Tieng Viet lovers club

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Video removed by user

Maybe kenna complaint. All the video under this user also removed :(

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Funny song

Con Buom Tung (Spring 2016)
http://youtu.be/1qcQ69Oz14k

[shenjingbin]

Nice sharing

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Vietnamese taxi firm to provide free Wi-Fi in 1,000 cabs, starting this month

A taxi operator has announced that it will provide free Wi-Fi in cabs servicing three major Vietnamese cities starting this month, pursuant to a pilot project.
One thousand Mai Linh cabs in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and Da Nang will feature free Wi-Fi beginning this March as part of a pilot project, the company announced Wednesday on its website.
The firm said that the project was initiated on December 18, 2015 and installation of the service in 1,000 taxis will be finished on May 31 this year.
Ho Huy, chairman of Mai Linh Group, said that the goal is to make Wi-Fi accessible to passengers and create additional revenue streams by offering more advertising channels to businesses.
In the experimental phase, 600 cabs operating in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1 and 3 and 200 taxis in both Hanoi and Da Nang will be equipped with Wi-Fi devices, Huy said.
The chairman added that the company will decide whether to install additional Wi-Fi devices in its remaining cabs after assessing customer satisfaction with the project at the end of this May.
Takashi Morimoto, representative of SoftBank Telecom Vietnam, one of the co-partners of the project, said that the devices are also able to record the cab’s speed, street status, traffic congestion, and more.
The data collected by the devices can be transferred to a main server and bounced back to a screen indicator in the cab to inform the driver and passengers of any information that might help them select an optimal route, he explained.
SoftBank Telecom Vietnam Co. Ltd. has two offices in Vietnam – one in Hanoi and one in Ho Chi Minh City.

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Comedy - vietnamese sub

Chapter 6

http://youtu.be/nkUaGDxJqt4

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3 Vietnamese arrested for stabbing foreigners at Saigon bar

Police in Ho Chi Minh City have arrested three local men linked to the stabbing of three Singaporean tourists at a downtown bar last month.
A police source on Wednesday confirmed that the suspects were taken into custody on Monday. Two of them are 19 years old and the other is 29.
Initial investigation found a Vietnamese group started a fight with the Singaporeans at a crowded bar on Cong Quynh Street in District 1 on the night of February 27, after one of the foreigners collided with them during a dance without apologizing.
They pulled out knives, stabbed the foreigners and also threw bottles and glasses at the victims.
A security guard managed to stop the attack and send the Singaporeans to hospital, who were bleeding heavily. The trio had recovered and left for Singapore on March 2, police said.
Police tracked down the three suspects using security footage at the bar and nearby shops.
They are looking for more people involved in the attack.

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2 Vietnamese jailed in Singapore for burgling $350,000 in cash

Two Vietnamese were sentenced to four and a half years in jail each in Singapore Thursday for breaking into a wholesale center and stealing 500,000 Singapore dollars, or nearly US$350,000, last January.
Nguyen Van Nhat, 23, and Ngo Quang Phuoc, 35, were arrested at a hotel on January 5, just hours after a fruit shop owner discovered the break-in and found his safe had been cut open.
The indictment said the duo had gambled away thousands of dollars at a casino after arriving in Singapore on January 1 and did not have enough left to buy flight tickets to Hanoi, Channel News Asia reported.
They decided to steal money from Nhat’s former workplace, where he knew his boss usually kept large sums of money to pay employees in cash.
They spent around $220 on buying a grinder, crowbar, hammer drill, a cutter, screwdrivers, and an extension plug.
On the night of January 4 Nhat kept watch while Phuoc, who worked in construction, climbed into the shop through the roof by removing a ventilator, cut a hole in the safe and packed money in four bags.
The bags were so heavy that he left behind one in a box on the rooftop. The police later found it containing $20,700.
They used the money to check into a hotel and buy luxury items the next day.
Police tracked them down using DNA tests and questioning taxi drivers in the area.
Most of the money, meant to pay the company’s employees their salary and bonuses ahead of the Chinese New Year in early February, has been recovered following the arrest.
Burglary is punishable by up to 14 years' imprisonment in Singapore.

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Tourist says robbed in broad daylight in Ho Chi Minh City

Tourist says robbed in broad daylight in Ho Chi Minh City
By Trung Hieu - Bui Thu - Thanh Nien News - Saturday, March 19, 2016 12:17
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A Polish tourist was robbed of her phone on a bridge in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday afternoon, just two days after arriving in the city.
Arkadiusz Chabrowski, told Thanh Nien that a man on a motorbike snatched the phone from his girlfriend Katarzyna Regula when they were checking a map on the phone.
They were standing on a bridge between District 7 and 1, he said.
He said his girlfriend cried a lot because the phone was worth more than US$1,000 and it had many photos they have taken in Vietnam and in recent trips to India, Malaysia and Singapore.
Chabrowski said they were both tired and upset after the incident.
But he said they do not hold it against anyone but the robber.
He said many Vietnamese have sent him kind messages on Facebook after learning about their story and some Vietnamese friends have invited them to dinners.
Local police said the tourists have not reported the case, but with information from the press, they will look into it.
A Thanh Nien investigation found that five Cambodian tourists in early February were robbed of their bags containing three cell phones and $3,000 in the same area the Polish couple was standing.
Police have not found the robbers.
Vietnam has been making various efforts to promote tourism. Foreign arrivals to the country increased 16 percent in the first two months, compared to the same period last year, largely thanks to the 15-day visa waivers offered to tourists from many Asian and European countries.
But at the same time, many tourists say they feel discouraged by reports of street crimes, especially in large cities.
Street crime remains a popular topic on global travel forums about HCMC, where police last year worked on more than 130 robbery and snatch-and-run cases involving foreign tourists.
The phone robbery against the Polish couple happened just one week after two motorbike riders snatched a bag from an Egyptian woman in the city, who was also checking a map.
The city earlier this week held a press conference and publicly apologized to her, promising to improve security.

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2 arrested in HCMC after robbing bag from Russian tourist

The Ho Chi Minh City police arrested two men early Monday morning soon after they snatched a bag from a Russian tourist walking on the street.
The crime department officers chased after and kicked the motorbike of the robbers after they snatched the bag on Pham Ngu Lao Street in the backpacker area.
The police said they had been following the duo, both 20, after finding them driving around suspiciously at 4 a.m.
They returned the bag that contained some cash to the foreign tourist.
Vietnam has been making efforts to promote tourism, and foreign arrivals increased 16 percent in the first two months of this year from the same period last year, thanks largely to the 15-day visa waiver offered to tourists from many Asian and European countries including Russia.
But many tourists say they feel discouraged by reports of street crime, especially in large cities.
Street crime remains a popular topic on global travel forums about HCMC, where police last year worked on more than 130 robbery and snatch-and-run cases involving foreign tourists.
Robbers snatched a cell phone from a Polish woman last Thursday and a bag from an Egyptian woman a week earlier, both in broad daylight when they were busy checking maps. The robbers have not been arrested in either case.
The city is planning to set up a special police unit to protect tourists after getting regular complaints from foreign nations’ consulates about the safety of their citizens.

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3 arrested for stealing bag from Chinese tourist in Da Nang

Police in Da Nang on Monday arrested three local men for stealing a bag from a Chinese tourist with his passport and money inside.
Li Jing Ming, 62, found out he lost his bag during a group tour in the central city on Sunday afternoon.
Three men, 39, 46, and 48 years old, were arrested Monday night and they have all admitted to stealing the bag.
Li reportedly left his bag in front of a hotel on Nguyen Van Linh Street before checking in. When he came out, the bag was gone.
They have returned the bag that contains a passport, a credit card, a tablet and cash worth US$300 to the tourist.
Earlier this month, a 27-year-old man in Hanoi was caught by locals and brought to the police after he tried to snatch a bag from a Belgium tourist.
The 57-year-old tourist was walking on a downtown street while the robber approached him from a motorbike and snatched the bag from his hand.
As the tourist tried to seize it back, passers-by stopped the robber, news website Zing reported.
Vietnam has been making various efforts to promote tourism. Foreign arrivals to the country increased 16 percent in the first two months, compared to the same period last year, largely thanks to the 15-day visa waivers offered to tourists from many Asian and European countries.
But at the same time, many tourists say they feel discouraged by reports of street crimes, especially in large cities.

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OP-ED: The Ugly Vietnamese

By Huynh Van Son - The writer is deputy chairman of Vietnam Association of Social Psychology. The opinions expressed are his own.
The number of Vietnamese travelers to foreign countries has grown rapidly over the past several years. Unfortunately, this increase has coincided with a growing stereotype of "The Ugly Vietnamese".
Last summer, I went to Thailand and was surprised to see a notice at a buffet written in Vietnamese.
"Please take what you can eat. Those who don’t finish their food will be fined from 200-500 Baht. Thank you!"
In Singapore, I encountered a similar sign, also in Vietnamese.
“Just take what you can eat,” it read.
Any customer of the restaurant understood the need for such a notice.
The restaurant's many customers had queued up for food, when suddenly, a Vietnamese couple cut in front, causing the rest of the line to snicker and sigh while the pair grabbed six oysters from a waiter clearly hoping to give out one per customer.
At another restaurant, a Vietnamese man was seen carrying several heaping plates of food to a table strewn with half-eaten plates, as though fearful the buffet would suddenly close.
‘Please flush the toilet’
In a toilet in Thailand, I encountered another sign written exclusively in my native tongue.
“Remember to flush the toilet,” it read.
Later, I heard a story about a Vietnamese person who got locked in a "smart toilet" in Europe because the automated door only opened after the toilet was flushed.
In Taiwan, I spent two hours watching a group of young Vietnamese people lay out newspapers, sit on the floor and play cards while shouting loudly.
After their game ended, they got up and left their newspapers for someone else to pick up.
Coincidentally, I was in town giving a speech about the relationship between culture and behavior.
‘Are you from Vietnam?’
I rarely talk about these things.
And it's difficult to admit that I'm always both happy and nervous about encountering my compatriots abroad. Between 1999 and 2000 I traveled to Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia and Denmark to attend a series of workshops.
In Singapore, I bumped into a young Vietnamese student who was on his way to receive some sort of tech award. I accepted his invitation to attend the award ceremony three kilometers away.
Soon after climbing into a taxi we were told to get out because the student refused to wear his seatbelt.
I asked the student if he didn’t get what the cabbie had asked him.
"I did hear," he said. "But we don’t have to wear a seatbelt in our country. It's just a short distance and it’s too bothersome. We can just take another taxi."
On another occasion, I wandered through Disneyland in Hong Kong from dawn till dusk to research how the park was managed.
At one point, I encountered a park employee trying to eject a customer for cutting several lines.
“Are you from Vietnam?” she asked in unclear Vietnamese.
Bad apples
I'm still ashamed of the handful of Vietnamese who seem to have no respect for others or themselves.
Of course not all Vietnamese people have such habits, but I've seemed to run into them all over the world. Not surprisingly, the image of "The Ugly Vietnamese" had followed them wherever they go.
In a society with strong laws, good ethical norms and proper law enforcement, you tend not to see these bad habits among members of the general public.
To get rid of our problems abroad, we need to start at home. Parents should be good examples for their children; schools need to teach students good habits in addition to providing them with general knowledge.

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Sex worker - On the edge of the ethic war

I’m writing this amid a current scandal in Vietnam which involves a celebrity being publicly exposed by some media to be a prostitute. Her pictures have gone viral, with as much personal information included as possible. “Whore”, “hooker” and many other degrading words have been used to hurdle shame and guilt upon the woman.
In Vietnam, although the law only imposes moderate punishment (a fine of from US$5-25) on prostitutes, sex workers are subjected to harsh social criticism. Even the terminology “sex worker” is virtually non-existent since very few would consider trading sex for money as work.
In this article of two parts, let's consider some arguments that have consistently been used to ban prostitution, commonly seen as a profession which is as old as the humanity itself.
The questions we want to answer is: “Is prostitution inherently immoral and harmful? Should it be criminalized and punished?”.

'Sex workers are exploited and coerced to work by criminals, that is why it is harmful'
One of the main reasons why prostitution is considered harmful stems from the fact that in many cases, sex workers are coerced into becoming a prostitute. They are considered victims of the last choice, human trafficking, economic hardship, domestic abuse, or criminal organizations.
According to a statistics from the UN, 80 percent of border-crossing human trafficking are women and girls, most of them are consequently subjected to sexual abuse and forced to work in the sex industry. It has become common knowledge that many women who end up in the Red Light District of Amsterdam, were promised a career in dance and entertainment.
Some prostitutes are unaware victims of lover boys who target vulnerable teenagers, make them fall in love, then isolate them from families. The girl are slowly trapped in the vicious circle of manipulated relationship with a terrifying mixture of emotional terrorism, dependent love affair, and confusing perceptions of sex, love and money.
Needless to say, those who coerce others into prostitution also include their loved ones: parents who are desperate for money, partners who see their “better half” as “better” in term of financial support.
In India, several villages such as Ingonia are known to survive and thrive on the profession. “Born into brothels” is an award-winning documentary in which children of Sonagachi were given a camera to capture their daily life in this red light district. Most female sex workers in this documentary were portrayed as indirect victims of poverty or domestic coercion.
Ironically, if we accept that sex workers are genuinely victims of coercion and crimes, and that is why sex work should be banned, then criminalizing sex work is nothing more than an unethical act to punish the victims one more time.
Blaming the victims is obviously easier than finding the culprits, especially when the culprits are hidden behind the thin veneer of families, love, sacrifice, or a corrupted system. We cannot punish a malfunctioning economy that creates such a terrible poverty that consequently puts people in to a situation of having to choose trading sex for survival, can we?
However, if the causal link between coercion and victimhood is the reason why prostitution is harmful and should be banned, then frankly, this can be argued to be the case with most of professions on earth.
To a certain extent, all of us are coerced into doing what we are doing, since none of us is 100 percent free to do what we individually want. Freedom is never absolute, and as members of a society, we all have to sacrifice, compromise, or adjust ourselves to suit the situation, hence, allowing ourselves to be coerced into doing something we genuinely would not want to do. From this point of view, we are all victims of societal pressure, at varying degrees.
At this point, “degree” should be the focal point of this argument. To what degree is coercion acceptable? This is not a question of a bi-polar spectrum where one extreme is right and the other is wrong. This is a question of one single scale with one single attribute of “suffering”, one end more acceptable and the other end less so.
Our hypothesis then can be stated as: “If we can somehow make the degree of coercion in prostitution at least similar to other lawful professions, then sex work should be considered a lawful profession”.
This leads the discussion away from the unfair treatment of punishing the victims and focuses the solution on regulations and law enforcement, which is the basis of a civil society. By decriminalizing prostitution and imposing strict rules, victims will be able to avoid double punishment, leading to an escape that is safer and more sustainable than what they have had to endure.
Many studies have proved that criminalizing prostitution creates double incrimination. A study in Florida shows that 82 percent of the sex workers have been assaulted, and 68 percent have been raped. They fear to report to police since this can be used as evidence to make them committed another felony charge of working as sex workers.
A 2002 Chicago based study found that 30 percent of exotic dancers and 24 percent of street-based sex workers who had been raped identified a police officer as the rapist. Up to 17 percent of sex workers interviewed reported sexual harassment and abuse, including rape, by police. They had been forced to strip or engage in other sexual conduct while in police detention. Again, a victim is victimized one more time, ironically with a punishment exactly the same as their accused felony.
Further, while acknowledging that this argument of victimhood is valid, we also need to accept the fact that not all sex workers are coerced into prostitution. Many of them choose this profession voluntarily because it fits their life style and personality, or because it is economically efficient, without any pressure.
In the last few months, I have been part of a volunteer group helping to deliver tea and coffee to sex workers in the Red Light District of Amsterdam. I started the job with the idea that all these people are victims, and I could not be more wrong.
While some of them are surely coerced into prostitution, there are many who choose to work here freely. Sex work is exactly that, work. And what well-intended people should do is to protect those who are forced to enter the industry, and support those who are the boss of their life, regardless of who they choose to be, as long as it is honest labor.
At this point, we have the second hypothesis regarding the argument of victimhood: “If we can be sure that sex workers choose their profession freely, then sex work should be considered a lawful profession”.
Feminism has been torn between these two viewpoints since the end of the 20th century. Half of the feminists believe that sex workers are victims, even to the point that they themselves are not aware of their victim status. Liberal Nordic countries such as Sweden and Norway fall into this categories, punishing the buyers and not the sex workers themselves.
The other half of the feminists believe that sex workers are also people who choose this profession on their voluntarily basis. The Netherlands and Germany legalize prostitution with strong regulations, making a genuine effort to ensure that sex workers are protected against abuse and coercion (to a certain acceptable degree on par with other lawful professions, of course).

Continue below ....

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'Prostitution is degrading, that is why it is harmful'
Prostitution suffers from a strong social stigma as a degrading profession. Being moral or immoral is not the point here, but the way societies look at it. One should not choose to be a sex worker simply because it is a degrading job to do. We try to avoid this profession not because it is wrong, but because societies attach very limited amount of respect to it.
More often than not, those who adhere to this argument are often hypocritical without even knowing it. When the Vietnamese celebrity was exposed on the media, some shook their head in a combination of disgust and empathy: “Sex work is also work, nothing wrong with it. But I still find her disgusting and I curse her for wanting to do that job. Why? Because she knows people dislike it, and yet, she still does it”.
This double standard is deafening, yet so well disguised under the cover page of social conformity. In a nut shell, the job itself is honest labor, but one still should succumb to social stigma and avoid it. Even people who accept that prostitution is pure honest work also cannot escape the need to surrender and bow to the negative social perception and betray their own genuine point of view.
Not only is this argument subject to hypocrisy, social perception towards prostitution as a degrading job cannot rule out the fact that many other professions in our societies are also degrading and not socially desired.
Not so many of us can loudly claim to be Jesus-like and give convincing evidence that we love everyone without a tiny bit of bias based on what job they do for a living. Some of us use degrading words to address housemaids, shoe-shine boys, scrap scavengers, or street porters…despite the fact that they are earning money honestly with their labor. If we do not criminalize these professions on the basis of socially undesirableness, why should we do that to prostitution?
Clearly, the discussion should be focused on how to change the stigmatized social perception of sex work, and not the moral nature of sex work itself. If we criminalize a profession simply because it is an unwanted profession by the society at large, then again, we are punishing and victimizing the victims who are already marginalized by the society. Worse, this punishment is purely based on our fear of being seen as sympathizers for the oppressed. If that is not hypocrisy, then I don’t know what is.
Again, the hypothesis that should be stated here is: “To an extent that we can promote social acceptance and empathy towards sex workers, then sex work should be able to be considered as lawful work”.
(To be continued in Part 2: Is prostitution harmful to marriage, spreading STD, and selling inappropriate commodities?)

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles

http://youtu.be/MkyG2nFQZUA

Continuing comedy for this series:

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 11
http://youtu.be/Epyej7XU2Sc

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 12

http://youtu.be/mQgeNWaay3Y

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 13

http://youtu.be/NEZVd7HN0Rk

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 14

http://youtu.be/-XWcRkseX98

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 15

http://youtu.be/Bz9gnpkWwvI

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Sex worker - On the edge of the ethic war (part 2)

Part 2: Social menace or social need?

Amid a current scandal in Vietnam in which a celebrity is exposed by media to be a prostitute, discussions emerged in this fairly conservative country, dividing public opinions between the need to keep prostitution a felony and the need to decriminalize the profession.
In part one of this article, I argued that while some sex workers choose their job voluntarily, others can be victims, and hence, need not to be victimized one more time with punishment from the legal system.
Obviously, other arguments used to support the ban on sex work do not always come from the sympathy with the victim status of sex workers. Quite a contrary, these arguments target them as the source of social menace, the cause of ethics decadence and the reason why humanity is morally ruined.
In another words, sex workers are no where near the status of being victim, they are squarely and simply the culprit.



Is prostitution being harmful to marriage?

Of all the arguments, this is the weakest one, since it is often used by those who inherently lack of confidence in their sexual prowess, a lack of trust in their partner's fidelity, or ability to maintain a stable marriage, or : “I oppose sex workers because my partner can cheat on me, and our marriage will be destroyed”.
Obviously, this argument is faulty since the burden of guilt should be borne by the unfaithful partners, not the sex workers.
The society is full of temptation: sex, power, money, beautiful jewelries, expensive cars, delicious food, and so on and so forth. Ethical people know exactly what they can obtain and what not. If fast food is generally needed but can be unhealthy if eaten too much, should we criminalize fast-food and shut them down, or should we control ourselves not eating too much?
Blaming fast food, or blaming sex worker is just another way to profess our weakness in self-control and regulation.
In another counter-argument, it has been proved that prostitution, if regulated well, can help to protect marriage. Single, inexperienced, or sexually frustrated people can safely find an escape without engaging in rapes or illicit affair with other people’s partners and hence, ruining an otherwise happy marriage.
In 2010, the Family Protection Society in Australia was forced to publicly apologize to Tasmanian sex workers for saying the industry is harmful to women and breaking up marriages. The message is clear, if you eat the forbidden fruit, you are the culprit, not the fruit. Evidence? We still eat apple until this day.


Is prostitution spreading STD to wider population?

Of all the arguments, this is the one that has been proven wrong at the strongest level. Study after study has shown that once sex work is regulated and decriminalized, sex workers have a much lower percentage of sexually transmitted disease (STD) infection, compared to the wider population.
Since the institution of mandatory condoms in Nevada's brothels in 1988, not a single sex worker has contracted HIV. In one Australian study carried out in 1998, the prevalence of sexually transmitted bacterial infections was 80 times greater in 63 illegal street prostitutes than in 753 of their legal brothel counterparts.
In the early '90s the Thai government began working with brothel owners to enforce 100 percent condom use. Free condoms were given to brothels, and sex workers were told to insist on condoms. Establishments that allowed unprotected sex were shut down.
As a result, condom use increased from 14 percent in 1989 to over 90 percent by 1994. Over the same period, the number of new STD cases among men treated at government clinics plummeted by over 90 percent. HIV infection rates among military recruits fell from 4 percent in 1993 to below 1.5 percent in 1997.
Understandably, criminalizing prostitution fuels the possibility of STD, as it is uncontrolled, workers unprotected, and in many cases, they are willing to succumb to customer’s requests of unprotected sex in order to reduce the time spent on the street, and hence escape the police’s attention.
Since condoms can be used as evidence and a form of harassment during street arrests, fear of felony charges can discourage safe sex, and contribute to the vicious circle of victim, being victimized, and then making others victims of STD.


Is sex an inappropriate commodity?

Very often, sex is regarded as a product that should not be put on par with other commodities since it is too intimate, too divine, or too vulgar. Let’s take this down one by one.
Sex is intimate. No doubt. But is sex more intimate than personal thought, than dirty, seedy, deep dark secrets and scandals that have been commercialized, manipulated, written and crazily advertised to fame-boost and make money for celebrities worldwide?
Have a look at some of the world’s famous biographies and you will know what I mean. From incest, rapes, sexual violence, cheating to sex tactics; from family hatred, friendship betrayal, unmasking of loved ones, to deepest personal fear and obsession…you name it. Are these less intimate than an ordinary intercourse?
Sex is divine. Well, maybe. To be precise, sex deserves that status only when it is combined with other wonderful emotion and relationship such as love. It is almost ridiculous to consider sex always a product of love and genuine feeling between two parties.
In its pure nature, sex is reproduction, and its foremost function is to help reproduce. This applies to everything on earth, from plants, animals, to humans. Of course sex as a result of love is the ideal, but this world is not populated by idealists, it thrives by realists who know all too well that we as human beings cannot rely on love to survive. If this planet was dependent on love to exist, none of us would be here today.
Sex is vulgar. For some, that is probably true, especially those who believe that humanity has been dammed for the original sin. In the end, sex contributes to the aftermaths of Adam and Eva being thrown off the Eden, and sex is religiously described as having only the function of reproducing. Having a pleasure from sex is taboo, since sex is not meant to be enjoying, but purely a process to make children.
But hey, hello! Criminalizing some product because it is religiously considered only for one specific God-given purpose does not seem to fit the idea of secularism, and still, it does not justify the verdict of sex work being harmful in nature.
Looking further beyond the tiny society we live in, many civilizations have honored sex as the source of life, and continue to do so. Sacred prostitution on the rivers of Tigris and Euphrates was practiced in the house of heaven where all women were ordered to give themselves to strange men once in their life time, taking their sacred money and refusing no one.
In ancient Greece, Hetaera often enjoyed their high status more than other women. Phallus worshiping, religious sex, sacred marriage, and many other sexual rituals are still the cores of many belief in civilizations from East to West. Vietnam, Japan, Bhutan and many other conservative countries still have festivals that focus on the glory of sex, of yin-yang harmony and revered origin of life.
Finally, the argument of seeing the body as a temple of God, and hence not appropriate to sell, meaning to let the consumer have the absolute right over it, is faulty. The more precise term for prostitution is that sex workers rent a part of their body in a fixed period of time with well-defined restrictions. Nobody owns their body, and hence, it is not selling in its conventional meaning.
In short, prostitution should be seen from a realistic angle of life. The profession has been here since time immemorial, and it is here to stay. Denial or defense simply is not sustainable, and frankly, a big fat lie to ourselves.
More than 70 countries have legalized it to varying degrees, including very conservative Muslim countries such as Bangladesh, Tunisia or strongly Catholic Mexico and many other in Latin America.
There should be no absolute urge to criminalize or venerate such a basic need as sex. To quote a comedian: "There is not much difference between going to a date and meeting a prostitute. In the former, you HOPE to get sex. In the latter, you are SURE to get sex".

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 16

http://youtu.be/alrl49AzjyQ

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 17

http://youtu.be/4olQrjfTyMc

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 18

http://youtu.be/QLsdPGs8LfA

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 19

http://youtu.be/pWmEie6Vz7A

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 20

http://youtu.be/uxcwisbcoyU

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Why do you freaking honk?

Let me put the question another way.
Is honking free speech or a crime?
In Vietnam, it’s pretty much the first one, and it sounds so bad on the packed roads of Saigon.
I was traveling to work this morning when the driver of a giant public bus kept honking his horn on tiny Nguyen Du Street. Cars and motorbikes tried to give way, but there was not much space.
So the bus driver kept at it until we all came to a red light. 30 seconds… 15… 5… 3… BEEP! BEEP! He was honking again even before the green light was back on. I turned into another road just to escape from him.
Some people say public bus drivers have time pressure. But it is not just them who are horn-happy. Many others are also quick on the draw, blowing the horn for no reason except that they want to go ahead.
My foreign friends say they can get at least one middle finger shown if they honk at another driver to indicate they want them to give way.
One afternoon two years ago my friend was driving me around Kuala Lumpur when a car in front of her kept zigzagging. We never found out if the driver was high on drugs, drunk or sick.
My friend had to slow down for fear of getting into a crash, but after around five minutes she lost patience.
She honked loud and long, which made the driver drive straight and move to one side for her to pass.
She immediately sped up.
“That driver might follow us and beat us,” she told me.
A Filipino friend in the car was also scared.
“What do you do that for?” he almost screamed.
I was not. Unfortunately, in Vietnam, you are not scared of honking at people. Honking is so loud and so often in the country that people just seem to accept it, and you should be scared, in fact, of asking them not to honk.
Vehicle horns are designed for the primary purpose of warning other vehicles of danger. Some also use it to punish others doing the wrong thing on the road, like my friend did.
But somewhere along the way, it has become habitual and a major cause of noise pollution, not just in Vietnam but around the world. The World Health Organization said in a 2011 report that one million healthy life years were lost every year due to traffic-related noise in Western Europe.
Since honking is a habit, it is hard to stop, just like we cannot stop people from using plastic bags or smoking even by printing graphic lung and throat cancer images on the pack.
From what I have read, there is a campaign in Mumbai to curb its honking “epidemic” by installing a device called Bleep to help drivers become aware of their unconscious honking.
It is a red button with a frowning face near the steering wheel that beeps repeatedly when the driver honks. They have to press the button to silence it.
Tests found honking by cars with the button reduced by 61 percent.
Most other countries use cash fines, which is US$350 in New York. In Peru, which is also known for its honking problem, the police can seize the vehicle as well.
Vietnam has a maximum fine of VND200,000, or less than $10, on drivers if their honking disturbs the peace in a residential area between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.
In a country where traffic cops force people to drive past red lights and stop at green to make way for officials’ cars (I’ve seen that with my own eyes in Saigon), such a rule hardly means anything.
One time I was in a taxi when the driver said a young girl had paid him twice the fare for not touching his horn. I was not sure if it was a suggestion for me, but yes, a driver who controls themselves from honking in the city deserves a reward.
It really gets on your nerves when in heavy traffic drivers keep pressing their horns and pass their stress and impatience to others.
Maybe paying a few bucks to stop people from honking is a good solution.

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 21

http://youtu.be/6tWkDmyAvIo

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 22

http://youtu.be/TSscQ4wgqZU

[Wendella]

I have another translation problem...

Đợi đến lúc anh nhận ra........
Thì 2 ta đã trở thành người lạ.........

[Wende11a]

I have another translation problem...

Đợi đến lúc anh nhận ra........
Thì 2 ta đã trở thành người lạ.........

Dun bother to embarrass yourself!

Want to order whore and dun understand tieng viet in Vietnam.

[jackbl]

I have another translation problem...

Đợi đến lúc anh nhận ra........
Thì 2 ta đã trở thành người lạ.........

From translator :

Wait until he realized ........
Then 2 we have become strangers

The meaning is almost there ......

[Wendella]

From translator :

Wait until he realized ........
Then 2 we have become strangers

The meaning is almost there ......

That's the google translation of course.

So it's like:

I waited until he saw/realized
and then the two of us became like strangers

it seems to be the girl sulking about losing her connection with a lover or hoped-for lover... he moved on suddenly

That's my take at least.

[Wende11a]

That's the google translation of course.

So it's like:

I waited until he saw/realized
and then the two of us became like strangers

it seems to be the girl sulking about losing her connection with a lover or hoped-for lover... he moved on suddenly

That's my take at least.

Đợi đến lúc anh nhận ra........waiting for you to arrive quickly
Thì 2 ta đã trở thành người lạ.........we are both strangers who have not met before

told you not to embarrass yourself....shameful and claim to be living in Vietnam for many years.

Just continue play your music and just stick to D1 whores...

[Wendella]

Đợi đến lúc anh nhận ra........waiting for you to arrive quickly
Thì 2 ta đã trở thành người lạ.........we are both strangers who have not met before

told you not to embarrass yourself....shameful and claim to be living in Vietnam for many years.

Just continue play your music and just stick to D1 whores...

My Vietnamese friend says you are wrong. :eek:

[Wende11a]

My Vietnamese friend says you are wrong. :eek:

You are really embarrassing.

I did not do a word by word translation but rather giving the meaning of of the texts.

Why don't you stick to playing music?

[Wende11a]

what does that mean stick play music, something we dont know abt wendella hahah

Thought you are his best buddy! BTW, have you met me before?

[Wendella]

what does that mean stick play music, something we dont know abt wendella hahah

something wendella also doesn't know about wendella

[Wende11a]

something wendella also doesn't know about wendella

I will post my picture of "Wendella"?

