When she was just 21, Camelia Nguyen, now 29, made the bold decision to leave her comfy life in Vietnam to pursue a career in Singapore. Eight years later, she's the new owner of her own hawker stall, Yi Xin Yong Tau Foo, located in a quiet coffee shop within an office building at a Woodlands industrial park. It’s hard to miss her stall with its cutesy sign board featuring a cartoon drawing of its lady boss.
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Came to Singapore to “make it on her own”
Camelia came to Singapore in 2016, leaving behind her “comfortable middle class” lifestyle back home in Ho Chi Minh City. Unlike many who go overseas in search of a better future, Camelia’s family isn’t struggling. They own multiple plots of land which they’ve used to run businesses like karaoke lounges and minimarts. They also operate a seafood distribution business.
Back home, she tells us that her family lives in a two-storey shophouse. They also have two other houses which they rent out as a secondary source of income. In Singapore, Camelia is renting a room in a three-room HDB flat. Compared to her life in Vietnam, the hawker says she has to work much harder now: “My life in Vietnam was more comfortable - I had hired staff who helped with all my work. But in Singapore, I have to do everything on my own,” she explains.
So, why leave Vietnam and her family’s business? She says: “I wanted to be independent, see my potential and try to make it on my own. I also knew some Vietnamese friends who were living in Singapore.” She adds that she chose to come to Singapore as it’s “safer for a girl” here.
The now Singapore PR shares that her mum was initially unhappy about her decision to relocate to Singapore: “My mum was worried about me going overseas alone, but now she is supportive,” she says.
The new hawker says: “I have no regrets moving to Singapore. To me, success is a journey, not a destination”. She adds that after eight years here, “I’ve just managed to do what I want - which is to open my own business, but I believe I’ll be able to do better and better in future”.
She declines to state on record whether she is single or attached.
Used to nap on the streets as a kid in Vietnam
Though her family is doing well now, Camelia, whose dad left the family when she was young, notes that she wasn’t born with a silver spoon, as the Vietnam war had left them in poverty. “Since young, my mum had a lot of small businesses [in markets], and she would bring me along. Whatever she could sell to make money, she tried it,” Camelia shares. When she was five, she lived together with her brother and mother in a small rented bedroom, but as her mum often had to work late into the night, there were days that Camelia would fall asleep on the streets by her mum’s stall.
Life only took a turn for the better when Camelia hit her teens: “In my teens, my mum started selling seafood at a market, and the business started making money. From there, she saved up and my home life got better”, she says. Her mum bought their first house when Camelia turned 18.
Though she considers herself involved in her family business still, Camelia says her mum handles most of the operations now, since Camelia is in Singapore. She explains: “Whenever my mum wants to open a new biz, I will chip in some money. And when I needed money to open this business [in Singapore], she sent money from our business [in Vietnam]”.
Camelia and Meyers
Hired a 'business consultant'
Currently, Camellia is the sole owner of her yong tau foo stall, though she works together with her business consultant, Meyers Wu, 35, who helps her with social media and operations. This is just a part-time hustle for Meyers, as he currently works in IT as a back-end application engineer. He decided to help Camelia, whom he met two years ago through mutual friends, as he felt that they have different strengths that could benefit Yi Xin Yong Tau Foo: “Each of us have our own forte - she’s better at operating the hawker stall, while I’m better at handling the back-end of the business,” he says.
He tells us that he isn’t a shareholder in the biz, though he will earn a portion of the profits once they recoup the investment.
From beautician to hawker
When the newbie hawker first moved here, she worked as a beautician doing nails and eyebrow threading for six years before entering the hawker biz. The Singapore PR explains that she “wanted to try something different, so I decided to switch to the F&B line to try and see if I can make it, since I like to cook”.
She decided to sell yong tau foo instead of the Vietnamese dishes that she’s more familiar with, simply because she wanted to cater to the local market. “A lot of customers ask why I’m Vietnamese but didn’t choose to open a pho stall. I’ll always say that I want to make food for Singaporeans - there are more locals than Vietnamese people here, and not a lot of Singaporeans know how to eat Vietnamese food,” she explains.
Why sell yong tau foo?
Why yong tau foo specifically? “Many young guys like to eat fried food, while many girls like to eat healthy food, and a yong tau foo stall has both of those things,” she reasons.
