Flipper Zero: 5 Surprisingly Useful and Fun Things You Can Do With It

14 September 2026 Howard Toh

The first time I saw a Flipper Zero, I assumed it was mostly one of those gadgets you buy because it looks cool, play with for a weekend, and then leave in a drawer.

Turns out, it is considerably more useful than that.

Yes, it has acquired a slightly ridiculous reputation online as some sort of pocket-sized hacking superweapon.

It isn’t.

What it actually is, though, is a rather fun collection of radios, sensors and interfaces bundled into one tiny device.

And once you start carrying one around, you begin noticing how many things around you are communicating wirelessly.

Here are some of my favourite practical uses.

1. Replace Half Your Infrared Remotes

This is probably one of the least dramatic Flipper Zero features.

It is also one of the ones I actually find most useful.

The Flipper has an infrared transmitter, so it can behave like a universal remote for things such as TVs, projectors, sound systems, air conditioners, fans, and some air purifiers and other appliances.

Flipper maintains a library of remote-control signals, and its mobile app can download compatible controls directly onto the device. If your appliance isn’t in the database, you can also point the original remote at the Flipper and capture its infrared commands.

That means the Flipper can effectively become a backup remote for appliances around the house.

This has saved me from the classic household mystery: “Where did the aircon remote go?”

Usually followed by somebody insisting they were definitely not the last person holding it.

Flipper’s official documentation covers both its universal infrared remotes and infrared functionality.

2. Copy Your Own Gate or Gantry Remote

This one feels considerably more magical.

Many older remote-controlled gates, barriers, roller shutters and carpark gantries operate using radio signals in the Sub-GHz range.

For compatible static-code remotes, Flipper can receive the signal, save it and later transmit it again.

So instead of carrying another remote around, you may be able to keep a copy on your Flipper.

There is an important catch.

Modern gate systems frequently use rolling codes, where the transmitted code changes every time the remote is used. These systems are specifically designed so that simply recording one transmission and playing it back later doesn’t work.

So this isn’t a universal gate-cloning machine.

But when you come across one of your own devices using a simple static remote, being able to capture it and then watch the gate open from your Flipper is enormously satisfying.

Flipper documents this under its official Sub-GHz documentation.

Important: only record or reproduce remotes for gates, barriers or other equipment that you own or are explicitly authorised to operate. Being technically able to transmit a signal does not grant permission to open somebody else’s gate.

3. Keep Copies of Access Cards You Are Authorised to Use

This is probably the feature most people associate with Flipper Zero.

It supports both 125 kHz RFID and 13.56 MHz NFC, which covers a wide range of cards, tags and key fobs.

Older 125 kHz access cards are particularly interesting because many simply transmit an identification number when presented to the reader.

For supported formats, Flipper can read the card, save it and emulate it later.

Its NFC capabilities are more sophisticated. Depending on the card technology and security involved, Flipper may be able to read and emulate some or all of the card data.

And this distinction matters: not every access card can be cloned.

A simple RFID card and a cryptographically protected smart card are very different beasts.

Flipper’s own documentation describes its 125 kHz RFID support and separate NFC capabilities.

Personally, one situation where I find this genuinely convenient is Airbnb.

Occasionally an Airbnb gives us only one or two access cards despite several people staying in the apartment.

If the provided access card uses a compatible technology, I sometimes make a temporary copy so we don’t have to coordinate our entire family’s movements around one physical card.

But there is an important boundary here.

I am authorised to access the property during my rental period.

Once that rental ends, so does that authorisation.

So I always delete and destroy any copies I created when I check out.

That seems like a fairly sensible rule for any copied credential: if your permission to enter disappears, your copy should disappear too.

And obviously, don’t copy somebody else’s office, condo, hotel or access card without permission.

4. Figure Out What Technology Your Cards Actually Use

This sounds nerdier than it actually is.

One of the things I like most about Flipper Zero is that it makes invisible technology visible.

Take an access card. Normally you tap it against a reader, hear a beep, and the door opens. That’s about as much thought as most people ever give it.

But put that same card against a Flipper and suddenly you start asking questions.

Is it 125 kHz RFID? 13.56 MHz NFC? MIFARE? Does it expose only a UID? Is there protected memory? Can it actually be emulated?

Even when Flipper cannot reproduce a credential, simply identifying what technology is inside the card is surprisingly interesting.