Height - around 1.67 to 1.7m
Weight - around 60 to 65kg
Hair Style - to be disclose
Wear glasses - to be disclose
Wife - to be disclose

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 23

http://youtu.be/G_8kiQo_cYU

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 24

http://youtu.be/RnxhP7-hx2g

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 25

http://youtu.be/mNA5abJbedk

[jackbl]

Robbers prey on foreign tourists in Ho Chi Minh City downtown: police


Police in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1 on Friday said that foreigners are the main target of criminals and promised they will strengthen security.
Colonel Nguyen Tan Dat, the district's police chief, told a meeting on Friday that eight out of 17 victims of robberies in the first quarter were foreigners.
“This is a big problem,” Dat said, adding that foreign tourists usually left the city soon after reporting the robberies, making investigation difficult.
He suggested the city recruit more crime police officers, saying the criminal police unit "has worked effectively."
Tran The Thuan, chairman of District 1, said the militia teams, equipped with motorcycles and cameras, will patrol regularly across the district starting March 28.
At the meeting, Dat also warned about illegal taxi services. He said many drivers reportedly drove away with passengers’ baggage immediately after they get off the cabs, or without giving back the change.
Earlier this month, Nguyen Thanh Phong, chairman of HCMC People’s Committee, said the city are taking measures to tackle crimes, especially robberies.
Leaders of districts where robberies happen frequently will be punished, he said.
Phong also said the city is planning to set up a special police unit to protect tourists, adding the unit will be managed by the Department of Tourism and trained by the city police.

[jackbl]

That's the google translation of course.

So it's like:

I waited until he saw/realized
and then the two of us became like strangers

it seems to be the girl sulking about losing her connection with a lover or hoped-for lover... he moved on suddenly

That's my take at least.

So how's your relationship with this gal now?

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 26

http://youtu.be/n4IwGXOAQyg

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 27

http://youtu.be/vaIGPoBZI9k

[jackbl]

Sentence upheld for Vietnamese restaurant manager who robbed Japanese tourists

An appeal court in Ho Chi Minh City on Monday upheld a nine-year sentence against a man who last year was found guilty of overcharging and robbing Japanese diners at his restaurant, local media reported.
The indictment said Tran Manh Cuong had worked at the restaurant in Binh Thanh District since 2005.
He asked Nguyen Thanh Do, who happened to speak Japanese, to draw Japanese tourists to the restaurant.
Cuong would then inflate the prices and ask the foreign diners to pay much more than they were supposed to. The extra amount was shared between him and Do.
The long-running scheme was only busted in December 2008 when police caught Do and two employees from Cuong’s restaurant beating two Japanese tourists and forcing them to withdraw money at an ATM.
The tourists had been asked to pay $1,200 for a dinner that cost only $80.
Cuong escaped soon after that and only turned himself in in October 2014.
He was sentenced to nine years in prison in September last year for robbery. He admitted that he was responsible for taking VND100 million from Japanese tourists over the years.
Do, 33, was earlier sentenced to 20 years in 2010. Other restaurant workers involved received between one and 12 years.

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 28

http://youtu.be/v4LP3CuOyRo

[jackbl]

Vietnam jails 2 for running high-priced sex ring


A court in the northern province of Quang Ninh Friday sentenced two women to jail for operating an upscale sex ring that charged its clients up to US$7,000 per day.

Ring leader Tran Duc Thuy Lien, 31, was sentenced to three and a half years while her assistant Doan Ngoc Minh, 26, got two years and three months.
The court also ordered Lien and Minh to surrender a total of VND65 million (US$2,900) that they had allegedly earned from the illegal operation.
The ring was busted last May after two of its sex workers was caught inside a hotel room in Quang Ninh with their two clients. One of the workers was the first runner up of a beauty pageant held in 2014 at her university.
These sex workers had been flown in from Ho Chi Minh City. They reportedly stayed at the hotel for two days for $7,000 per day.
But they said they eventually earned only $1,000 per day because Lien and Minh pocketed the rest.
Civil society groups have pressured the government to legalize prostitution so that the industry can be regulated and sex workers can be protected.
Programs to help sex workers reintegrate into the community have not been really helpful.

[Uncouth]

Just wondering if there is any updates on the Singapore guy who was accused of murdering his Viet GF in VN??

came across the news of the Singapore guy in Singapore who murdered his Viet GF hence the other incident crossed my mind.

[jackbl]

I can't find any updates in the vn newspaper. If I came across I will post here.

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 29

http://youtu.be/ZHJO6pNNWaU

[Hurricane88]

Just wondering if there is any updates on the Singapore guy who was accused of murdering his Viet GF in VN??

came across the news of the Singapore guy in Singapore who murdered his Viet GF hence the other incident crossed my mind.

Do you mean this case...:)

http://news.asiaone.com/news/crime/vietnamese-woman-24-found-dead-hotel-friends-suspect-sporean-boyfriend-involved
http://www.doynews.com/article/police-vietnam-are-searching-singaporean-man-who-allegedly-murdered-vietnamese-lady-hotel

This case still unsolved...:)

How are you related to this case...I read the first post...later was edited away...so are you related to him or Dickson Leong...:confused:

[pting]

Sharing some translation with help from a friend.

Lately wrote a compliment message to a FL for her good service.
Got a surprise reply. I expect a thank you message but this is what i get.
I guess this reply come from her middleman instead.

Em ấu rất là chụi khó
She is very hardworking

Ngoài làm gái còn có công việc ổn định và luôn trau dồi văn hóa
Beside being a whore, also have a stable job and always cultivate traditional culture

Một cô gái rất cố gắng, luôn luôn tự đào tạo mình
A girl always try hard to improve herself.

mọi người hãy luôn ủn hộ em nhé
Everyone please support her ok?

Feedback welcome.

[pting]

which girl was this....
Kynu Mi Q8

[jackbl]

Kynu Mi Q8

Is Kynu a website or u address her as Kynu :rolleyes::confused:

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 30

http://youtu.be/VXy9oVI1kyY

[pting]

Is Kynu a website or u address her as Kynu :rolleyes::confused:

Kynu = Website name
Mi = The name she used in website

[jackbl]

82-year-old woman to stand trial for running drug ring in Vietnam

Prosecutors in Ho Chi Minh City have filed drug charges against an 82-year-old woman who they said was the leader of a large drug ring busted two years ago.
Police caught Nguyen Thi Miet at her house in District 10 in June 2014, when she was buying 3.3 kilograms of heroin from Ngo Van Thanh, 51.
They then searched her house and found 660 grams of heroin.
Based on her confession, police later arrested nine of her accomplices, who worked as her street dealers. They seized another 4.4 kilograms of heroin.
Investigators later discovered that in June alone, Miet's ring managed to sell 7.7 kilograms of heroin and earned a total of VND120 million, or nearly US$5,400. She reportedly bought drugs from a kingpin in the north.
The woman claimed she needed the money to raise her grandchildren.
Vietnam is tough on drug crimes and people involved in a case like this will likely face death sentences.

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 61

http://youtu.be/W4CcTGC__vE

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 62

http://youtu.be/mrdWtr8kFgc

[jackbl]

5 jailed for running upscale sex ring in southern Vietnam


A court in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday sentenced a man and four women to up to four years in jail for running a lucrative sex ring targeting an upscale clientele.
Le Bao Loc, 41, received the longest sentence of four years while his accomplices got at least one and a half years.
They were all found guilty of procuring sexual services, but some media reports said the women also did sex work themselves.
Loc, a stage director, and the group were arrested in April last year. Their ring was busted when police caught six sex workers and their clients at a hotel in Binh Chanh District.
The ring's sex workers, mostly college students and part-time models aged 23-26, told police that they had to pay the procurers half of what they earned, which was US$1,000 per client.
According to investigators, the ring began its illegal operation in 2013 and was soon expanded. It provided sex services at a price range of $500-1,000 to wealthy businessmen.
Loc had successfully used his occupation as a director to lure young women, mostly newcomers of the entertainment industry, into his illegal business.

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 63

http://youtu.be/CAC0KHsHqmo

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 64

http://youtu.be/55gSuoNqLyY

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 65

http://youtu.be/nbwT_iGU81Y

[jackbl]

Who says Saigon is boring at night?

I read an article recently that stated that nightlife in Saigon was pretty much non-existent.
Was this the same city in which I chose to live two and a half years ago? I found it hard to believe. The same city where I have frequently stayed up for 24 hours, drinking, partying and having a great time? The same city where market traders start work as late night revelers wobble past on their way home? The same city where many drinkers go straight to the office from the myriad of pubs, bars, nightclubs, karaoke rooms and other venues? I was beginning to think I had imagined it all.
I moved to Saigon, now of course called Ho Chi Minh City, in 2013, originally for just two months. I had a short writing gig and thought it would be fun to stick around for a while. Two and a half years later I’m still here, still enjoying life and still getting home at 4 a.m. on a regular basis.

After-hours bars in District 1
This is the main business and entertainment area, and there is no doubt that the vast majority of the late night watering holes are to be found here.
In the backpacker area of Pham Ngu Lao you’ll find a full-on 24-hour party town. This is Saigon’s answer to Bangkok’s Khao San Road, though not quite as spoiled. It is here that you’ll find cheap beer and hostesses in abundance. Along Bui Vien, which runs parallel to the Pham Ngu Lao, as it has come to be known, the trendy hipster types and old school expats gather seven nights a week. This whole area never sleeps.

Just across from here, moving towards the river, you’ll find a group of bars spread across the few blocks that run between Pasteur and Ho Tung Mau. On Ton That Dam in the middle of the old wet market, Chilli Pub serve many after-hours revellers with beer, wine and spirits until 4 a.m. seven days a week. This is one of the best bars in town if you like the atmosphere of a pub where everyone knows everybody else.
If trendy nightclubs are more your thing, Apocalypse Now and Lush are two of the better known after-hours clubs. These two venues are very popular among the young, trendy set who like to party all night long. Apocalypse is one of the oldest late night dancing and drinking venues in town. Lush is newer but has created quite a stir in recent years. It is extremely popular with clubbing fans. All of these venues are gay-friendly in a city that has a healthy attitude to gay and lesbian people. Probably the most popular gay bar in the city is Centro, where the gay community meets to party, dance and watch the late night cabaret.

Cafés and karaoke
Many people of course come to Asia and don’t want to do the same things as they do back home. Saigon has such a variety of things to do that you don’t see in the West.
The city has hundreds of cafés selling amazing tea and coffee, many of these open late also. Walking home in the early hours of the morning you will pass many old style, hole in the wall type places that are popular with the locals. Old guys sit enjoying drinks, chatting and generally chilling out. They will often invite you to join them and are almost always happy for you to join if you ask. I quite like this scene; even with no common language it’s fun to sit and relax with the locals.
The phenomenon that is karaoke is evident across the city. In most districts you will find karaoke houses. To Westerners this is a strange phenomenon indeed. The idea of going to a venue that specializes in karaoke is rather odd. Of course some of these are nothing more than a place for working girls. Some though are legitimate. As with all things in Saigon, it can be difficult to tell the difference.

Beyond District 1
While the main attractions are inside District 1, they are by no means confined to it.
In District 3, The Acoustic Bar has live music concerts every night except Sundays from 9:00 p.m. While the music generally ends around midnight, people hang around drinking into the wee small hours.
Over in District 4, the dance floor in Cargo Bar remains packed until the sun comes up. Opening in 2013 this place has garnered a huge following.
In District 2, late night drinking can be a bit hit and miss, which is surprising considering the very large expat community here. BMV and the Buddha Bar sometimes open very late but it tends to depend on how busy they are, which can be frustrating at times. The Billiard Clubs along Tran Nao however are always open very late. So if playing pool and drinking are your thing, then these can really be great fun.
The fact is that like most thriving modern cities, Ho Chi Minh City has plenty to offer after midnight, and in some cases right through the night.
This is definitely a 24-hour party town.

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 66

http://youtu.be/Js62WDT1b5Y

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 72

http://youtu.be/MVlTsmlk8Kw

[Pulver]

Thanks for the share TS

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 74

http://youtu.be/QrH7OiGkur0

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 75

http://youtu.be/LPD54iB4HmE

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 78

http://youtu.be/6nx5UhZMsTs

[jackbl]

Russian man arrested for stealing phone at Ho Chi Minh City restaurant

Ho Chi Minh City police have arrested a Russian man accused of stealing an iPhone from a restaurant manager last week.
Initial investigation found Petrov Vadim, 32, moved from the central city of Phan Thiet to HCMC on April 6. He rented a room on Bui Vien Street in the popular backpacker neighborhood.
The following day he reportedly went to a restaurant on the nearby Nguyen Thai Hoc Street for lunch.
The restaurant manager Lam Huynh Thuy Tien left an iPhone 6 charging at her counter and went away. Vadim allegedly stole the phone and left.
Tien checked security footage and decided to go around the neighborhood to find the suspect.
She saw Vadim walking on Bui Vien Street at around 6:30 p.m. the same day and asked local residents and police to help arrest him.
At the police station, Vadim first rejected the accusation but he later admitted to the theft after police showed him the video.
The Russian man said he worked as a teacher in Mui Ne, the resort town often known as "Little Moscow." He caught a bus to HCMC to avoid paying debt.
Police are investigating the case.

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 79

http://youtu.be/bSpI0jNZ988

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 81

http://youtu.be/a-pwrB00N3E

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 82

http://youtu.be/5l_trCItJmo

[jackbl]

Expats’ take on young Vietnamese’s drinking, smoking habits

A number of expats have shared their thoughts with Tuoi Tre News after a recent national report called young Vietnamese unfit and said they smoke a lot while also downing loads of alcohol.
The report was released on March 2 at a conference in Hanoi on sharing international experience in youth development.
The event was co-hosted by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the United Nations Population Fund in Vietnam.
According to the national report, as of 2014 there were over 25 million Vietnamese citizens between 16 and 30 years old, representing 27.7 percent of the country’s total population.
In terms of physical fitness, the average height of male Vietnamese youths is 164.4cm, 13cm lower than the global average, while that of female youths is 153.4cm, 10cm lower than the world average.
These numbers show that young Vietnamese are falling behind their peers in the region when it comes to height, with Japanese and South Korean youths surpassing them by 8cm, Chinese youths by 7cm, and Thai and Singaporean youths by 5-6cm.
Statistics in the report also indicated poor performance by young Vietnamese in terms of physical attributes, especially stamina and strength, in comparison to the world average.
The report identified the shortcomings of the previous surveys on youths’ risky behaviors including smoking and drinking, saying the surveys were conducted only on a relatively small sample using interview or self-assessment forms, meaning currently available statistics may not accurately represent the reality among Vietnamese youths.
The figures showed however that a reasonably high percentage of Vietnamese youths smoke or drink, despite several programs aimed at limiting the community’s consumption of alcohol and cigarettes.

‘Mot, hai, ba, yo!’
Living in Vietnam for more than a year, I often see young men in particular smoking. Maybe it’s because people do not have enough health awareness. In any case, the cost of cigarettes here is ridiculously cheap. In Australia a packet of 25 cigarettes would cost US$20, here it's just $1.
Also, people seem to deliberately drink to get drunk. It's the culture of “mot, hai, ba, yo!” (One, two, three, cheers!), and out of respect, people drink up. The beer club culture attracts a lot of young people too. I've travelled the world and never have I seen bars or clubs with dedicated vomit sinks like they have in Vietnam.
There seem to be a lot of street drinking restaurants here too, so I think it is part of the culture: coffee and cafés by day, beer clubs and beer restaurants by night.
When I binge drink, I usually drink for hours (8:00 pm to 4:00 am). It's over a long period of time. The Vietnamese seem to drink just as much in a lot shorter time. I can only imagine their hangovers.
In Australia, smoking is beginning to decrease amongst the younger generation because it’s too expensive, and major cancer campaigns have been effective. Drinking is still common, but taxes on alcohol are high on things like alco-pops (flavoured alcoholic drinks).
The alcohol laws in Australia are also strict. There are certain laws in certain states that prohibit the consumption of alcohol. For example in New South Wales, you cannot just order alcohol at a restaurant, you must also buy food. The number of patrons in a venue or drinking outside the venue is also limited. If there are a certain number of people drinking in a venue then a hired security guard is required by law.
Alcohol cannot be bought at a supermarket either, only in a liquor store. There are also extremely harsh penalties for drinking and driving. If people get caught they will lose their license, be fined and possibly thrown in prison, depending on how much over the limit they are.
Craig Nock, Australian

Solution: high tax on smoking, strict regulation on drinking
It seems that smoking and alcohol consumption in Vietnam are higher than in Japan. I think education is most important. All Japanese people "understand" the harmful effects of smoking. (It is much different from "knowledge").
Japanese cigarette prices are higher than those of Vietnam. The tax rate is 63 percent. A lot of friends of mine wanted to stop smoking when the tax rate increased. So it seems that cigarette price works as a means to stop or reduce smoking.
In terms of drinking, the rule became strict more than 30 years ago. When a policeman finds a car or motorbike driver driving whilst drunk, the driver has to pay a penalty of JPY1 million (close to ten thousand U.S. dollars). Moreover, if the restaurant or bar is aware that the customer came by car, and that they left by car, the restaurant has to pay a penalty as well. It is a very strict rule, but it works to stop drinking and reduce drunk driving accidents.
Also, a part of Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture have set the following rules:
- All restaurants must set aside a smoking room.
- Smoking is prohibited while walking.
Almost all restaurants have dissenting opinions on this. However, I think these regulations are effective in changing people's mind about smoking and drinking.
Hirate Yosuke, Japanese

Nothing is stronger than self-awareness
I think there are many factors that influence the habits of youngsters. Firstly, it’s the influence of local culture and family education. Advertisements of cigarette and alcohol products come from films, music videos and everywhere else. We are bombarded with continuous references to a drinking and smoking lifestyle with the illusion that nothing can damage our health. However, I think nothing is stronger than our self-awareness and there are no excuses. I started doing sports at the age of 11 and realized that there is always an active mind in a healthy body.
It is better to teach people what is good for their health. People who drink and use drugs know that these are dangerous but are unaware of anything else that can make them feel better.
Alessandro Corradi, 25, Italian

Alcohol only a kind of beverage
I came to Vietnam four years ago and was shocked to see my Vietnamese friends drink. They have a very different drinking culture compared to us. People who show up late have to drink more. They explained to me that was one of the rules of the table. In France, we also drink but in a more “friendly” way. I mean, alcohol is only a beverage. The most important thing is the time we share together with friends. My friends and I go to bars on the weekend but we enjoy chitchatting more than drinking. Alcohol can add something more to the ambiance of our party, but it’s not the whole thing. No one wants to leave the show with messy clothes and forget everything the next morning.
Exercise is good. You should choose a sport to play. Whatever you want or like because it helps eliminate the toxins after drinking. Ask your friends to go with you so it will be more fun.
Martin Bernard, 27, French

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 83

http://youtu.be/kAnCREcGQAE

[jackbl]

Japanese mother learns Vietnamese to fulfill son’s final wish

A professor of Vietnamese at Osaka University in Japan has sent Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper the touching story of one of her students, a 60-year-old Japanese mother, who is learning Vietnamese in honor of her deceased son.
Nakajima Hiroko was already retired when she applied for the Vietnamese undergraduate program at Osaka University late last year.
Prior to her application, she had already spent many years participating in cultural and linguistic activities at the ‘Vietnamist Club’ hosted by retired Professor Tomita Kenji, while finishing a two-year Vietnamese program in college.
Once completed, Hiroko applied for the Accreditation Program at Osaka University’s Vietnamese Department, which meant that she could begin in the third year of the full-time program.
In her cover letter, Hiroko attributed her decision to the death of her 18-year-old son, who had expressed a wish to re-visit Vietnam before he passed away.
After he died during twelfth grade in 2001, Hiroko even wrote a book entitled ‘Memoirs of an Old Lady Who Studied in Vietnam.’
In the book, she talks of her son’s death as the motivating factor behind her decision to abandon her job in 2005 and visit Vietnam, a place she had never been to and where she had no acquaintance or relative, in order to study Vietnamese.
Hiroko described her son as a kind-hearted and optimistic boy who had a lot of friends.
During high school, she wrote, her son had taken an interest in local volunteer activities and had loved studying foreign languages. He had also visited many places, including a study tour to Vietnam.
In his report written after his trip to Vietnam, he wrote about his experiences volunteering in the Southeast Asian country, as well as his wish to return to that nation in the future.
Those words planted the idea in Hiroko’s mind to take up Vietnamese so that she could understand more about the country her son had found so captivating, and that he had wanted so much to come back to.
In the epilogue of her memoir, Hiroko writes, “To lose your most beloved child is like losing your own future. I feel more vividly now than ever before, how happy it is as a parent to have your children safe and sound by your side."
“It was through the death of my son that I had learnt the significance of fate, and what it means to empathize with others,” she said in the book.

[jackbl]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 84

http://youtu.be/W_oNNB_Gy50

[chatlovers]

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 84

http://youtu.be/W_oNNB_Gy50

Thanks bro. Upz you back + 10.

[jackbl]

Women stage distraction for kid to steal iPhone from Hanoi shop

Two Vietnamese women disguised themselves as customers to distract a shop assistant in Hanoi for a young boy to steal an iPhone, according to what was captured by a security camera.
The entire incident which happened on Sunday at a cellphone accessory shop in Dong Da District was recorded by the security camera installed inside the venue.
The footage appears to show that the woman wearing a T-shirt with horizontal stripes and the kid were pretending to look for cellphone cases on sale at the store.
Meanwhile, the woman wearing a red and white T-shirt occupied the shop assistant by asking several questions about the products.
As the employee was distracted, the first woman nodded to signal for the young boy to go through to the drawers at the counter to steal an iPhone and hide it under his clothes.


The footage has gone viral on Facebook, capturing the attention and raising the concern of many Internet users.
“How could the adults tell their child to do that? Was it possible that they wanted to train the young boy to become a ‘professional’ thief at such a young age?” one viewer commented.
“Stealing is a sin itself. Getting your kid to steal for you is beyond any imagination. I would pity the little boy if one of the women is his mother,” another remarked.
According to online newspaper Dan Tri, the stolen phone belonged to the shop assistant, who has already reported the staged theft to authorities.

[jackbl]

Hài 2015 (Vitamin C) Episode 1:

http://youtu.be/SvejVx8k_GQ

[jackbl]

Hài 2015 (Vitamin C) Episode 2:

http://youtu.be/oFJATm9Mbt4

[jackbl]

Hài 2015 (Vitamin C) Episode 11 :
http://youtu.be/hselW42sQsw

[jackbl]

Saigon bus route liking international airport, downtown area proves effective for passengers

The bus route that connects Than Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City to the downtown area has quickly become a preferred form of transport for travelers.
After one month of operations, bus route No. 109 connecting Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Tan Binh District and 23/9 Park in District 1 has received positive feedback from both domestic and international passengers.
Tran Ngoc Anh, 45, who is a Hanoi businesswoman and frequent traveler to Ho Chi Minh City, has expressed her compliments on the ‘yellow coated’ buses, saying that they are very clean, pleasant, and comfortable.
Both the drivers and employees are all very nice and friendly, Anh continued.
“Prior to the opening of the bus route, I had to spend VND200,000 [US$9] for a taxi ride from the airport to the city center. Now with only VND20,000 [$1] I can have access to a faster and more convenient journey,” the woman said.
According to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporters’ observations, the bus designs include a modern interior, an anti-slip floor, a lower platform, and large luggage spaces convenient for air travelers.
Able to carry up to 70 passengers, the vehicles are also air-conditioned and outfitted with security cameras and fire extinguishers.
In addition, the drivers of these buses never make sudden breaks or sharp turns, providing a smooth experience for passengers.
According to Truong Quoc Hung, a driver of the shuttle bus, all drivers of bus route No. 109 are required to possess a Class E driver's license and five to six years of experience.
Information on the buses is written in both English and Vietnamese for international tourists while staffers on the vehicles and at the ticket counters have proper English skills to answer all travelers’ questions.
The fare for the service is VND20,000 ($0.9) for journeys over 5km and VND12,000 ($0.54) for those under 5km, driver Nguyen Thanh Dong said, adding that passengers are not charged an extra ticket for every large suitcase like on other public buses.
The six buses that ply the new route run every 15-20 minutes between 5:30 am and 1:30 am, which is very helpful for people who travel late at night, according to Hung, a resident of Phu Nhuan District.
Possible improvement
Tran Thi Thu, a passenger of the bus route, considered the vehicle very effective in terms of alleviating traffic congestion.
However, the route does overlap with route No. 152, which has a lower fare, VND5,000 ($0.22), and a longer journey, but those buses have become quite degraded, Thu said.
Many passengers have opted to travel on the No. 152 bus due to its more flexible route, such as Devadoss Jebaraj Joseph, an Indian expat who has been living and working in Ho Chi Minh City for 10 years.
“Though the new route No. 109 is very convenient, I still choose to travel on the old route No. 152 as it can take me closer to my home,” Joseph elaborated.
Nguyen Hong Ninh, a Vietnamese passenger, suggested that the bus route be extended to other districts in the city, preventing travelers from having to take additional buses or cabs to reach their final destinations.

[jackbl]

Hài 2015 (Vitamin C) Episode 15:
http://youtu.be/IWhhWgTQsIo

[jackbl]

Hài 2015 (Vitamin C) Episode 16:
http://youtu.be/qOKhIkNXLig

[jackbl]

Hài 2015 (Vitamin C) Episode 17:

http://youtu.be/wMIHeXnn16Q

[jackbl]

Hài 2015 (Vitamin C) Episode 18

http://youtu.be/7hzG_QyhPJw

[jackbl]

Popular coastal city in southern Vietnam to ban eating, drinking on beaches

Authorities in the popular coastal city of Vung Tau in southern Vietnam have announced that all forms of eating and drinking will be banned from its beaches from Tuesday onward, Nguoi Lao Dong (Laborer) newspaper reported on Monday.

Located about 100 kilometers away from Ho Chi Minh City, Vung Tau City is a popular getaway destination for southerners, thanks to its beautiful beaches and fresh seafood.

The People’s Committee of Vung Tau said on Friday that all catering businesses and cooperatives operating along the beaches are required to move all their equipment out of there.
The committee prohibits all forms of catering businesses at the beaches starting Tuesday, as well as discouraging tourists from all eating and drinking activities on public beaches.
The People’s Committee of Vung Tau also held an urgent meeting the same day to discuss the issue after some members of tourism cooperatives expressed their objection to the ban.
Some demanded that tourists be allowed to bring cooked food to the beaches, or that the ban be postponed until after the upcoming public holiday this weekend, which celebrates the liberation of southern Vietnam and the country’s reunification in 1975.
Representatives from the cooperatives said that most of their members understood and agreed to the ban, though some have lodged a complaint to the Party Committee and the People’s Committee of Vung Tau.
Nguyen Ngoc Truong, head of the Economic Division of Vung Tau City, said that the prohibition on eating and drinking at the beaches is not a topic for debate.
“Those who sell food at the beaches have already been violating two laws, even without the ban, which are sidewalk encroachment and conducting business without a license,” Truong pointed out.
“These beaches are the tourism products of Vung Tau, but that doesn’t mean everyone should eat there,” he underlined.
Truong went on to mention how allowing eating at the beaches had worsened littering, as beach cleaners collect hundreds of buried crab shell pits at the seaside every day.
“For now, members of cooperatives who are running eateries at the beaches will be relocated to Vung Tau Tourism Market should they wish to continue their business,” Truong added.

[jackbl]

No more BBQ on Vung Tau beaches

A 2015 ban on street vending and drinking and cooking in beaches in Vung Tau to check pollution, that has remained on paper, will be strictly enforced from tomorrow, authorities have said.
Truong Thi Huong, deputy chairwoman of the city People’s Committee, said vendors and tourists do not clean up after they gather to cook, eat and drink on the beaches, causing pollution and making the beaches ugly.
Some even leave charcoal behind after cooking, instead merely burying it in the sand, which is soon washed away by the waves, exposing the charcoal.
The city Friday ordered eateries to quickly remove kiosks, carts and other equipment they used from the beaches and clean up.
Huong said swimmers could go to restaurants and eateries near beaches instead of cooking themselves.
The city plans to create fast food areas on the beaches, and traders can bid to put up kiosks, she said.

[tomcat007]

Can Bros here explain to me the meaning of this song?

Yeu Nguoi Khong The Yeu
https://youtu.be/7ZQZNVlnEjI

[tomcat007]

It probably says that the guy fell in love with a girl that he shouldn't. But, I can't afford the time to decipher the entire song lyrics. I mean I can take the effort to do so, but the girl who sent me this song and told me to go listen is acting strangely and I can't afford the time now... Someone help me please?

I knew her when she's working in JC / Saigon. Then, after she went back, I visited her couple of weeks later. She took the problem to meet me in HCMC from her hometown which is 8 hours ride away.

Update..

Hmm.. Anyway, it's high chance she's brain-fucking me cos I've been slow sending her pocket money. Lol.. Whatever...

[jackbl]

Can Bros here explain to me the meaning of this song?

Yeu Nguoi Khong The Yeu
https://youtu.be/7ZQZNVlnEjI

The title already shows the meaning "Love someone that's not suppose to love"

[jackbl]

2 Chinese among 5 arrested for bride sale scheme

Police in Ho Chi Minh City Monday arrested five people, including two Chinese men who had come to find brides, on trafficking charges.

The Chinese, Jiang Xuhua, 41, and Wu Kuaifa, 31, had reportedly entered the country in March to look for wives with the help of three Vietnamese middlemen.
They had each paid the agents VND120 million after selecting their brides. The mediators reportedly pay a third of the money to the families of the brides, farmers in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho.

The five were caught red-handed while transacting the payment at a hotel in Binh Tan District, the police said, adding that the brokers had also forged identity papers for the brides to enter China.
One of the brokers, Nguyen Thi Hong Anh, 29 was herself a victim in 2012 after being sold to her Chinese husband by a woman called Nguyen Thi Banh, 61. Anh then became Banh’s accomplice, finding Chinese men looking for Vietnamese wives.
Investigations are continuing.

[jackbl]

Hanoi says to punish electronics store for bikini show

Authorities in Hanoi said on Friday they will punish an electronics store for inappropriately promoting its business with women in swimwear.
To Van Dong, head of the city’s culture department, told local media that managers of Tran Anh Electronics Supermarket have been ordered to report on the case.

He said inspectors will also look into other promotional campaigns and advertisements of the company.

After many people were upset by the controversial appearances of a group of women in bikinis at the shop on Thursday, the managers claimed that they were only filming "sex education videos."

In an interview with Thanh Nien on Friday morning, Ngo Thanh Dat, marketing manager at Tran Anh, denied allegations that this was a promotional ploy to attract the male gaze and lure in customers.
He insisted that rival companies were trying to "defame" his store and that his company had good intention.

“Young Vietnamese people have not been provided with appropriate sex education... so we want to make a series of sex education videos,” said Dat.
The manager did not elaborate on the content of the series and in what way the women in bikinis can teach young people about safe sex practices.
In several videos posted on YouTube and dozens of photos online, the women can be seen helping a customer park his motorbike and standing and waving next to products.

Lawyer Nguyen Thach Thao said the promotional campaign may have violated the Law on Advertising, which prohibits advertisements and acts that are deemed offensive in the Vietnamese culture.

[jackbl]

Vietnam sentences Singapore man to death for trafficking heroin

A court in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday sentenced a Singaporean man to death for trafficking 2.5 kilograms of heroin.

