Hair Products You Can and Cannot Find in Saigon

The first weeks after a move are spent replacing things. A kettle, a plug adapter, the right sort of coffee. Hair products tend to sit further down that list, right up until the morning you reach the end of the bottle you brought with you and realise you have no idea what to buy next.

This is one of the quieter frustrations of settling into Ho Chi Minh City, and it catches people who never gave their shampoo a second thought at home. What follows is a general map rather than a shopping list. We are not naming brands, but we will say where to look. What sits on a shelf in District 7 this month is a poor guide to what sits there next month anyway.

The categories that are usually straightforward

Broadly speaking, the closer a product is to an everyday household staple, the easier it is to find:

• Basic shampoo and conditioner from the large international manufacturers, in the versions sold across Asia. The names may be familiar even when the formulas and fragrances are not identical to the ones you knew.
• Hair oils and serums. Oil is a normal part of a routine here rather than a specialist product, and the shelf space reflects that.
• Everyday styling basics such as wax, clay, gel and hairspray, mostly aimed at short and mid-length hair.
• Dry shampoo and heat protectant, though the choice is narrower than in a European or North American pharmacy.

The categories that give people trouble

The gaps are less about the country and more about who the mainstream market is built for. The most common complaints we hear from people settling in:

• Products for curly, coily and highly textured hair. Curl creams, curl-defining gels and rich leave-in conditioners are the single most frequent thing newcomers say they cannot replace easily.
• A specific salon line. If you were loyal to one professional range at home, assume it may not be here, or may be here only through channels that are hard to verify.
• Fragrance-free and sensitive-scalp ranges. Strongly perfumed products are the norm, and unscented options take some hunting.
• Toning shampoos for blonde, silver or lightened hair. Availability moves around, and the tone of a given product is not always what the packaging suggests.
• Medicated scalp treatments. Anything you were using on a doctor’s advice is a conversation to have with a doctor here, not something to guess at in an aisle.
• Certain tools. Diffusers and particular comb or brush shapes are worth checking on before you assume you can replace them.

Where you buy

Where you buy matters as much as what you buy. Pharmacy chains and supermarkets carry a narrower range, but what is on the shelf is what the label says. The online marketplaces carry everything, including a great deal that is not what it claims to be, so for anything going on your scalp it is worth paying more somewhere you can ask a person.

Looking for a substitute, not the same thing

The people who settle this fastest tend to stop searching for a name and start searching for a function. A few habits that help:

1. Write down what the old product actually did for you. Softened, weighed down, added grip, reduced static, made drying faster. That description travels; a brand name does not.
2. Photograph the ingredient list before you throw the bottle away. It is far easier to compare a new label against an old one than to reconstruct it from memory.
3. Change one product at a time. If you replace shampoo, conditioner and styling cream in the same week and the result is worse, you have no way of knowing which one to blame.
4. Ask where the product came from. Buying somewhere you can ask that question is worth more than saving a trip.

It is also worth saying plainly that a substitute can behave differently on your hair than it did on the person who recommended it. Hair varies enough that no product recommendation carries a guarantee, including ours.

What is actually worth packing

If you still have a suitcase to fill, or a visitor coming, priority tends to fall in this order:

• Anything specific to your hair type that the mainstream market here is not built around, particularly for curly and textured hair.
• Anything a doctor put you on.
• Tools you are attached to. Vietnam runs on 220V, so a dryer or iron built for 100V or 120V needs more than an adapter. Plug shape is rarely the problem: most sockets here take both flat and round pins.
• A small amount of your usual product instead of a year’s supply, so you have a bridge while you experiment.

That last point matters more than people expect, which brings us to the climate.

Your preferences may not survive the move

The same product can feel like a different product in a different climate. People arriving from cold, dry winters often find that the rich creams they relied on feel greasy or limp in humid air, and drift towards lighter textures and smaller amounts. People arriving from somewhere already tropical sometimes find the opposite once they start spending long stretches in cooled indoor air.

Neither pattern is a rule, and there is no knowing which applies to you without living here a while. It is an argument for small sizes at first, and for treating the early months as testing, not restocking.

Expect the first few shopping trips to be inefficient. What shortens them is walking in with a function in mind instead of a brand name, and buying somewhere you can ask a person about what you are holding.

A note from emo.

If you are between products and not sure what to buy next, it is a reasonable thing to raise at an appointment. Bringing a photo of the ingredient list from the bottle you liked, or simply describing what it did for you, gives a stylist something concrete to work from, and how your hair is cut and dried can matter as much as what goes on it. emo. Hair Salon is in District 7, at 14 Raymondienne in the Starhill area of Phường Tân Mỹ, near Crescent Mall and Phú Mỹ Hưng.

We speak English, Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean.

To book, call us or message us on Zalo. Online booking is also available, but please note the booking page is in Japanese only.

• Phone: 0707 177 290
• Zalo: Message us on Zalo
• Online booking (Japanese only): Book via Reservia

emo. Hair Salon
14 Raymondienne, khu Starhill, phường Tân Mỹ, Quận 7, Ho Chi Minh City (near Crescent Mall, in Phú Mỹ Hưng)
Tue–Fri 9:00–19:00 (last cut 18:00) / Sat–Sun 9:00–18:30 (last cut 17:30) / Closed Mondays