It also gives you a much better appreciation of just how different two pieces of plastic that look virtually identical can be.

5. Learn How Much Wireless Stuff Is Around You

This may actually be the best reason to own one.

The Flipper Zero encourages curiosity.

You start noticing infrared LEDs. You start wondering what frequency a remote uses. You realise that your condo gate, car key, door badge, TV remote, NFC tag and wireless doorbell are all communicating using completely different technologies.

And because the Flipper gives you one interface for exploring many of them, concepts that previously sounded abstract start becoming tangible.

Infrared suddenly isn’t just something buried inside a remote control. RFID isn’t simply “the thing that opens the office door.” Sub-GHz isn’t merely a frequency range.

You can actually interact with these technologies and see what they are doing.

That makes Flipper Zero much more interesting to me as an educational gadget than as the “hacking device” it is sometimes portrayed as online.

Is Flipper Zero Worth Buying?

If you expect a magical device that opens every door and controls everything around you, you will probably be disappointed.

Modern security systems are deliberately designed to prevent exactly that.

But if you’re the type of person who enjoys figuring out how things work, it is an incredibly entertaining gadget.

It combines infrared, Sub-GHz radio, RFID, NFC, Bluetooth, GPIO and a bunch of other experimentation possibilities into something you can actually carry around in your pocket.

And unlike a lot of hobbyist electronics, you don’t need to build a circuit every time you want to try something.

You simply pull out the little dolphin gadget and start investigating.

If you’re looking to get one locally, you can find the Flipper Zero on Shopee Singapore.

Just remember that owning the tool doesn’t change the rules.

Experiment with your own equipment, your own credentials, or systems where you have permission.

Within those boundaries, there is an awful lot of fun packed into that little orange-and-white box.

Telegram Channel & Group Cloning: Because “Lifetime Access” Sometimes Lasts Until Tuesday

23 August 2026 Howard Toh

You joined a useful Telegram channel years ago. Maybe it contains a paid course, a community’s accumulated advice, a niche hobby archive, family photos, work references, deal alerts, or simply a group of people who became part of your life.

You paid for access. You were told it was permanent. Then one day the invite link stops working, the administrator disappears, or the channel is deleted without warning. No refund, no download button, no polite little “thank you for your custom” email—just a hole where your archive used to be.

That is not a hypothetical concern. It has happened to me repeatedly: eight out of ten channels I had paid to access eventually disappeared. The lesson was not to collect more links. It was to keep an archive of the material I was legitimately allowed to see while it still existed.

This service clones the channel or group into an organised destination you control. Rather than merely handing you a folder of downloads, the aim is to preserve the actual chat-channel experience: the posts, media and accumulated history, in a separate Telegram archive that remains useful when the original does not.

What a Telegram clone gives you

A proper clone is more than a pile of random downloads. The aim is a structured, Telegram-native copy of the material you already have access to, before an admin changes their mind, loses an account or simply evaporates into the internet mist.

A real channel/group copy — content is replicated into a separate destination, not reduced to a folder of loose attachments.
Media retained with the posts — photos, videos, documents, audio and other attachments stay associated with the relevant content where feasible.
Order retained — channel or group content stays grouped in a usable timeline rather than becoming one heroic folder called misc_final_v7_reallyfinal.
A destination you manage — your cloned archive lives under an account/destination you control.
A familiar way to browse — revisit the archive from Telegram in a channel-style format instead of hunting through a hard drive.

Who this is for

This is useful for people who want to protect access to content and conversations that matter to them:

Members of paid communities, courses or membership channels
Community owners and moderators wanting a contingency archive
Hobby, trading, gaming and interest groups with years of accumulated tips and files
Families, alumni groups and communities preserving shared history
Anyone who has already learned that “lifetime” is an oddly elastic word online

Export vs. clone: what is the difference?

Option	What you get	Best for
Standard export	A file-based record of messages and attachments for local storage.	People who are happy to browse content outside Telegram.
Telegram clone	A separate, organised Telegram destination that replicates accessible posts and media in a channel/group-style format.	People who want the content to remain practical to browse and reference inside Telegram.
Clone + file export	A Telegram-native clone alongside a separately delivered file copy, where requested.	The “I have been burned before” plan.

Straightforward pricing

The real workload is driven largely by the size and number of media attachments, not merely how many messages appear in the group. I will assess the channel/group first, confirm the scope and give you a clear quote before the work starts.

Plan	Best for	Included files	Price
Restricted clone	Channels or groups where forwarding, saving or media access needs extra handling.	First 2,000 files	S$50 base, then S$0.03 per additional file
Unrestricted clone	Sources that allow forwarding or saving files, including private channels/groups without those limitations.	First 1,000 files	S$20 base, then S$0.01 per additional file
External file export	Separate disk/file delivery requiring extra storage and physical file handling.	Quoted by scope	Custom quote

Setup fee: Both clone plans have a S$10 setup fee, waived when the confirmed order is at least S$100. Large videos, unusually large source groups and external file exports may need additional handling. There are no surprise calculations after the work begins: the agreed scope comes first.

How it works

Send the channel/group link and a short description. Tell me the channel/group you want cloned and its intended destination.
I assess the source. I check the likely media volume, file sizes, access method and the appropriate clone structure.
You receive a fixed scope and price. You decide before any work begins.
The clone is created. Accessible posts and media are organised in the new Telegram destination.
You receive your cloned archive. It remains available to browse from the destination you control.

Why do this now instead of later?

Telegram channels and groups are convenient living spaces, but access to someone else’s channel is not the same as control of your own copy. Administrators can delete content, lose control of an account, make a channel private, migrate elsewhere, or stop operating altogether. Even well-run communities can disappear for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

The best time to preserve something is while it is still there, your access is active, and the material is complete. After it closes, there is usually no recovery process waiting backstage with a cape.

Frequently asked questions

Can you back up a private group or paid channel?

I can assess channels and groups that you can legitimately access. The practical method, scope and what can be retained depend on the source, permissions, media size and platform behaviour.

Will the clone retain the original media?

Where the source makes them available, the clone is prepared to retain the best practical available version. I will flag any limitations before starting.

Can you clone a source with tens of thousands of files?

Yes. Larger archives are exactly why a structured process and per-file pricing are useful. The scope is assessed first, then you receive a clear quote.

Where does the completed clone live?

It lives in the agreed Telegram destination under your control. A separate file export is not part of the standard clone plans, but can be quoted separately if you need files delivered outside Telegram.

Get a Telegram cloning quote

If there is a channel, group or community archive you would hate to lose, send the link and a short note on what you want cloned. I will first confirm what is feasible, how the clone will be structured and the price.

Contact me on Telegram for an assessment

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Important: This service is for preserving material you are entitled to access and retain. It does not grant access to restricted content, bypass permissions, or transfer ownership of anyone else’s work. Please respect applicable terms, copyright and community rules.

Welcome to the Museum of Meaningless Metrics

21 June 2026 Howard Toh

Welcome to the Museum of Meaningless Metrics

I recently encountered a comic depicting the “Museum of Meaningless Metrics”.

Its exhibits included:

Lines of Code
Story Points
Pull Requests
Tokens Spent

The newest and proudest exhibit was a towering token counter, presumably recording enough artificial intelligence activity to heat a modest apartment block.

The comic is funny because it captures a recurring organisational habit: when something important is difficult to measure, we measure something nearby instead.

Productivity is difficult to measure. Value is difficult to measure. Quality, good judgement, avoided mistakes and long-term maintainability are all difficult to measure.

Counting things, however, is wonderfully easy.

And once a number appears on a dashboard, it acquires an air of authority. It becomes a target, a performance indicator and eventually a presentation slide with an upward-pointing green arrow.

The problem is not that these metrics contain no information. Most of them do. The problem begins when they are promoted from operational signals into proof of productive work.

Exhibit One: Lines of Code

To a non-programmer, lines of code can look like a straightforward measure of output.

One developer writes 500 lines. Another writes 5,000. Clearly, the second developer has done ten times as much work.

That conclusion is roughly as reliable as judging an author by the weight of the manuscript.

A large codebase may genuinely represent a substantial amount of work. A complex application cannot always be produced in 12 elegant lines and a motivational comment. But the number of lines tells us very little about whether the work was necessary, correct or well designed.

Those 5,000 lines could represent:

a major new system;
duplicated logic;
an unnecessarily complicated solution;
generated boilerplate;
poorly understood requirements;
several fixes for problems introduced by earlier fixes.

Meanwhile, an experienced developer might spend a day studying the problem and submit a 20-line change that eliminates the need for hundreds of additional lines.

That does not mean fewer lines are always better. Code can be compressed until it resembles an ancient curse. Readability, maintainability and testing matter more than winning a code-golf tournament.

The meaningful questions are not “How many lines were written?” but:

Does the software solve the intended problem?
Is it reliable?
Can somebody else understand it?
Can it be changed safely later?
Did it reduce or introduce complexity?

Lines of code can help estimate the size of a codebase. They are poor evidence of an individual developer’s productivity.

Exhibit Two: Story Points

I have participated in sprint-estimation exercises and have also been asked to assign story points.

In theory, story points provide a relative indication of a task’s size. They can incorporate effort, complexity, uncertainty and risk. A task assigned eight points is not necessarily expected to take eight hours or eight days. It is simply considered substantially larger or less predictable than a task assigned two points.

The Fibonacci-like sequence—1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on—is intended to discourage fake precision. As tasks become larger, our confidence in estimating them usually decreases. The gap between the available numbers forces teams to acknowledge that uncertainty.

That is the theory.

In practice, the exercise can sometimes feel like a group of people cautiously plucking numbers from the sky while discreetly checking what everyone else has plucked.

Developers and requestors may view the same task very differently. One sees a minor form change. The other sees legacy code, undocumented dependencies, six integration points and a database that becomes emotionally unstable after 4 p.m.

Ideally, disagreement exposes hidden assumptions. Someone who estimates a task as two points may know something the person estimating eight does not. The discussion is supposed to produce shared understanding.

But the process breaks down when:

people anchor their estimates to the first number mentioned;
participants follow the majority to avoid defending a different view;
developers agree on the answer beforehand;
management treats points as hours in disguise;
velocity becomes a performance target;
teams inflate estimates to make their output appear larger.

At that stage, story points stop being a conversation aid and become ceremonial arithmetic.

The points themselves were never meant to be objective units. An eight-point task for one team cannot reliably be compared with an eight-point task for another. Even within the same team, the meaning may drift as the people, technology and work change.

Story points can help a stable team forecast its own capacity. They become dangerous when outsiders mistake them for a universal measurement of productivity.

Exhibit Three: Pull Requests

Pull requests are an important part of modern software development. They allow proposed changes to be reviewed, discussed, tested and improved before being merged into the main codebase.

That does not make the number of pull requests a meaningful productivity score.

A developer who submits many pull requests may be working in a disciplined way, breaking changes into small and reviewable units. Another developer might submit fewer pull requests because the work involves longer-term research, architecture or debugging.

Or the high count could come from:

repeated corrections;
failed implementations;
unnecessary fragmentation;
automated dependency updates;
trivial formatting changes;
fixes for problems introduced by earlier pull requests.

Conversely, a low number could represent careful, high-impact work—or a single 18,000-line pull request that causes every reviewer to suddenly develop an urgent dental appointment.

The count does not tell us whether the changes were useful, safe or even necessary.

Better questions include:

How quickly are useful changes delivered?
How often do changes introduce defects?
Are reviews substantive or merely ceremonial?
Are pull requests reasonably sized?
Does the team learn from incidents and review feedback?
Are customers or internal users seeing meaningful improvements?

Pull requests are a workflow mechanism. Counting them is like measuring a restaurant by the number of plates that passed through the kitchen.

Interesting, perhaps. Conclusive, no.

Exhibit Four: Tokens Spent

Now we arrive at the museum’s newest attraction: tokens spent.

As organisations adopt generative AI, token counts have become the latest impressively large numbers available for dashboards.

Someone used ten million tokens.

Excellent.

What happened?

Did those tokens produce a working application, complete useful research, resolve customer cases or automate a tedious process?

Or did an AI agent repeatedly inspect the same repository, misunderstand the task, rewrite its own plan six times and confidently announce that it had completed work for which it did not even possess the required credentials?

The token count cannot tell us.

Tokens are units of text processed or generated by an AI model. They matter for practical reasons:

expenditure;
capacity planning;
latency;
model selection;
efficiency optimisation;
detecting unexpectedly wasteful workflows.

But tokens spent are an input cost, not an output measure.