Lee Loke Dah, 40, was arrested at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in December 2014 with a plastic bag containing thousands of capsules. Further tests confirmed that the drug was heroin.
The man, who had entered the country four days earlier, told investigators that he stole the bag from a stranger in a hotel in District 5 and that he was not aware of the drug.

Prosecutors rejected these claims. The court found him guilty of drug trafficking.
Vietnam has some of the world’s toughest drug laws. The production or sale of 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics is punishable by death. Those convicted of possessing or smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine also face the death penalty.

[jackbl]

British tourists complain to Hanoi authorities about hotel scam

Three British tourists have complained to Hanoi tourism authorities that they were cheated by a man who took them from the gate of a hotel they had booked into to another one by lying to them.
Bradley Spillman, Jonathan Bearman and Matthew Taylor, all 21, told officials at the Hanoi Tourism Department Thursday that they had booked rooms at Hanoi Old Town Hotel, 95 Hang Chieu.
On Wednesday they arrived at the hotel from airport by taxi when a man who introduced himself as the “manager” of the hotel jumped into the vehicle.
He said the hotel’s water system was broken and he would take them to another branch of the hotel at 9 Nguyen Truong To Street, Ba Dinh District.
They booked into the new hotel, called Hai Nam, when they received an email from the Hanoi Old Town Hotel asking why they did not turned up.
Meanwhile, the man sold some tours to them, and after learning he had scammed them, they wanted the money back. But he only made a partial refund.
They told department officials they wanted their money back and the man and the hotel to be punished.
On Thursday Vu Cong Huy, deputy chief inspector of the department, said they were investigating the case together with Ba Dinh District authorities.
Do Dinh Hong, Director of Hanoi's Tourism Department, said the authorities will "seriously address any violation" to "maintain the good image of Vietnam's tourism."

[jackbl]

Vietnam suspends Ha Long boat accused of ripping off tourists


Authorities in Vietnam have suspended a boat in Ha Long Bay for overcharging a group of tourists after serving them seafood early this month, according to local media reports.
The suspension of an undetermined length came after one of the tourists wrote on her Facebook that her group of six was "extorted" by the vessel named Minh Huong 58.

She said the group was shocked when receiving a bill of nearly VND10 million (US$446) and complained to the owner that they had not ordered a big enough meal to justify that total amount.
They eventually had to pay the bill and filed a complaint to local authorities.
Inspectors later confirmed that they were overcharged and that the boat did not list food prices as required.

The boat’s owner has also been fined VND1.5 million and ordered to return the extra money to the tourists.

[jackbl]

'Grossly unethical and unprofessional' bus service



This week I was due to go and meet my fiancé's family in Lâm Đồng province for the first time. Being almost 5 months pregnant with our baby and having never met her family, visiting them for our engagement was very important. As my fiancé is deaf I had no choice but to let her return home to her family for the duration of the pregnancy since I would be unable to assist with hospital visits.

With the trains all sold out for the long weekend, I approached a travel agent in Đà Nẵng, booking a bus to Đà Lạt. All went well at first but just before midnight I was awoken by a loud crashing sound and screams and I was jolted forward, hitting my head on the seat in front. It didn't hurt at the time, perhaps due to the shock. As everyone began filing off the bus, I followed and the reason for the accident became clear. The bus had collided head-on with a man on a motorbike whose lifeless body lay in a pool of blood directly in front of the bus. I did not witness the event personally but it would appear from the location of the body and bike that the bus was in the wrong lane, traveling too fast in an urban area and collided with the man as he exited a side street.

We waited for hours while police investigators questioned onlookers and the driver and took photographs of the body and the bus while all the other passengers arranged other transport in the middle of the night. I simply waited. The organiser of the bus took my bag from under the bus and threw it into the middle of the road, right near the centre divider. I looked at him in shock, wondering why he was dumping my bags in the middle of a highway. He motioned to me and just said "Come". I followed him for several hundred meters down the highway where he silently asked me for a cigarette and then another bus arrived. He threw my bag onto the bus, pointed inside and simply said "Đà Lạt".

I got onto the bus for a sleepless journey with the sound of the man's wife sobbing over the body still ringing in my ears and I messaged my fiancé telling her that I would be late due to a bus crash but that I was ok. However my troubles were not yet over. By mid-morning the bus stopped on the side of the road. My map said were in Phan Rang, more than 3 hours away from Đà Lạt in the wrong direction. No one got off. My bag was retrieved from under the bus and thrown into the dirt on the side of the road. I was handed a piece of paper with a phone number and 120.000 vnd written on it. I shook my head and said "Khong. Tôi đi Đà Lạt. Tôi trả rồi !" and pointed at my ticket. They in turn pointed to their own piece of paper and then at my bag on the side of the road and yelled "Không đi Đà Lạt. Đi. Đi !" and pushed me off the bus. I yelled the most offensive Vietnamese insult I could think of as they drove off, leaving me in a cloud of dust, hours from my destination and late for my engagement party.
I called my travel company and explained what had happened. They were very apologetic and asked me to find out where I was and see if they could do something to fix it. I gave them my address and they sent a motorbike to pick me up and take me to a bus station. It was not one of my agent's busses but the woman said she would pay for the ticket personally because the bus company were refusing to take any responsibility.
I made it to my engagement party, half a day late; injured, covered in dust from head to food and extremely upset. If I had not been an experienced traveler with basic tiếng Việt knowledge and the contact number of an understanding travel agent, things could have been far worse. With my travel agent getting me to Đà Lạt, I asked some school kids if I could get to Lâm Hà on a local bus and I spent a bumpy journey standing up on an overcrowded school bus amongst children vomiting into plastic bags.
Unfortunately the hospitals were closed and I had to see a private doctor about my eye injury who gave me a variety of medicine and said that the damage should not be permanent but that I should visit the hospital for a proper check after the public holiday is over.
Regardless of who was at fault in the accident, the flagrant disregard for either the lives of motorists and the wellbeing of their passengers of the Ha Linh bus company was surely grossly unethical and unprofessional, dumping a foreigner on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere after promising to take him to his destination and then demanding more money to get him there just because they killed a man on the highway and had their bus impounded is absolutely unconscionable. After the accident division are through investigating the impounded bus, the Ministry of Transport should take serious action against the bus company for their actions.

My only consolation was the kindness and helpfulness of the woman at Han Travel in Đà Nẵng who did everything within her power to get my to my engagement party at her own personal expense and promised to refund my ticket since the bus company refused to do so. I cannot thank her enough for helping me out of what could have been a disastrous situation. The Ha Linh bus company however should be ashamed both for the man they killed and rudely pushing a foreigner off the bus in the wrong city, and taking no responsibility for injuries caused by their fatal bus crash.

[jackbl]

Vietnamese jailed for fixing sham marriage in Singapore



A Singaporean court has jailed two Vietnamese women for arranging a sham marriage between a Vietnamese woman and a Singaporean man three years ago for immigration benefits, The Strait Times reported.
Nguyen Thi Yen, 41, was sentenced to nine months in jail and fined US$2,200 in a trial on Thursday while her accomplice Le Thi Tra My, 31, was sentenced to seven months in jail on April 5.

According to Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, in February 2013, My suggested to the bride involved in the sham marriage that she marry a Singaporean in order to apply for a Long-Term Visit Pass and extend her stay in Singapore. In return, the woman would pay her $5,509.
The woman agreed, and My introduced her to Yen, who then found her a suitable groom who would get a cut of the bride’s money.
The wedding took place at a Peninsula Plaza restaurant on March 18, 2013.
Later that year, the bride and groom were each jailed for six months for entering into the fake marriage.

Under Singaporean laws, the maximum punishment for contracting or entering into a sham marriage is a $7,345 fine and 10 years' jail term.

[jackbl]

Hanoi launches new bus route to Noi Bai Airport

Hanoi on Saturday launched a high-quality bus service connecting its railway station in the city downtown with Noi Bai Airport.
The unsubsidized route, numbered 86, runs 33 kilometers from Hanoi Railway Station in Dong Da District to the international airport. Tickets cost VND30,000 (US$1.30) a person.
The new buses are each designed with 25 seats, but there is enough space for a maximum of 80 passengers and luggage.
Hanoi Transport Service Corporation, which operates the route, said the service will start from 6:18 a.m. to 11 p.m. There will be one bus every 25-30 minutes.
Hanoi has been operating two other bus routes connecting the airport with Hoan Kiem and Cau Giay Districts, at subsidized fares of less than half a dollar.

The new bus has a lot of space for luggage.
Officials in the city said the new service is another effort to revive the enthusiasm for public transport, which has been losing popularity compared to motorbikes. Many bus passengers are unhappy with how often the bulky vehicles get stuck in heavy traffic.
Buses were a common means of transport in Hanoi in the 2000s. But it has continued losing popularity, after reaching its peak in 2012 with 416 million travelers.
A new report said bus passengers in the first quarter dropped 14 percent from a year ago to 82 million. The number last year was down 7.5 percent from 2014.

[jackbl]

Tourists recall unpleasant incidents from Hoi An Ancient Town

Recent trips to Hoi An Ancient Town have not been what some local holidaymakers have expected, with several writing to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper and recalling unpleasant incidents they have experienced at the famed World Heritage Site.

Hoi An, a beautiful small town in the central province of Quang Nam, was recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999. While the ancient town has long been known for its honest tourism, several Vietnamese tourists have recently warned of dishonest traders there.
One Tuoi Tre reader named L.P. said people should be aware of a woman called Hoang, who forces tourists to buy her floating candles at exorbitant prices.
Releasing floating candles stored in paper flowers onto the Hoai River is among the most popular cultural activities in Hoi An.
According to an email sent by P., Hoang approaches tourists and begins moaning about her hard life, begging them to buy her candles. Then, without the tourists’ agreement, Hoang starts releasing the floating candles into the river, and forces her customers to open their wallets.

P. had to pay VND80,000 (US$3.5) for five candles he did not want, he said. He initially gave the woman VND10,000, which is the usual price for the service, but she rejected and angrily insisted on receiving VND80,000.
The upset tourist had no choice but to give her the money. “It is not about the hefty price I had to pay, but the dishonesty of the woman that angered me,” he said.

Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporter went undercover as a tourist to the area, and had the same experience with Hoang as P.
Hoang again started to lament her life and cried even harder when the Tuoi Tre reporter asked how much her candles cost. The woman then forced the correspondent to release five floating candles to the river.
When asked about the price, she said “this is a good deed so you can pay whatever you want.” However, when the reporter gave her VND10,000 as per the correct price, Hoang started swearing and demanded that she receive at least VND30,000.

Tuoi Tre has verified that Hoang is in fact Dang Thi K., a local resident, and that her dog’s life is totally made up.
Another Tuoi Tre reader has also complained that the boat services taking tourists along the Hoai River to nearby craft villages and local attractions are charging unfixed prices, with boat owners swearing at customers in rejection of their offers.
“This is not what I expect to see at a World Heritage Site,” the reader, hailing from a southern province, wrote. “This is totally unlike the friendly and peaceful Hoi An I have heard of before.”
Tuoi Tre visited the tourist wharf on Bach Dang Street, where more than 50 boats of different sizes are docked, waiting for customers.
Whenever a tourist walks past the wharf, they will be besieged by a number of people, inviting them to board their boats with no official prices.
One boat owner named T., who has eight tourist boats, charged a group of fewer than ten people VND200,000 ($8.9) for a trip to two craft villages, and VND300,000 ($13.4) if there were more than ten passengers.
V., who runs more than ten boats, offered a price of VND100,000 per person per hour for tourists, with a different price for locals. The time tourists have to wait for the boat to be fully loaded is also included, adding to the feeling of being ripped off, they told Tuoi Tre.
“The prices are negotiable because the government has not set any official fare,” V. said.

[jackbl]

Vietnam eases liquid restriction for domestic flights

Passengers traveling within Vietnam are now permitted to take on board an unlimited volume of liquids and gels as the country has eased its restriction.
Under a new circular issued by the transport ministry that went into effect on May 1, passengers on domestic flights are allowed to bring liquids, aerosols and gels in their carry-on luggage with no limitation on volume and container size.
Passengers of course will still have to abide by airlines' regulations on cabin luggage size.

The liquid restriction remains unchanged for international flights. Passengers to and from outside Vietnam are allowed to carry no more than one liter of liquids, aerosols and gels in total in their carry-on luggage, with each of their containers no larger than 100 ml.

The limit is not applied to baby formula and food for children who fly with their parents, nor to prescription medicine.

[ParaParaSakura]

Please click one of the Quick Reply icons in the posts above to activate Quick Reply.
bro ,system show i up you before .take care ,next time

[jackbl]

Out of place: The increasingly bad reputation of Vietnamese tourists

More Vietnamese people are able to afford a holiday. But that is not always a good thing, at least according to industry insiders.
The number of Vietnamese tourists grew sharply by 48 percent to 57 million last year, including more than 6 million people who traveled abroad. This fast-growing market has brought both big gains and big problems.
At a meeting held by the Vietnam Tourism Association in Hanoi on Thursday, industry insiders did not mince words, describing the behavior of many tourists as "shameful" and "awful."

One of the most vocal critics, Nguyen Van My, director of Ho Chi Minh City-based Lua Viet Tours, even came with a long list of Vietnamese tourists' bad habits in public places, particularly when they are abroad.
"They dress inappropriately, they talk and curse loudly, they spit and litter, and they steal and overstay," My said.
"Our reputation has been tainted," he said.
Nguyen Tien Dat, deputy director of Transviet Travel, said he felt "ashamed" on many occasions when leading overseas trips as a guide.

"Let's not follow the steps of Chinese tourists who have money to spend but are not respected," Dat said.
He pointed out how infamous Chinese tourists have become, following a recent viral clip that showed a group of them using plates to scoop up food at a buffet in Bangkok.


Solutions?
The tourism association will soon publish an official pamphlet with 30 dos and don'ts that Vietnamese tourists can find useful when traveling to a foreign country. Most are just simple rules about queuing, saying sorry and thank you, or tipping.

Dat said real-life situations have showed that tourists' bad behavior could be positively altered when tour guides took a more active role.
Trinh Le Anh, a lecturer at the tourism department of Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, agreed, saying that Vietnamese tourists behave badly because they lack guidance and information.
Ha Van Sieu, deputy chief of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, on the other hand, was among participants who believed the most important thing is education. He said such rules need to be taught at school and even young children should know them.

Others said guidance alone is not enough, arguing that punishment is needed.
When a tourist is discovered misbehaving, they should be banned from going abroad and their tour operators must be punished too, a representative of a Ho Chi Minh City-based traveled company said.

[jackbl]

Hanoi restaurant faces fine for putting waitresses in bikinis


Hanoi authorities are considering a fine against a restaurant for putting women in swimwear to serve drinks to customers after several photos of the waitresses went viral.

To Van Dong, director of Hanoi Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said his agency will announce a strong punitive measure, adding that the act was “against Vietnam's traditional culture and fine customs."
Images of the waitresses at the restaurant on Tran Thai Tong Street spread on social networks early this week. The waitresses can be seen serving beer and sitting next to the customers. The photos are believed to be taken on Sunday.
Lam, the restaurant manager, confirmed that the photos had been taken at his restaurant.

However, he claimed that the women were hired by Saigon Beer-Alcohol-Beverage JSC (Sabeco) to promote and boost sales of its own products.
He said most of the so-called "promotion girls" were wearing formal clothes except for a few.

“The ones in bikinis were here for only one or two minutes. We asked them to cancel the promotional campaign after seeing how they were dressed,” he said.
Truong Van Tuan, director of Sabeco’s northern branch, rejected the claim, saying his company had never run such a campaign at the restaurant.
Earlier on May 6, Hanoi cultural inspectors issued a fine of VND40 million (US$1,795) against an electronics store for using women in swimwear to promote its business.

The managers of Tran Anh electronics store claimed that they were only filming "sex education videos."

[jackbl]

Couple arrested for trafficking Vietnamese women into Malaysia sex ring

Authorities in the southern province of Tay Ninh have arrested a Vietnamese woman and her Malaysian boyfriend for allegedly trafficking nine women to Malaysia to do sex work.

Police said Nguyen Kim Ngan, 26 and Kim Eng Hoe, 39 found and sold Vietnamese women to a prostitution ring in Kuala Lumpur run by a Malay man known as Banh. They were paid VND3-4 million per woman, police said.
Ngan, who had done sex work at a Kuala Lumpur bar since 2013, returned to Vietnam with her boyfriend in 2014, seeking young women for Banh.
She promised the victims high-paid jobs as waitresses in beer clubs and massage parlors.

But investigators said when the women arrived in Kuala Lumpur, they had their passports taken away by Kim and forced into the prostitution ring.
Those who tried to resist would be tortured, the victims said. They have all been rescued.

Banh is still at large.
Sex work is illegal in both Malaysia and Vietnam.

[jackbl]

Vietnamese drink 1 billion liters of beer in 4 months

Brewers in Vietnam produced more than a billion liters of beer in January-April, mostly for domestic consumption, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Production was up 5.8 percent over last year, VnExpress quoted a ministry report as saying, while per capita consumption in the country of 90 million has been 11.1 liters in four months.
But br$$$$$es’ profits fell as special consumption tax increased from 50 percent to 55 percent this year. It will continue to increase to 65 percent by 2018.
Le Hong Xanh, board member of Saigon Beer-Alcohol-Beverage Joint Stock Corporation (Sabeco), said, “This will affect profit and increase beer prices,” adding that Sabeco – known for its Saigon Beer – is considering increasing prices.

Vietnam is among the leading countries in beer consumption a glass of beer is often available for a mere 50 US cents.
In related news, the Vietnam Association of Financial Investors has recommended that the government should sell its stakes in Sabeco and Hanoi Beer and Beverage Company (Habeco) totally worth around US$3 billion at current prices.

The government owns 90 percent of Sabeco and 82 percent of Habeco.
In 2014 Thai Beverage, owned by billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, offered to buy the stocks of Sabeco from the government for $2 billion.
Denmark’s Carlsberg Br$$$$$es owns 17.23 percent of Habeco and is seeking to raise its stakes to more than 30 percent in the Hanoi-based brewer.
Sabeco has a 46 percent beer market share and Habeco, 17.3 percent.

[ET]

i very disappointed with viet liao :(

[jackbl]

i very disappointed with viet liao :(

Difficult to learn and not easy to master?

[FireShark]

i very disappointed with viet liao :(

Why are you disappointed with Viet?

[ET]

Difficult to learn and not easy to master?
i not saying the language lah faint :rolleyes:

Why are you disappointed with Viet?
bo heart :rolleyes:

[FireShark]

bo heart :rolleyes:

You are just the unlucky one. `

[jackbl]

bo heart :rolleyes:

Go relax & destress. Don't treat it too serious lor....

[ET]

You are just the unlucky one. `

Go relax & destress. Don't treat it too serious lor....
i do so many things for her u know and i even rom with her but this time she go back vn she changed i wechat her she block me i also don't know why :(

[FireShark]

i do so many things for her u know and i even rom with her but this time she go back vn she changed i wechat her she block me i also don't know why :(

Bro;

Care to share your story. You even ROM with her in Singapore? How long you know her

[jackbl]

Vietnamese excuses: Five things at once

Getting my students to remember and hand in homework is like trying to find an empty road in Vietnam. A noble ambition with little chance of success, yet when it happens, it’s like a dream.
The reason is a 50/50 combination of lousy time management skills, never checking their emails for homework and the education system’s love of exams; endless, pointless, impractical exams.
There’s also the problem of Vietnam’s cultural demands on its people too. “Gotta do something for my mum, have to attend a funeral, my best friend’s cousin’s aunt’s sister who is my great-grandmother is getting married” – it’s no wonder that coffee, the black energy booster that delivers nightmares at 2:00 am, makes such good money in such a perpetually exhausted population, that also runs on Mayan time!
Money, of course, doesn’t help either. Everyone tears around the streets on the way to make a dollar, in-between school, family obligations and next week’s rent payment. “Teacher, I can’t come to class today, I have to help my mum sell flowers” – of course, you’re the daughter – you’re cheaper to hire than giving a job to some poor, undeserving slob!
It’s the idea of NOT doing things properly that gets me. Raised in the strict educational code of Australia, my expectations of ‘on time’, ‘prepared’ and ‘what I asked for’ are as meaningless here as a garbage bin on a Vung Tau beach on a summer long weekend.
My foolishly misguided and wildly ambitious projects to get the Vietnamese organized become an endless series of schemes based on my rules and deadlines. Homework arrives five minutes before students trundle into class and the internet shark gets the blame for everything – “Oh, I didn’t get that email.” Well, if you got off the phone long enough at 11:00 pm while exchanging selfies, you’d find it marked under “Stivi: subject: homework from two weeks ago.”
In a way, it often seems like an analogy: what happens in my classroom goes on in real life as well. “Check your homework for mistakes before you hand it in to me” becomes ‘Teacher – I had no time! I have to prepare for a test tomorrow!” Now that’s usually horribly true but why, oh why can’t they take five minutes to check?
You see this everywhere in Vietnam – roads built at breakneck speed with no-one checking the quality of the work. There are a thousand deadly hazards on the roads with no warning signs or a cover plate – or the local make-do, a tree branch sticking up out of a pothole. How about the English textbooks where every fifth page contains a basic grammar mistake?
If I ask for 300 words, double spaced, typed in Microsoft word and sent via email for an IELTS essay practice, I’m as likely to receive a crumpled A4 page with writing that I have to read under a microscope with no paragraphs and a chain of thought that’s worse than a traffic roundabout in Ho Chi Minh City. Excuse? “My dad took the laptop to work.” Really? I thought you had three laptops in the house or does your dad borrow that Range Rover to drive to work?
Again, the analogy. They know what should be done but somehow expect me to accept a poorer alternative. Ever ordered at a restaurant but received something not quite what you expect? It becomes a habitual breaking of rules and standards that spreads across the culture like a bad summer flu.
I explain to my students the consequences. What if a pilot didn’t learn his skills properly? What if a doctor failed to give a full report? What if an engineer changed the standard to something he fancies – just because he can? Blank faces stare at me because the penalties are so light it doesn’t matter much – unless your parents are involved – then you’re in trouble!
You can find the same scenarios played out across the country as people escape serious punishment for traffic accidents or putting others lives at risks. People using airplane exit doors comes to mind... or jumping from a burning ship without life jackets or instructions.
It’s terrible, right? However it does get better... even if it is as slowly as an old lady pushing her street cart across three lanes of traffic. The hope does rest with the young – they are getting the idea. Mind you, I am losing my mind and drinking too much Larue at 9:00 pm from the strain of installing practical common sense and an ability to think out cause and effect.
Occasionally my brightest and most sensible students hand in work that matches my teachers bucket list and I’m in seventh heaven, saluting the stars with a cold beer in the late evening and believing that I’m changing the world. In the real world, progress happens too, for example they’ve just placed new traffic barriers near my school. Now I don’t have to wince every time I’m heading back to Hoi An in the evening.
In the real world, disaster, tragedy and plain stupidity seem to rule. In my classroom we plan for the future and struggle to get it all right. Somewhere between reality and education there is improvement and that’s what I believe in. To keep asking for better, to highlight the wrongs and offer solutions to those who need to learn.
Although there will always be someone who cheats or is lazy, the goal should always be to create greater numbers of people who DO care and work hard to get things right.
And somewhere, the homework handed in correctly becomes the person who thinks and cares enough to make Vietnam a better place for all of us.

[HC NEWBIRD]

Vietnamese excuses: Five things at once



BRO,

Returned my LUCKY 88888888.

[jackbl]

What makes bun cha a Hanoi must-try that Obama ate for dinner?

What makes bun cha, the Vietnamese dish which U.S. President Barack Obama had for dinner on his first night in the Vietnamese capital on Monday, a delicacy of Hanoi people?

Popular in the northern region of Vietnam in general and in the Vietnamese capital in particular for its taste and simplicity, bun cha is a dish made from very simple ingredients.

It is comprised of two main simple parts, bun (white rice noodles) and cha (grilled pork and meatballs), and always served with vegetables and dipping sauce made from fish sauce, carrot and green papaya.
A combo of bun cha could also be complete with an optional dish of nem cua be (crab spring rolls).

A classical meal
Becoming a favorite of many northerners, the dish could be found everywhere in Hanoi from an outlet on the sidewalk, a storefront, or a stall at a market to a restaurant, and is easy to be made at home as well.
Being favored by Vietnamese people, the noodle dish has also become a choice for many tourists coming to the country, and been recommended by travel and cuisine sites.

Last year, a story about street food in Vietnam of The New York Times mentioned bun cha as “a classic Hanoi meal of charcoal-grilled pork slices and pork patties, served over thin noodles.”

According to the author of the piece, the Bun Cha Nem Cua Be Dac Kim storefront, a one-dish joint in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, is “where phenomenally flavorful grilled meat arrived hot and juicy, and the dipping options included a mountain of pepper-spiked garlic, along with fish-sauce-based condiments.”
In 2014, the dish was chosen as the world’s best street food by the internationally-renowned National Geographic Travel website.
The selection was made based on comments from National Geographic Travel’s Facebook fans, who were asked to share the best lip-smacking street eats they had sampled around the globe.
Earlier in 2011, bun cha was listed among the top 40 delicious Vietnamese dishes by CNN Travel.

“Pho might be Vietnam’s most famous dish but bun cha is the top choice when it comes to lunchtime in the capital,” the site said.
Hanoi’s most famous bun cha outlet is at 1 Hang Manh in Hoan Kiem District, according to CNN Travel.

Other famous and long-time outlets for bun cha in the capital include Bun Cha Duy Diem at 140 Ngoc Khanh Street in Ba Dinh District, Bun Cha Sinh Tu at 8 Ta Quang Buu Street in Hai Ba Trung District, Bun Cha 34 at 34 Hang Than Street in Hoan Kiem District, and Bun Cha Huong Lien where President Obama and renowned American chef Anthony Bourdain stopped by on Monday at 24 Le Van Huu Street in Hai Ba Trung District.


The southern version

With the dish’s popularity spread, it is not a surprise to know that the Hanoi delicacy has made its way to Vietnam’s most crowded city, Ho Chi Minh City.
Like in Hanoi, it is also easy to find a combo of bun cha everywhere in the southern metropolis, which has been known as a place of cuisine thanks to its convergence of foods from many parts of the country.

According to some diners, bun cha was first sold in Ho Chi Minh City when some people moved to the southern hub from the capital city and wanted to make the dish to remember their hometown.
One of the reasons that make bun cha enthusiastically embraced by southerners is that it is quite similar to a southern dish called bun thit nuong (rice noodles with grilled meat).

An interesting thing which diners may find when stepping into several bun cha storefronts in Ho Chi Minh City is that they have the same style with stainless steel sets of tables and chairs, and serve the same type of Hanoi’s iconic soft drinks and desserts like Trang Tien ice cream, dracontomelon and apricot water besides the famous bun cha.

Some of the most well-known places for bun cha in Ho Chi Minh City include Bun Cha Hoa Dong at 121 Ly Tu Trong Street in District 1, Bun Cha Ho Guom at 135 Vo Van Tan Street in District 3, Bun Cha Anh Hong at 140b Ly Chinh Thang in District 3, Bun Cha Dong Xuan at B92 Bach Dang Street in Tan Binh District, and Bun Cha Xuan Tu at 291A Hoang Van Thu Street in Tan Binh District.
In February last year, American food blogger Mark Wiens also listed bun cha one of the 25 Vietnamese must-try dishes recommended by him after his trip to Ho Chi Minh City.

“It wasn’t as good as I remember in Hanoi, but it was still pretty tasty and definitely worth eating,” he wrote.

[jackbl]

OP-ED: The problem with Vietnam's vomitoriums



On a recent Thursday evening, a team of young professionals from a multinational e-commerce firm decided to celebrate a long week by heading to the Vuvuzela Beer Club on Nguyen Binh Khiem Street.
At around 11pm, in the chaos of laughter and music, someone spun around and smashed a mug over the heads of two young men for apparently no reason.
Vuvuzela's management accompanied the victims to a nearby emergency room and watched nurses pick bits of glass out of one's scalp and sew the other up.
The perpetrator, whom no one saw, fled without being arrested.
Everyone in their party was shocked by the incident.
I can't say I was.
Those two young men weren't assaulted. They were beer clubbed.
The rise of beer clubs
When I got to Ho Chi Minh City four years ago, people primarily drank bottles of what Garret Oliver called “the worst beer in the world” at sidewalk restaurants that served the best food in the world.
And life was fine.
Last year, a series of beer clubs began cropping up in town, faster than anyone could really notice them.
Among the most prominent and successful is a chain called Vuvuzela –whose name incidentally contains two of the Vietnamese words for “tit.”
The chain's business model involved slapping skimpy shirts and orange short-shorts on girls from the countryside, then having them hawk towers of beer to packed tables of stressed-out young professionals.
Apparently, it's exactly what Ho Chi Minh City wants at this moment in its history.
Caligula goes to Hooters
In the year since its debut here, Vuvuzela has opened six locations in town.
The Golden Gate Group, which owns Vuvuzela and other restaurants, has reportedly grown from 5 to 67 restaurants nationwide.
Their investors have enjoyed more than a 900% return on their multi-million dollar investments since 2008; Standard Chartered just shelled out $35 million for a stake in the group.
Despite the fact that all of Vuvuzela's locations are cavernous, I'm told you can't get a table, any night of the week, without a reservation.
On a recent Tuesday, I went to the Nguyen Binh Khiem club (the scene of the crime) at noon and stayed put.
By 6pm, a din of V-Pop and office worker chatter had rendered conversation impossible.
The atmosphere walked a thin line between an Orange County Hooters and a scene from Gore Vidal's Caligula.
The menu, for example, contained corn chips and a whole fried turtle; slow pans of girls in lingerie and bikinis played on omnipresent TV monitors, while top-40s music boomed in the background.
Game Over
Things got particularly weird in the bathroom, which featured a sleek row of urinals behind a two-way mirror that allowed men to watch other people gorge while they peed.
The bathroom's most dumbfounding feature was a dramatically lit sink with a wide, open drain.
A sign featuring a person crawling toward a toilet and the words "Game Over" hung over it.
Later, I had a conversation with Diep, the lady responsible for mopping up whatever doesn't make it into the sink for $175 a month.
While we spoke, a young waiter walked in and guessed that around 20 Vuvuzela customers throw up every night. He was soon followed by Diep's 14-year old son who delivered his mom's dinner.
Diep claimed she couldn't afford to send him to school.
“That's a lot of hardship,” I said.
“It's a lot of shit!” she answered.
Puke and rally
Vuvuzela's 23-year old day manager, Tuan Anh, attributed the restaurant's need for puke sinks to the popular practice of making friends drink more than they can hold.
“I myself can only drink two bottles before I have to join them [at the vomit sink],” he said.
They were created, according to Tuan Anh, to prevent people from washing their hands in a sink full of puke.
The Golden Gate Group did not respond to a list of question--the most pressing of which was: what percentage of Vuvuzela customers throw up so that they can keep drinking?
“A number of [vomiters] go back to drinking, but just hot tea,” Tuan Anh said. “A number go home. Of course, a number go back and keep on drinking beer.”
Vomit sinks have migrated from fringe drinking establishments to Ho Chi Minh City's new host of middle-class drinking establishments. You probably can't get a table at one--any night of the week--without a reservation.
More fun than America
This conversation set me on a kind of week-long odyssey into the puke-soaked heart of these places.
At an open-air beer club in District 3 called Poc Poc, I encountered a communist-chic mural that read uống có trách nhiệm (drink responsibly) just outside a pair of rest rooms equipped with stainless steel puke bins.
The bins were clearly labeled bồn ói [nôn](“sink” and “puke” in both southern and northern dialect).
An instructional icon of a bathroom man projectile vomiting graced their fronts.
A waiter named Vinh Duy guessed that around seven or eight people use them every night.
A saucy janitor disagreed.
“Lots of people use it!” she said while she checked the receptacles before the dinner rush.
When she heard American bars don't have puke sinks, she scoffed.
“That's because Vietnam's more fun that America!”
Touché.
From whence puke sinks?
These kinds of sinks, I gather, have provided relief to the janitors of quán nhậu places for some time. This past weekend, I found one in the dark corner of a rundown bathroom in Thu Duc--fashioned out of an old metal wash basin and plastic pipes.
Most of the restaurant's customers seemed to prefer throwing up in the urinals.
The week before, I waited an unusually long time to use the bathroom at one of my favorite seafood restaurants—one that happens to serve beer. When a wasted diner finally opened the door I found a surprise waiting in the toilet.
“Ói,” the manager cried to a young man playing on his phone, evoking a long, low sigh.
I get it.
What's in a name?
When I asked my Vietnamese friends what they called these sinks, reactions ranged from “I've never heard of them” to simply “wow.”
Puke sinks have exploded in the tawny core of the city so fast, they don't even have a name yet. The more I looked for them, the more I kept stumbling upon new and terrible beer clubs.
On yet another weeknight, I stopped into the Kingdom Beer Club on Ton Duc Thang.
Girls in cocktail dresses and clunky high-heels wobbled out the front doors like dying bees while others--prim and nervous--stood in a small line waiting to get in.
Inside, a strobe-lit morass of drunk people swirled around taking pictures of itself.

