Ho Chi Minh City eatery staff go above and beyond for Singaporean tourists' lost travel budget

Phuong Oanh, owner of Oanh Cua Eatery in Cau Ong Lanh Ward, shared a video on social media platform TikTok recounting the incident. The clip quickly attracted widespread attention and praise from viewers.

According to Oanh, two Singaporean tourists visited the eatery for a crab meal on the night of September 29.

After finishing their meal, they left while staff proceeded to clear the tables and dispose of the rubbish.

Two to three hours later, the foreign tourists returned and told the staff they had accidentally left an envelope containing cash at the eatery.

The envelope held more than VND40 million (US$1,550), which the tourists had brought with them to cover expenses during their trip to Vietnam.

The eatery staff reviewed security camera footage but could not locate the envelope.

The tourists believed the small envelope might have been accidentally thrown away with used tissues, food containers or other waste from their meal.

Meanwhile, the eatery’s rubbish had already been collected and taken to an outdoor waste collection area, Oanh said.

“The staff started searching inside the eatery and then moved out to the rubbish area.

“Because the envelope was so small, they had to go through each bag and piece of waste one by one.

“The search eventually extended to three large garbage vehicles where the waste had been collected.”

Several sanitation workers nearby also joined the effort.

They brought empty garbage vehicles and helped transfer the waste from the original vehicles, making it possible for the eatery staff to search through it more thoroughly.

“Rain also began to fall as the search continued,” Oanh said.

“As the two tourists told the staff that the money was almost their entire budget for the trip, the staff really wanted to help them find it and searched for more than an hour.”

However, the mystery was eventually solved in an unexpected way.

After returning to their hotel, the tourists checked their luggage again and discovered that the envelope had been tucked deep underneath a paper bag.

The following day, the two tourists returned to the eatery for a meal and thanked the staff for their enthusiastic efforts to help them.

They also wrote a thank-you letter in both English and Vietnamese.

“Thank you so much for helping us look for our envelope last night, even going through the trash.

“We are truly grateful.

“Thankfully, we found it at the bottom of our paper bag.”

In addition, the tourists gave VND2 million ($77) to the employees who had joined the search as a gesture of appreciation for their efforts.

“For me, being able to protect a customer’s belongings and leave international visitors with an image of Vietnamese people as hospitable and kind is already more than enough to make me happy,” Oanh told Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper.