Tieng Viet lovers club

[jackbl]

A place to go for coffee and relax w/o those noisy music...

Coffee cup café
===========

Coffee Cup Café is a new location in Ho Chi Minh City for those who love unique furniture, especially antiques and faux antiques.


The woman who owns it has a passion for home decoration, making the Coffee Cup unique among the cafés near Turtle Lake. It is on the corner of Pham Ngoc Thach and Vo Van Tan streets.

The luxurious interior has the classical beauty of Victorian design.

Ornate tables and chairs adorn both sections of the restaurant to lighten up the space.

Customers can browse and purchase a selection of furniture on display while the shop offers a variety of drinks and food to choose from.

Highly recommended are the cinnamon apple juice and cinnamon cakes.

The owner buys these special cakes from the US. The aroma of cinnamon and coffee fill the shop evoking a feeling of old world charm.

Reported by Lan Anh

[jackbl]

Cakes galore
=========
Banh ong (pipe cake) and banh day (roll cake) are traditional dishes of the Khmer people in the Mekong Delta. They are made for special occasions and traditional Khmer festivals such as Ok Am-bok (Moon God Festival) and Chaul Chnam Thmey (New Year Festival).

The provinces of Tra Vinh and Soc Trang are well-known for making the delectable treats.

The pipe cake consists of rice flour, refined sugar, coconut flesh, juice and salt.

To make pipe cakes, the ingredients are mixed together to create a dough. The dough is then stuffed into bamboo or metal pipes about 20 centimeters in length and three centimeters wide. Next, the pipes are covered with tin lids and steamed in a saucepan.

When the cakes are well-cooked, they are removed from the pipes and placed on green banana leaves.

Nowadays, many people also use the juice from the leaves of dua thom (Pandanus amaryllifolius) plant. The leaves can be kneaded with flour to create fragrant green cakes.

Pipe cakes are eaten with a mix of salt and sesame. The sweet smell and rich taste of coconut juice makes the treat especially delicious, while the hint of salt adds a savory element. The cakes are meant to be eaten slowly and savored.

While the Khmer in Tra Vinh Province are famous for their pipe cakes, the Khmer in neighboring Soc Trang Province are renowned for their banh day.

This kind of cake is made from wheat flour, soft coconut flesh, sugar and peanuts, and is shaped into rolls.

Part of the fun is watching the expert cake-makers create the treats before your eyes. The cakes are best when eaten hot and fresh and cost just VND2,000 (11 cents) each.

[jackbl]

FYI...

Singapore school to provide grants for Vietnamese students
======================================
PSB Academy has announced it will provide scholarships and tuition grants worth totally 1 million Singapore dollars (nearly US$680,000) to Vietnamese students next year.

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday in Ho Chi Minh City, Azliana Abdullah, a PSB representative in charge of international enrolment, said from the SGD$1 million, 40 scholarships each worth SGD$20,000 ($14,433) and 20 tuition grants each worth SGD$10,000 ($6,716) will be given to qualified Vietnamese students in 2009.

The SGD$1-million is part of a PSB scholarship program worth SGD$8 million ($5.4 million) for international students from nations including Vietnam, China, India, the Republic of Korea, among others, she said.

The scholarships and tuition grants will facilitate studies for students who apply for the Business Administration Bachelor Program with training curriculum provided by the California State University in the US, said Azliana.

Interested candidates can contact the Vietnam Hop Diem (Vietnam Center Point) Training Center who will select qualified recipients in Vietnam on behalf of PSB, she added.

Candidates can also access websites including psb-technologies and www.vietnamcentrepoint.edu.vn for further information.

Reported by Tuong Nhi

[Hurricane88]

Cyber crime rising as users remain unaware

Young people at an IT event in Hanoi.
Hi-tech crime is on the upswing in Vietnam and many internet users are not sufficiently aware of the dangers of ineffective information security shields, experts have warned.


“Hackers have targeted not only the information of financial companies, banks and e-commerce websites but also government offices,” says Tran Van Hoa, head of the Ministry of Public Security’s Hi-tech Crime Prevention Department (C15).