[jackbl]

Hai Trung Quoc 2015 part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO9vneBZ3Tg&list=PLvLbgA9ntIDKEn5XSYl4gPisW7hxR-F3H

[jackbl]

Hai Trung Quoc 2015 part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7MLfjZFCNM&list=PLvLbgA9ntIDKEn5XSYl4gPisW7hxR-F3H

[jackbl]

Caught on camera: shop owner thwarts brazen robbers



Police in Ho Chi Minh City are searching for suspects in a robbery attempts that was foiled when the brave victim fought back.
A video footage capturing the brazen robbery in an eyewear shop on To Hien Thanh St., Dist. 10, was posted on the Internet by members of a vigilante group in HCMC on Friday.

https://youtu.be/upszvMX0NNA


A group member told Thanh Nien the incident took place at 2.30 p.m. on May 17. A man entered the shop asking to buy sunglasses as another suspect waited on a scooter outside.
When the shop owner, a woman who preferred anonymity, was showing him some products, he suddenly held a knife at her throat with one hand and covered her mouth with the other.
After a brief but violent struggle, the suspect snatched the woman's iPhone, rushed out of the shop and tried to escape with his accomplice on their scooter.
The brave shop owner shouted for help and grabbed him, causing the bike to tip over. The two suspects fled on foot, leaving their bike behind.
According to neighbors, the two robbers, assisted by two other men armed with knives, managed to escape.
The shop owner was shocked but not injured.
According to the police, the vehicle left by the suspects had been reported stolen earlier the same day in the same district.

[FireShark]

Caught on camera: shop owner thwarts brazen robbers



https://youtu.be/upszvMX0NNA

A group member told Thanh Nien the incident took place at 2.30 p.m. on May 17. A man entered the shop asking to buy sunglasses as another suspect waited on a scooter outside.
When the shop owner, a woman who preferred anonymity, was showing him some products, he suddenly held a knife at her throat with one hand and covered her mouth with the other.
After a brief but violent struggle, the suspect snatched the woman's iPhone, rushed out of the shop and tried to escape with his accomplice on their scooter.
.

The lady owner also quite daring; I wonder wat if the robber give her a stab from behind

[jackbl]

Hai Trung Quoc 2015 part 3:

https://youtu.be/p_wON7BwQTM

[jackbl]

Hai Trung Quoc 2015 summary

https://youtu.be/crE4PqlHJ8U

[jackbl]

The lady owner also quite daring; I wonder wat if the robber give her a stab from behind

Moroccan man knifed while fighting off robbers in Saigon

A Moroccan man was stabbed several times while he was fighting two men who had snatched his wife's purse in Ho Chi Minh City, police said.
The man, identified only as Rachid, 34, was rushed to Cho Ray Hospital with injuries in his chest and forehead. The police are searching for the two robbers.
According to the police report, Rachid's wife Tran Thi Thu Trang was walking into an apartment building in Tan Binh Dist. at 8 p.m. when the two men, who wore face masks and raincoats, approached her on motorbike and snatched her purse.
As Rachid was chasing the robbers on foot, one of them attacked him with a pointed object, the police said.
Many other local people joined the chase but the robbers managed to escape.
Trang later found her purse in a street nearby, but she said two smart phones and some money that she had kept in the purse were gone.
Rachid's condition is stable, doctors said.

[Mito]

Moroccan man knifed while fighting off robbers in Saigon

A Moroccan man was stabbed several times while he was fighting two men who had snatched his wife's purse in Ho Chi Minh City, police said.
The man, identified only as Rachid, 34, was rushed to Cho Ray Hospital with injuries in his chest and forehead. The police are searching for the two robbers.
According to the police report, Rachid's wife Tran Thi Thu Trang was walking into an apartment building in Tan Binh Dist. at 8 p.m. when the two men, who wore face masks and raincoats, approached her on motorbike and snatched her purse.
As Rachid was chasing the robbers on foot, one of them attacked him with a pointed object, the police said.
Many other local people joined the chase but the robbers managed to escape.
Trang later found her purse in a street nearby, but she said two smart phones and some money that she had kept in the purse were gone.
Rachid's condition is stable, doctors said.

Bro, return you 10 points.

[jackbl]

Foreigner falls victim to another robbery by fake cop in Ho Chi Minh City

The Ho Chi Minh City police are looking for a man suspected to have impersonated a police officer to steal an American tourist’s bag.
Kumar Bloomstein, 23, was riding a motorbike in District 2 Thursday afternoon when a man approached him, introduced himself as a criminal investigator and said he suspected Bloomstein was involved with drugs.
He ordered the American to come along to a police station, and when they approached one on Mai Chi Tho Street, the man told Bloomstein to leave his bag and go fetch his passport to prove he was in Vietnam legally.
The tourist went to his hotel in District 1, but when he returned the man had disappeared with his bag, which contained two tablets and a camera.
The robbery happened two days after a German tourist was robbed in a similar manner in the same area.
The police have not arrested the suspect in the first case yet, and it is still not clear if it was just the same person.
Vietnam’s tourism market has seen a strong recovery this year, with a 20 percent increase in foreign arrivals in the first five months.
Ho Chi Minh City hopes to welcome 5.1 million foreign visitors this year, up from 4.7 million last year, but safety issues could make that goal hard to achieve.

[jackbl]

20 Vietnamese women ran from Malaysian husbands, took children: report

Authorities in Malaysia are looking for 20 Vietnamese women who reportedly left their husbands in Malaysia and might have returned to Vietnam with their children.
Michael Chong, Public Complaints Bureau Chief at the Malaysian Chinese Association, said at a press conference Monday that there has been no trace of the women or their children in Malaysia.
Chong said, as cited by Free Malaysia Today, that Vietnam Foreign Affairs director Le Phu Hoa has agreed to try to locate the women and children.
But he said all search efforts will be made on “humanitarian grounds.”
“We understand the importance of a mother’s love, so we will not side with anyone and will not attempt to separate mother and child. We only want to bring them together so they can discuss among themselves how best to resolve the issue,” he said.
The children are Malaysian citizens, he added.
He said many of the women were married to Malaysian men via matchmaking agents who charged between RM18,000 and RM25,000 (US$4,400-6,100).
Many of the women could have run away because their husbands are too old, Chong said.
His unit plans to seek support from Vietnamese media as well as the matchmakers.

[jackbl]

A helping hand in Vietnam

Pushing someone’s motorbike with your foot while riding your own is a very common activity in Vietnam. Although it’s scary when you wobble toward and then away from each other, when you turn that corner in unison, it feels like you’ve achieved some kind of amazing circus talent!
Generally, you know each other, but I’ve also seen folks stop to give others a helping hand when they’ve run out of gas or something mechanical has gone wrong. Strange that in a country that has thousands of gas stations and a million households selling petrol by the roadside, so many people forget to fill the bike before whizzing to the market!
Over my eight (soon to be nine) years in Vietnam, I’m still grateful for those little acts of kindness the Vietnamese do, for their own people as well as us foreigners. I can’t remember how many times a local has stopped to pick me up off the ground after some evil taxi Nazi or a kamikaze shuttle bus driver has run me off the road.
My best friend in Vietnam, Hong Le, a brilliant, funny and glamorous housewife, along with her husband, Kien, have dragged me out of more bad spots than I can remember. I remember how she reacted with horror when the local hospital charged me 600,000 dong for headache pills and bandages when I crushed my foot under my motorbike four years ago.
Another time they took me to Hoan My Hospital in Da Nang in their own car when I became debilitatingly ill. Hong has also taken it upon herself to help me find teaching work sometimes and like all good friends, she sometimes had to ‘tell me off’ when I was doing the wrong thing or about to do something stupid.
I remember a young fellow in Da Nang who spent an entire afternoon guiding me around the city, with no English, on his motorbike, as I tried to find bookshops, tool shops and furniture places. It was a cold day and this kid didn’t accept any money, and wouldn’t let me buy him a hot coffee – he just smiled and zoomed off into the traffic.
One cold, wet night I blew a tire near Marble Mountain, a local tourist spot half way between Da Nang and Hoi An. It was very late and the roads were deserted except for the lights of the locked up marble showrooms. One security guy – albeit with no uniform or attitude about him – waved me under the wide roof of the showroom driveway. Inside five minutes he’d got a friend to drop by and fix my wheel with his personal repair kit – again no money was accepted.
There have also been many times my students or local neighbors have ‘pitched in’ to help too. During Typhoons Ketsana and Haiyan, my neighbors banged on my doors after midnight to check that I was OK. The wind at that time was so strong that I couldn’t open my door despite putting my whole weight on it! We all worked together afterward clearing the street, me in my expensive shoes and my neighbors in soaked old sandals!
I often remember these kind acts when I stop to help the ladies on their old bikes, collecting rubbish and cardboard when their delicately balanced piles of paper and plastic bottles tumble over when the traffic is rough or they lose their balance trying to get moving again. Frequently I give them some rubber straps I keep in my bike storage and stand holding the pile of cardboard upright as she wraps the stuff in seven dimensions.

I’ve met dozens of university students who do charity drives or raise money for local people too. It’s not a bad way to socialize and help others out at the same time.
We’re lucky as foreigners to meet these people. I can’t tell you anymore how charitable or kind people are back in my home country of Australia, if I was to judge from the media there. In our Western world, people are separated by the lifestyles they lead and the inherent fear of strangers. The willingness to stop and help seems lost sometimes or backfires on the helper.
I hope that you have some good Vietnamese memories like I do. It’s nice to know that even though I live amongst strangers, I can depend on people not acting like strangers when the need is there.

[jackbl]

Opportunity most important factor for people to return to work in Vietnam

Editor’s note: Singaporean doctor Ong Kian Soon has talked with Tuoi Tre News about his thoughts on Vietnamese people working and studying overseas returning to work in their homeland.
His opinion was shared following the story of 29-year-old Vietnamese-born American doctor Tran Hoang Minh, who has opted to return to Vietnam and work in a low-paid public hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.
Minh began his job in the emergency ward of Go Vap District Hospital last July.

Good time to return
To work overseas after studying or to come back to Vietnam to work is largely a personal decision. A lot depends on the opportunities that are available to the student at the time of graduation so it is different for everyone.
Nevertheless, I think now is a good time for Vietnamese working or studying overseas to come back to work because Vietnam seems to be at the early stage of exponential growth in the economy and industry.
In the long run, how one's career develops depends a lot on how the country and the economy progress and it helps to be in a country that is growing rapidly.
Unlike Vietnam, many places in the developed world have much worse growth prospects. Hence, I suspect that young people who are starting their careers today will find much more opportunity for a satisfying career in Vietnam versus other developed countries.

Patriotism and compassion are all valid factors but opportunity seems to me the most important of all for people to return to work here. Remuneration, while important, should never be the only consideration. Job satisfaction and opportunities for career advancement are also important considerations.
From the people I know who have come back to Vietnam to work, the opportunities available to them here far exceed the difficulties that they have faced while transitioning.

My Vietnamese wife has a Master’s in Healthcare Management and had worked in Singapore until recently when we moved to Ho Chi Minh City. Both of us were keen in the beginning to be in Vietnam. I am a Family Physician and my goal in coming to Vietnam was to develop the field of Family Medicine in Ho Chi Minh City. In fact, I may have been more eager than my wife to be here.
I am sure difficulties will be faced by anyone when they move from one place to another to live or work. Most people will recognize that and I am sure most will take these difficulties in their stride.
There is also the issue of the cost of living. I think Vietnam's cost of living is very favorable compared with many other countries!
Most of my Singaporean friends who have studied overseas are required to return back to Singapore to serve national service or have contractual obligations to return by the companies or the government who provided the money for them to study. Hence, they have no choice but to return to serve their country. In a sense, Vietnamese students who study overseas are much luckier as they have a choice to return or not.

Improving education, healthcare to support people who are back

Among the most important concerns of people who live and work in Vietnam, education and healthcare remain near the top of the list. I am sure the people who previously lived and studied overseas and are used to levels of education and healthcare in developed countries will share these concerns.
Improving access to education and healthcare will go a long way to support people to return and contribute to the country.
Salary is another major incentive but at the moment the difference in salary between Vietnam and developed countries is too big. People who are attracted to a higher salary will never be interested in coming back to Vietnam. Those that do come back in spite of a far lower salary are a unique group of people and I feel that these are not the types that are primarily motivated by money alone.

[jackbl]

Three Vietnamese women jailed for sex trafficking of minor

A Can Tho court has handed down jail terms of 10-12 years to three women for trafficking a 15-year-old Vietnamese girl for sex in Malaysia last year.
Pham Thi Hanh got 11 years, Nguyen Thi Thuy Trang, 12 years and Trang’s mother, Vo Thi Beo, 10 years, all for child trafficking, according to the ruling by Can Tho People’s Court on Thursday.
According to the indictment, Trang, 30, moved to Malaysia in 2005 and worked as a manager of a local bar.
She met Hanh, 40, at the bar in 2014 and they planned to bring Vietnamese girls to Malaysia to work as sex workers.
In 2015, Hanh returned to Vietnam and offered a 15-year-old girl from Can Tho, identified only as N, a job as a waitress for a coffee shop in Malaysia. N said she was promised a monthly salary of VND5 million ($210).
Trang then asked her mother Beo, 62 to take N to Malaysia by bus through Cambodia and Thailand.
In Malaysia, N refused to work as a sex worker and Trang demanded that N's family pay VND20 million to bring her home.
N’s family agreed to pay Trang but also reported to the police.
Trang was arrested on July 14, 2015 in Ho Chi Minh City when she was taking N home.
Investigators also found evidence indicating that Trang and Hanh had sent five other Can Tho women to Malaysia to work as sex workers, including Hanh’s daughter.

[jackbl]

Man arrested for pretending to be cop to rob foreigners in Ho Chi Minh City

Police in Ho Chi Minh City have arrested a man accused of impersonating police officers and robbing at least seven foreign tourists.
Dang Tuan Thanh, 21, has admitted to the robberies, saying that he approached the victims and asked them to hand over their bags for investigation. He would then run away with the tourists' belongings.
Police said Thanh used to work as a xe om motorbike taxi driver in the city’s backpackers area, where he managed to learn English.
They have received reports from four victims since late last month.
In the latest case, Lee Sie Zan, a 31-year-old Malaysian tourist, was robbed on June 7 afternoon in District 7.
Zan said Thanh, in a police uniform, stopped him on Hung Gia Street before presenting a red card and asking to check his bag.
Then he fled with the bag, which contained a tablet and a cell phone worth around VND13 million.
Three other tourists from German, Japan and the US fell victims to similar tricks between May 26 and June 2, all in District 2.

Police arrested Thanh last Friday at his rented house in District 7. They also seized many bags he robbed from tourists and a fake police card that said "Police Office on Drug Crime."
The man used the money for drugs, police said.
Vietnam’s tourism market has seen a strong recovery this year, with a 20 percent increase in foreign arrivals in the first five months. But the lack of security remains a big challenge to the industry.

[jackbl]

Teen girl rescued from sex ring in central Vietnam

Police in the central province of Nghe An have rescued a 14-year-old girl who was tricked into a brothel and just about to be forced to serve a client.
They started looking for her on May 18 after her mother reported that she had gone missing for three days, An Ninh Thu Do reported.
During the investigation, police found a man who traveled with her on a bus trip to a different district. She also borrowed his cell phone to call her friend to pick her up.
Police tracked that friend down to a coffee shop at a beach town owned by Cao Thi Ha.
The officers went into a shop undercover and Ha offered sex services at the price of VND200,000 (US$9) a time.

She pointed to the teen girl that they were looking for and said her price was VND20 million ($900) because she was a virgin.
The officers then arrested Ha.
The teen girl said her friend introduced her into the coffee shop to work as a cleaner during the summer. She said she did not know that it was a sex ring.
Procuring sex with children between 13 and 16 years old is punishable by up to 15 years in jail under Vietnam’s Penal Code.

[jackbl]

Vietnamese personal names generally consist of three parts: a family name, a middle name, and a given name, used in that order. The "family name first" order follows the system of Chinese names and is common throughout the Chinese cultural sphere, but is different from Chinese, Korean, and Japanese names in having a middle name. Persons can be referred to by either the whole name, the given name, or a hierarchic pronoun in normal usage.

Due to the frequency of the major family names such as Nguyễn, Trần, and Lê, a person is often referred to by their middle name along with their given name in Vietnamese media and youth culture.

Family name

The family name, positioned first, is passed on by the father to his children. It is estimated that there are around one hundred family names in common use, although some are far more common than others. The name Nguyễn is estimated to be used by almost 40% of the Vietnamese population. The top three names are so popular because people tended to take the family name of kings, to show their loyalty. Over many generations, the family names became permanent.

The most common family names among the Vietnamese are the following (the Chinese characters following each name are Hán tự).[1] Added together these 14 names account for 90% of the people.

Distribution of Vietnamese family names:

Nguyễn 阮 (38%)
Trần 陳 (11%)
Lê 黎 (9.5%)
Phạm 范 (7.1%)
Huỳnh/Hoàng 黃 (5.1%)
Phan 潘 (4.5%)
Vũ/Võ 武 (3.9%)
Đặng 鄧(2.1%)
Bùi 裴 (2%)
Đỗ 杜 (1.4%)
Hồ 胡 (1.3%)
Ngô 吳 (1.3%)
Dương 楊 (1%)
Lý 李 (0.5%)

[jackbl]

Joke of the day????!!!!!


Burglar breaks into Hanoi police station, takes gun

Police in Hanoi say they are investigating a burglary at one of their stations a week ago in which a gun and a motorbike were taken when all officers were out on duty.
The motorbike belongs to Pham Van Chien, head of Nhi Khe Commune’s police station, local media reported.
He kept a gun and handcuffs in the motorbike's underseat storage.
“All the officers were mobilized to deal with a traffic jam nearby, and they forgot to lock the door,” Chien said of the incident June 8.
District police are looking into the case.

[jackbl]

Only one in ten residents believes Ho Chi Minh City is safe: survey

Only one out of ten respondents to a recent survey believes that Ho Chi Minh City is a safe place to live, with high crime rates seeming to be a huge factor in the dominance of negative feedback.
A Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper contributor conducted a survey of 120 Ho Chi Minh City residents in order to evaluate the city’s security situation, with only 10.8 percent responding with the "safe" remark compared with 45.8 percent of respondents who said they believe the southern metropolis is unsafe.
The surveyed city dwellers were adults residing in District 1, District 2, District 3, District 7, Binh Thanh District, Tan Binh District, and Go Vap District.
Women were more pessimistic about the city’s security than men, accounting for 49.2 percent of the "unsafe" responses, most likely because most crime victims are female.
There were also enormous variations in security optimism by age and residence. The older the respondents were, the more likely they were to give negative feedback with regard to the city’s safety.
Similarly, those living in more central districts, such as District 1 and District 3, feel worse about their safety than those in more distant neighborhoods, such as Go Vap District or Binh Thanh District.
More than a third of respondents said they witnessed at least one street robbery or bag snatching case in the city, with 37.5 percent of those living in central districts, compared to 26.8 percent in remote locations.

Moreover, 17.5 percent of respondents said they were not just eyewitnesses but victims of street crime. More than half of this group of respondents said they felt panic and nervousness after the incident.
“Falling victim to a robber was a frightening feeling,” one of the respondents said. “I felt psychologically hurt to see such brazen robbers in a modern city like Ho Chi Minh City and I am terrified whenever I have to go out in the street.”
In tracking the root of robbery, 57.5 percent of the surveyed residents pointed to other social ills, such as drugs, illegal gambling, and online gaming. Another 52.5 percent of respondents blamed unemployment, and 15 percent believe the lack of surveillance cameras is a contributing factor.
The respondents suggested solutions to curb street crimes, with 55.8 percent recommending imposing tougher penalties on robbers or bag snatchers and 47.5 percent calling for more police crackdowns.
Forty-five percent of the surveyed city dwellers also advised people not to “show off their valuable assets” in public and 43.3 percent recommended people leave their home with “tools to protect themselves." Finally, 41.7 percent proposed “learning some basic self-defense techniques” to stay safe on Ho Chi Minh City streets.
Crime rates modestly shrinking
Curbing crimes is one of the top priorities of Dinh La Thang, secretary of the city’s Party Committee.
On February 18, only a fortnight after the former minister of transport took the new position, Thang requested that Ho Chi Minh City police take steps to reduce crime rates over the next three months.
The city’s police presented the results of the three-month campaign during a meeting with the Standing Committee of the Party Committee on Tuesday.
Le Dong Phong, director of the municipal police department, highlighted at the meeting that criminal offences in March-May dropped 6.83 percent from the same period last year and 5.40 percent from the previous three-month period.
There were fewer cases of robberies, asset snatching and burglaries. Murder cases were also resolved more quickly, contributing safety and security for the city, Phong said.

However, the police chief admitted that these improvements still fail to satisfy both local residents and the police department.
“Despite combating efforts, robberies and thefts are still predominant crimes, frequently occurring in many localities across the city,” Phong said.
Local residents and tourists are still frightened by brazen robberies and sophisticated break-ins, he added.
Phong said the police force will continue their efforts to reduce crimes.
Commenting on the anti-crime campaign, Thang spoke highly of the efforts made by the city’s police, even though the crime rates were only modestly reduced.
“What matters is identifying the reasons why criminals are unfazed by the added police effort,” Thang said.
The party chief then pressed that the fight against criminals should also be viewed under other perspectives, such as economics, society, and education so that the “problems can be solved at their roots.”

[jackbl]

Gambling-mad Vietnamese put their houses on Euro 2016

Football and a flutter go hand-in-hand in Vietnam making Euro 2016 a golden opportunity for fans to enjoy two national obsessions, even for those who have already bet their houses on the beautiful game -- and lost.
Each major football championship is followed by a slew of reports of big wins, losses and suicides that fixate a nation with a particularly deep love for gambling, even though it is outlawed.
Speaking at a small cafe in Hanoi, Nguyen The Hoang recounts an astonishing gambling run during the last European Championship in 2012 that ended up wiping out his fortune.
"Football betting cost me almost half a million dollars," the 58-year-old explains of a bad streak that cost him two homes and a restaurant.
"My wife hates football so much because it ruined our lives," he added.
The father-of-two now washes dishes at a small streetside noodle shop, where his wife prepares bowls of pho that bring in a meagre $10 a day.
But his impecunious new life has not dulled his lust for a gamble, with Euro 2016 no exception.
The bets are now more modest, but Nguyen said he nearly doubled a $20 stake last week by backing England to beat Wales in their group qualifier.
The lure of striking it rich and a culture steeped in superstitions surrounding luck captivate many in a nation where rapid development has unleashed a hunger for new luxuries and larger slices of the economic pie.
Illegal betting typically spikes during major sporting events, such as the World Cup and European Championship, when millions of dollars trade hands and are wired overseas.
Hiding from henchmen
Exact figures are hard to come by. The government has not made any estimate and there has been little academic research on the phenomenon.
However a police operation against an illegal betting ring that was announced by state media earlier this month provided a rare window into the sums involved.
Officials said they had arrested 23 people from a single gang which had taken in a total of $340 million worth of bets over the previous 12 months.
With Euro 2016 in full swing, Hanoi pawnshops are filling up with smartphones, motorbikes, cars and even land certificates as gamblers rustle up cash for the big games -- and to cover heavy losses.
Many are likely to find themselves bankrupt -- or desperately hiding from bookies and their henchmen -- by the tournament's end.
Those who fail to pay face harassment and threats from their creditors, with debt collectors deployed to homes or workplaces.
Vietnam's gambling addicts span the social spectrum from white-collar public servants to students and even professional footballers.
And as usual it is the bookies who always seem to have the last laugh.
On the surface Phuc, a pseudonym, is a law-abiding Hanoi jewellery shop owner.
But in reality, the 55-year-old plies his trade as an illegal gambling agent, earning a one percent commission on all the bets he brokers.
Returns 'too huge'
In an interview with AFP he explained how his syndicate works.
A network of bookies collect cash from punters who pass him the money that is then placed online by "big bosses".
Those bosses, he explains, are connected to illegal syndicates in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
He expects to rake in tens of thousands of dollars during Euro 2016, he told AFP, adding that up the chain the returns will be "too huge" to estimate.
That is thanks to regular punters like Tran Quoc Vinh, whose main source of income for the last 15 years has been gambling.
While he is not a massive football fan, he has had a very successful Euro 2016 so far with his $500 initial stake now worth 10 times more after just a few matches.
By sending a text message or making a quick call, Vinh places bets worth hundreds of dollars within seconds.
His brokers often stump up the cash for him in good faith that he will pay.
"The agents transfer the order up to maybe two or three more levels," Vinh explained, adding that payments are usually settled in the following days.
"Betting is the game of trust. We count on each other to be successful," he said.
In recent years there has been some debate in Vietnam's state media on whether gambling should be legalised, handing the government a potential bonanza in tax takings.
Betting agent Phuc says police crackdowns on the gambling industry will never work.
"There is always demand and that leads to supply," he said grinning.

[jackbl]

Woman arrested for running upscale sex ring in Hanoi

Nguyen Thi Hao, 22, who was arrested by Hanoi police last week for operating a sex ring in the city.
Police in Hanoi on Thursday said they have arrested a 22-year-old woman accused of running a sex ring that targeted wealthy businessmen in the city.
Nguyen Thi Hao was nabbed last week inside a hotel in Bac Tu Liem District, where she arranged for two sex workers to meet their clients.
The sex workers were caught when they were with the two clients, police said, adding that each man paid Hao US$1,000.
The woman said the sex workers received VND5 million ($225) each and she kept the rest.
Hao claimed she started the ring in early June and that she recruited employees at beauty salons and cosmetic shops around the city to work for her.
She then hired a photographer to take pictures of the women and posted them on porn websites and her own Facebook account to lure clients.
Hao added she sometimes did sex work herself when there were many clients.

[jackbl]

The following include some other, less common, surnames, in alphabetical order:

An: 安
Ân: 殷
Bạch: 白
Bành: 彭
Cao: 高
Châu: 周
Chu: 周 or 朱
Chung: 鍾
Chử:褚
Diệp: 葉
Doãn: 尹
Đàm: 譚
Đào: 陶
Đinh: 丁
Đoàn: 段
Giang: 江
Hà: 何
Hàn: 韓
Kiều: 喬
Kim: 金
La: 羅
Lạc: 駱
Lâm: 林
Liễu (in northern or central regions): 柳
Lục: 陸
Lương: 梁
Lưu (in central or southern regions): 劉
Mã: 馬
Mạch: 麥
Mai: 梅
Nghiêm: 嚴
Phí: 费
Phó: 傅
Phùng: 馮
Quách: 郭
Quang: 光
Quyền: 權
Tạ: 謝
Thạch: 石
Thái/Sái: 蔡
Thi: 施
Thân: 伸
Thảo: 草
Thủy: 水
Tiêu: 蕭
Tô: 蘇
Tôn: 孫
Tống: 宋
Trang: 莊
Triệu: 趙
Trịnh: 鄭 (almost exclusively a northern surname, based around Thanh Hóa)
Trương: 張
Văn: 文
Vĩnh: 永
Vương: 王
Vưu: 尤

[Ramirez]

+8 return to you bro jackbl

[jackbl]

Can you find your equivalent surname in Vietnamese?

[lovelyboy]

+8 return to you bro jackbl

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[jackbl]

How Vietnamese youths abuse Singaporean live-streaming service Bigo Live

A new social network featuring live video streaming has become a new platform for Vietnamese youths to showcase their lifestyles, including non-traditional ones, as the world watches on.
At one o’clock in the morning recently, over 6,500 users were on Bigo Live, a live video streaming social network that allows its users to broadcast their activities live via smartphones to their audience of choice, and were still wide awake watching a group of three youths club-dancing for their camera phone.
Out of the blue, a girl in the group nicknamed Trang said, “I’ll flash when the view count reaches 7,000. Hurry up, guys!"
Three minutes later, the girl smiled suggestively and pulled up her shirt to reveal her breasts in front of 7,234 live viewers.
This is only one example of hundreds of sexually explicit live streams broadcast daily on Bigo Live, which has attracted over one million users, most aged 18 to 25, since its launch in Vietnam on May 18, boasting 700,000 active daily users.

Getting high ‘live’
Logging into a chat room on Bigo Live, developed by a Singaporean company, at 20 after midnight last Monday, one Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporter found himself watching a live broadcast of a group getting wasted inside a secluded room.
The camera holder, who identified himself as V. from Ho Chi Minh City, said the group was “eating candies” (a Vietnamese slang term for synthetic drugs).
Over 3,000 viewers watched on as the group proceeded to take the drugs, while comments popped up furiously onto the screen, many encouraging the group and asking questions like; “are those colored candies?” or “these guys are for real,” and “shoot it up, guys.”
After a few minutes, V. turned the camera at his face and wrapped up on about a dozen pink pills on a white piece of paper.
V. then proceeded to distribute the drugs to everyone in the room, before the lights went out and club music could be heard in the background.
By the time V. ended his live stream, the application’s view counter had calculated that as many as 15,502 viewers were watching the group get high in real-time.
At 12:30 am in another chat room, a young man with username N.O. was live-streaming himself touching the private parts of a girl lying by his side, all the while asking where his viewers would like to see him touch the girl next.
Despite ending after ten minutes and 49 seconds, the sexually explicit live broadcast had already attracted as many as 17,414 live viewers.
In another chat room, two female undergraduates dressed in suggestive clothes could be seen dancing erotically in front of the camera while sharing their Facebook addresses to the 23,332 viewers at two in the morning.