Camelia adds that the initial transition from a beautician to hawker job wasn’t easy: “When I first started, I felt that [being a hawker] was very tiring because I was used to being in an air-conditioned setting when I worked as a beautician. My legs and arms were all sore from working as a hawker, but now I’m used to it and think I can do it,” she says.
Last year, Camelia spent nine months training at other yong tau foo hawker stalls, where she picked up basic cooking skills. However, she tells us that her recipes are entirely her own - in fact, her ex-colleagues were hesitant to teach her theirs.
“My colleagues were not willing to teach me, because they thought that I wasn’t there just to earn money, but also to learn their recipe. So I had to secretly learn things on my own, and observe [my colleagues] to pick up basic things like how to cook the ingredients,” she shares.
The young hawker adds that she “wanted [her recipes] to be special”. Instead of using store-bought soup mixes which she says many other stalls do, she makes her laksa gravy and tom yum soup from scratch daily. Camelia also handmakes over 15 types of yong tau foo ingredients.
Invested $22,000 into biz
In total, Camelia invested around $22,000 into Yi Xin Yong Tau Foo. She hasn’t recouped her investment yet, but remains hopeful since it’s only been three months since opening.
The lack of footfall at their coffee shop is a problem, though. Meyers says: “People and traffic is where the main bulk of revenue comes in for F&B. In this area, I would say that it’ll take a while longer [to recoup the investment], so that’s why we have plans to open a second stall in a more prominent and accessible location”.
They chose to set up their first shop here as they wanted to target the office crowd in the surrounding buildings, and were also offered a lower rental fee of $2,500 a month.
The menu
Yi Xin Yong Tau Foo offers three soup bases: original, laksa and tom yum. There are over 40 toppings to choose from, and nine types of noodles, like kway teow, thick and regular bee hoon, mee suah, udon, or rice. Each soup comes with a minimum of one carb and six toppings, costing $5.50 for original soup, and $6.60 for laksa and tom yum. Additional toppings start at $0.80 each.
8days.sg sampled three bowls of yong tau foo - original soup with yellow noodles, laksa with thick bee hoon, and tom yum with mee suah.
Original soup with yellow noodles, from $5.50
For our healthiest bowl, we paired our clear soup with beancurd skin, baby corn, carrots, and enoki mushroom, plus Camelia’s handmade stuffed tomatoes, red chilli, tau pok and wanton. The wholesome broth - made with chicken bones, veggies, yellow soybeans and ikan billis - was clean-tasting, with a slight sweetness from the dried fish. Camelia’s handmade toppings were lightly crispy and fried to a nice golden-brown without being too oily. Each ingredient was generously stuffed with juicy minced chicken, which she mixes with chicken seasoning powder and eggs. The filling was still flavourful enough despite not containing any of the usual dried sole fish powder or salted fish.
Camelia’s handmade YTF ingredients
She also sells fish paste-stuffed ingredients, but this wasn’t available the day we visited. Unlike most yong tau foo stalls, Camelia uses minced chicken instead of pork or pork blended with fish to cater to a wider group of customers. 
Laksa with thick bee hoon, from $6.60 (8 DAYS Pick!)
Our favourite bowl of the lot. The laksa here is rich and savoury, with a robust coconutty gravy that paired well with the smooth thick bee hoon. It’s more on the creamy than spicy side, so we recommend adding a dollop of the punchy housemade chilli for more kick. We had our bowl with mala-seasoned crumbed chicken, boiled egg and prawn balls. Though the toppings were nothing noteworthy, the sour-spicy mala chicken complemented the lemak laksaespecially well.
Tom yum with mee suah, from $6.60
The tom yum here was adequately spicy and tart. We enjoyed how the thin mee suah soaked up the piquant broth, making each mouthful extra shiok. We had ours with crispy fried fish belly, beancurd and broccoli, plus a platter of Camelia’s fried minced chicken-stuffed ingredients on the side.
The Details
Yi Xin Yong Tau Foo is at #01-30 Woodlands Horizon, 31 Woodlands Cl, S737855. Open Mon - Fri 8am - 7pm; Sat 12pm - 8pm. Closed on Sun. More info via Facebook.
Photos: Dillon Tan
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