A young couple, whose love blooms from their mutual appreciation of Chingiz Aitmatov's "Tales of the Mountains and the Steppes", struggles with their personal romanticism and faith in each other as the novel becomes subjected to a new era's changing ideas about art.

At the wedding of his rich friend, a man meets a charming and stylish woman who's known in Saigon high society as the daughter of an influential minister.

In 1981, six years after the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, Tan, a young former Vietcong officer, goes to take the ashes of his dead comrade, Thai, to his family in a remote area. On the overcrowded train out of Ho Chi Min City, he meets Mien, a former soldier and witness to Thai's death.

A hard up historian lives happily with his newly-wed wife and her child from her previous husband. But as he becomes more successful and financially stable, the family relationships begin to fracture.

A woman manages to escape from the Khmer Rouge labour camp. Saved from drowning in river by a group of Vietnamese soldiers, she decided to join them.

Follows a young cyclo driver on his poverty-driven descent into criminality in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. The boy's struggles to scratch out a living for his two sisters and grandfather in the mean streets of the city lead to petty crime on behalf of a mysterious Madame from whom he rents his cyclo.

A singer begins a love triangle with an actress and a bar girl.