Real-world exploration
Our standard is simple: real people visit real places, confirm what’s there and describe what makes them worth the trip.
Ho Chi Minh City · Preparing for closed beta
Explore without a plan.
The best places aren’t always the ones you’re looking for.
Homnay helps you discover the unexpected, explore the places around you, and turn everyday adventures into memories worth keeping.
“Hôm nay” means “today” in Vietnamese.
What is Homnay
An app for the day you didn’t plan.
Homnay is an iOS app for exploring your city and keeping the memories you make along the way. It began with one simple question: “What should we do today?”
Some of the best experiences happen by accident — a family-run restaurant at the end of an alley, a quiet café on a side street, a view you only find because you took a different turn. Many discovery tools focus on the most popular places, the highest ratings and the perfect itinerary. Homnay is built for another way of exploring.
Discover what others overlook.
Imagine arriving in Ho Chi Minh City with no itinerary at all. Instead of spending hours researching, you step outside, look around and let the day unfold.
Homnay is designed to help you find interesting places, overlooked local businesses and neighbourhood corners you might otherwise walk past — whether you are visiting for a few days or have lived here for years. Exploring doesn’t have to revolve around famous landmarks. Sometimes the most meaningful discoveries are close to home.
You don’t need a plan.
How we build
Built by people, not web scrapers.
We don’t fill Homnay with scraped business directories, recycled travel articles or piles of unverified internet listings. Our goal isn’t the biggest database — it’s a trustworthy, useful collection of places worth experiencing.
Added with care
We add places to Nearby one at a time. Scraped directories and bulk-imported listings are not how we want Homnay to be defined.
Reviewed before it’s shared
Memories from the community are reviewed before they appear publicly, and anyone using Homnay can report a place or Memory that looks wrong.
Room for the overlooked
Small, family-run and neighbourhood places deserve the same attention as famous landmarks — often more.
Respect for local places
We try to describe places honestly and fairly, and to show what a visit is really like.
We’re just getting started. Our collection is still small and grows every week — we would rather add places carefully than quickly.
Inside Homnay
Four tabs, one idea: spend more time where you are.
Wander
Explore without a plan
Leave the itinerary behind. Follow your curiosity and see where the day takes you.
Wander starts with the question behind Homnay: “What should we do today?” Answer four quick questions — who you’re with, how much time you have, your budget and how you’re feeling — and Wander is designed to suggest a small handful of options. Choose one and go.
In the beta, Wander asks its four questions while we build its suggestions for Ho Chi Minh City. Your choices help us learn what to build first.
Nearby
Discover what’s around you
Sometimes the most interesting places are closer than you think.
Nearby is a carefully curated guide to places worth knowing about — cafés, markets, views, neighbourhood favourites and hidden gems that are easy to walk past.
- Hidden Gems and Recently Added places
- Browse by category, or search by kind of place, price or mood
- Photos and practical details for each place, such as opening hours
Memories
Experiences worth sharing
Every place has a story. Share what made yours memorable.
A Memory is a day out told stop by stop. Pin each place, add your photos and write what it was like — then answer a few simple questions for every stop:
- Who you were with — just me, my partner, friends or family
- How long you stayed — from under 30 minutes to 2+ hours
- What you spent — free, cheap, moderate or high
- How it left you feeling — happy, relaxed, inspired, curious… or disappointed
Shared Memories are reviewed before they’re published. Found one you love? “Start this memory” to follow it stop by stop as your own adventure, or remix it into a private plan of your own.
My Journey
Your story, your experiences
Years from now, the places you’ve explored become the story of where you’ve been.
My Journey is your personal corner of Homnay — not a feed and not a popularity contest. There are no followers and no likes; just a record of where you’ve been and what you experienced, more meaningful with every year.
- My Profile — a public page in the style you choose
- Scrapbook — pages of your own photos and notes
- Private Journal — writing that stays on your phone
- Your adventures, badges and Stats for Nerds
Private Journal
Some memories are just for you.
Not every experience needs to be shared. Your Private Journal is a personal place to reflect, write and keep the thoughts that matter to you — separate from the Memories you share.
- Kept on your iPhone, encrypted and locked with a six-digit PIN.
- Homnay doesn’t sync or back up your Journal, and never sees what you write.
- Only you hold the PIN, so Homnay can’t recover it — keep it somewhere safe.
- It lives on your phone alone: if the phone is lost or Homnay is deleted, your entries may go with it.
Scrapbook
Collect moments, not followers.
Turn your experiences into something personal. Fill scrapbook pages with the places, photographs and small notes you want to remember, and come back to them whenever you like.
- Arrange photos, sticky notes and handwritten text on each page.
- Choose a cover that feels like yours.
- Private by default — publish it to your profile only when you want, and make it private again at any time.
Our mission
Spend more time where you are.
Our mission is to encourage people to explore the world around them, discover places that deserve attention and preserve the experiences that shape their lives. We believe technology should lead you into the world, not replace it — and that real places are best understood by real people, so human, real-world verification is our standard and a core part of this mission.
We want Homnay to help you:
- Break away from the same routine
- Explore your city with curiosity
- Discover overlooked local places
- Notice the small local businesses that give a neighbourhood its character
- Experience more of the world around you
- Keep the memories that matter
- Build a record of your experiences over time
We hope Homnay becomes something you value more with every year you use it.
Where we are
Starting in Saigon. Built for everywhere.
Homnay is in active development and preparing for closed beta testing. We’re starting in Ho Chi Minh City on purpose: we would rather build something strong in one city than something thin in many.
What we’re focused on now
- Building a trustworthy, human-curated collection of local places
- Refining spontaneous city exploration
- Helping people find places that are often overlooked
- Making recording personal memories genuinely meaningful
- Learning from our first beta testers
- Improving Homnay before expanding to more cities
We have bigger ambitions, but we’re taking them one neighbourhood at a time. If you’d like to help shape Homnay, we’d love to hear from you.
[email protected]