He warns that local hackers have become mercenary and begun coordinating their activities with counterparts in other countries. This marks a shift from hackers targeting notoriety, Hoa notes.

“There have been more and more cases [recently] when hackers have attacked servers and websites to access credit card [information] and illegally transfer money,” he says.

Vu Quoc Thanh, vice president of the Vietnam Information Security Association, says there is low awareness of information security among local enterprises and organizations.

A recent survey by Bach Khoa Internetwork Security Center (BKIS) found 300 new viruses being detected every day during the past few months, up to four times the figure for the first six months this year.

In 2007, there were a total of 86,752 viruses detected in Vietnam for a daily average of 18.49.

“Investigations found most of the viruses of Chinese origin installed through the backdoor after an attack to access the computer at any time they want,” says BKIS Director Nguyen Tu Quang.

“Many Internet security centers abroad have also confirmed China to be a giant virus factory,” he adds.

Vietnam used to be one of the 10 countries with the greatest amount of spam emails in the world. Most of the emails, few of them in Vietnamese, probably were sent from zombie computers by botnets under foreign management.

Reported by Truong Son - Vinh Bao

[jackbl]

Was caught in a jam for 30min at a road junction along NKKN street at 5pm... simply frustrated... some due to road work...

City leader wants traffic problems fixed before Tet
=================================
Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee Chairman Le Hoang Quan has ordered authorized agencies to keep a close eye on the city’s traffic problems and fix them immediately in the lead-up to Tet.

Quan said the agencies must curb traffic problems in their areas from now until the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, which falls on January 26.

They should prevent traffic jams and quickly clear them if they occur, and severely penalize people violating traffic rules, he said.

The committee has already told contractors to ensure safety and smooth flow of traffic at places where they are carrying out road work by having workers on three shifts and tarmacking the road immediately after finishing work.

It has also entrusted the Department of Transport with providing up-to-date traffic information to the media.

Reported by Minh Nam

[jackbl]

Bro, lets move the vietnamese news to "Tieng Viet Lovers" thread

Originally Posted by Hurricane88

Helmet law one year anniversary: thousands of lives saved

[jackbl]

NGO gifts helmets to 1,200 children in Hanoi
===============================
The Asia Injury Prevention Foundation (AIPF) Saturday organized the Helmets for Kids ceremony at Hanoi’s Hoang Hoa Tham primary school to mark the recent global release of a report on child injury prevention.

The report, by World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, said a leading cause of injury and death among children around the world is head trauma from road accidents that can be prevented by wearing a helmet.

Helmets for Kids was sponsored by the Vietnam Helmet Wearing Coalition (VHWC), a public-private partnership established by the foundation in 2001.

Its members include, among others, AIPF, Australian aid agency AusAID, the National Traffic Safety Committee and WHO.

Reported by Vinh Bao

[jackbl]

No wonder the roads always jammed!!!


Removal of barriers leaves unpaved streets behind
=================================
Many contractors have failed to properly pave the street after being forced to remove several street barriers by local authorities in Ho Chi Minh City, Thanh Nien has found.

Inspectors from the HCMC Department of Transport has recently fined several constructors and ordered them to remove the barriers after a Thanh Nien report reflected residents’ complaints they were dysfunctional and misused.

However, some constructors have flouted the law by leaving the street unpaved after removing the barriers, including those on Tran Quang Dieu Street in District 3 and Pham Van Hai Street in Tan Binh District.

Previously, people living in District 3, and the districts of Phu Nhuan and Tan Binh had complained that the street barriers remained in place for no discernible purpose, created traffic jams and were a public nuisance.
Residents said workers were using the barriers just to store materials and tools, or even bigger equipment.

Reported by Minh Nam

Originally Posted by jackbl

Was caught in a jam for 30min at a road junction along NKKN street at 5pm... simply frustrated... some due to road work...

[jackbl]

What a waste! Never had the chance to visit vietnamese porn site till date... anyone got another?

Ten arrested in porn website investigation
===========================
Police in Ho Chi Minh City Thursday arrested 10 suspects allegedly involved in the operation of a pornographic website and charged them with “distribution of depraved material.”


Police plan to press similar charges against two other suspects.

In mid-November, police from the Ministry of Public Security shut down the biggest illegal sex website ever operated in Vietnam.

Police seized 17 computers, eight hard drives, three laptops and more than 100 CDs during subsequent raids on the suspects’ houses last month.

Investigators said more than 20 people had been involved in operating the site over the past few years.

Nguyen Tang Truong of HCMC is accused of establishing the website on his own before recruiting three others as site administrators.

The website was originally promoted as an “education forum for a healthy teenage sex life” but Truong allegedly posted photos, stories and movies of sex acts, investigators said.

The forum attracted around 300,000 members and more than 1,650,000 postings about sex. It also held offline meetings in many places around the country, police said.

Distribution of depraved materials in Vietnam carries a penalty of a jail term of up to 15 years.

Reported by Dam Huy

[jackbl]

Vietnam ranked high among disaster-prone nations
===================================
Historic flooding left at least 22 people dead or missing in Hanoi in late October

Vietnam ranked sixth out of 10 countries most affected by weather catastrophes from 1998 to 2007, according to Germany-based NGO Germanwatch.


Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh were the countries with the highest frequency of extreme weather, the report adds.

Germanwatch filed the 4th edition of its Global Climate Risk Index 2009 at the United Nations climate negotiations in Poznan, Poland on Thursday.

The Global Climate Risk Index 2009 analyzes which countries are particularly affected by weather extremes. It presents a ranking of those countries most seriously affected in 2007 and in the past decade, through an analysis of the impacts of weather-related events like storms or floods.

Over the past decade, Honduras, Bangladesh, and Nicaragua were ranked as those countries most affected, the report says.

It also says that in 2007 alone Vietnam ranked eighth of out 10 countries devastated by weather catastrophes.

Last year, natural disasters claimed the lives of 346 people in Vietnam with losses estimated at US$1.64 billion, calculated in purchasing power parities (PPP), according to the report.

The hardest-hit countries in 2007 were Bangladesh, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Nicaragua, and Oman, says Sven Harmeling, senior advisor for climate and development at Germanwatch and author of the study.

Of the 10 worst-hit countries last year, nine were developing economies.

Poorer countries were much more affected than richer ones, Harmeling adds.

Germanwatch is an independent nongovernmental organization (NGO) that monitors trade, environment and the relationship between developed and developing countries.

The report also says that natural catastrophes last year cost the globe dearly.

More than 15,000 people around the world died in 2007 from extreme weather events, a record number in recent years.

Damage caused by these events amounted to more than $80 billion with many more people severely affected, through storms, floods and other weather extremes, the report notes.

People in less developed countries have a much harder time coping with such events compared with their peers in industrialized countries.

And while no single weather catastrophe can be directly attributed to global warming, the changing climate will most certainly lead to an increase in their frequency and intensity in many parts of the world, the report warns.

The report recommends that governments should promote initiatives and measures to help people raise their disaster response capacity and work together in order to prevent and minimize the impacts of natural disasters.

Maarten van Aalst, associate director of the Red Cross, says that besides providing assistance when disaster strikes, the most effective response is disaster risk reduction.

"Preventing or reducing the impacts of the increasing hazards is crucial. Practical risk reduction options include, for instance, better early warning, drought resistant crops or reforestation to prevent floods," he says.

[freefuck]

Can any bro help to translate the following text means? Thanks.

Bo luat hinh su chuog 2 khoag 1 Dieu 9 co quy dinh..Neu ai vo tinh gay THUONG NHO cho ng khac.De lai hau qua lam tan nat trai tim ng do thi fai chiu khung hinh phat la CHUNG SONG tron doi voi ng do..Y la k hoi tiec,co lo tai ma nhu diec,y fai biet cuog quyet,nog nang va kich liet,y la fai chiu thiet,xai tien k dc tiec,y cho toi suc tan,luc kiet, y vay moi la y thiet..Hii dag lam j do Be yeu ?

