Heartache for sale!

At Vietnam's Old Flames market, curious customers peruse love letters and pick through perfumes, candles and clothes -- relics from failed relationships put on sale by forlorn lovers.

Entrepreneurial exes meet once a month, bringing their baggage -- emotional and literal -- to a converted cottage on a leafy Hanoi street to find a new home for items they can no longer bear to look at.

"(After a breakup) I'm very sad, I can't drink or eat... but after a while I pick myself up. The past is in the past," said Phuc Thuy, 29, who was selling clothes, purses and even a tube of toothpaste she acquired during a former romance.

The market has steadily grown since it opened in February, especially among Vietnam's social-media obsessed youth, unabashed about sharing intimate details of their everyday lives.

"Young people are more open-minded and they want to share deeply and widely to overcome pain, without suffering alone," said founder Dinh Thang, as a visitor strummed love songs on a guitar nearby.

He started the market after a few bitter breakups left him with unwanted paraphernalia from a now extinguished passion.

For those who haven't quite reached Thang's stage of emotional post-breakup enlightenment, he's set up a message board to pen notes to exes.

"To all my ex-lovers, I'm sorry because I feel like we never really knew each other," read one remorse-tinged message. Another was more succinct: "I'M FINE!!!"

Thang hopes the market will make the topic of breakups less taboo in Vietnam, a conservative communist nation of 93 million.