Tieng Viet lovers club

[FireShark]

Originally Posted by Eddie Tan

i very disappointed with viet liao

Why are you disappointed with Viet?

[ET]

Originally Posted by jackbl

Difficult to learn and not easy to master?

i not saying the language lah faint

Originally Posted by FireShark

Why are you disappointed with Viet?

bo heart

[FireShark]

Originally Posted by Eddie Tan

bo heart

You are just the unlucky one. `

[jackbl]

Originally Posted by Eddie Tan

bo heart

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

[ET]

Originally Posted by FireShark

You are just the unlucky one. `

Originally Posted by jackbl

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]

Originally Posted by Eddie Tan

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]

Originally Posted by jackbl

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:

[jackbl]

Hai Trung Quoc 2015 part 2:

[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.




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]

Originally Posted by jackbl

Caught on camera: shop owner thwarts brazen robbers





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: