Tieng Viet lovers club

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Hai Trung Quoc 2015 summary

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Originally Posted by FireShark

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]

Originally Posted by jackbl

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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%)

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.