When life goes live
Apart from drug use and sexually explicit content, the social network also sees its young users sharing their everyday activities to an audience of hundreds or thousands.
Over 15,000 users watched a girl live-stream herself getting a tattoo on her breast for over an hour at a tattoo shop in Phu Nhuan District, Ho Chi Minh City last Monday.
L., a live streamer from Ho Chi Minh City, dozed off during one of her live broadcasts, but 627 persistent viewers still hung around to watch the girl sleep!
White-collar workers and deliverymen also joined in the trend, broadcasting their whole day of work live on the social network for the whole community to see, some even going as far as live-streaming themselves and their family members brushing teeth, cooking, or changing clothes.
Though the application does not allow viewers to save broadcast videos, many users still used a third-party application or a separate camera to record the live streams and have uploaded them on other video-sharing sites such as YouTube or even porn sites.
A closed Facebook group named ‘Hunting live pretty girls’ has been created with nearly 17,000 members to share photos, clips, and even personal information of ‘hot’ female live streamers.
Q., one of the two aforementioned female undergraduates, said she deeply regretted the live streams after discovering her explicit clips available on YouTube.
“I was just having fun with the new app and was only hoping to bring the fun to my viewers, too,” Q. said. “I didn’t know they would record everything and upload it on the Internet. I’m deeply worried.”
Ngoc Lam, a 21-year-old man from Ho Chi Minh City, said he had to uninstall the app after having used it for a week, saying it was “addictive.”
“Nighttime is when youths unleash their ugly self, and since nobody knows anybody on the social network, inappropriate content keeps flooding in, and yet for some it’s a pleasurable hobby,” Lam said.

Recruiting ‘baits’
Ethan Van, marketing executive of Bigo Live in Vietnam, said that his company had not been registered for business in the country despite having opened a representative office in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, on May 18.
However, according to Tuoi Tre’s findings, the company has already recruited and signed contracts with hundreds of female Vietnamese students to work as ‘baits’ by using the social network at least 40 hours every month with a minimum wage of VND3.2 million (US$143).
Commenting on the application’s negative impacts, Van said his company took full responsibility for the issue, adding that he was personally saddened by that.
According to an, his company has taken measures to restrict accounts that violate the application’s terms and conditions.
More specifically, he said, the company had established two teams of supervisors to monitor the two markets in Vietnam and Singapore, who had already blocked over 700 accounts that go against the Vietnamese sense of decency.
Van added his teams are on the watch 24 hours a day, and would deliver warnings to first-time violators, before blocking them completely for further abuse.
The marketing executive added that Bigo Live currently had seven million users worldwide, and that the company is looking to cooperate with a university in Ho Chi Minh City to deploy an e-learning application in the near future.

[jackbl]

Middle name

Most Vietnamese have one middle name, but it is quite possible to have two or more, or even no middle names at all.

In the past, the middle name was selected by parents from a fairly narrow range of options. Almost all women had Thị (氏) as their middle name, and many men had Văn (文). More recently, a broader range of names have been used, and people named Thị sometimes omit their middle name.

Thị is by far the most common female middle name. This word expresses possession; for example, "Trần Thị Mai Loan" is a person who has the given name of "Mai Loan" and the surname "Trần", and the combination "Trần Thị" means "A female person belonging to the Trần family". The combination is similar to Western surname formation like "Van" in "Van Helsing", "Mac" in "MacCartney" etc. Male middle names include Văn (文), Hữu (友), Đức (德), Thành (誠), Công (公), Quang (光) and many others.

The middle name can have three usages:

To indicate a person's generation — brothers and sisters share the same middle name, which distinguish them from the generation before them and the generation after them (see generation name).
To separate branches of a big family. For example, "Nguyễn Hữu", "Nguyễn Sinh", "Trần Lâm". However, this usage is still controversial. Some people consider them to be dual family names, not family name + middle name. Some families may, however, set up arbitrary rules about giving a different middle name to each generation.
To indicate a person's position in the family, also known as birth order. This usage is less common than others.
However, nowadays most middle names do not have those usages. They can either have a meaning or just be there to make the full names more euphonious.

[jackbl]

Given name

In most cases, formally, the middle name is actually a part of the given name. For example, the name "Đinh Quang Dũng" is separated into the surname "Đinh" and the given name "Quang Dũng". In a normal name list, these two parts of the full name are put in two different columns. However, in daily conversation, the last word in a given name with a title before it is used to address a person, for example "Ông Dũng", "Anh Dũng", etc. where "Ông" and "Anh" are words to address the person which depend on age, social position, etc.

The given name is the primary form of address for Vietnamese. It is chosen by parents and usually has a literal meaning in the Vietnamese language. Names often represent beauty, such as bird or flower names, or attributes and characteristics that the parents want in their child, such as modesty (Khiêm, 謙).

Typically, Vietnamese will be addressed with their given name, even in formal situations, although an honorific equivalent to "Mr.", "Mrs.", etc. will be added when necessary. This contrasts with the situation in many other cultures, where the family name is used in formal situations, and is a practice similar to Icelandic usage and, to some degree, to Polish practice. It is similar to the Latin-American and southern European custom of referring to some people as "Don" along with their first name.

Addressing someone by his or her family name is rare though not unheard of. In the past, married women in the north were called by their (maiden) family name, with Thị (氏) as a suffix. In recent years, doctors are more likely than any other social group to be addressed by their family name, though this form of reference is more common in the north than in the south. Some extremely well-known people are sometimes referred to by their family names, such as Hồ Chí Minh (Bác Hồ - "Uncle Hồ") (however, his real surname is Nguyễn), Trịnh Công Sơn (nhạc Trịnh - "Trịnh music"), and Hồ Xuân Hương (nữ sĩ họ Hồ - "the poetess with the family name Hồ"). In the old days, people in Vietnam, particularly North Vietnam, addressed parents using the first child's name; for example, Mr and Mrs Anh or Master Minh.

When being addressed within the family, children are sometimes referred to by their birth number, starting from one in the north but starting with two in the south. This practice is less common recently, especially in the north.


Examples Edit
Nguyễn Tấn Dũng is the former Prime Minister of Vietnam. Nguyễn is his family name, Tấn is his middle name, and Dũng is his given name. In formal usage, he is referred to by his given name ("Mr. Dũng"), not by his family name ("Mr. Nguyễn").
Likewise, the famous general and military leader, Võ Nguyên Giáp, is referred to by his given name, i.e. "General Giáp".

[jackbl]

3 jailed for duping Vietnamese women into prostitution in Malaysia

A Can Tho City court Tuesday handed down jail terms to three people for duping seven women into going to Malaysia to work as sex workers.
Tat Cam Linh, 34, got 13 years, Mai Thi Be Thuy, 39, got 10 years and Luu Tuan Khanh, 29, got five years, all for human trafficking.
According to the indictment, Linh married a Malaysian man in 2009 and migrated to his country, where she met an unidentified Malaysian man and a Vietnamese woman who own a bar and a massage parlor.
The couple offered Linh up to VND6 million (US$270) for bringing Vietnamese women to Malaysia to work as sex workers.
Linh then asked Thuy and Khanh to join her and they managed to send seven Vietnamese women to Malaysia by offering to get them high-paying jobs in coffee shops and others.
It all began to unravel last August when Thuy took a Can Tho woman, identified only as T, to a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City before flying to Malaysia.
T phoned home and told her family to report to the police after overhearing one of the trio speaking on the phone.

[jackbl]

Vietnam road accident nightmare: Bus... Stop!

It’s border visa-run time again; time to board the scary bus with the scary driver, write a letter to my mum, and try to look at anything except the road.
Each time I travel from Hoi An to Da Nang via the coastal highway it’s clear that the road has become a Formula 1 race track with buses and taxis vying to be the first to anywhere. When I first arrived in Vietnam in 2006, I remember the media controversy over calls for speed limiting devices on large vehicles and tougher penalties for traffic violations. It seems not much has changed.
After another horrific bus accident near Da Lat on June 19, I’m fed up and quite angry. When is the bus madness going to stop? When are the company owners going to be punished for giving their drivers schedules that push them to meet deadly timetables? When are the drivers going to be brought to account for overloading their vehicles, dangerous driving, and reckless risk taking on the roads?
What’s the cause of the carnage? Arrogance from drivers? Greedy owners running too many services? Probably both, alongside a combination of poor driving skills, lack of sleep, speed, alcohol, and stimulants. Bus companies, not rail services, are the backbone of this nation’s transportation system; yet the value of human life doesn’t seem to play a role in that system.
Smaller ‘people carriers’ can be thrown into this mix as well. There are all too many tourists, local and foreigner, with horror stories from road travel in Vietnam. This is an obstacle to developing a safe, reliable, and efficient trans-national transportation system.
As the summer rolls on and tourism increases with the coming cooler months and upcoming national events, the number of bus passengers is only going to increase, creating the potential for even more road fatalities.
The quality of roads also adds terrifying hazards to this deadly mix, but at least it seems the government is taking any steps to fix road widths and other issues. Maybe not as quickly as we’d like, but it is happening.
Like a lot of Vietnamese problems, a major part of the issue is that it is deemed ‘reactionary’ by law enforcement and transportation companies who, instead of rectifying what is wrong, dump the responsibilities and penalties solely on the drivers. Shouldn’t there be more pressure on the owner/operators so that they can be pro-active in saving lives and preventing accidents?
It might be cost-effective to set up a traffic hotline for the anonymous reporting of bus and truck traffic behavior and impose a strict requirement that ALL large vehicles have their company name on their sides and rear. The idea of the hotline would not only be to report violations but also to identify companies whose drivers are constantly creating traffic trouble. It would be a fast track to getting to the heart of the matter: the companies who force drivers to meet unrealistic schedules and shift people and goods as quickly as possible without considering the consequences.
I’m aware that much of this is already in operation in some parts of the country, and that’s one good step in the right direction. Many companies make enormous profits while paying their drivers a pittance, a commission, or a percentage – however the penalties for when problems occur don’t seem to fit the crimes. Up the ante and make the companies pay not only the fines but the additional costs for damage to the environment and communities who lose their loved ones.
Australia, my birth country, has experienced an ongoing battle for decades over the terrifyingly regular event of truck accidents brought about by driver fatigue and the over-use of stimulants that keep drivers awake, as well as the speeding caused by tight transport schedules.
In Vietnam, rural speeds tend to be higher and driver fatigue issues dull reaction times, so accidents can quickly become more severe. Curiously, while Australia made laws limiting the legal time commercial drivers could drive before taking a compulsory break, it made little impact until many companies were examined in detail and penalized.

Since Vietnamese drivers are prey to many forms of pressure, have a weak union presence, and lack the ability to organize effectively against employer pressure, the national government has to take on the burden pressuring companies to accept slower and better driver habits.
One last point – much of Vietnam’s billion dollar tourist trade is moved by plane and bus. With each new tourist destination that opens, particularly in the mountains and other attractions such as Phu Quoc, bus services are expanding extremely quickly, yet the level of traffic control hasn’t changed much in the last ten years. Why put the tourism dollars and human lives at risk if it’s going to cost the nation so much in heartache, resources, money and reputation?

[jackbl]

Dun try even it is in Vietnam, and think you won't get caught ......

Vietnamese-American man jailed for having sex with teen girl

An appeals court in the southern province of Ca Mau on Thursday handed down a three-year jail term to a Vietnamese-American businessman who was found guilty of having sex with a 15-year-old girl.
Tieu Van Luan, the 57-year-old owner of a large hotel in Ca Mau, was earlier given a three-year suspended sentence in May. Local prosecutors appealed that decision, saying the punishment was "too lenient."
The court also sentenced Lam Thi Chau, 40, who brokered the illegal sex service, to three years in jail on Thursday, instead of a suspended sentence.
Luan and Chau were arrested in June 2015 after the girl's family reported that Chau had kept their daughter against her will.
Investigators said the girl began to work as a waitress at Chau’s restaurant in May 2015.
But Chau forced her to do sex work and collected half of the money.
Luan admitted to paying VND500,000 (US$23) twice to have sex with the teenager at a local hostel.
Sex work is illegal in Vietnam. Having sex with a child between 13 and 16 years old is a serious crime punishable by up to 15 years. Procuring sex with those in that age range may also lead to a 15-year jail term.

[cabayasi]

Dun try even it is in Vietnam, and think you won't get caught ......



Credit 11 as return, thanks bro and beward of underage

[jackbl]

Vietnamese woman rescued from brothel in Dubai: report


A Vietnamese woman has been rescued from a brothel in Dubai after a group of criminals kept her there against her will and forced her into sex work, an official from the Vietnamese embassy in the United Arab Emirates told news website VnExpress on Tuesday.
Nguyen Thanh Quang, the first secretary of the Vietnamese embassy in the UAE said it is working with local police to bring the woman home.
The embassy was informed by some Vietnamese in the country on June 26 that the woman, known as Nguyen, was being detained, beaten and forced into prostitution by a group of Vietnamese criminals.
The embassy then sought help from local police.
The police raided the brothel and arrested 11 people, including four Vietnamese men.
After being rescued, Nguyen told the police she was lured to travel to Dubai for a week by an acquaintance named Linh.
After she arrived in Dubai on a tourist visa, the Vietnamese criminals detained her, took her passport and forced her to do sex work in an apartment.
The embassy said there has recently been an increase in the number of Vietnamese women who forced into prostitution in Dubai. Most of the other victims were promised well-paid jobs.
After they arrived in Dubai, they were forced to into prostitution, according to the embassy.

[jackbl]

The minuses of Da Nang tourism

Editor’s note: Quang Kiet and his family would have had a perfect vacation in the central coastal city of Da Nang if they had not encountered “some minus points” when touring it.
In this piece sent to Tuoi Tre News, the Vietnamese recounted how his family was upset by the trip.
Definitely we will return to Da Nang City because it is an appealing destination.
We will take it into careful consideration when catching taxis as well as visiting Ba Na Hills next time, however.
Last week, my family visited Da Nang to let the youngsters enjoy a relaxing holiday.
Embraced by the Han River, the city was an ideal place to visit, I admit. The streets and beaches were clear of trash; there were loads of public beaches and eateries in general offering fixed prices, with staff showing good manners.
However, there are some issues that I see as the “minuses” of the city’s tourism, which somewhat lessened the comfort I had expected from the trip.
Here come the cab drivers who try their best to take visitors to stone sculpture stores to earn commissions from the store owners.
My family and I took a taxi to visit Hoi An City to spend our first day.
As soon as we departed from the hotel, the driver advised us to visit some stone sculpture facilities.
When I refused to do so, the driver kept urging, “You just drop by for 15 minutes. It’s OK to buy nothing.”
As my family did not change their mind, he pleaded “Please help me earn a bit!” and told us that those taxi drivers bringing visitors to the said stores would receive tips from the shop owners and a crate of beers in the case of taking many visitors there a month.
Tired of being hustled, we agreed to let him carry us to a stone sculpture facility on Truong Sa Street.
When arriving at the shop, we saw a lot of taxis there waiting for visitors to go around the place.
On the second day, after exploring Ngu Hanh Son Mountain, we had the same experience as another taxi driver begged us to visit a stone sculpture store for 15-20 minutes when taking us to the hotel.
In the evening, my family decided to dine at a well-known seafood restaurant on Vo Nguyen Giap Street and chose a table outside to relish the gentle breeze.
During two hours dining there, we were continuously solicited by many food hawkers despite the signpost of local authorities banning such behavior.
But it was nothing compared to the trip to Ba Na Hills, a horrid journey, I must say: two hours queuing in sweat under the scorching heat; totally worn out by the crowd jostling for the cable cars to the amusement park.
When my family and I managed to arrive at the park, it was completely disappointing as we were stuck among a sea of people. I really felt pity for the kids as they were all tired and almost “fainted” at noon, so they hardly had any chance to play there.
I hoped that the Ba Na Hills attraction would offer 50 percent discounts to those visiting in the afternoon to solve the crowding problem of the morning.

[jackbl]

For those that rides motorbikes in Vn please take note...

Motorbike drivers face higher fines from next month

Motorbike riders in Vietnam will face higher fines for traffic violations like driving on the sidewalk and running red lights under a decree that will take effect August 1.
Captain Tran Thi Hong Nhung of the Ho Chi Minh City Traffic Police Agency said most fines would be around VND400,000 (US$18), an increase of VND100,000-200,000 from now.
Driving on the wrong side of the road and on the sidewalk, except to enter a home, will be fined VND300,000-400,000.
Le Hong Viet, deputy chief inspector of the city Department of Transport, said these are among the most common violations by motorbike drivers.
The new decree, which replaces a 2014 document, stipulates fines of up to VND400,000 for motorbikes jumping a red light. Violators will also have their driving license revoked for 1-3 months.
Drivers using cell phones or audio devices will be fined VND100,000-200,000, up from VND60,000-80,000.
Those who drive in the tunnel without headlights will face fines of VND500,000-1 million.
According to Nhung, the new decree maintains the same fine for those driving motorbikes without a license or with their license temporarily revoked. In addition to seizure of the vehicle for a week, violators face fines of up to VND1.2 million in case of motorbikes of under 175cc and VND6 million for 175cc and above.
Vietnam has nearly 2.75 million cars and 45 million motorbikes.

[jackbl]

Survey finds 30 percent of coffee in Vietnam has no caffeine

If you are loyal customers of sidewalk cafés in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, there is real probability that you have been sipping the favorite drink with almost no caffeine.
More than 30 percent of the coffee consumed daily in four Vietnamese provinces and cities have an insignificant content of caffeine, the Vietnam Standard and Consumers Association (Vinastas) announced Thursday, citing findings from its latest survey.
Most of the coffee with a poor caffeine content is served at sidewalk and small-sized cafés, according to the survey, which examined 253 black coffee samples taken from Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and the southern provinces of Binh Duong and Soc Trang between June and July.
The samples were randomly taken from coffee shops at different places, including coffeehouses, small-sized cafés, hospital canteens, sidewalk cafés and mobile coffee carts, according to Vinastas.
The survey indicated that 30.04 percent of the taken samples have a caffeine content of less than one gram per liter. Five samples were found having no caffeine at all.
The no-caffeine coffee is mostly served at all of the serving places surveyed, except for the standard coffeehouses, according to the survey.
More alarmingly, of the number of coffee cups sold by the mobile carts, hospital canteens and sidewalk café, those with little or no caffeine content accounted for as much as 47.54 percent.
Vuong Ngoc Tuan, deputy general secretary of Vinastas, said the survey only looks into the low-cost segment of coffee consumption in those localities.
“We will survey more locations in the coming time,” he told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper. “We will also examine other quality parameters rather than just the caffeine content.”
A cup of coffee that has no caffeine obviously means it is in fact a mixture of different chemicals which are greatly harmful to drinker health.
Vietnam’s overall coffee production remains unchanged at 29.3 million bags (60kg each) in the 2015-16 marketing year (MY), the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in its ‘Vietnam: Coffee Annual’ report released last month.
The Vietnamese coffee production for MY2016/17 is forecast at 27.3 million bags, a seven percent drop compared to that of MY2015/16 due to adverse weather conditions, El Nino and possibly followed by the La Nina phenomenon, according to the report seen by Tuoi Tre News.

[jackbl]

Very few foreign visitors return to Vietnam: travel association

Very few first-time foreign visitors to Vietnam choose to come back, according to a travel association, with multiple causes attributed to the low return rate.
The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) has said that of the 90 percent of foreign visitors to the Southeast Asian country who are first-timers, only six percent visit again.
The Vietnamese tourist industry seems to focus mainly on ways to boost profit, leaving operational processes cumbersome, while at the same time, marketing campaigns remain limited.
It is estimated that the annual marketing budget of Vietnamese tourism is around US$2 million.
The primary focus remains on getting as many tourists as possible, without attending to the need to provide better services.
According to a government resolution, Vietnam has extended its visa-waving initiative for citizens of the UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy until June 30, 2017.
Since July 1, 2015, when it was initiated, the visa-free program has attracted more visitors from these countries, and it is expected that the program will continue to boost the local tourist industry.
According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, there were 4.7 million foreign visitors during the first six months of 2016.
Notably, the percentage of tourists from the five countries granted visa wavers increased from 13.8 percent to 30.1 percent year on year.
During the first six months of this year, the number of visitors from those five countries rose by 62,000 against the same period last year.
In addition to granting visa waivers, the Vietnamese government is also implementing methods to streamline the immigration process for foreigners.
According to many Vietnamese travel agencies, the 15-day visa-free duration for people coming from those five countries is quite short, luring only small groups of tourists to enjoy short vacations.
Unfortunately, most visitors from Western Europe prefer tours lasting between three and four weeks.
Streamlining immigration procedures for foreigners will make the Vietnamese tourist industry competitive on the world stage and especially amongst neighboring ASEAN countries.
Free visas for the five Western countries is a great initiative, but it needs to be more carefully planned in order to better suit the situation and make Vietnamese tourism more competitive.

[jackbl]

Did you, expats, know of this regulation on marriage certificates when marrying Vietnamese?

Did you, expats, know that you and your Vietnamese husband- or wife-to-be have the right to receive your marriage certificate at a formal ceremony, along with flowers, champagne, and congratulations from authorities?
This is what the administration of Ba Dinh District in Hanoi gave local supermodel Vu Ha Anh and her British spouse Oliver Dowden, who got their marriage certificate on July 12.
At the ceremony, as updated on the supermodel’s Facebook page the same day, the couple, who will tie the knot during a wedding reception later this month, were congratulated and granted the marriage certification by a top official.
There were also a pair of champagne glasses for the couple to toast their marriage, now formally recognized by the law.

In her Facebook post, accompanied by a series of photos capturing the formalities, Anh expressed how proud she felt to see officials handle her marriage registration procedures with great respect.
However, the Facebook post and photos of the ceremony have attracted not only congratulatory comments, but also hatred feedback.
Some people said that was simply Anh’s publicity stunt and such a ceremony was unnecessary. The district administration has also been criticized for giving such alleged favorable treatment to the couple.
Many Vietnamese people have indeed received their marriage certificates in a less formal way, usually at the working counter of the local administration office.
An official will ask them to both sign the document, which is all for the formality.
There will be no ceremony, no congratulatory messages, no flowers nor champagne, such as what Anh and Dowden were treated to.
However, as the supermodel pointed out on her Facebook a few days later, such a formality is totally normal and stipulated in the law.
The supermodel cited the Vietnamese law on civil status, ratified by the lawmaking National Assembly in November 2014, saying that “a marriage certificate ceremony is a required formality in the marriage between a local and a foreigner.”

Many of Anh’s fans also commented on her Facebook, saying they had got their marriage certificates at similar ceremonies when marrying foreign spouses.
It turns out that few know of such a regulation, and Anh has just made it known to the wider public.
So if you are going to tie the knot with a local, do not forget to request such a ceremony be held when you receive your marriage certificate.

[dandan69]

Did you, expats, know of this regulation on marriage certificates when marrying Vietnamese?

Did you, expats, know that you and your Vietnamese husband- or wife-to-be have the right to receive your marriage certificate at a formal ceremony, along with flowers, champagne, and congratulations from authorities?
This is what the administration of Ba Dinh District in Hanoi gave local supermodel Vu Ha Anh and her British spouse Oliver Dowden, who got their marriage certificate on July 12.
At the ceremony, as updated on the supermodel’s Facebook page the same day, the couple, who will tie the knot during a wedding reception later this month, were congratulated and granted the marriage certification by a top official.
There were also a pair of champagne glasses for the couple to toast their marriage, now formally recognized by the law.

In her Facebook post, accompanied by a series of photos capturing the formalities, Anh expressed how proud she felt to see officials handle her marriage registration procedures with great respect.
However, the Facebook post and photos of the ceremony have attracted not only congratulatory comments, but also hatred feedback.
Some people said that was simply Anh’s publicity stunt and such a ceremony was unnecessary. The district administration has also been criticized for giving such alleged favorable treatment to the couple.
Many Vietnamese people have indeed received their marriage certificates in a less formal way, usually at the working counter of the local administration office.
An official will ask them to both sign the document, which is all for the formality.
There will be no ceremony, no congratulatory messages, no flowers nor champagne, such as what Anh and Dowden were treated to.
However, as the supermodel pointed out on her Facebook a few days later, such a formality is totally normal and stipulated in the law.
The supermodel cited the Vietnamese law on civil status, ratified by the lawmaking National Assembly in November 2014, saying that “a marriage certificate ceremony is a required formality in the marriage between a local and a foreigner.”

Many of Anh’s fans also commented on her Facebook, saying they had got their marriage certificates at similar ceremonies when marrying foreign spouses.
It turns out that few know of such a regulation, and Anh has just made it known to the wider public.
So if you are going to tie the knot with a local, do not forget to request such a ceremony be held when you receive your marriage certificate.

upped you bro!

[jackbl]

Teacher parodies Vietnamese pop song to teach English idioms

A millennial English teacher in Vietnam has turned a popular Vietnamese song into a parody music video to teach English idioms “for a world without English illiteracy.”

Nguyen Thai Duong, a 25-year-old English teacher in Ho Chi Minh City, became popular on the Internet after his parody music video surfaced on Sunday.

Incorporating 19 everyday English idioms into an eye-catching dance routine and the popular tune of Vietnamese hit ‘That Bat Ngo’ (What A Surprise), Duong’s video was quickly shared by tens of thousands of viewers on social media.

Idioms like ‘a piece of cake’, ‘under the weather’, and ‘go the extra mile’ were cleverly mixed into Vietnamese lyrics explaining their meaning while encouraging the young to start learning English “for a world without English illiteracy.”

The dance steps featured in the video were performed by Duong and a student dance troupe from Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted, which is the teacher’s alma mater, in Ho Chi Minh City.

“The video captivates viewers who are all eyes and ears right from the first watch, making the lessons easier to remember for a longer time,” Le Thanh Nhan, 32, commented on the video.

“I’ve remembered the lyrics already,” 19-year-old Tran Tuan Anh said. “It’s just as catchy as any other song that I like.”

Duong has a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology, but he has decided to devote his time to his passion for teaching English at a local English center.

The teacher said he had written the lyrics for the song in only a day, though finding a song with a matching and suitable melody took him over a week.

Duong’s group spent another two weeks filming the music video at iconic venues in Ho Chi Minh City.

The passionate teacher also disclosed his intention to produce more similar videos to introduce a more captivating way of learning English to young people.

[makka111]

Long time didn't log on... I have always like viet girls. I know some of you may think this should belong to Int'l Field Report or some other thread 😊

Technology has really made things easier. So i booked a short time with a FL in my 3-star hotel in HCM city center booked via wechat. Seems that some hotels aren't strict about girls making housecalls anymore.

Girl did not look same as wechat profile but still pretty in makeup anyway and she smelt nice. Paid her price b4 SOP: rub my cock during shower, lick here & there etc.

Jenny was a very fair girl with nice B tits, soft to touch so should be natural. Pussy shaved so my didi reacted. Gave me a hardworking BBBJ for about 10mins while I play her wet pussy. 1 finger... 2 fingers... 3 fingers... the more fingers I insert the harder she sacked. Her boobs were outstanding due to her petite 150cm+ frame. Sucked my balls in a gentle way, not too hard.

When she decided it was hard enough, she put on a rubber for me n did cowgirl as my cock easily penetrated her pussy. She enjoy it more than I did. Her Pussy felt very small and tight, my cock went in n out as she went up n down. My groin was all wet when I push her off to change position.

Her butt was small. I rammed her in doggy. I get horny when I see my cock giving her pussy so much pleasure. She almost screamed but the TV was louder anyway. It felt good grabbing her boobs from behind as I continue to pump her.

When I was about to cum, I pulled out and moved her around. She seem surprised when I removed my rubber and shoved my cock into her mouth. I grabbed her hair to prevent her head moving away as I released my load into her throat. She submitted by grabbing my butt as she swallowed my sperm. It felt good cumming like this.

I laid down on bed to catch my breath as she washed up. Gave her a tip to cover transport as it was late. I slept very well that night as her perfume lingered on the bed😊

[makka111]

Long time didn't log on... I have always like viet girls. I know some of you may think this should belong to Int'l Field Report or some other thread ��

Technology has really made things easier. So i booked a short time with a FL in my 3-star hotel in HCM city center booked via wechat. Seems that hotels aren't strict about girls making housecalls anymore.

Girl did not look same as wechat profile but still pretty in makeup and smelt nice anyway. Paid her price b4 SOP: rub my cock during shower, lick here & there etc.

Jenny was a very fair girl with nice B tits, soft to touch so should be natural. Pussy shaved so my didi reacted. Gave me a hardworking BBBJ for about 10mins while I play her wet pussy. 1 finger... 2 fingers... 3 fingers... the more fingers I insert the harder she sacked. Her boobs were outstanding due to her petite 150cm+ frame. Sucked my balls in a gentle way, not too hard.

When she decided it was hard enough, she put on a rubber for me n did cowgirl as my cock easily penetrated her pussy. She enjoy it more than I did. Her Pussy felt very small and tight, my cock went in n out as she went up n down. My groin was all wet when I push her off to change position.

Her butt was small. I rammed her in doggy. I get horny when I see my cock giving her pussy so much pleasure. She almost screamed but the TV was louder anyway. It felt good grabbing her boobs from behind as I continue to pump her.

When I was about to cum, I pulled out and moved her around. She seem surprised when I removed my rubber and shoved my cock into her mouth. I grabbed her hair to prevent her head moving away as I released my load into her throat. She submitted by grabbing my butt as she swallowed my sperm. It felt good cumming like this.

I laid down on bed to catch my breath as she washed up. Gave her a tip to cover transport as it was late. I slept very well that night as her perfume lingered on the bed ��

[jackbl]

Hanoi youths practice foreign languages with ‘Ask Me Anything’ project

A group of youths in Hanoi have been setting up a free multilingual information spot to answer tourists’ queries while grabbing the chance to practice their foreign language skills.

‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) is the name of a project launched last April by a 30-year-old coffee shop owner in the Vietnamese capital to provide tourists with information on anything they want to know about Hanoi and Vietnam.

The ‘guides’ of the project are young Vietnamese who would like to practice speaking foreign languages and are interested in introducing their country to foreign visitors.

The group gathers every weekend in front of the Ly Thai To Monument opposite Hoan Kiem Lake, dressed in white uniform T-shirts having the invitation ‘Ask Me Anything’ printed on them.

Handwritten on a large sheet of paper that the group always brings along with them is their description, which reads, “We are here to help [for] free… Ask me anything. Direction, cuisine, culture, history, things to do…We speak Vietnamese, English, German…”

Tourists who have questions about what to do or where to visit in Hanoi or who would like to learn more about Vietnamese culture are welcome to ask for the group’s assistance.


Tran Van Tien, the brains behind the idea, also owns a coffee shop just opposite Hoan Kiem Lake that has been popular among ‘backpackers’ for being awarded the certificate of excellence by U.S.-based travel review website TripAdvisor.

Tien said that he came up with his idea of establishing an information spot for tourists after seeing many independent tourists struggle to look for multilingual authentic information on eateries, landscapes, and historical sites worth visiting in the capital.

Meanwhile, he said, many youths in Vietnam are learning ‘mute’ foreign languages that focus heavily on grammatical points without enough exposure to real-life communication, so he has integrated the two needs into one project that was launched last April.

The working principle of Tien’s group is not to proactively approach tourists as it would violate their personal space, but instead to gather at one place and help those who ask for assistance.

