Since 2017 the (visible) local scene here in Vietnam unfortunately has become total dogshit, a pure cesspool. Everybody playing the China-style get rich quick schemes; launching bullshit token scams and generally it feels it has become a gathering place for low-ethics hustler scum of society... - which certainly makes many of the decent local people stay away from it; rightfully so.
AFAIK, it happened over the whole forum when people got crazy with bitcoin and many scam projects, ICOs. Bounty hunters got crazy with their spams. I don't know during that period, the Vietnamese local thread is the most terrible spam place or not but the fact is it was locked. Maybe there were more spam boards but they have local moderators to handle it that we did not have for our local thread.
Unfortunately in the (active) local scene there is at this point in time not anybody I could vouch for without reservations, but maybe they are also all just in hiding/lurking mode because they don't want to associate with the local crypto-scammer folks and dont know where else to turn to.
In general, it happened with the forum when some prestigious users left the forum that forced theymos (somewhat) to create the merit system that works well to keep the forum cleaner.
Not sure if he's on Bitcointalk, but
Hugohanoi certainly one of the few Bitcoin folks of Vietnamese descent who provide very valuable contributions to the scene.
Thank you for information on hugohanoi, that kind of looks like knowledgeable crypto enthusiast.
Otherwise the local Bitcoin-focused communities in
Saigon,
Da Nang,
Vung Tau and
Hanoi seem to do a decent job, but are unfortunately very Expat-skewed when it comes to the attendance rate.
Helpful links too.
Generally, by now, I can see a fact that there are not much valuable members from Vietnam. Maybe they have been inactively, left the forum or have not yet seen my thread. Let's wait for a while.