, Trung N, wrote on TripAdvisor after a similar afternoon: “I had a fantastic experience at the perfume workshop led by Helen at NOTE – The Scent Lab.” That sentence is short but carries the right tone. A good workshop does not feel led in the classroom sense — it feels guided, the way a Vietnamese family friend guides you through a difficult menu. Nobody is teaching at you. Someone is simply sitting next to you while you figure out what you want.

Building Forest of Memory: sandalwood, cedarwood, fig tree, and one Vietnamese flower

By the time Mr. Sơn reached the blending stage, the shape of the bottle was clear even if he hadn’t written it down. He wanted wood. A lot of wood. But not the heavy, smoky kind that rolls across a room — something drier, quieter, the way a Czech pine smells in winter when the air is cold and clean. He built the base from sandalwood and cedarwood, two woods that share a certain powdery softness, and added a low thread of fig tree — which, surprisingly, does not smell like fig fruit at all, but like green bark in spring.

Then he reached for a Vietnamese floral he hadn’t expected to like: tuberose. Tuberose is a polarising note. It is heavy, creamy, slightly animalic. People either love it or flinch. Mr. Sơn sniffed the strip twice, paused, and said something we’ve heard from other Việt kiều guests: “This smells like my mother’s altar flowers when I was small.” He used a very small amount — three drops — but it was enough to anchor the whole bottle to a specific room in a specific house in a specific year.

When he had the composition he wanted, he sprayed a little on a test strip and passed it around to his four friends. One of them inhaled and laughed. Another just nodded. The third friend, the Saigon-raised one, said something interesting: “That’s not what a Czech forest smells like. That’s what you smell like when you come back to create something.”

Mr. Sơn smiled and wrote the name on the bottle label: Forest of Memory. Ten milliliters. He didn’t need a larger bottle. What he wanted was to use it sparingly, over the two weeks of his return, and then fly home with it half-full, where it could keep aging quietly in a Prague apartment through a Central European winter.

As another past guest wrote of our workshop: “Such a beautiful experience. My daughter and I did a spontaneous perfume making workshop here today.” That one was Sarah S on TripAdvisor. The word spontaneous matters, because most of our best bottles come from exactly that — not from a plan, but from a moment someone walked in thinking they were only along for the ride.

Why NOTE has become the “when I go home” stop for Vietnamese diaspora

We’ve noticed something, across six years of running this studio. When Việt kiều return to Vietnam, the trip usually has a short list of required stops: the grandmother’s house, the cemetery, the old school, a specific bowl of something they’ve been thinking about for years. And increasingly, a perfume workshop. For the returning Việt kiều, each of them creating something, the bottle is a gift to themselves — a way to compress three weeks of visiting, cooking, driving, crying and laughing into 10 milliliters that will sit on a bedroom dresser in Prague or Houston or Berlin for the next six months.

It’s also, practically, one of the easiest gifts to bring home. It passes through airport security. It weighs nothing. It does not spoil. It does not need a translator. A bottle of custom perfume is a small, portable home — and for Vietnamese people living abroad, that portability is the point.

Some of our guests come alone. Some, like Mr. Sơn, come with friends. Some bring their non-Vietnamese partners, who sit at the workbench too and, by the end of the session, understand a little more about why this country smells the way it does. As one past couple, Aleck Hann, wrote on TripAdvisor: “Finally understood how notes works. Came with our best friends for our 20th wedding anniversary.” Different occasion, same shape: you come with the people you want to smell-remember later.

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What Forest of Memory does on a Prague winter evening

A few months after his visit, Mr. Sơn sent a short note back to our studio. He had worn the bottle for the first time on a cold Prague evening in late autumn. The wood notes had settled into something more intimate than they had been at the workbench. The tuberose — that single Vietnamese floral — had mellowed and was no longer shouting. The bottle smelled, he wrote, “the way my mother’s house in Việt Nam smells at dusk, except I’m here, and it’s November, and there’s snow on the window.”

That is exactly what a well-made custom perfume does, and it is exactly the thing we most often fail to describe on our booking page. The bottle you build at our workshop will not smell the same in six months as it does in the first week. Top notes will fade. Middle notes will deepen. Base notes will settle into your skin chemistry and become something that, strictly speaking, only works on you. This is the thing custom perfume does that mass-market perfume cannot. It turns into a memory that is honest about whose memory it is.

A friend of Mr. Sơn’s, back in Prague, has already booked a slot for his own next trip to Vietnam. He says he wants to make one for his wife, who was born in Hải Phòng and has not been back in eleven years. Another chain extending. Another forest waiting to be built.

Another TripAdvisor reviewer, after her own afternoon with us, put it in one line: “This is a must do activity for couples on a SEA trip!” That was declanmr. We would gently extend his sentence to include the travelers who create, not only visit: a must-do for couples, for solo travelers, and — most quietly — for Vietnamese people coming home, with the friends who love them, to build a small forest they can carry back.

Frequently asked questions about the perfume workshop in Saigon for Vietnamese diaspora

Is the workshop conducted in Vietnamese or English? Can Việt kiều guests switch between the two?

Both. Our instructors are fluent in Vietnamese and comfortable in English, and plenty of sessions — especially with Việt kiều guests and their non-Vietnamese partners or friends — happen in a natural mix of both languages. Switching mid-sentence is welcome. Nobody will correct your Vietnamese.

How long does the perfume workshop Saigon session take, and what does it cost?

Around 90 minutes. You choose from 30+ raw materials, blend your own formula, test on your skin, adjust, and leave with a finished bottle. Prices start at 550,000 VND (around $24 USD) for a 10ml bottle — Mr. Sơn’s size — and go up to 1,550,000 VND ($64 USD) for a 50ml. The 30ml Best Deal at 1,350,000 VND ($54 USD) is our most-booked size. All prices are before 8% VAT. For Vietnamese diaspora on short trips, the 10ml is often enough — it travels easily and lasts six months at a daily spray.

Can I bring friends or family who aren’t making their own bottle?

Yes, always. Like Mr. Sơn’s four friends, many guests arrive with a small group who only want to watch, drink coffee, and share the afternoon. We keep our workshop table large enough to hold both the active participant and the company. There is no “audience fee.” The conversation around the bottle is part of how the bottle ends up smelling.

Will the custom perfume survive a flight home to Europe, North America, or Australia?

Yes. A sealed 10ml, 20ml, 30ml or 50ml bottle fits in standard carry-on liquid rules (under 100ml per container). We pack your bottle with the original formula sheet, which lets you recreate the exact same composition later. Most of our international guests carry the bottle directly in their carry-on; longer 50ml bottles travel comfortably in checked luggage too.

I haven’t lived in Vietnam for twenty years and my Vietnamese isn’t perfect. Is the workshop still a good fit?

Absolutely. In fact, this is one of the audiences the workshop fits most naturally. You don’t need to speak perfect Vietnamese. You don’t need to know any of the raw materials in advance. You don’t need to remember what your grandmother’s garden smelled like. The instructor works with wherever your nose is now, and the bottle you leave with will quietly do the remembering for you. Book a slot to create your own bottle during your Vietnam trip — it’s often the stop our returning guests wish they’d scheduled first.

If you want to bring more than one bottle home — for parents, siblings, a partner back abroad — NOTE’s handcrafted ready-made collection is at thescentnote.biz. Same craftsmanship, already bottled.