English language books in Ho Chi Minh City

Boa Bookstore is a bibliophile’s hidden treasure trove, with the hidden part being almost literal. The address is number 6 Turtle Roundabout (Room C26, 2nd Floor, 42 Tran Cao Van or 6 Cong Truong Quoc Te, D1), though to reach the bookstore proper, you have to climb up two flights of stairs and navigate a short stretch of sooty hallways in an old apartment building. The room is number C26. The door is closed most of the time. Do not feel shy. Push that closed door open and inside you will find an apartment room stocked from floor to ceiling with books, books, and even more books.

The stock here consists mostly of English- language books with a smattering of French ones. Half are brand new while the other half are secondhand – all imported from the US. Titles run the gamut from young adult, romance, popular self-helps to finds few would expect from a Vietnamese bookstore such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, HG Wells’ Seven Novel collection, HP Lovecraft’s Complete Cthulhu Mythos, and even a complete collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and tales in three different editions: hardback, hardback with illustrations, and Barnes & Noble Classic leather bound with silver or gold plated pages.

“Because we are so small, and our customers are so niche, we can make some really brave choices in our selection,” says Thao, Boa’s co-owner. “If we ran a bigger store with more varied customers like Phuong Nam Book or such, then we probably would have to stock the popular, easy to sell varieties more. But as we are now, we can be the bookworms we want to be.”

Looking at the rare editions and collectible titles it boasts, it’s hard to believe Boa started out two years ago as an online forum to sell secondhand books. “Thuy and I started out on this tiny forum for English-language book lovers. We were just regular members and were just having fun sharing our obsession with like-minded people,” says Thao. “By chance, Thuy had a relative in America who occasionally shipped her a book or two. She shared them online and before she knew it, people were asking her to order books for them and were willing to pay a little extra for her time. That was how Boa actually started out.”

Thao, 24, and Thuy, 25, opened the bookstore using their savings. “A lot of people questioned our choice in business investment, our families included,” shares the latter, who works a second job in a furniture company to finance their new venture. “This is, after all, the era of Kindle and digital texts so it probably seems a little unwise to put all your savings into a tiny book business dealing exclusively with physical foreign language books. But we just love books too much to do anything else.”

For the first year, Boa was less a book business proper and more a nameless book ordering service favored by English literature students and teenagers. “We were students and broke. We could afford only 10 books per month and keep maybe 20 to 30 in stock at a time. That’s how small we were.”