“At first only a handful of volunteers answered my call [on Facebook],” Tien said. “But gradually more people knew about the project and now we have over 1,000 registered members.”

Transformation from AMA

Khanh Ly, mother of ten-year-old Nguyen Quang Minh, the youngest ‘guide’ in the group, said her son had applied to be a member after observing the group answering tourists’ questions.

“After a while, Minh became more confident when communicating with foreigners,” Ly said.

Tran Kim Oanh, an English undergraduate at Phuong Dong University in Hanoi, was excitedly talking to a tourist on Saturday afternoon.

Oanh said her shyness had kept her from communicating with foreigners for the first two years of her college life despite having aced all English exams in high school.

“Listening to the radio and watching movies in English did not help much either,” Oanh said.

After a year working for the AMA project, Oanh is now a confident ‘guide’ that can introduce in fluent English most popular tourist destinations in Hanoi.

Oanh said the nature of the work had pushed her to learn more each day, as tourists could ask the most unimaginable questions, such as “How many fish are there in Hoan Kiem Lake?” or “Who is Ly Thai To?”

According to Oanh, oftentimes the group has to deny tips from tourists since their service is free, though she said they sometimes receive small gifts or souvenirs such as a pen or some photos.

“The biggest plus of AMA is that it trains your response skills and helps improve background knowledge,” said Tran Lan Phuong, an undergraduate at the Hanoi University of Education. “Foreign visitors tend to listen attentively and want to understand a piece of information in depth, which pushes me to read and do research in order to provide them with satisfactory answers.”

Phuong said her part-time job as a private English tutor had also seen great improvements after joining AMA.

In March, the project established its first ‘branch’ in the central city of Hue with 30 volunteers who assemble every weekend after 5:00 pm at 49 Le Loi Street to help tourists.

Tien said he has no plan to drop the project despite his running the coffee shop, adding he does not want to lose a helpful playground for youths to sharpen their communication skills, a dream he has clung onto since his high school years.

[vietboy]

Nowadays all very good in TV. Nobody ask for translation anymore. :)

[casannova03]

Nowadays all very good in TV. Nobody ask for translation anymore. :)

now all use apps for translation already..;)

[jackbl]

Nowadays all very good in TV. Nobody ask for translation anymore. :)

All of them like u. MIA for 2 years to go up "mountain" to learn tv. :D
So what level are u now?

[vietboy]

All of them like u. MIA for 2 years to go up "mountain" to learn tv. :D
So what level are u now?

Level 0. :D:p

[vietboy]

now all use apps for translation already..;)

Apps buay zhun de.
Dun have the exact meaning.

[jackbl]

Level 0. :D:p

Cannot be la... You are with a Vietnamese everyday for 2 years. How can still be at level 0?

[vietboy]

Cannot be la... You are with a Vietnamese everyday for 2 years. How can still be at level 0?

Precisely, everyday together end up reversed learning so end up level 0.
Lol. :D:p

[jackbl]

Expat revenge in Vietnam: The overcharge

Ten thousand dong is not a lot of money to some people, or an outrageous sum to others. To convert into U.S. currency, it’s about 45 cents. It took me months to get my head around this bizarre idea. Confused? Join the club!
A recent Facebook post has chronicled the Machiavellian scheme of one expat in Da Nang who sought revenge for being overcharged 4,000 dong for a 6,000 dong sugarcane juice, or nuoc mia. I had to read it four times to make sure it wasn’t a joke, but the expat apparently ‘had a bone to pick’ with the shopkeeper (there was something he wanted to talk about) and had his Vietnamese wife buy the juice again, at the regular price. Lurking anonymously while she made the purchase, he confronted the shopkeeper afterwards, but the shopkeeper remained unrepentant.
It’s called quibbling in English, arguing about something so trivial that it only becomes important because one person in the argument believes it so.
I used the example above in my class that night to express the English idiom, ‘Storm in a teacup’ - a problem that is so small that it has virtually no impact, outside of the argument itself. Another great idiom that sprang out of this lesson was ‘The lights are on but nobody’s home’ (I’m sure you understand that one!) and then finally, ‘A pain in the neck’; someone who causes a lot of unnecessary trouble.
The notion that we should all be charged fairly and equally exists in most Western countries, although anyone who has travelled understands the concepts of ‘buyer beware’ and ‘charge as much as the market will bear’. Most people would argue that this particular shopkeeper doesn’t make a lot of money, and the price difference is very silly. Secondly, why didn’t the buyer just go to another shop if the juice was that important to him? And finally, getting that upset over such a small sum might indicate some underlying anger issues.
But he’s not alone in his opinion. Even 1,000 dong is outrageous when you look at it from a local perspective. For example, I often buy small bottles of water during school from the lady down the road. She charges me 5,000 dong per bottle. My students were horrified by this knowledge, and told me that I should have buy in bulk, a large box of water from another shop, equaling about 3,000 dong per bottle. For locals, 7,000 to 10,000 dong buys breakfast depending on quality, quantity and how fancy the food is – street stalls or eat-in cafés. 10,000 to 20,000 can buy you a huge lunch or dinner on the street.
People in poor countries are brought up with the idea that spending is a sin. When shopping, they are always challenged to find a cheaper alternative, or get the best deal they possibly can. So it’s strange that we foreigners can lavish huge sums of money on the simplest things without even thinking about it – no wonder some locals want to charge us more! We’re crazy with our money!
Five years ago I recall having to pay the difference to a local xe om after a backpacker complained about the 50,000 price tag for a 3 kilometer ride from Hoi An to the beach nearby. A local would get the same ride for around 10,000 dong, but the metered taxis are slightly more expensive. However, the real problem wasn’t the price, it was the attitude of the traveler, abusing the 50 something year-old man who does this job because he can’t get something better – plus he’s got a family to support...
I paid up because I know what things cost to a local, and am aware of their daily struggle to make a living. While we see many in Vietnam now with new cars and great houses – a lot of that is just debt to the bank, and still represents only a tiny proportion of people here, especially when you think about the vast rural population, who have yet to reach the middle class. My neighbors are an example of those who get up well before dawn and often work late, just to make salaries that would turn a Westerner pale.
So don’t quibble, folks – be generous and enjoy the local juice... you never know, you might just make someone’s day, even if it cost you 10 cents more!

[jackbl]

Vietnamese crowd pagodas to express love for mom on Buddhist Mother's Day

A considerable number of people in Ho Chi Minh City have flocked to pagodas to observe the Buddhist Mother's Day.
This occasion, also known as the Vu Lan Festival, falls on the 15th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar.
On this day, visitors come to pagodas to express their love for and gratitude to their parents, especially their mothers.
Large pagodas in the southern city, including Vinh Nghiem in District 3, Hoa Khanh in Binh Thanh District, and Hoang Phap in Hoc Mon District, were all packed with visitors.
People received roses of different colors to pin on their shirts.
Pink and red roses were given to visitors whose mothers are still around.
Those whose moms have passed away were handed a white rose to remind them of their beautiful retrospective memories.
Luong Chi Binh, 41, of Binh Thanh District, came to the pagoda with his mother despite the scorching heat.
The man said celebrating the Vu Lan Festival has long been his annual habit.
“I want to pray for my mother’s wellness. I feel lucky still having her in my life,” he added.

[jackbl]

Vietnam diary: The humble gecko

“So I’d just settled into my hotel room when EWWW... there’s this tiny thing walking up the wall! I screamed and called reception...”
Ah... the humble gecko... beloved by expats for their usefulness in keeping the insects under control and loathed by tourists and frustrated receptionists trying to explain that it is part of Vietnam’s ecology and they’ll send the cleaners up to remove it immediately.
A receptionist’s need for the required English to deal with irate guests’ complaints about geckos is probably the most requested lesson in my repertoire, yet I always refuse to teach anything that would lead to the death of an innocent lizard. I often thought it was quite amusing how the country-bred housekeepers would cheerfully pick the geckos off the walls and put them down in the garden soil while the city receptionists would wince and curl up against the doorways in horror.
Even the most heavily fortified five-star resorts, complete with freakin’ lasers, wouldn’t eliminate these little marvels of evolution. So wrongly labeled as ‘bugs’ or ‘a weird thing in the bathroom,’ while the gecko’s place in the tropics is far from secure, it’s the most benign of creatures to humans, posing no significant threat to their health.
They’re amazing little bundles of sticky feet and odd eyes. Did you know that a gecko’s eyesight is 350 times more sensitive than our own? Or that they can see ultra-violet? Their feet are incredibly adhesive, able to hold on to surfaces so well that scientists estimate they would be capable of supporting a hundred kilos if the foot was big enough!

It’s such a routine part of tropical life that I don’t even blink when my friendly house gecko comes down behind my laptop to see what’s on the menu. I say hello to the little green visitor which often tilts its head as if to say, “Leave me alone, I’m busy looking for dinner.” You can hardly feel them on your skin although I can feel the foot pads pulling at the hairs on my arms. I’d love to train one (if that was even possible) to sit on my shoulder while I’m riding around town, just to see the reaction on people’s faces.
For a while, I had a giant gecko, called Tokay, hanging around in my roof. He was louder than the construction truck horns but thankfully smart enough to shut up in the early morning. My neighbors frequently visit to gaze at him and tell me for the hundredth time that he brings good luck to the house. I thought I was luckier when they left!
Mosquitos are the real menace we deal with in this climate, but the fabulous geckos in my house (I dunno... maybe a dozen? Or even a hundred?) keep the hazard at bay rather well. It’s well worth the price of having to sweep the tiny poo away each day. My dogs are fascinated by them and will stalk the ‘pesky bugs’ for a long period of time.
Next time you see a humble gecko, cohabiting with humans in perfect harmony, off to work around your house, don’t reach for the insect spray – raise your glass in salute at nature’s tiny, all-natural insect killer. I mean, think of what might happen if you DIDN’T have one around...

[jackbl]

2 arrested for running online sex rings in Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City police have arrested two men accused of running two separate sex rings since 2015.
Police said Duong Van Thanh, 38, launched two websites in early 2015 to advertise illegal sex services.
He hired some people to post photos of the sex workers online, receive calls to the hotline, and collect money for him. The man lives in the southern province of Tien Giang, where he also owns a restaurant.
Police had been watching the ring since early this year. They caught six sex workers with their clients in two hotels in Ho Chi Minh City on July 21. Thanh was arrested in his hometown on the same day.
Thanh confessed he charged each client VND1.5 million (US$67), from which he earned VND500,000.
In the second case, Trinh Van Chuong, 29, used to work for a massage parlor in HCMC’s District 10 and knew many employees who also did sex work.
In July 2015, he created various accounts on Zalo and Wechat mobile chat services and posted sex workers’ photos. He charged each client VND1.6 million and took VND500,000 from the amount.
Police are looking for a procurer in District 4 who allegedly worked with Chuong.

[FireShark]

2 arrested for running online sex rings in Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City police have arrested two men accused of running two separate sex rings since 2015.
Police said Duong Van Thanh, 38, launched two websites in early 2015 to advertise illegal sex services.
He hired some people to post photos of the sex workers online, receive calls to the hotline, and collect money for him. The man lives in the southern province of Tien Giang, where he also owns a restaurant.
Police had been watching the ring since early this year. They caught six sex workers with their clients in two hotels in Ho Chi Minh City on July 21. Thanh was arrested in his hometown on the same day.
Thanh confessed he charged each client VND1.5 million (US$67), from which he earned VND500,000.
In the second case, Trinh Van Chuong, 29, used to work for a massage parlor in HCMC’s District 10 and knew many employees who also did sex work.
In July 2015, he created various accounts on Zalo and Wechat mobile chat services and posted sex workers’ photos. He charged each client VND1.6 million and took VND500,000 from the amount.
Police are looking for a procurer in District 4 who allegedly worked with Chuong.

Hahahaha I wonder this MC is one of them

[jackbl]

Pokemon Go player has phone snatched out of her hand in Vietnam

A man was arrested after he snatched an iPhone from a woman who was playing Pokemon Go in Tao Dan Park in Ho Chi Minh City Monday night, local police have said.
Nguyen Van Hieu, 19, is under investigation for snatching theft, the police said.
According to an initial report, Hieu was at Tao Dan Park in downtown HCMC at 10.20 p.m. when he saw the woman, identified as Tram, 32, playing the game on her iPhone 6 Plus.
Hieu snatched her phone and tried to run of on foot. When the victims shouted for help, the park guards gave chase and managed to catch Hieu.
Hieu was handed over to the police later.
Since the game was available in Vietnam last week, Tao Dan Park has become one of the biggest Pokemon hotspots in Ho Chi Minh City, with many people spending the nights chasing the elusive creatures.

[jackbl]

Shoeshine scammers target foreign tourists in downtown HCMC

A 15-strong gang has been scamming tourists in downtown Ho Chi Minh City by shining their shoes without being asked before demanding an extortionate amount of money, threatening those who do not pay, a Thanh Nien investigation has found.
On August 11 for instance, two foreign men were sitting on a bench in September 23rd Park when two men suddenly approached them and polished their shoes without saying a word.
The tourists did not turn them away but were shocked to be asked VND1 million (US$45).
The two men threatened the tourists until they paid them the money.
Thanh Nien found similar incidents occurring elsewhere in the city’s downtown.
On August 11 a foreign man was about to cross Le Lai Street when a man insisted on polishing his shoes though the former said no.
A Thanh Nien reporter managed to join the shoeshine group and found there were 15 men who had moved to the city from Thanh Hoa Province.
They rent rooms on Hoang Sa Street, District 3, and usually take buses to the downtown area.
A member, who claimed he could earn VND2 million in a morning, said they often go in pairs so that they could threaten the victims easier. One would polish shoes and demand money while the other would keep an eye out for police and voluntary youths, he said.
Dinh To Hoa, deputy chief inspector of the city Department of Tourism, admitted that her agency is aware of the scam.
Authorities have recorded more than 2,500 cases of hawkers and shoeshine boys hassling tourists, she said.
“[My] department has coordinated with relevant agencies to step up patrolling. They will also be punished if caught on street cameras.”

[jackbl]

Police in Vietnamese province start fining those playing Pokémon Go while driving

Authorities in the southern province of Dong Nai have required traffic police and relevant departments to penalize those people who play Pokémon Go while driving.
Tran Van Vinh, deputy chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, on Friday acknowledged an increasing number of traffic violation cases related to the viral game.
Accordingly, many Vietnamese ‘hunters’ tend to play Pokémon Go while driving on the street, leading to a high risk of traffic accidents and congestion.
The mobile game is dangerous not only to drivers but also to others because players must move frequently and mainly focus on the phone screen even when they are driving.
This seriously jeopardized drivers’ safety and hinders their ability to concentrate, as new creatures can pop up whenever on their mobile phones when they move in the real world.
Following the requirement from the Dong Nai authorities, local police have started patrolling more frequently and penalizing those drivers who violate traffic rules while playing the game.
Meanwhile, authorities in Ho Chi Minh City have also run electronic signs that read, “Do not play Pokémon Go while driving,” on some crowded streets.
According to news website VietNamNet, under the current law, those who use a mobile phone while driving a car will be fined VND600,000 (US$30) to VND800,000 ($40).
The fine is from VND100,000 to VND200,000 for motorcycle and bicycle riders.
Pokémon Go, a game developed by Nintendo and Niantic Labs, has attracted a surprisingly huge number of players thanks to its highly interactive functions.

[jackbl]

Free tourist guidebook launched in Ho Chi Minh City

Expats and visitors to Ho Chi Minh City are advised not to leave home without a new tourism guidebook, released on Tuesday by the municipal Department of Tourism.
The publication, titled “Ho Chi Minh City Hotels and Restaurants 2016,” is a 144-page full color handbook providing tourists with all the necessary information on where to stay, eat, drink and have fun in the southern hub.
The book features addresses and brief descriptions of numerous hotels, restaurants and shopping venues in Ho Chi Minh City, plus essential information such as the phone numbers of general consulates and emergency services numbers.
On the back of the booklet are multiple promotional and discount coupons offered by the facilities mentioned.
The guidebooks authors, the Department of Tourism and Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, held a ceremony in downtown Ho Chi Minh City to introduce the work on Tuesday.

Speaking at the ceremony, Pham Huy Binh, deputy director of the tourism department, said the guidebook is an effort by the city’s tourism sector to create convenience for tourists in accessing information while in Ho Chi Minh City.
“Through this publication, partners and visitors can access famous hotels, restaurants and brands whose quality live up to their prices,” Binh said.
“This guidebook also creates opportunities for service providers to promote themselves and connect with travel firms.”
Binh said if this first edition proved successful, the city’s tourism sector will issue more in the future, with the next editions “surely boasting better design and more detailed and profound content.”
The guidebook is now available free of charge at the arrival terminal of international airports, three- to five-star hotels, restaurants and trade centers. It will also be offered at international events.
The publication is also available online at http://tuoitrenews.vn/hotels-and-restaurants.

[jackbl]

Singaporean jailed for holding girlfriend captive in Vietnam hotel

A Ho Chi Minh City court on Wednesday sentenced a 41-year-old Singaporean man to five months and six days in jail for locking his girlfriend inside a hotel room in February.
Eng Yong Kit was set free after the trial as he had been detained long enough, local media reported.
The court heard that on February 2, Kit forced his 24-year-old Vietnamese girlfriend into a hotel room on District 3’s Hai Ba Trung Street.
He then locked the room and blocked the door with a bed to prevent others from rescuing her.
Police and representatives of the Singaporean Consulate General in HCMC arrived at the hotel, but they failed to talk him into opening the door.
Eight hours later, police had to use smoke grenades and break in to rescue the woman. Kit was arrested.
He told the police that he met his girlfriend online and they started dating in June last year.
When the woman, believed to be a sex worker, decided to break up with him, he did not take it well.
The court said it handed down the lenient sentence because there were no serious consequences and the woman also requested to drop charges against him.

[jackbl]

Vietnamese couple injures genitals using plastic bag as condom

A young couple in northern Vietnam was recently admitted to a hospital with scratched and bleeding genitalia after having sex wearing a plastic bag in place of a condom.
The two undergraduates, a boy and a girl, were taken to the Hanoi Nephrology Hospital with badly injured private parts, said Nguyen The Luong, the infirmary’s deputy director.
According to the patients, the two had used a plastic bag as protection when having their first sexual intercourse, after feeling too shy to buy a real condom.
As the plastic bag was rough and lacked elasticity and lubrication, the young couple ended up scratching their genitals to the point of bleeding.
The lovebirds underwent a thorough check-up and were prescribed with antibiotics and disinfectants for their injuries.
According to doctors, the use of plastic bags or similar household products as alternatives to condoms is strongly discouraged since such items are not designed for the function.
Thick plastic bags can scratch or even tear private parts, while thinner ones are just as damaging and are prone to break much more easily than condoms.
A recent study conducted on over 2,700 undergraduates in Hanoi by Hanoi Medical University and Hanoi Medical College found that 16 percent of those surveyed claimed to have had sexual intercourse by the time of the interview.
However, only a third of these respondents said they had used a condom during their first sexual experience, while a fourth of them admitted that they found buying condoms embarrassing.
The staggering numbers may be attributed to a lack of sex and contraceptive education, a topic still considered sensitive and avoided by many parents and teachers despite it having long been a compulsory part of school curricula in Vietnam.

[jackbl]

Singapore stores’ one-each policy on iPhone 7 sales hinders Vietnamese shoppers

Vietnamese fans and dealers of Apple’s latest flagship smartphones iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus queued for days in advance at shopping malls in Singapore, only to be let down by the store policies throughout the city allowing for only one purchase per customer.
Vietnamese fans of U.S. tech giant Apple’s smartphone duo iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, unveiled on September 7, are willing to pay the price to be one of the first to get their hands on the new gadget.
As Vietnam is not among the major markets enjoying the phone’s first shipments, set for sales to open on Friday, many Vietnamese fans have resorted to flying to Singapore days in advance to queue up for their favorite phone, or even paying extra for a dealer to do the tiring job.
By Thursday at 10 am, around twenty Vietnamese customers could already be spotted in front of a Nubox store at City Square Small in Little India District, Singapore, a day before the phone’s designated sales launch.
A Vietnamese woman at the front of the line said she had flown to the country from Vietnam’s Tra Vinh Province three days earlier and had been in line since the early morning.
She was standing next to a pink blanket laid down in the hallway which she said would be her sleeping place for the night.
At 7:50 pm the same day, 35 eager customers have lined up outside the store, 70 percent of whom were from Vietnam.

Thien Van, a Vietnamese woman in line who said she has been queuing for the phone with her sister since 8:00 am the same day, said an additional SG$300 (US$220) would be charged to those who wanted to get their hands on the new phone before 4:00 pm on Wednesday, when the stores are officially allowed to sign contracts with iPhone 7 owners.
Van said she was buying the phones to resell them to ten clients at home who had already deposited money.
When the iPhone 6 launched two years ago, Van and her husband followed a similar plan, quickly buying over 80 iPhone 6’s and reselling them for between SG$20 and SG$100 ($14.68 - $73.4) each.
The ‘hottest’ iPhone 7 in this release is the glass-backed Jet Black version, for which Apple confirmed on Wednesday that they had run out of initial inventory due to such a large numbers of pre-orders.
Many Vietnamese dealers, including trio My, Trang, and Nga, who arrived in Singapore early on Wednesday, were disappointed to find that they were only allowed to buy one phone each.
The women said they had received eight orders for the phone, so they would have to hail a taxi to another mall in Clementi, which opens sales at 11:00 am, right after buying three in Jurong.
“I hope things work out, otherwise we’ll have to buy from the black market for hundreds of Singapore dollars more for each phone,” My said.
By 9 am on Wednesday, most stores in Singapore had opened sales for the iPhone 7 after a after an earlier morning downpour finished around 7:30 am..
Early campers at some shopping malls were made to queue outside on the pavement as the mall does not allow large gathering sinside.
The price for a pink iPhone 7 in Singapore is SG$1,418 ($1,040) with an added tax of SG$93 ($68).

[jackbl]

Vietnam has more than 100,000 sex workers: ILO

Vietnam has more than 100,000 sex workers, many of whom have to work more than 12 hours a day, the Vietnamese chapter of the International Labor Organization (ILO) said Friday, citing its statistics.
Of these sex workers, some 72,000 are prostitutes, according to the ILO Vietnam figures, released at a conference held by the social evils prevention department under Vietnam’s Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs.
The social affairs ministry admitted at the meeting that Vietnam has more than 160,000 establishments offering ‘sensitive services,’ with hundreds of thousands of laborers who are forced to have sex with their customers.
The ILO research was conducted via in-depth interviews with men, women and transgender people who do prostitution, as well as owners of ‘sensitive services’ and local authorities.
According to the study, women working at establishments offering prostitution have to ‘serve’ six to ten customers a day on average, with the number reaching up to 30 on peak days.
In the meantime, male prostitutes receive an average of three to ten customers a day.
Prostitutes working on the street have a smaller amount of costumers a day, no more than five.
Occupational health and safety issues
Pham Thi Thanh Huyen, national coordinator of ILO in Vietnam, said big financial burden is the main motive behind prostitution.
“Many had tried other jobs before deciding that prostitution is their best option at the time,” she added.
Among 73 prostitutes interviewed, only one said she was cheated into do prostitution.
Many sex workers have their travel controlled over, and their personal papers held by their ‘employers,’ according to the study.
The study also found that while most sex workers voluntarily take part in prostitution activities, only a few of them are able to control occupational health and safety issues.
The ‘workplace’ of those workers is mainly neat and dirty brothels in poor conditions.
Prostitutes often feel unsafe, and worry about the risks they may have to face including being raided by police, thief and violence.
As a result of unguaranteed working condition, hours-long working, slogging, and violence, the job they are doing has left bad consequences on their health.
“Many prostitutes stress and have metal problems as they feel uncomfortable with working,” Huyen said.
“They also suffer stomachache for heavily drinking alcohol, either because they are forced or choose to do so on their own accord.”
Many sex workers also have tremor as a result of having too much sex, or injures due to gang rape, Huyen added.
“We need to make sure that employers follow regulations to ensure safety, health and rights of their labors,” Dr. Chang Lee Hee, director of ILO Vietnam said.
Dr. Chang said the local labor and health inspectors play a very important role in protecting sex workers.
“They need to be trained regarding the issue and bring labors’ safety, health and rights into their plans of inspection,” he explained.

[jackbl]

HCM City restaurant accused of cheating Australian man of $30,000 in payment card fraud

An Australian tourist has recently reported that he was charged nearly AUD39,429 (nearly 30,000) for a dinner via payment card without his acknowledge in a Ho Chi Minh City restaurant two months ago.
On August 11, Caracciolo David John had dinner at Nightfall restaurant in District 1’s Thai Van Lung Street.
He paid the meal with his payment cards and after got back to his home country, the man realized he was charged with the above amount.
Le Kim Yen, his authorized representative on Saturday confirmed with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the restaurant staff deliberately swiped both of his cards multiple times.
At the time, they also asked him several times for the cards’ passwords, saying there were technical issues.
They did not provide John with any payment bill or money transfer receipt, Yen added.
“He believed and did not check his account until getting back to Australian and received an account statement from his bank,” Yen said. “He found that Nightfall swiped his cards 8 times and took the money”.
The Australian man’s authorized person confirmed again that he did not sign any bill at the time the payment was conducted at Nightfall.

According to lawyer Truong Xuan Tam who represents Caracciolo David John in Vietnam, Nightfall restaurant must be responsible once the money was transferred to their account.
“We are currently not able to contact to the owner as the restaurant was moved to another location,” the lawyer said. “However, its registered business address is still valid.”

[stoneage]

Here supposed to learn what?

[Selecao]

Here supposed to learn what?

Please move your nonsense out of this thread if you are not here to support.

Thank you.

[Timetopika]

Not sure if this is the right thread to post. I just want to understand the behavior of typical vietbu so if any pro brother can shed some light please do.

Recently got to know this young vietbu working at coffeeshop zhi char. I was surprised to see such and hence chat with her. Found out she is 22 recent Uni grad (verified from work permit) and on a short 3 month contract. She told me that she came here by knowing the work as it showed management trainee on her working pass but end up in coffeeshop and she was unhappy working here especially not able to speak mandarin and cannot adjust to the food. . Anyway being a nice gentlemen I said I can bring her around when she off.

Fast forward, we met almost everyday after her work which ends at 12.30 am, going for supper or just chatting . I managed to hold her hands and kiss and hug her within a couple of late night outs. This happened all within a short 3 weeks and I asked her to be my gf (thinking can up her) she rejected saying she still young and she don't know what will happen when she goes back but she wants to come back here. I told her the various options that she can work here. I even said I would pay for her (dangle carrot) agency fees etc.

Things got on smoothly but all of a sudden she changed 360 degree. Ignore my SMS and call and I think even blocked me. Went to confront her and she said she has many things to think about and we are just friends (hello?) no head no tail so I left her alone for awhile to let her sort her mind. But she continued to ignore me and even when we agreed to go out on her off she said she was busy and had another appointment.

Now my question is have I been led on? Is this a typical vietbu trap? She had never asked me for money but I would always pay for everything which I am not particular about.

Just got to know from coffeeshop auntie not to waste time on her as she was seeing someone on the sides. But nt sure who to believe now

Hope some brothers can share their experience with vietbu and their so called scams.

[FireShark]

Now my question is have I been led on? Is this a typical vietbu trap? She had never asked me for money but I would always pay for everything which I am not particular about.

Just got to know from coffeeshop auntie not to waste time on her as she was seeing someone on the sides. But nt sure who to believe now

Hope some brothers can share their experience with vietbu and their so called scams.

The Coffeeshop auntie had already informed you that she is seeing someone why u still insist to be with her. Don't be too naive. How can a grad be working as a stall assistant?

[jackbl]

What do expats think about Hanoi plan to lift midnight curfew?

Editor’s note: Two expats in Hanoi have told Tuoi Tre News their view about the capital city’s plan to extend the mandatory closing time for service-oriented business past midnight.
With all services in Hanoi currently required to close before 12:00 am, too early for many foreign visitors, the curfew lifting move is intended to appease Western visitors and stimulate the capital’s languid tourism sector.

Cameron Lucy (English teacher in Hanoi):
I think that they should not make the curfew later, the thing that makes Hanoi great is that it is a crazy and noisy city, but then at night becomes a peaceful place.
Hanoi is slowly becoming more like Bangkok which is a bad thing! If people want to party all night, Hanoi is not the place, let the locals sleep, they work hard enough already!
Bangkok is full of fast food places and convenience stores, the streets are crowded overnight with drunk people which means that there are many pickpockets and prostitutes there.
Of course Hanoi has crime too but nowhere near as much as Thailand!
I have stayed in Bangkok a few times but I am always kept awake by the noise and light pollution there!

Ogbu Benneth Chima (Nigerian, student at British Vietnam University in Hanoi):
The news of extending Hanoi curfew time to early hours is a welcomed development as such will increase and retain the number of visitors.
Night life is a major factor that can positively or negatively impact on tourism, visitors are most likely to choose destinations with great night and of course nightlife encourages more spending which is good for the economy of the host country.
Comparing tourism in Vietnam and Thailand, we notice a great gap.
Thailand has 55 percent returning visitors while amazing and beautiful Vietnam has got just 5 percent return.
The difference could be as a result of various factor, however the most audible of all factors is the fact that Thailand has got a legendary night life which is quite attractive to most visitors.
The city of Bangkok keeps buzzling all night with so much activities. That explains the difference in the statistical numbers.
Improving night life in Vietnam could be a great turning point for the Vietnam tourism industry.
Great night life means more visitors, more jobs, more government earning, and after all, overall GDP growth.

[jackbl]

Wanna lose weight, expats? Vietnamese food should be your choice

How come so many chubby, obese, well-rounded, rolly-polly tourists return home without embracing the Vietnamese diet? Why the tourism authorities don’t promote Vietnam as the ultimate healthy, dietary heaven is something I don’t understand. The only fat Vietnamese are the ones with jobs where they don’t move... that’s it... everyone else is skinny and on the go!
OK, sure, I’m being so unfair, right? Yes, I admit that there are plenty of young backpackers in good shape all trudging around with half their life on their backs. Well, of course... that cockamamie Lonely Planet guide must weigh about 40 kilos by itself.
Also: Being fat isn’t always your own fault. That’s OK, you can blame it on the DNA, so get down and mutate.
Forget the ‘Paleo’ diet which encourages you to eat an early caveman – simple fruits, nuts, veggies, fish and meat but no processed food or dairy products such as milk or cheese. That might help you lose, let’s say, 10 to 15 kilos, which is enough for a balloon-shaped tourist to squeeze out of a coach’s door.
The ‘Atkins’ diet favored the idea of cutting out foods such as sugar, bread and pasta and replacing them with food that took longer to digest, making the body hungry so it would start using up the fat stored inside. However, the idea collapsed because people became hungry... duh... so they ate more.

