How Ngo Quy Hai Turned a Childhood Rejection Into a Bakery of His Own

Ngô Quý Hải was a toddler when he fell into an open wood stove and suffered severe burns. Years later, he spoke to Vietnamese reporters about the treatment that followed and about growing up with scars people noticed before they knew anything about him. His account makes clear that recovering from the accident took time and that being able to return home was only one stage of that recovery.

During childhood, attention from strangers could make an ordinary outing difficult. One memory stayed with him. He and a friend went to buy a cake and were turned away. The experience mattered to him because of how ordinary the errand was. Buying something from a shop should have been simple. Instead, it became a moment when a child felt that even approaching a counter could end in humiliation.

Hải later chose to work in hospitality. He trained at KOTO, a program that offers practical training for young people, and went on to work in restaurants. Those jobs gave him experience with the routines behind the counter. A customer might see a finished cake or a cup of coffee, but preparing food, serving it and keeping a business running involve work that begins well before the door opens. His training gave him a route into that work and a way to earn a living through it.

He eventually opened Sunhouse Coffee in Kon Tum, where he could put that experience to use on his own terms. Baking linked the business to the memory of being refused service as a child. He could now make something he had once been made to feel unwelcome buying. He could also decide how his own customers would be greeted, with the understanding that a small interaction at the counter can stay with a person for years.

The reports describe treatment, financial hardship and bullying as parts of Hải’s life. The period after the accident and the years of social isolation are distinct experiences. He spent considerable time undergoing treatment, and the scars later affected how people responded to him in shops, at school and elsewhere. Learning to work in a service business brought him into regular contact with customers and colleagues. It was a path he built over time through training and work.

His story later continued in Ho Chi Minh City, where reporting described his baking work under the name Hướng Dương. The move broadened the audience for his work. It also continued a choice he had already made in Kon Tum, to build a livelihood around a skill and give customers an experience that reflected how he wanted people to be treated.

Hải’s account is sometimes told through the contrast between the child who was turned away and the adult who could open his own shop. The years in between explain how he got there. There was medical treatment, there was the work of navigating other people’s reactions, and there was the practical opportunity to learn a trade. The bakery grew out of those experiences. For Hải, it meant being able to stand on the other side of the counter and welcome someone who had come in for the same ordinary pleasure he wanted as a boy.