Using more tokens does not necessarily mean that more reasoning occurred. It may mean that the task was complex, the context was large or extensive validation was performed. It may also mean that the prompt was inefficient, the agent became stuck in a loop or the system generated vast quantities of polished nonsense.

Similarly, minimising tokens is not automatically desirable. Spending additional tokens to verify an important result may be entirely justified. A cheap but incorrect answer is not efficient. It is merely an error delivered at a discount.

The more meaningful measures depend on the objective:

Was the task actually completed?
Was the result accurate?
How much human correction was required?
How much time or money was saved?
Was the outcome independently verified?
Did the system avoid inventing actions, identifiers or results?
What was the cost per successful outcome?

“Tokens spent” might earn bragging rights among people with generous compute budgets. It does not, by itself, demonstrate useful work.

When the Metric Becomes the Mission

The deeper issue behind all four exhibits is not measurement itself. Measurement is necessary.

The trouble begins when a proxy becomes a target.

When developers are rewarded for lines of code, codebases grow.

When teams are rewarded for completing story points, estimates mysteriously expand.

When pull-request counts become visible performance measures, work gets divided into more pull requests.

When token usage is presented as proof of AI adoption, systems find remarkably creative ways to consume tokens.

People adapt to the measurement system placed around them. This is not necessarily dishonesty. It is often rational behaviour. If an organisation repeatedly signals that a number matters, employees will naturally optimise for that number.

Unfortunately, the number may become healthier while the actual outcome deteriorates.

What Should We Measure Instead?

There is no single perfect replacement metric. That is precisely why organisations keep returning to convenient counts.

Useful measurement normally requires a combination of quantitative data and human judgement.

Depending on the work, better indicators might include:

successful outcomes delivered;
user or customer impact;
reliability and defect rates;
lead time from request to usable result;
frequency and severity of production incidents;
rework required;
maintainability;
cost per successful task;
quality of documentation and knowledge transfer;
whether the original problem was actually solved.

Even these can be manipulated or misunderstood. No dashboard eliminates the need for context.

A metric should begin a conversation, not end one.

The Museum Is Still Expanding

Lines of code, story points, pull requests and tokens spent are not entirely useless. Each can answer a narrow operational question.

How large is this repository?

How does this team perceive the relative size of upcoming work?

How are changes flowing through the review process?

How much AI capacity are we consuming?

Those are legitimate questions.

The absurdity begins when the answers are repurposed to answer much larger questions:

Who worked hardest?

Which team is most productive?

Who created the most value?

Is our AI programme successful?

Numbers cannot answer those questions simply because they are available, countable and aesthetically compatible with a bar chart.

So perhaps the comic’s museum label is slightly unfair.

These are not always meaningless metrics.

They are metrics from which we frequently demand meaning they were never capable of providing.

And judging by the rate at which dashboards are being built, the museum gift shop should be extremely profitable.

Rove Beetles in Vietnam: The Tiny Bug We Didn’t Take Seriously Until My Daughter’s Eye Started Swelling

13 June 2026 Howard Toh

A tourist PSA from our Ho Chi Minh City trip

During our recent trip to Ho Chi Minh City, we stayed in a well-furnished apartment on the 17th floor. It was a nice place, the host was responsive, and honestly, this was not the sort of problem I expected to encounter so high above ground level.

But over the first couple of days, we started noticing tiny insects crawling around inside the apartment.

At first, I did what many people would probably do without thinking too much: I squashed a few of them.

Bad idea.

We later realised these were rove beetles, known locally in Vietnam as kiến ba khoang. They are small, easy to miss, and they do not bite or sting. That is probably why many tourists may not immediately see them as dangerous.

The problem is what happens when they are crushed.

Rove beetles can contain an irritant called pederin. If the beetle is crushed against the skin, or if its body fluid gets transferred onto skin, towels, bedsheets, clothing, or surfaces, it can cause a painful skin reaction called Paederus dermatitis. The rash can look like a burn, blister, infection, or even shingles.

That was the part we did not know. Here’s a short clip of one of the many in our apartment. YouTube Shorts: https://youtube.com/shorts/lERdwH2axbQ

What Happened to Emma

From around the second day of our stay, we noticed some swelling and redness around Emma’s eye area.