Now the ‘Jenny Craig’ diet features frozen food delivered to your door that is tailored to your dietary needs and is scientifically measured to produce about a 5% loss in weight over a year. Still... if you’re about 120 kilos, it would take you about a decade before you can seduce that 80 kilo love machine dancing on the other side of the room.
Why not have a ‘Lose weight in 90 days’ tour of the country? It would sell like banh mi (Vietnamese sandwich) at a street stall next to the traffic lights near a university on a Monday morning. And DO try the cooking classes – it’s fun and yummy and healthier than that pre-packaged stuff back home.
Local food is mostly low in sugar and fairly light on spices and salt, depending on the recipe. A Vietnamese diet can be highly recommended for those with chronic, unending tummy problems, digestion issues and skin problems, mostly due to the high vitamin content of the food. That’s one of the reasons why Asians in general have such thick, strong hair, did you know?
Pho, for example, noodles with meat and fish combinations, is a high energy, low fat breakfast pick-me-up that gets you on the go at 6:00 am in the morning. Why not try com ga or chicken rice; herbs and spices balanced to the region’s climate and season - an anytime of the day energy booster as it releases its energy fast.
Or how about bun cha – rice vermicelli (vermicelli is thin noodles) with grilled pork, often served with chili, garlic, nuoc cham (fish sauce), and lots of fresh greens. Heck, if it was good enough for President Obama (he’s skinny, but..) in Hanoi, it’s got to be fabulous for you!
Hint: this is what bun cha is all about: http://tuoitrenews.vn/lifestyle/34977/what-makes-bun-cha-a-hanoi-musttry-that-obama-ate-for-dinner
Now one dish I highly recommend is canh thit bo, a beef broth (soup or stew) that has lots of variations. This is usually a soup with sticky rice and beef and whatever flavors you choose. It’s brilliant and as great as that late night meal before a hard day in the morning or when the rain is howling down and you’re soaked to the bone.
Yeah... come to Vietnam and stick around for a while. You will lose weight in a comfortable, tasty way that makes the Western diet books look as if they were written by a jealous office worker who never managed to lose enough weight to steal the love of his life away from the gym coach. Really!
Now I should make a disclaimer here by confessing that I love my junk food too but I mix it up with spring rolls, street food and an 11:00 pm banh mi. Still, I’ve lost weight too! Vietnam beats the world again.
Remember if it’s good enough for President Obama to eat in a small café in Hanoi, then that’s your cue to eat like a Vietnamese too.
Personally? I love to finish my day with an Australian Vegemite banh mi washed down by a Red Export Larue beer. I’m sure I lost a kilo just thinking about it.

[jackbl]

Thugs rob, assault bus passengers in southern Vietnam

Passengers on buses traveling from Ho Chi Minh City to the southern province of Dong Nai have fallen victim to several gangs who call themselves merchants of ‘panacea’, forcing people to pay heavily for their products.
Within 30 kilometers of the Suoi Tien Bus Station, in District 9, Ho Chi Minh City, people aboard coaches have been easy targets for at least four groups of muggers.
The thugs use several methods, from putting on a show to threatening and assaulting their victims in order to appropriate their property.
The victims are mainly poor people from the countryside who come to the southern metropolis to earn a living or receive treatment for health conditions.
Uninvited guests
According to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporters’ observation on the morning of November 9, a gang of five men from 25 to 50 years old led by a man named Chanh gathered at the Suoi Tien bus stop at around 8:30 am.
The outlaws dressed themselves in jeans, T-shirts or shirts, and shoes, and held several small pieces of paper advertising a medicine called PIROMAX, which they stored in their bum bags.
After 10 minutes scouting the area, the men boarded bus No.12 toward a stop in Dong Nai and began preparing their daily endeavor.
At around 10:00 am, another of the gang members pulled over a passenger bus, which was carrying some 30 people, before getting on the vehicle.
One of the members started promoting their ‘panacea’ while the other four acted as passengers, whose role was to express enthusiasm for the products.
The 'merchant' then began handing out his blister packs of PIROMAX ‘for free’ as the whole gang tried to shovel the medicine into the hands of the passengers.
Some travelers managed to resist the ‘gifts’ while others with the pills in their hands then became the targets of the scavengers, who showed their true nature.
“Collect the money!” Chanh shouted, before his accessories forced the unfortunate victims to pull out their money and took whatever they had.
After snatching VND1 million (US$44.15) from 19-year-old Thien and another VND1.2 million ($52.9) from a 22-year-old passenger, the group quickly disembarked from the bus.

After comprehending the situation, Thien went to follow the muggers only to be thwarted by the threat of another man, seemingly a member of the gang.
“If you get off the bus, they will stab you to death. They are all drug addicts. Dare to follow them if you do not believe me,” the stranger asserted.
According to the bus driver, many people have become their prey, powerless to resist.
“I could only warn my passengers of the incident. They would attack us if we interfere with their operation,” the driver said.
Using a similar scheme, Chanh’s men had earlier plundered VND200,000 ($8.83) from a 40-year-old woman on November 7 as well as threatening an undercover Tuoi Tre journalist when he tried to stand up for the victim.
Violent actions
The gangs do not just verbally intimidate passengers but do not hesitate to throw fists at those daring to talk back.
At 8:00 am on November 3, Cuong, an experienced merchant of ‘panacea’ and his disciples boarded a bus heading toward Ho Chi Minh City.
They performed a similar play, with Cuong the seller and his followers disguised as passengers.
The scheme was going smoothly until one male passenger in his 30s revealed the scam, threatening to call the police.
Cuong then charged at the man before he could finish his sentence, grabbing his shirt.
“I will beat you to death!” the thug shouted before punching the passenger repeatedly on his chest and head.
“Go ahead and call the police. I can give you the number,” Cuong said before leaving the vehicle with his gang.
On October 28, the groups of Chanh and a man named Son raided a shuttle bus in Bien Hoa City, Dong Nai, introducing themselves as medicine sellers of a charitable organization.
One of their victims, 21-year-old Bui Tien Vu, was pressured to pay VND200,000 for two packs of pills.
As Vu said he did not have enough money, he was attacked by four men, resulting in a bleeding mouth, scratched forehead, and broken glasses.
The thugs spared no one, a witness said, recalling an elderly woman who had also been terrified by the criminals.

[alan1999]

Not sure if this is the right thread to post. I just want to understand the behavior of typical vietbu so if any pro brother can shed some light please do.

Recently got to know this young vietbu working at coffeeshop zhi char. I was surprised to see such and hence chat with her. Found out she is 22 recent Uni grad (verified from work permit) and on a short 3 month contract. She told me that she came here by knowing the work as it showed management trainee on her working pass but end up in coffeeshop and she was unhappy working here especially not able to speak mandarin and cannot adjust to the food. . Anyway being a nice gentlemen I said I can bring her around when she off.

Fast forward, we met almost everyday after her work which ends at 12.30 am, going for supper or just chatting . I managed to hold her hands and kiss and hug her within a couple of late night outs. This happened all within a short 3 weeks and I asked her to be my gf (thinking can up her) she rejected saying she still young and she don't know what will happen when she goes back but she wants to come back here. I told her the various options that she can work here. I even said I would pay for her (dangle carrot) agency fees etc.

Things got on smoothly but all of a sudden she changed 360 degree. Ignore my SMS and call and I think even blocked me. Went to confront her and she said she has many things to think about and we are just friends (hello?) no head no tail so I left her alone for awhile to let her sort her mind. But she continued to ignore me and even when we agreed to go out on her off she said she was busy and had another appointment.

Now my question is have I been led on? Is this a typical vietbu trap? She had never asked me for money but I would always pay for everything which I am not particular about.

Just got to know from coffeeshop auntie not to waste time on her as she was seeing someone on the sides. But nt sure who to believe now

Hope some brothers can share their experience with vietbu and their so called scams.

Bro...what scam are you refering to? There is no scam from your story at all. If i'm right, yes, she is a U grad. If not, they can't come over as MGT trainee. Also i want to highlight to you is that she is not from poor family bcs it's imposbbile to come to Singapore as trainee. Normally u need a lot of connections and money to do that.
Maybe she is still young and wants to explore the world first thus not to commit to anything. Maybe she came to know another guy which show more affection then you.
Anyway if u r really interested in the gal, try going to Vietnam for meetup and have more bonding rather then telling yourself this is a scam.

I have settled down in Vietnam for many years already and thus i know how the lives here works.

[jackbl]

A tribute to all hard-working teachers in Vietnam

Vietnamese Teachers’ Day is November 20th, when flower sales go through the roof and students visit their teachers across the nation to pay their respects.
From the wooden shack classrooms of the cloud-wrapped Western mountains with hardships of poor housing, clothing, little money and fewer opportunities to the growing quality of city education with well-fed kids in over-crowded and mostly under-resourced facilities – the challenges are still huge.
So to work successfully in teaching makes you a pretty amazing person!
But here’s the thing... 20 million students are getting an education and more than a million teachers are doing their jobs. The nation’s education ministry is lifting its educational standards and working on better support for everyone – it’s all happening.
That’s right – teachers are actually doing their jobs as well as they can!
When people mention education, we often moan about too much homework, boring teachers and subjects yet that could be any classroom in the world. Why is it that we don’t seem to remember the best teachers and subjects?
Here’s a challenge for you – can you remember the teacher who made you understand? I can think of about a dozen from elementary school to my master’s degree.
For me, there was Mr Fox, a scary teacher in elementary school who used colored chalk a lot and gave me my first real practical science class – I can still remember the lesson exactly. There was Mr Lowe in high school that encouraged story-telling, drama and the power of writing. And Mrs Goodman, a science teacher, incredibly strict but finally made me understand physics and chemistry.
Teachers will continue the lesson until you get it!
Recently an IELTS student’s face glowed when she talked about a history teacher who made the subject come alive for her by filling out the boring factual content with stories and comparisons – the smile on her face was priceless. She may never use the lesson in a job but what if it motivated her to travel? That’s life changing...
What you learn may surprise you in many ways later!
Not all teachers are inspiring or memorable but without their daily work in doing the lessons again and again, we probably wouldn’t have had the choices in life and work that we eventually took for granted.
So teachers are tough and strong in their hearts! (Even when it’s sooooo... boring.)
A part that’s often poorly understood by parents and outsiders is the amount of organizing, planning, paperwork, grading, marking, report writing, studying, thinking, meetings, lesson plan writing and sudden changes in curricula, timetables, schedules, standards, workloads and outside-school-hour work that is involved in good teaching.
A teacher’s ranges of office skills are often wider than you think!
A good teacher is also partly a parent, policeman, psychologist, scientist and philosopher. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to listen to students’ problems, calm down an excited class or lift the spirits of an unhappy class. There are times when the weather is bad and the students are grumpy (the teacher too!) or the other days when one student looks like the loneliest person in the world and there’s nothing you can do.
Sometimes students will ask you questions about life and you have to philosophize, explain or give an opinion – without imposing your own prejudices on them. This is a very hard one – especially with students around late teenage or early age. The trick is not to judge the student for asking the question but giving them an answer that is honest and fair.
Teachers see things from many points of view! And there’s often more than one answer...
Next to last, knowing your stuff; There’s an old saying, ‘the textbook is only as good as the teacher’ – meaning it takes a teacher to help the student understand the knowledge. All too many teachers go ‘by the book’, relying on the book to get them through the lesson but your special teacher will go much further than the book.
There’s inspiration and imagination to give and young minds to set on fire. It doesn’t happen every lesson or for every student or every teacher – but we can all remember that moment of inspiration. Remember my question from before about who opened your mind?
A teacher understands that school is only half the classroom!
A true teacher knows the world is bigger than the book and many lessons are learnt outside a classroom. If you teach a student to pass an exam then you have only half taught them – if your teacher gave you some ability to think about the unexpected then the lesson is 90% complete. The other 10%? What you think long after your teacher is an old memory...
So before you give your teacher their flowers and gifts, stop and stand or sit quietly somewhere for a moment and just think: What did they teach you that didn’t seem like a lesson, yet you learned something?
If you are smiling when you think about this... then the teacher did his job...
My very best regards to all the hard-working teachers of this nation that I love! Happy Vietnamese Teachers’ Day!

[jackbl]

In Vietnam, three is not a crowd

How many Vietnamese does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: three – one to change the light, another to tell him he’s changing it the wrong way, and a third laughing his head off.
Funny how easily a crowd forms in Vietnam...
People-watching is one of humanity’s great pastimes. Either observing from a distance in the comfort of a coffee shop or standing right next to the action – people become sucked in, like mosquitoes to a light, when anybody does anything, even if it appears to be the most utterly boring thing in the world.
Builders working on a construction site fascinate me. It’s like a convoluted LEGO set with little ants running around. Magically, the LEGO set transforms over a few weeks into something recognizable, yet still an ultimately boring piece of architecture that I had hoped it wouldn’t be...sigh...
Coffee shop Vietnamese-style chess nearly tops the list of intriguing crowd-pullers. It never ceases to amaze me how such a slow-moving game can draw such frowns of concentration and annoying running commentaries.
Don’t you hate it when someone points out what you should have done while you’re playing a game... and why aren’t they slaving over a hot shovel, laptop, or service desk counter?
And another thing, why do most Vietnamese spectators stand with one arm across their back holding their other arm while it hangs down straight? Is it a national way of standing?
It seems Vietnamese do that on motorbikes too; this strange ‘leave the left arm behind’ thing. Do they have weak left arms? I’d better not think too much about that question...
Sport; any sport. Just as I’m totally unable to fight the urge to eat Vietnamese fried banana pancakes (I love those things), it seems any game played at any age level attracts a gaggle of people taking sides, yelling support and generally having a whale of a good time. Frequently football and volleyball fans’ motorbikes end up occupying most of a road lane, causing good natured chaos as honking horns battle it out while supporters cry with delight.
The making of sugar cane juice is a kid’s endless entertainment. Particularly around the southern part of Da Nang (I’m not sure why...) you’ll see kids standing around juice making machines as they churn out the sugar cane for juice. I’ve got to admit I love this display of physics at work too. Sometimes a hot and hard motorbike ride is made just a bit more fun by stopping for a smoke and watching the process. Try it sometime, it’s hypnotic.
Motorbikes are equally bedazzling too. Especially in the countryside there’s a magnetic attraction for males to watch someone struggle to repair or rebuild twenty-year-old motorbikes. Many a time I’ve ridden past a repair shop and noticed a cheerful group of commenters contributing their unwanted advice to a poor lad hunched down on his knees, sweat dripping over an old plate of nuts and bolts at his feet while he attempts to re-assemble the drive train of a ubiquitous Honda cub. I’m surprised that I’ve never seen a mechanic throw the spanner at these repeat offenders and their annoying and largely pointless advice.

I recall an artist living in Hoi An a few years ago who used to wander through the city painting and drawing trees, landscapes, and the old town. She had to give up painting in some public areas because the locals would crowd so close to the canvas that she couldn’t concentrate on her artwork. I can’t remember her name, yet her renditions of Vietnam and its scenery were done in beautiful watercolor.
Yet the event that causes the most chaos in Hoi An is Christmas. Surprised? Each year the large church in town puts on a big display of lights, a Christmas tree, and a choir that (weather allowing) sings its heart out. Unfortunately the church is on one of the busiest corners in town and jams up four streets on nights leading up to the holiday. You know you’ve lived in Vietnam a long time when you can actually remember the annual traffic bottlenecks in your neighborhood.

I can easily attract a mob watching in puzzlement as I do the outside gardening. I only do this when my gardener mysteriously disappears for a week and the paper moon trees are growing faster than Vietnam’s debt. No one ever helps, just parks their bikes and snickers as I struggle with the garden tools. I fancy myself as a DIY handyman but the reality of my clumsiness and inept handling of the equipment shows that I’m clearly a highly talented artist and writer… and a horrible tradesman.
Still it works both ways – I can stand next to someone doing something odd and pass along comments too. “You’ve missed a bit” is always a good annoyance. My other favorite begins in English with much body language, “You know, you should... (followed by a long pause, then the punchline)...” and just walk off with an enigmatic smile on my face.
After all, I’m just another face in the crowd...

[jackbl]

Pee in public and pay higher fines, Vietnam says

Vietnamese officials have decided to intensify a crackdown on public urination in the name of environmental protection.
Those peeing in public will be subject to higher fines, according to a new decree set to take effect next year.
However, skeptics still doubt the effectiveness of the new penalty.
The fiat, which will come into force on February 1, 2017, says that those urinating in public will be fined between VND1 million (US$44) and VND3 million ($131).
The current penalty for such an illegal act is from VND200,000 ($8.7) to VND300,000 ($13).
People who are caught littering cigarette butts in public will be fined from VND500,000 ($22) to VND1 million, according to the new rule.
Those dumping garbage on sidewalks, roadways and into local drainage systems will be charged from VND5 million ($220) to VND7 million ($308), much higher than the current fine, which is only around VND400,000 ($17.5).
Some experts considered the harsher punishments necessary for raising public awareness of environmental protection.
According to Ho Nguyen Le, a Vietnamese lawyer, the current law on environmental protection is not strict enough while Vietnamese tend to turn a blind eye to public hygiene.
Aside from encouraging people to protect the environment they live in, a stern penalty is a must to prevent any violation, Le said.
However, Pham Thi Hoang Anh, chief of the office of Healthbridge Canada in Vietnam, a non-profit environmental organization, asserted that the new fine is not so much of a deterrent.
“Apart from a hefty penalty, competent agencies should also carry out regular inspections and sternly punish violators,” Anh said.
According to Nguyen Huu The Trach, a lawyer, law enforcers should ensure fairness and clarity as they deal with offenders of environmental protection regulations.
Local residents should actively study the new rules to cooperate with officers, in a greater bid to conserve their surroundings, Trach said.
Another legal pundit stated that lawbreakers should also be required to do community service alongside a financial penalty.
Parents and adults in a community must strictly comply with the law to set good examples to their children, he added.

[jackbl]

In Vietnam, is it worth the risk?

Just after I signed up for hospital insurance the other week, I got a brutal reminder about why I need it.
One Saturday morning heading toward Da Nang on the coastal highway, I came across a gaggle of Vietnamese huddled around a fallen motorbike. Everyone was on the phone to someone. As I came closer, I realized there was a young, Western female holding her left arm and crying while sitting cross-kneed in the middle of the road.
Now, it’s a terrible thing that you have to stop and think before intervening in accidents in Vietnam. I’ve heard countless stories of helpful Westerners eventually being blamed for accidents after they’ve only pulled over to assist. In most parts of the world, there is no legal requirement for someone to stop and help at the scene of an accident if they are not directly involved in it; however, most people will feel the instinct to help. So I turned back to the scene to see what I could do.

The poor young lass was badly injured, covered in blood with what I (later correctly) guessed was a broken arm. With the Vietnamese still arguing, a young man from Mai Linh Taxi Company pulled up and I got him to get our victim up to Hoan My Hospital in Da Nang as quickly as possible.
In the end she was patched up pretty well at the hospital with a story to tell when she got home and months of gravel rash pain to get through.
Whilst feeling good about having helped, it did spook me a little as I’d just only finalized this year’s health insurance the day before. I’ve had close calls on the roads myself, threatened by all manners of driver insanity and also had some horrible bouts of illness over the course of nine years in Vietnam, so knowing that I now have some kind of financial protection is comforting, even though I have no idea how effective it will be until something actually happens. I’m ‘knocking on wood’ as I write this!
For Vietnamese readers, ‘knocking on wood’ is part of a Western superstition of knocking on something made of wood to protect oneself from evil spirits and bad luck.
Anyway, I was prompted to get the insurance, which I had put off buying for a long time, after incidents like the accident mentioned above. It isn’t cheap in hospitals here, particularly for foreigners, who are often seen as easy prey with deep pockets.
I’ve signed up with Bao Viet Insurance, a state-run company that was recommended by friends. The insurance guy, Bi Linh, was a very nice fellow who said that my ‘plan 2’ package was typical for many middle-class Vietnamese with some money. My coverage is about 6000 dollars for a year and up to 60 days in hospital – a reasonable deal. Anything more serious and I’m off to Australia, fast!
The process has been largely free of any major bureaucratic red tape and I’ll get my ‘Bao Viet Card’ soon. I wonder how many cards I’ll eventually have in this country?
Although I have no idea how many foreigners have decent health and emergency travel insurance, I’m still quite amazed at the risks young foreigners take on the roads here.
In the space of less than a week, I witnessed backpackers with no helmets, no T-shirts and no decent footwear racing up the highway giggling to one another, clearly over the speed limit, somehow believing that Buddha is looking after them. One fellow I observed wore a Vietnamese conical hat, had a cigarette in his mouth and was barefooted going through a red light not that far from my house. Another I witnessed rode on the back of a bike ridden by his larger English friend with a beer glass in his hand, racing up Cua Dai Road in Hoi An late in the evening with plenty of local traffic whizzing pass them too.
Even for the prudent and sensible, the hazards of disease, traffic and I don’t even want to think what else are never far away, so having insurance in Vietnam (or from your home country) is a ‘must’. Please consider this if you are planning on sticking around in Vietnam for a while.
Even though I hope nothing ever happens, as the saying goes: “life is unpredictable so you’d better be ready!”

[applepen39]

Hi cả nhà.
Mình muốn chơi hàng china thì ở đâu cả nhà. Ngon thật ngon nha.

[jackbl]

Karaoke bars should be banned from residential areas in Vietnam: foreigners

Editor's note: Two people from Japan and Singapore have shared their thoughts with Tuoi Tre News on safety regulations in karaoke bars.
The opinions were given following recently reignited concerns in Vietnam that most karaoke bars are unsafe conversions from residential homes and lack the appropriate emergency exits.
Earlier this month, a fire in a karaoke bar in Hanoi that killed 13 was found to have been started by the careless welding of billboards that caused nearby flammable objects to spark, with the rescue of trapped customers hindered by large iron frames caging the front of the building.

The fatal incident once again raised safety concerns over Vietnam’s karaoke bars, the majority of which are merely converted residential homes.

Some of the bars have only a single doorway that serves as both the entrance and exit, usually between four and eight meters wide.
Unsafe fire conditions kill
I've been to this type of karaoke bar in Vietnam, and as far as safety is concerned, I'm afraid that I never thought seriously about it. I thought that a karaoke bar could make food without using fire and I believed that I would be protected by fire protection laws in Vietnam.
In Japan, the law prohibits the operation of karaoke bars in residential areas, so karaoke venues are located around train stations, in commercial buildings and near shopping malls.
According to the Japanese Association of Karaoke Enterprises, there were 9,555 karaoke bars in Japan in 2015, with 47.5 million karaoke users.
As for the law in Japan, all buildings must obey fire protection regulations. Fire protection laws were enhanced on October 25, 2002, after a fire in a multipurpose building of Shinjuku, Tokyo, on September 1 the previous year. Forty-four people were killed and three injured in the incident, the 5th largest fire tragedy in the 70 years since WWII in Japan.
Causes of the fire included an accumulation of objects in the building’s narrow staircases, the fact that the building had only one evacuation passage from the upper floor, and finally, nobody had inspected the automatic fire alarm and a fire drill had never been carried out.
The fire led to the Japanese government's inspection of the country’s "multipurpose buildings." Violations were found in over 90%, meaning the Japanese government took immediate action and changed fire laws to prevent the recurrence of violations.
Punishment for people who violated the laws changed from a maximum of one year of imprisonment or a fine of up to five hundred thousand yen to a maximum of three years of imprisonment or a fine of up to three million yen.
The result has been fewer incidents since October 2002, with all building owners required to be aware of fire security.

Regular audits prevent negligence on safety
I think karaoke is a fun social activity to get people together. Living here for almost half a year, I’ve been to some karaoke bars in Vietnam. I didn't really pay attention to safety but I remember that the walkways and staircases at one place were too narrow. Another one had 7 storeys and very narrow walkways as well. The lift didn’t look like it had been maintained well either. Not much safety there.
In Singapore, the karaoke bars are in shopping malls or in shophouses, not in residential homes. Commercial businesses can only operate in commercial buildings. You will not see a karaoke bar in a residential building. That is illegal. The karaoke bars follow either the shopping mall regulations or building regulations and are audited for fire safety by appointed government bodies. Firefighting systems such as sprinklers and fire extinguishers have to be in place and clear exit signs put up. These businesses have to pass fire safety audits before they are allowed to operate, and I believe they are audited every year.
If the karaoke bar is new and it fails to comply with safety regulations, it is not allowed to operate. If safety standards are not met after an audit, the karaoke bar will be given a period of time to make corrections and be fined. I'm not sure how much the fine is. Probably you can find out on the regulation websites. If they fail to improve in the given time period, the business will be ordered to shut down.
I believe in safety audits/regulations enforced by the government. This prevents negligence on safety.
There’s another concern related to karaoke bars that I’ve experienced in my apartment a few times. The building across the road has the volume turned on so loud but I have no idea why, as it’s not even a karaoke bar. They were singing from 11:00 pm through 3:00 am? Absolutely ridiculous. There was no conscience in them or manners to think that there are many other people who are trying to sleep. So inconsiderate.
In general, after 10:00 pm/11:00 pm, there should be reduced noise unless you're in a commercial area where people are not staying. It's hard to put a penalty on this. I think people should just be considerate and these kinds of things won't happen. Or they could be made more aware of how disturbing it actually is for the people around them.
It happens in Singapore and we deal with it by calling the police. The police will show up at their doorstep to ask them politely to reduce their volume as it is late at night. If they do not comply and the neighbors call the police again, the police will arrest them for causing a public disturbance. Singaporeans usually won't repeat something after the police show up.

[FireShark]

Karaoke bars should be banned from residential areas in Vietnam: foreigners

Regular audits prevent negligence on safety

There’s another concern related to karaoke bars that I’ve experienced in my apartment a few times. The building across the road has the volume turned on so loud but I have no idea why, as it’s not even a karaoke bar. They were singing from 11:00 pm through 3:00 am? Absolutely ridiculous. There was no conscience in them or manners to think that there are many other people who are trying to sleep. So inconsiderate.
In general, after 10:00 pm/11:00 pm, there should be reduced noise unless you're in a commercial area where people are not staying. It's hard to put a penalty on this. I think people should just be considerate and these kinds of things won't happen. Or they could be made more aware of how disturbing it actually is for the people around them.
It happens in Singapore and we deal with it by calling the police. The police will show up at their doorstep to ask them politely to reduce their volume as it is late at night. If they do not comply and the neighbors call the police again, the police will arrest them for causing a public disturbance. Singaporeans usually won't repeat something after the police show up.

This person who comment this does not know the culture of the Vietnam. Normally; even you call the police; the police can't do anything. For several times; I heard those houses having their Karaoke session from 8pm through 3am then they stop. Most of them will not care cos it their culture unless Government have rulings that after 11pm; you wont be able to have any loud activities coming from your home.

[jackbl]

Expat suggests methods to combat public littering in Vietnam

Editor's note: A Singaporean expat has shared his thoughts with Tuoi Tre News on what Vietnam should do to combat people’s bad habit of throwing trash and urinating on the street.
Dr. Ong Kian Soon’s opinions follow a decision by Vietnamese officials to crack down on public urination and littering.
Those urinating in public will be fined between VND1 million (US$44) and VND3 million ($131), a new rule that will take effect on February 1 says.
People caught littering cigarette butts in public will also be fined from VND500,000 ($22) to VND1 million, according to the new rule.
Anyone dumping garbage on sidewalks, roadways and into local drainage systems will be fined from VND5 million ($220) to VND7 million ($308) which is much much higher than the current fine, which is approximately VND400,000 ($17.5).

Fine is good, but not enough
I’ve travelled to Vietnam many times over the past 10 years, so it’s inevitable that I have seen people littering or relieving themselves in public.
These new regulations are a good start. I am glad that the awareness of the importance of a clean environment is improving and official regulations are a good sign that Vietnam is serious about keeping the environment clean.
Of course when you implement these types of regulations, there will be plenty of doubts and many people may say that such regulations to try and change people's behavior are ridiculous, or will never work.
What Vietnam is facing right now is not unusual. Singapore was in the same situation 20-30 years ago. I remember many years ago when I was growing up in Singapore, there were many "Keep the city clean" campaigns and initially, there was a lot of resistance and many people also thought that such campaigns would never work.
However, in spite of objections to such regulations punishing people who dirty the environment, the government persisted and finally people started getting the idea that it’s bad to spoil the environment.
At one time, Singapore was jokingly called a "Fine" city because there were posters everywhere showing how much you need to pay in fines if you dirtied the environment, e.g. littering in the park, spitting on the ground or passing urine in the lifts, etc.
In Singapore, most people live in government-subsidized housing called HDB (Housing and Development Board) apartments, and sensors to detect urine are installed in all HDB lifts to catch people who urinate there. If these sensors are triggered, the lift door will not open and the police will arrest the perpetuator. If I remember correctly, the fine is $500 dollars.
In Singapore, when a person attracts a fine, police officers will actually take down the person's details and the person will have to pay the fine at the relevant government office. If the fine is not paid, he/she can be taken to court and even be jailed if the person repeatedly refuses to pay the fine.
So, I do think that such regulations are feasible in Vietnam, but the government needs to persist and more importantly implement the fines across the board to anyone and everyone who violates the rules, without fear or favor, so that people respect them.

Surveillance camera
It is impossible to catch violators all the time. In Singapore violators don’t get caught most of the time. The most important thing is that the regulation signals the government's resolve to stamp out such behavior.
In Singapore in the old days, certain places e.g. dark alleys or small deserted roads or car parks that saw lots of people dumping rubbish had cameras that monitored the area. These kinds of surveillance cameras warn people not to litter or pass urine there. It’s not that expensive to install such cameras and deter crime.
Cameras are not used to catch people who randomly pass by the area and litter, they are used to catch people who persistently use the area to dump rubbish. If you see a certain person in the area that dumps rubbish day after day, it’s not difficult to identify them. The camera is used mainly to catch these recurrent offenders.
Actually you see it often in Vietnam too. Certain areas around the back of markets, certain people will dump rubbish in the back lanes and these people do it day after day. Cameras are supposed to catch people who persistently litter and have no consideration for others.
In Singapore, surveillance cameras are often used in high-rise buildings (e.g. HDB apartments and government buildings) to catch people who litter. Usually these cameras are deployed due to complaints by residents that a certain area is dirty because lots of people litter. In a way the government in Singapore is quite responsive in that when people complain to their local town council, the town council will take action by installing cameras in the area of concern.
Other methods
Looking at the bigger picture, I think that meting out fines to people only deters a certain group from violating the regulations. The really effective method is to "name and shame" perpetuators. This one does not involve money and I would say is even more effective than fines.
There were also some concerns in Singapore that rich people wouldn’t be worried about getting a fine and therefore continue to litter, hence the government implemented a scheme whereby the person who littered would need to perform "community service" by sweeping the road around the place the person lives while wearing a bright green shirt. This of course was made to shame the perpetuators in front of his or her neighbors and it was amazingly successful!
Of course, the best way is to educate people on the importance of protecting the environment and keeping our shared living spaces clean.
This type of education should start at a young age. There is no better place to start than in schools. Schools should play an active role in educating students on such issues. In certain schools in Singapore, it is compulsory that students clean their classroom and surrounding common areas even though there are school cleaners who are supposed to do this. It is part of a student’s character building.
The other method is to encourage people's good behavior by giving due recognition to those that go the extra mile to keep the environment clean. For example, when I was studying, the school often organized trips to the beach to clean up the rubbish on our beaches. Such events are often publicized by the media. In this way, the people who participate in the events learn good habits of how to keep our environment clean and also, the event serves as a positive example.

