I have a great love with notebooks. And whenever the monthly salary is transferred to my account, I am sure part of them would be use to purchase some notebooks. My favorite store in HCM City is DotGrid (dotgrid.vn) – it has a main store in Ha Noi City also. DotGrid sells a variety of handmade notebooks, stationery kits, fountain pens and ink – definitely an attractive place for stationery addicts. Today I grabbed 4 notebooks with different sizes and patterns – 2 items with colorful covers (they are really rare since DotGrid does not stock this kind of handmade notebooks over the year), 1 small black one, and 1 bigger binder one. All of these notebooks use dot papers, except for the binder one with caro papers.

Quality of DotGrid papers are exceptional – thick and not easy to bleeding with fountain pens. However the cover is not a very good part. You have only one choice is hardcover. Whenever I place my bag to the motorbike trunk, I must be extraordinary careful so that the notebook nape is not broken under pressure of closing the trunk. Pricing is another plus point. DotGrid notebooks come under very acceptable price of VND79k per big one (c. $30) and VND65k for smaller size. They totally beat Moleskine notebooks in term of pricing.

I also bought a small size (15ml) Pilot ink bottle, which I will review in my next blog.

HCM City, a rainy Saturday of August.