Eight years ago, a 24-year-old man from the Mekong Delta Province of Đồng Tháp, who identified as gay at the time, decided he wanted to change his gender.

But he didn’t know where to turn for advice.

“I felt like a girl inside. Psychologically, that’s how I felt,” he said last Sunday during an interview at a signing ceremony for a new health clinic for the LGBT community in HCM City.

“I could easily buy hormones from people who had visited Thailand for sex-change surgery. Hormones and that kind of surgery are still not available in Việt Nam,” he said.

Changes in the national law, however, are expected to occur within several years, as the Ministry of Health’s legal affairs department is working with several government agencies to compile a Law on Gender Transition.

The law is expected to allow sex-change surgery under certain criteria and include more detailed provisions about transgender people than what is in the current civil code. It will be submitted to the National Assembly next year, but may not take effect for another two to five years. Read more via Vietnam News