He was born in 1962 in Ha Tinh Province, Vietnam. He served in the Vietnamese army for eight years and fought in the Sino-Vietnamese Border War of 1979 and the Vietnamese-Cambodian War in the 1980s. He then became a journalist, based in Ho Chi Minh City. He wrote for several newspapers such as "Tuoi Tre", "Thanh Nien", and "Sai Gon Tiep Thi". Until 2010 he also wrote a blog called Osin, which was ranked as the most popular blog in Vietnam. The blog was critical of the Vietnamese government, attempting to "push the line but not cross the line". In 2009 he was dismissed from his post at "Sai Gon Tiep Thi (Saigon Marketing)", a state-run newspaper, because of comments on his blog. Since then he has been a freelance journalist.