[1] The oldest, largest, and most prominent Little Saigon is centered in Orange County, California, where over 189,000 Vietnamese Americans reside.

With the other five counties (listed below) that make up the bulk of the Southern California mega-region, this region constitutes the largest ethnic Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.

[2] The community originally started emerging in Westminster, and quickly spread to the adjacent city of Garden Grove.

With its original roots along the bustling Bolsa and Brookhurst corridors, the borders of Orange County's Greater Little Saigon community has grown to nearby cities.

Since 1978, the nucleus of Little Saigon has long been Bolsa Avenue, where early pioneers Danh Quach and Frank Jao established businesses.

The Vietnamese community and businesses later spread into adjacent Garden Grove, Stanton, Fountain Valley, Anaheim, and Santa Ana.

The borders of Little Saigon can be considered to be Trask and McFadden on the north and south and Euclid and Magnolia on the east and west, respectively.

There are approximately 200 restaurants in the area of Little Saigon and spilling over to Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach.

Many Little Saigon newspaper offices are based on Moran Street in Westminster and Vien Dong Daily News also has its own auditorium.

In addition, many advertisements in Los Angeles area Vietnamese-language programming and publications invariably refer to businesses in Westminster.

Garden Grove Park is the location of an annual Vietnamese Lunar New Year festival held in late January - early February known as Tết.

[10] An intercity bus service named Xe Đò Hoàng connects the Little Saigon in Orange county to the one in San Jose and various other cities in California and Arizona with high concentration of Vietnamese Americans.

Even with the normalization of U.S.–Vietnam relations in 1995, older Vietnamese are more emotional with a strongly held point of view on the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

Mass vigils with wavings of South Vietnamese flags and demonstrations (sometimes peaceful and sometimes coming close to a riot), in front of the store ensued.

Vietnamese Americans, due to their large numbers, have exercised considerable political power in Westminster and Garden Grove.

In 2003, they helped raise money for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Westminster commemorating American and South Vietnamese soldiers.

But other Vietnamese Americans in Orange County, especially U.S.-born, are also Democratic as the younger generations become more concerned with the rights of the blue-collar population in the United States, rather than the old-world politics of Vietnam.

Over the years, the vibrant community of Little Saigon has experienced frequent openings and closures of small mom-and-pop Vietnamese businesses, resulting in sights of some abandoned strip plazas.

Recently, a Pho restaurant in the area won the James Beard award, signaling a change in the perception of Vietnamese culture and identity in the region.