At first, we did not immediately connect it to the insects in the apartment. After all, these beetles are not known to sting. There was no obvious “bite moment”, no screaming, no dramatic jungle-adventure scene. Just some redness and swelling that slowly became worrying.

As the trip went on, the area looked more inflamed, and because it was near her eye, we decided not to wait it out. Skin reactions are one thing. Anything near the eye is where my parental overthinking department opens a full emergency branch office.

So I brought Emma to Tâm Anh General Hospital in District 7 of Ho Chi Minh City.

Visiting Tâm Anh Hospital as a Tourist in HCMC

We went to Tâm Anh General Hospital for Emma’s consultation.

My quick summary of the experience: it felt like a private hospital visit, closer to something like Gleneagles in Singapore in terms of environment, but the bill was surprisingly affordable from a Singaporean tourist’s point of view.

The hospital was clean, quiet, and very well-staffed. In fact, there seemed to be more nurses and staff than patients when we were there.

The one area that could have been better was English communication. For a hospital that seems fairly modern and private, I expected basic English communication to be smoother. We managed, but it was not seamless until we saw the doctor.

That said, once the doctor came in, the consultation itself was relaxed and reassuring. Emma noticed that the doctor walked in wearing Crocs, which immediately made the whole thing feel a bit less intimidating. Not exactly the solemn hospital drama scene I had prepared myself for.

The doctor was an experienced older paediatrician, and almost immediately after looking at Emma’s skin, she asked whether it could be an insect-related reaction.

At that point, I was still unsure.

Then we both started trying to describe the same insect in our own ways. I showed her photos of rove beetles, and we had the “ah, yes, that one” moment.

The doctor suspected that Emma may have come into contact with a rove beetle while sleeping, or unknowingly during the day. Another possibility is that the irritant may have been transferred from a crushed beetle on a surface, towel, bedsheet, or object.

And yes, I had crushed one or two of them earlier in the stay before I knew what they were.

So this post is partly a PSA, and partly my confession that I may have accidentally turned a tiny bug into a tiny biological paint marker. Not my proudest fatherhood side quest.

Should I Blame the Airbnb Host?

Personally, I do not think this is a case for naming and shaming the Airbnb host.

We booked two apartments opposite each other because we were travelling as a large group. Both units were well furnished, and the host was responsive throughout our stay.

From what I later read, rove beetles can become more common during wet or rainy seasons in parts of Vietnam. They are attracted to light and may enter homes and apartments even when people are generally careful. In our case, the apartment was on the 17th floor and the windows were shut, yet we still saw multiple beetles indoors.

When I informed the host, he offered to reimburse our medical bill. I told him we had travel insurance, but I appreciated the gesture. He also quickly sent someone to apply pest repellent around the windows and balcony areas.

To me, that showed responsibility.

So this is not a “bad Airbnb” post. It is more of a “tourists should know this tiny insect exists” post.

Because if you see one of these beetles and react the wrong way, you may make things worse without realising it.

What Rove Beetles Look Like

The rove beetles we saw were small and narrow-bodied, with a distinctive colour pattern: dark head, orange/red body sections, and a darker tail end. They look a bit like an ant, a wasp, and a tiny villain from an insect anime all merged together.

The key thing to know: do not crush them.

Not with your hand.
Not with tissue.
Not with a slipper.
Not with a random object that you might later touch again.

If the beetle’s body fluid gets onto a surface, and someone touches that surface later, the irritant may still transfer to the skin.

What To Do If You See a Rove Beetle

If you are visiting Vietnam, especially during wetter seasons, and you see a bug that looks like the one in the photos or video here:

Do not crush it.
Do not brush it across your skin.
Gently blow it away or use a piece of paper to lift and remove it.
If you think it touched your skin, wash the area with soap and water.
Wash hands, towels, or clothing that may have come into contact with it.
Avoid touching your eyes after handling anything near the insect.
Seek medical help if there is swelling, blistering, pain, spreading redness, or eye involvement.

This is especially important for children because they may touch the insect, wipe their face, rub their eyes, or sleep on contaminated bedsheets without anyone noticing.

Symptoms to Watch For

Rove beetle dermatitis may not appear instantly. Depending on the exposure, symptoms can develop later and may include:

Redness
Burning sensation
Swelling
Blister-like marks
Linear rash patterns
Skin that looks like a burn
Irritation near the eyes
Worsening redness or signs of infection

Because the rash can look like other conditions, it is easy to misread it as a bite, allergy, infection, or even shingles. If it is near the eye, I would not take chances.