[casannova03]

Originally Posted by freefuck

Can any bro help to translate the following text means? Thanks.

Bo luat hinh su chuog 2 khoag 1 Dieu 9 co quy dinh..Neu ai vo tinh gay THUONG NHO cho ng khac.De lai hau qua lam tan nat trai tim ng do thi fai chiu khung hinh phat la CHUNG SONG tron doi voi ng do..Y la k hoi tiec,co lo tai ma nhu diec,y fai biet cuog quyet,nog nang va kich liet,y la fai chiu thiet,xai tien k dc tiec,y cho toi suc tan,luc kiet, y vay moi la y thiet..Hii dag lam j do Be yeu ?

can't exactly translate the whole chunk but sound like some chat line advertisement you received in VN???

[Hurricane88]

Tourist arrivals plummet in Vietnam as global downturn bites

Expedited visa application process can boost tourism revenues by 10 percent, an expert says
Vietnam is set to miss its target of attracting five million international tourists this year as arrivals have dropped off sharply, industry officials say.


Hotels and tour operators are struggling and dropping their rates amid the steepest fall in arrivals since the 2003 SARS crisis and then bird flu outbreaks a year later that scared tourists away from Vietnam and other Asian destinations. This time, the global economic downturn is the main factor.

Next year, the tourism sector – which employs more than 10 percent of Vietnam’s workforce – faces zero growth or worse, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Hoang Tuan Anh, warned at a Hanoi conference last week.

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) has asked the government to spend US$20-30 million on a global marketing campaign to draw back visitors next year and after.

VNAT said such a campaign, which would follow a smaller advertising campaign on CNN and the Discovery Channel, could be financed from a newly-announced one billion dollar economic stimulus package.

“The number of international arrivals has been down for months, but the situation has seriously worsened since October,” said Vu The Binh, a senior official at VNAT.

That month, fewer than 300,000 international visitors arrived in Vietnam, a drop of almost 12 percent since October last year, according to VNAT figures.

By November, arrivals were down 22 percent year-on-year, part of this was due to the shutdown of Thailand’s airports by protesters.

Despite strong growth rates early in 2008, only 3.87 million tourists have come to Vietnam in the year to November, with arrivals from the US, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all down, the tourism ministry said.

“We forecast that arrivals in 2009 will fall 20-30 percent from 2008 because of the global economic crisis,” said Binh. “So we need to invest more in tourism products to make them return to Vietnam in late 2009 and 2010.”

Tourism operators have echoed the complaints.

“Our clients from the US and Europe, especially France, Britain and Germany, have been down since midyear,” said Nguyen Hang Quy of Huong Giang (Perfume River) travel agency in the former royal capital of Hue.

“It’s because of the international downturn,” he told AFP. “And 2009 will be more difficult. We are now trying to seek out new markets in Asia.”

Tourism accounts for 4.5 percent of Vietnam’s emerging economy and had been forecast to generate 3.7 billion dollars this year. The sector makes up 10.8 per cent of the workforce of its 86 million people.

A conference in Hanoi early this month was told that Vietnam could boost tourism revenues by at least 10 percent if it eased up visa regulations and expedited the process through online applications and visas-on-arrival.

The cumbersome visa application process was the “largest obstacle to establishing Vietnam as a global destination,” said a Tourism Working Group paper presented by Baron R. Ah Moo, the CEO of Indochina Hotels and Resorts.

“Due to the processing time... last-minute travel to Vietnam is not an option and has been replaced by weekend trips to Phuket, Bali, Macao and Singapore,” he said in a paper he presented at the Vietnam Business Forum.

Source: AFP

[casannova03]

Bro jackbl and hurricane88.... thanks for the constant update of vietnamese news!! It must have taken some effort to post up these news, even if you cut and paste!!

kudos for the efforts!!

[Hurricane88]

Originally Posted by casannova03

Bro jackbl and hurricane88.... thanks for the constant update of vietnamese news!! It must have taken some effort to post up these news, even if you cut and paste!!

kudos for the efforts!!

You are most welcome...it's ok for me...just to share with all readers...