[jackbl]

The slow wind-down in Vietnam

Strange how the stress levels increase as the nation slows down.
Vietnam will slow to a crawl (apart from the traffic!) across Christmas and the New Year heading towards Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year.
As the twinkle of Chrissy lights switch on across Vietnam, the bedroom lights are also on late into the evening as senior students prepare for their final exams and others, their mid-terms. Luckily, electricity is cheap in Vietnam.
I’m already receiving those frustrated, anxious late night Facebook messages from students freaking out, looking for reassurance and someone to off-load their angst on. Oddly, at the same time, class attendances are falling as my students begin the annual round of school and work parties, not to mention compulsory family get-togethers.
Almost nightly, my students repeat those same old modal verbs of obligation. ‘Hey, Stivi! Can I be absent because I have to/must/should/need to...’ You get the idea... Sigh... Even my IELTS students are abandoning study for the more serious family demands to help out with the shopping or to prepare for their final tests. I’ve never seen so many bags under young eyes before...
I was intrigued to learn that some exams were going to be delayed because the Christian students would be attending church. Maybe they’ll secretly study physics during the sermon. I get the impression it’s all rather metaphysical.
This time of year can be a very distracting time, with all those parties. It can be easy to forget to stock up for Tet, with shops and banks shutting down for at least the last four days of the traditional rituals of holiday.
This year I’m working on the day Australia celebrates Christmas, the 25th, however our students will have a mini-feast. Hopefully there will be lamingtons, a combination of sponge cake, chocolate and coconut that’s never failed to cheer up a stressed student.
I highly recommend anyone reading this who doesn’t know about lamingtons, an Australian invention, to find the recipe on the Internet. They’re incredibly easy to make.
This year I’m planning to enlist the skills of Da Nang’s catering maestro, Tony Hill, to whip up a batch of brownies and lamingtons. As I teach my students; they are ‘delicious, yummy, awesome, irresistible’ and ‘to die for’. The last adjective always gets a look of shock.
Unfortunately due to Vietnam’s incredibly silly visa rules, I’ll be travelling overland to Cambodia on another visa run around the Western New Year. I like Cambodia. It’s a weird breath of fresh air after a year or two of dealing with Vietnam’s labyrinth layers of business permits, contracts and registering a business.
Even getting a Cambodian visa takes ten minutes compared to Vietnam’s slow, time-consuming, crowded, bureaucratic land border procedures. And why, oh why, dear Vietnam, do you have to fill up a whole passport page with a Vietnamese visa? Is it some form of punishment?
As I return in early January, my little school will grind to a halt, as family obligations ahead of Tet demand housecleaning, food preparation for dozens of relatives, gift shopping and pre-Tet parties. I’m kinda envious, but it’s very cool that the Vietnamese will celebrate four events; Christmas, the foreigners’ New Year, a pre-Tet warm-up and then Tet!
For the world-weary, grumpy, old expat the ‘slow wind-down’ is part of the culture we have learned to snuggle into. Having said that, it’s the most intense two-month period of the annual intake of fresh-faced, enthusiastic new expats - all wanting to teach English, find accommodation and start a yoga studio, gym class or gluten-free shop.
I’m sure it will be chaotic at the airport as I set out on my voyage of discovery soon. The bus to Cambodia will be exhausting. The running around in the pot-holed tuk-tuk in Phnom Penh will damage my back and the return journey will be just as infuriating.
Yet the slowdown is a great time to be in Vietnam provided you’re not trying to make money or trying to get things done in a hurry. It’s an excellent time to catch up with long lost friends, think about what you’ve accomplished (or successfully avoided...), savor the warmth of close friends in our drizzly, supposedly chilly winter - that or a Vietnamese hot pot - and simply put off everything until mid-February.
So go with the flow... Slow down yourself and take the time to chill out and look around the world you occupy and the people that you helped, encouraged and loved. Put off the chores for a while and decorate your space.
You might be wearing a big jacket to keep the chill outside, but you’ll feel warm and fuzzy inside. And if that doesn’t work, I do recommend a cold Larue.

[jackbl]

Vietnam to allow screening of 18+ movies from 2017

A new film-rating system is slated to take effect on January 1, 2017, allowing for the first time the screening of adult movies not suitable for viewers under 18 years of age in Vietnam.
According to the new ratings by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, movies will be labeled based on four age restrictions before reaching theaters across Vietnam.
The classifications include films that are suitable to general audience, with all ages admitted, and movies that are only allowed for viewers of at least 13, 16 and 18 years of age, respectively.
The respective labels for the four categories are P, 13+, 16+ and 18+.
The rating system is quite different from that of the Motion Picture Association of America, which includes such ratings as G (General audience), PG (Parental Guidance Suggested), PG-13 (may be inappropriate for children under 13), R (Restricted - under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) and NC-17 (Adults Only).
The 18+ rating applied in Vietnam is similar to the NC-17, which is worded as “no one 17 and under admitted.”
According to the culture ministry, the ratings are based on such parameters as the film theme, topic, language, content and the level of untidy, sexual and violent scenes, as well as the use of drugs.
Until today, the companies that release adult films in Vietnam usually have to cut all explicit scenes to be allowed to screen the works as 16+ movies.
The new rating system, which finally allows films intended for adult viewers to be screened, is therefore hugely welcomed by Vietnam’s film industry.
Local filmmakers said they will no longer have to worry if their works are banned from screening for explicit content, while releasing firms can now sigh a breath of relief as they will no longer have to show cut movies to fans at the expense of their complaints.
A recent flick released late 2016, Chay Di Roi Tinh, was in an ironic situation when it was forced to be labeled as 16+ because Vietnam was then yet to have the 13+ rating. Consequently, a young actor of the film was not allowed to watch his own movie as he is under 16 years old.

[jackbl]

Vietnam outlines strict requirements for locals to gamble at home

With the Vietnamese government recently revealing that local gamblers will be allowed to enter casinos on home soil in a three-year pilot scheme, a set of strict requirements they have to meet have been outlined in a draft decree.
At a meeting with the administration of the northern province of Quang Ninh in December, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said the government will pilot allowing local punters to enter casinos in the province’s Van Don District, and Phu Quoc Island off the southern province of Kien Giang.
These two casinos are still under construction, with no opening date confirmed so far, according to newswire VnExpress.
Strict requirements
According to the draft decree, Vietnamese nationals who wish to gamble at those casinos have to meet four requirements at a time.
The punters first have to be at least 21 years of age, and have proof that their minimum monthly income is VND10 million (US$440).
As per the third requirement, local gamblers must afford an entrance fee of VND1 million ($44) per person per day, or VND25 million ($1,100) per person per month.
Lastly, the punters are only allowed to play if there are no official requests from their family members, including their parents, spouses, children, or even parents-in-law, that the casinos should not allow them to play.
Any person who is under legal prosecution or has a criminal record is not allowed to gamble at casinos, according to the bill.
News that Vietnamese will soon be allowed to enter local casinos has been greatly welcomed by some members of the tourism industry.
Professor Ha Ton Vinh, an academic who has extensively researched the gambling industry, said lifting the casino ban on locals will surely drive the economy of Quang Ninh and Kien Giang, where the gambling centers are located.
Vinh also said that every year, the country loses approximately US$800 million in tax return as thousands of Vietnamese have no choice but coming to neighboring countries for gambling.
According to the new regulation, foreign investors who would like to operate a casino in Vietnam are required to invest at least US$2 billion and have ten years of experience in the casino business. Previous requirement asked investors to have at least US$4 billion in capital.
Currently, Vietnam has four licensed casino complexes, including the Nam Hoi An in the central province of Quang Nam and the Ho Tram in the coastal province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, besides the said venues in Quang Ninh and Phu Quoc.
Two other projects have received in-principle approval, whereas several venues have opened to foreign players for years, including Do Son in Hai Phong City and Aristo Hotel in the northwestern Lao Cai Province.

[jackbl]

Year-end parties turn nightmare for Ho Chi Minh City residents

Noise pollution has become an alarming issue in several neighborhoods in Ho Chi Minh City as many families and organizations have begun to organize year-end parties, with loudspeakers and karaoke machines operating at their maximum capacity.
Festive activities to celebrate the end of the lunar year has seemed to be taken up a notch in the southern hub with modern and high-capacity loudspeakers and karaoke sets, alongside the usual endless partying and drinking.
Many residents have been powerless against such activities, having no other choice than to put up with the noise during their daily routine.
P., residing at an apartment building in District 5, said that she has to ‘suffer’ the annoyance at this time of each year.
She recalled an incident on Thursday last week, when a party was thrown in the yard of the complex, overwhelming the entire neighborhood with music from four large loudspeakers.
P. had to call for help from local officers, who did not seem to be helpful as the noise started again when they left the place.
During the second report, the local police unit confirmed they could not take any action to stop the noise.
“It’s a once in a year occasion. Just let them enjoy the party,” P. quoted the officers as saying.
At several other households in the apartment building, young children and sick elderly people also had to endure the torment.
The end of the year is the time when merchants at the Ho Thi Ky flower market in District 10 to celebrate, little did they know that their joy could be painful for some others.
Loan, who lives about 20 meters from the market, stated that about 10 tables and two sets of loudspeakers were placed outdoors for the celebration on Friday night.
“I had to take my children and old mother elsewhere to escape the agony. Many nearby residents were also forced to evacuate the place until the party was over,” Loan recalled.
Meanwhile, T.K.H., a 62-year-old resident in Tan Phu District, is often thrown into misery during Tet or other holidays.
H.’s neighbors recently bought a new set of karaoke machines for their year-end party that began at 11:00 am.
The man is living with his wife and 90-year-old mother, who could not seem to bear the noise even when all doors and windows were closed.
“I asked them to turn down the volume for the sake of my mother’s health and was threatened by a group of drunk men,” he said.
N.V.M. in Binh Tan District reported a similar case, as she was yelled at by the party-goers from a nearby house.
“They all reeked of alcohol, saying that I was being inconsiderate and threatening to pull down my house,” M. recounted.

[S.I.T.E]

Year-end parties turn nightmare for Ho Chi Minh City residents

Noise pollution has become an alarming issue in several neighborhoods in Ho Chi Minh City as many families and organizations have begun to organize year-end parties, with loudspeakers and karaoke machines operating at their maximum capacity.
Festive activities to celebrate the end of the lunar year has seemed to be taken up a notch in the southern hub with modern and high-capacity loudspeakers and karaoke sets, alongside the usual endless partying and drinking.
Many residents have been powerless against such activities, having no other choice than to put up with the noise during their daily routine.
P., residing at an apartment building in District 5, said that she has to ‘suffer’ the annoyance at this time of each year.
She recalled an incident on Thursday last week, when a party was thrown in the yard of the complex, overwhelming the entire neighborhood with music from four large loudspeakers.
P. had to call for help from local officers, who did not seem to be helpful as the noise started again when they left the place.
During the second report, the local police unit confirmed they could not take any action to stop the noise.
“It’s a once in a year occasion. Just let them enjoy the party,” P. quoted the officers as saying.
At several other households in the apartment building, young children and sick elderly people also had to endure the torment.
The end of the year is the time when merchants at the Ho Thi Ky flower market in District 10 to celebrate, little did they know that their joy could be painful for some others.
Loan, who lives about 20 meters from the market, stated that about 10 tables and two sets of loudspeakers were placed outdoors for the celebration on Friday night.
“I had to take my children and old mother elsewhere to escape the agony. Many nearby residents were also forced to evacuate the place until the party was over,” Loan recalled.
Meanwhile, T.K.H., a 62-year-old resident in Tan Phu District, is often thrown into misery during Tet or other holidays.
H.’s neighbors recently bought a new set of karaoke machines for their year-end party that began at 11:00 am.
The man is living with his wife and 90-year-old mother, who could not seem to bear the noise even when all doors and windows were closed.
“I asked them to turn down the volume for the sake of my mother’s health and was threatened by a group of drunk men,” he said.
N.V.M. in Binh Tan District reported a similar case, as she was yelled at by the party-goers from a nearby house.
“They all reeked of alcohol, saying that I was being inconsiderate and threatening to pull down my house,” M. recounted.

Uppz you.

Thanks Bro.

[jackbl]

New Year in Vietnam: What’s next in 2017?

Whew... well now that 2016 is finally behind us... is 2017 going to be awesome? I guess that depends on your focus. For me, just being alive is enough to ensure that it’ll be a great year.
The fact that Donald Trump will take office as the next president of the United States makes the ‘Year of the Rooster’ more eerily appropriate than we could ever have imagined. Certainly he’ll be strutting his stuff in Washington, D.C. His actions will have an impact on trade and the economy, that’s for sure; but if he manages to slap China in the face and get away with it... I’ll buy him a beer.
One prediction I plucked from the Internet was that ‘The Year of the Rooster represents a period of hard work and activity, as the rooster is busy from morning to night. His comb is a mark of high intelligence and literary spirit. People born in the year of the cock are considered profound thinkers.’ Personally, I just think roosters are annoying and the most boring thing on the menu.
And what about New Year resolutions? Somehow these weird little plans to improve our weight, health, or wealth often crumble under the pressure of reality, so what’s the point? I’m still only half-way through my list from 2016; while I did manage to lose weight I never saved up enough to buy a Rolls-Royce.
Maybe the best idea for 2017 is to stick to what is working in your life and make it bigger. As my horoscope said, I need to marry my imagination to my ability in order to organize for better results. That’s easy to do, right?
I’m never short on big, fancy plans, just like the Vietnamese. Maybe this year Da Nang will build a triple by-pass looping roadway and tunnel combination that features a water slide and cable car. Or Ho Chi Minh City could ban all vehicles with more than one wheel.
Visas in 2017 should also become less complicated. Maybe we could base the issuance of visas on height and weight this year. Multiple-entry visas will only be issued if you’re over 50 kilos and 1.4 meters tall.
I also have a great tourism idea for 2017 – why not grant visas to those who visit places that don’t often see tourists? You could get a business visa if you visit the Hai Phoung steel and coal factories.
Another Year of the Rooster resolution should be to increase creativity and productivity. Tacos and weird burger combinations will be all the rage in 2017, so why not have a tourism promotion featuring the world’s biggest Taco or largest bowl of Pho? I’m also planning to write a guide to buying safe helmets in Vietnam – I think it will be a smash hit.
Education also needs to be revamped. For 2017, I call upon the Ministry of Education and Training to translate the Finnish education system’s textbooks into Vietnamese – students will no longer be required to take tests, pay for private teachers, and attend extra classes at 7:00 am on Sundays – they might even have some actual time to sleep!
I think it should also be a law that all Vietnamese tourism websites must be checked for spelling and grammar by native English speakers and issued certificates of proof they’ve undergone this measure. The economic benefits could be huge.
Yeah, we should be bolder roosters too. The next time a factory pollutes the rivers, sea, or local environment, the managers should reach into their own pockets to pay for the local resident’s food until the mess is cleaned up.
To rehabilitate dog thieves, we should make them work – forcing them to clean up canals and roadside litter strewn about by selfish market stall owners.
What else can we do cheerfully in 2017? Well, I’m aiming to study more and upgrade my IELTS teaching skills. Maybe I’ll finally tackle that PhD I’ve been reluctantly putting off. How about substituting a few pub-quiz nights for some studying?
Personally, I’d like to see no more animal poaching, more protection for Vietnam’s marine life and national parks, less super-sized resorts, more kids going to school, and no more war.
Whichever way 2017 goes – let’s make it a goal to make things better for ourselves and our loved ones.
So, take out your pen and paper (no smartphones, please) and make a list of goals for the Year of the Rooster – you might just surprise yourself.
May you all have a terrific, stunningly successful, and prosperous 2017!

[jackbl]

Lunar New Year’s Eve in Vietnam: Shake it off!

Did the dog leave you for a better master? Has your girlfriend left you for another boy? Failed every test at school? Don’t worry! It’s New Year!
The coming year brings with it many things the lunar 2016 missed. More opportunities, better twists and turns, unexpected surprises and another special feature; more climate change!
If you take the time to read the sales brochure for the lunar 2017, you’ll discover it costs exactly the same as last year and comes with brand-new opportunities to improve your life, luck and health.
For example, the lunar 2017 comes with fully automated new friends, travel and some quiet time to reflect on how you’re doing in life. The windscreen is slightly tinted too, so you don’t have to squint at any unpleasant memories from the lunar 2016, even if you come across a major life storm, the windscreen wipers are specially designed to allow you to shrug off the heaviest of problems.
The lunar 2017’s motor is also faster, more powerful and more economical than ever before. In the New Year you should find yourself racing ahead in life, unaware of the acceleration, but also safe in the knowledge that you have great braking power if you spot danger up ahead.
Yep – the lunar 2017 is a bargain.
Whatever went on in the lunar 2016, it’s time to shake it off and put on your dancing shoes!
The lunar 2017 is your chance to show how well you dance through life and show off the smooth moves you’ve learnt.
For all my Vietnamese friends, Lunar New Year’s Eve is a time of celebration, just before the long rest after a frantic year of work, family responsibilities and as always; the pressure to make money. For most expats it’s fun as well, even though we’ve already welcomed in our new year. It’s Vietnam’s time to party and even though there’s no fireworks display, there’s sure to be some in your personal life.
The Year of the Rooster is not the time to be shy or hide your talents, so start making noises and get the attention of the people you want to. Display the strengths you’ve hidden away all year and impress someone you care about. Who knows, your life might take a new direction... woo-hoo!
For most of my Vietnamese friends and students, praying for good luck, fortune, health and great educational results is a typical activity after Lunar New Year’s Eve, but you could also pray for world peace and a high school education for every child.
The other important thing to do is shake off ‘the blues’ – the feelings of sadness or depression that happen when something isn’t successful. It’s a life skill that we really should be teaching in school. One thing that Vietnam really teaches you comes from the people’s ability to laugh or smile about things that go wrong.
Yet it’s more than that – the Vietnamese learn from a young age that obstacles are normal and that you must find ways to get over, under, around or simply just wait until problems resolve themselves. This is ingrained in the national consciousness, very much a part of the resilience that has won Vietnam a number of wars as well as a cheerful knack of living in the moment - because the future is so often uncertain.
Unlucky in love last year? Well, there are a million more possible lovers out there! Didn’t get the job you wanted? Try moving to a similar job – always get closer to your goals, you never know, opportunities often appear disguised as something else.
Above all, don’t dwell too much on the scale of the challenges in front of you or the size of any unsolved problems carried over into the coming lunar 2017. Do what most young Vietnamese do, listen to music, play computer games or go to a café!
I predict the lunar 2017 will be an amazing year for love for a lot of lonely people (with many marriages in the Year of the Rooster) and a spectacular time for artistic projects, discovering new talents and shaking off old ways of doing things.
If it seems like the world has gone mad – it’s normal. A quick study of history will tell you that there have been far worse times in the past and since we humans don’t learn from our mistakes well enough, there’ll be worse times to come too. The best way forward is to make your own life less crazy.

This Lunar New Year’s Eve, don’t worry about the fireworks, find a clever way to bring in the New Year. How about a flash mob in your street? What about a viral video of everyone in your family dancing around in pyjamas at midnight? Why not get the kids to make confetti and throw it all over the neighbors!

Whatever you do or decide on Lunar New Year’s Eve or next year – have fun!
And to all our readers, may the lunar 2017 be a very prosperous and memorable year for you and your families.
Chuc Mung Nam Moi (Happy New Year) and see you in the Year of the Rooster!

[CoCK ShoCk]

7 shoCkers added to bro jackbl

[Abbie Mayo]

[QUOTE=jackbl;15580791]Lunar New Year’s Eve in Vietnam: Shake it off!

7 returned. Thank you sir

[winddd]

Will like to visit Vietnam one day

[jackbl]

Vietnam clamps down on pre-paid SIM cards

Vietnamese authorities have imposed stricter policies to manage the information of pre-paid SIM card users and have promised to apply harsher fines on service providers that violate the rule
>> Scroll down for the tips to ensure your SIM card is safe
The new regulations were added to government decree No.49 on penalties for violations in telecommunications, IT, and radio frequencies, which are aimed at improving the management of the sale and use of pre-paid SIM cards in the country.
According to the new regulations, individuals are no longer limited to having no more than three SIM cards for each mobile network as stated previously.
However, users will need to perform a more thorough and complicated procedure when registering for each service.
For the first three SIM cards of each service provider, users are required to present the necessary documents and sign a confirmation letter.
From the fourth SIM card on, buyers will then have to sign a contract with their mobile network operator.
In order to register for a SIM card, users must now submit original copies of passports for foreigners, or IDs for Vietnamese citizens.
Children under 14 years old will require the signature of their parent or guardian to sign up for a service.
Mobile operators have the right to refuse deals with their customers if they fail to present sufficient paperwork as stated in the new regulations.
They are also in charge of reminding existing subscribers to fill in the compulsory information, if they lack any.
If a user fails to submit the necessary documents within 15 days of the first reminder, his one-way telecommunication services will be ceased, and his two-way services will be halted after a subsequent 15 days.
The subscription will be terminated after the next 30 days if the client does not provide the necessary information, after which the mobile number will be offered to other users.
Local mobile network operators are also subject to fines of VND800,000 (US$35) to VND1 million ($43.8) for each subscription they offer without asking for the full information of users.
This fine shall not exceed VND200 million ($8,774) for each company, the regulation stated.
Service providers are also required to keep their clients’ information confidential as per the law.
Operators will be fined between VND80 million ($3,509) and VND100 million ($4,387) if they do not sign proper contracts with a subscriber who wishes to buy more than three SIM cards.
A VND30 million ($1,316) to VND40 million ($1,754) penalty will be imposed on those who offer SIM cards without asking for a subscriber’s personal documents, or trade a subscription that has already been registered.
The new regulation was implemented on April 24 following a proposal of the Ministry of Information and Communications, while the fines will begin being imposed from July 24.

[GaDTaRk]

Will like to visit Vietnam one day


A man dream come true.

[welk]

Hi bros, sorry have to ask for some help here. I exhausted all translators online but still cannot get a right translation for this. Can any of u kind souls help?

Con nho e de thuong ghe, chon cai Hinh tui xau nhat

If it's any help, it was posted as a comment under a photo.
Thanks in advance

[KangTuo]

Con nho e de thuong ghe, chon cai Hinh tui xau nhat

If it's any help, it was posted as a comment under a photo.
Thanks in advance

Is the comment on a photo with little kid? :confused:

[welk]

No it was not

[ivenus]

The translation is :

"My little son is cute lah, but the photo I chose seems ugly."

My level is limited, any mistake please point out, thanks.


Hi bros, sorry have to ask for some help here. I exhausted all translators online but still cannot get a right translation for this. Can any of u kind souls help?

Con nho e de thuong ghe, chon cai Hinh tui xau nhat

If it's any help, it was posted as a comment under a photo.
Thanks in advance

[ivenus]

This is what she meant:

"My little son/daughter is cute lah, but in the photo chosen, me seems ugly "

My level is limited, any mistake please point out.


Hi bros, sorry have to ask for some help here. I exhausted all translators online but still cannot get a right translation for this. Can any of u kind souls help?

Con nho e de thuong ghe, chon cai Hinh tui xau nhat

If it's any help, it was posted as a comment under a photo.
Thanks in advance

[KangTuo]

Hi bros, sorry have to ask for some help here. I exhausted all translators online but still cannot get a right translation for this. Can any of u kind souls help?

Con nho e de thuong ghe, chon cai Hinh tui xau nhat

If it's any help, it was posted as a comment under a photo.
Thanks in advance

No it was not

then i guess it will be
"still remember you cute, choose a photo of me that is ugly"

[welk]

then i guess it will be
"still remember you cute, choose a photo of me that is ugly"

Bro thank u very much, really appreciate u taking ur time in this.

[FireShark]

Hi bros, sorry have to ask for some help here. I exhausted all translators online but still cannot get a right translation for this. Can any of u kind souls help?

Con nho e de thuong ghe, chon cai Hinh tui xau nhat

If it's any help, it was posted as a comment under a photo.
Thanks in advance

My translation will will Kids of yours so cute; your husband photo so ugly

[vietboy]

Hi bros, sorry have to ask for some help here. I exhausted all translators online but still cannot get a right translation for this. Can any of u kind souls help?

Con nho e de thuong ghe, chon cai Hinh tui xau nhat

If it's any help, it was posted as a comment under a photo.
Thanks in advance

I think prof Jackbl have mentioned here many many times: when asking for translations from broz here, give context so broz here can help.

Can u give a description of the photo? Is it a guy or a gal who made this comment( most prob a guy if not u wont ask)
If not it can be like what bro KT translated or it can also mean this: still remember you are cute, (but) choose this photo i am more ugly.

[welk]

I think prof Jackbl have mentioned here many many times: when asking for translations from broz here, give context so broz here can help.

Can u give a description of the photo? Is it a guy or a gal who made this comment( most prob a guy if not u wont ask)
If not it can be like what bro KT translated or it can also mean this: still remember you are cute, (but) choose this photo i am more ugly.

thanks bro for ur time, i think i got the msg already.
It means something like the poster of the photo chose a photo where u looks best. So the person comment that she doesn't look good in that.

[youmee]

Discover a new joint. Mixture of vietnam and laos. Love this place because not much stress. Stress in monetary.lol.

1 tower $48 for HH. Non HH $58. Hang flower can start $30. Better still, don need LD. So no stress.lol. Got pool table can relax whole night.

Going to protect this joint. So bros got new discoveries, we can exchange. Thanx

And ya, lady got chio and average, no milf;)

[marsex]

Discover a new joint. Mixture of vietnam and laos. Love this place because not much stress. Stress in monetary.lol.

1 tower $48 for HH. Non HH $58. Hang flower can start $30. Better still, don need LD. So no stress.lol. Got pool table can relax whole night.

Going to protect this joint. So bros got new discoveries, we can exchange. Thanx

And ya, lady got chio and average, no milf;)


can share? new to hcmc

[pting]

WTF........just saw this news........I ate how many beef in Vietnam already...........Cannot believe the beef steak and beef organ I ate everyday in vietnam contains all these chemical.......No wonder I down with terminal illness.....
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/the-meat-you-eat-raid-on-vietnamese-facility-finds-beef-organs-being-soaked-in

[jackbl]

New Year New Post

[Hurricane88]

New Year New Post

The GURU is back...:)

[FireShark]

New Year New Post

Are you still staying at the west area?

[jackbl]

The GURU is back...:)

Now many ppl are guru too. Times have catch up :D

[jackbl]

Are you still staying at the west area?

U wan to deliver New Year hampers to me?? :) Yes I like Mien Tay. Also like Con Gai Mien Tay too :D

[jackbl]

New Year Wishes

What people often wish each other during Tet.
Tet holidays are the moments of happiness and family enjoy, therefore Vietnamese often dedicate the most beautiful words to their family and friends on this occasion. Here is the list of the most common ones:

1 - Năm mới dồi dào sức khỏe: wish you a healthy new year
2 - Năm mới tấn tài tấn lộc: wish you a wealthy new year
3 - Năm mới thăng quan tiến chức: wish that you will get promoted in the new year
4 - Năm mới toàn gia bình an: wish that the new year will bring health to all your family
5 - Năm mới thắng lợi mới: New year, new triumphs (often heard in political speech)
6 - Vạn sự như ý: All wishes come true
7 - Chúc hay ăn chóng lớn: Eat more, grow rapidly (for children)
8 - Chúc mau chóng tìm được người yêu: New lover will come in the new year (for single people)
9 - Tiền vào nhu nước sông Đà, tiền ra nhỏ giọt như cà phê phin: Money influx is as strong as Da's river; expenditure is as little as dripping coffee


Still there are plenty of wishes that people send to each others in Tet holiday, this list is simply an overview. Use them and impress your friends this coming Tet!

[jackbl]

Mừng Xuân Kỷ Hợi

[jackbl]

The Vietnamese alphabets song: https://youtu.be/HUlN9wX9Y7E

[jackbl]

Fruits : https://youtu.be/GYubfP24T0M

[yum123]

The joint near which location

[brolla]

Seems like a nice place

[jackbl]

The joint near which location

Seems like a nice place

What talking you??

[Hurricane88]

What talking you??

tcss lah...clones clocking posts count..:)

[jackbl]

Animal
https://youtu.be/FKysFdZX8Dk

[jackbl]

Vegetable
https://youtu.be/do-TszjXLJI

[jackbl]

https://youtu.be/DWKhBIYsuUA

[jackbl]

https://youtu.be/cFDMaYJERXc

[jackbl]

https://youtu.be/SX-BTkNDfK8

[forgotoldnick]

Wow, bro jackbl still contributing to this thread after so many years, cool!!!

[jackbl]

https://youtu.be/tS-_2m3Taq8

[jackbl]

Wow, bro jackbl still contributing to this thread after so many years, cool!!!

Please help to contribute anything to this thread :D

[Vanda]

Anyone dated single mom milf from Vietnam and successfully provided them in Singapore. What is the expectation of finacial status and income to be successful?
I am just a normal salaried pmet

[korraa]

Anyone dated single mom milf from Vietnam and successfully provided them in Singapore. What is the expectation of finacial status and income to be successful?
I am just a normal salaried pmet

My advise is dont. Alot of them are with u becuz they know u can provide for them. There is no love for u, they know u sot tio ure the ah hai. Used to have a vietnamese girl like that b4. 6 mths tgthr break up alrdy. I feel shes just using me. Waiting for durian to drop from the tree. Sibei jialat. The last time i went vietnam see her. She happily forget my bday. When i ask. She coldly reply i forget liao. I was like fuck that. Not even sorry. So i fuck her one last time raw. Cum inside her and go back singapore ignore her. If money keeps u two tgthr. Imagine what happens if u are jobless one day bro. All the best.

[Vanda]

My advise is dont. Alot of them are with u becuz they know u can provide for them. There is no love for u, they know u sot tio ure the ah hai. Used to have a vietnamese girl like that b4. 6 mths tgthr break up alrdy. I feel shes just using me. Waiting for durian to drop from the tree. Sibei jialat. The last time i went vietnam see her. She happily forget my bday. When i ask. She coldly reply i forget liao. I was like fuck that. Not even sorry. So i fuck her one last time raw. Cum inside her and go back singapore ignore her. If money keeps u two tgthr. Imagine what happens if u are jobless one day bro. All the best.

Bro there is one pretty one wanted me to marry her. But after I had sex with her, she demanded I give her 500 sgd. However I disagree becos there is no transparency in her spending and she unfriend from zalo a few times since our disputes cannot be settled. After I look for her on zalo again. She sarcastic to me that she had just met Singapore boyfriend and willing to pay 1k and marry her. But too bad she has passport issue as she burrow her passport to friend for fraud marriage. I warned her not to come or risked herself getting jailed and charged for sham marriage. A woman if they are for marriage, they will save for the future if it is too early they ask for money. Meaning that they treat it as transactions more than love and marriage. Such woman can throw away for they are no money no honey gold diggers. I think for most of the ladies you are jobless they fly. But how long they can tahan to stay with you?

[jameschong1]

Alot of them are with u becuz they know u can provide for the. If money keeps u two tgthr. Imagine what happens if u are jobless one day bro. All the best.
u are born loser. wat u say not true
my friend oso unsteady job & low salary but viet girl working here ask him stay with her at her rent flat in bona vista
cook for him, let him f free & raw

[Vanda]

u are born loser. wat u say not true
my friend oso unsteady job & low salary but viet girl working here ask him stay with her at her rent flat in bona vista
cook for him, let him f free & raw

James chiong Man slut. I still have better choice than this one. It is just that I met money faced one.
Vain man like you like to talk " big hole" think you are swarm by beautiful ladies but are prostitutes. And somemore you kanna zapped by many brothers, you are a bigger loser who know no shame:D:D:D