Getting Medical Help in Ho Chi Minh City

We brought Emma to Tâm Anh General Hospital in District 7 of Ho Chi Minh City
Get directions to Tâm Anh Hospital on Google Maps

If you are a tourist in HCMC and need medical help, I would also suggest:

Bring your passport or a photo of it.
Preserve and prepare earlier photos of the swelling and/or rashes to show the doctor.
Take photos of the insect if you safely can.
Use Google Translate if the registration counter has limited English.
Ask for a medical report and itemised receipt for insurance claims.
For children, eye involvement, fever, spreading redness, or severe pain, do not wait too long.

Travel Insurance Note

This is not insurance advice, but if you are travelling, keep all receipts and medical documents.

In our case, the Airbnb host offered to reimburse the medical bill, but we had travel insurance, so I preferred to go through the proper insurance route. This is to allow us to have smoother in case there are follow-up claims or further treatment needed for medical treatment when we are back in Singapore (yes, we’re still in Ho Chi Minh as I write this).

If you need to make a claim, remember to keep:

Hospital receipt
Doctor’s memo or medical report
Medication receipt
Transport receipt, if applicable
Photos of the condition
Photos or video of the suspected insect, if available

Final PSA for Tourists Visiting Vietnam

If you remember only one thing from this post, remember this:

If you see a rove beetle, do not squash it.

The beetle is not dangerous because it chases you, bites you, or stings you. It becomes a problem when it is crushed and its irritant gets onto your skin or nearby surfaces.

We were lucky that Emma was seen quickly and the situation was manageable. But it could easily have been more stressful, especially because the reaction was near her eye.

So if you are travelling to Vietnam, especially during rainy or wet seasons, keep an eye out for these tiny beetles. Shake out towels, check bedsheets, avoid leaving bright lights on near open gaps, and teach children not to touch or squash unfamiliar insects.

Tiny bug. Serious rash. Very avoidable lesson.

Unfortunately, we learned it the itchy way.

How a Tiny Galaxy Projector Fixed My Kid’s Fear of the Dark (While Travelling)

12 June 2026 Howard Toh

Ethan is afraid of the dark. Like properly afraid — the kind where every shadow is a monster and bedtime turns into a negotiation. We’ve tried night lights, leaving the door cracked, the whole routine. They help, but they don’t fix it.

So when we travel, I’ve started bringing along a secret weapon: a compact, USB-powered mini star/galaxy projector.

It’s small — about the size of a deck of cards — and runs off any USB port (power bank, laptop, wall adapter, whatever). And what it does to a dark room is honestly kind of magical.

How It Works

This little gadget projects a rotating starry sky with a detailed, textured moon onto the ceiling. It covers the entire ceiling in a field of bright, scattered stars with a soft galaxy nebula drift across the scene. The colours are cool blues and whites — calming, not harsh — and the gentle rotation creates a subtle motion that’s surprisingly soothing.

Instead of lying in the dark staring at a blank ceiling imagining things, Ethan now looks up at the night sky. The moon is big enough that it feels real, and the stars keep his attention in a good way — the way a campfire does.

Why It’s Great for Travel

USB-powered — plug it into a power bank, laptop, or wall charger. No batteries to hunt for.
Compact — fits in any carry-on pocket or toiletries bag.
Familiar comfort — hotel rooms / Airbnb apartments feel less foreign when the ceiling looks like your own bedroom galaxy.
Works as a night light — enough gentle light to navigate the room without being bright enough to disturb sleep.
Great for naps too — the slow rotation and soft light doubles as an ambient wind-down cue.

Not Just for Kids

I won’t lie — I’ve used it for myself too. After Ethan falls asleep, the galaxy projection makes the room feel like a cozy planetarium. It’s genuinely relaxing to lie there and watch the stars drift by. If you’re someone who finds it hard to wind down in unfamiliar places, this helps.

Get One

If you’ve got a kid (or an adult) who struggles with the dark — especially when travelling — I’d honestly recommend grabbing one. It’s cheap, tiny, and the effect on the room is way more impressive than you’d expect from something this size.

Check it out on Shopee — Affiliate links help keep this site running. (Prices and availability correct at time of posting.)