Vinh Long fisherman catches 150 kg giant barb

Phan Ngoc Phuoc, a fisherman in the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long, last Tuesday caught a 150-kg giant barb in the Tien River.

 

The fish is pinkish white and 2.5 m long. Photo: SGGP

 

After catching the fish, Phuoc used a robe to hold it and brought it back alive to Cai Tau Ha Town.

The fish is pinkish white and 2.5 m long.

Many traders have offered Phuoc up to VND700,000 (US$35) for every kg of its meat but he turned them down.

Phuoc is expected sell the fish for as much as VND1 million (US$50) a kg.

In 2009, Phuoc caught a similar giant barb which weighed 160 kg and sold it for more than VND100 million (US$5,000).

 

Source: SGGP

Driving while smoking should be banned

One day, I was driving down the street when my eyes suddenly became irritated. I quickly used a hand to wipe them and suddenly lost my balance and almost fell. After collecting myself, I realized it was not due to dust or rain drops, but cigarette ash.

 

Besides causing harm to those in the back, the act of smoking while driving does not obey street safety either. Photo: Tuoi Tre

 

In front of me, there was a young man driving his bike with one hand and holding a cigarette in the other. He carelessly exhaled white smoke together with ash towards people driving behind him.

It was not the first time I suddenly had tears coming from my eyes. On the street, I have seen several men smoking while driving. Besides causing harm to those in the back, their act does not obey street safety either.

When we have to stop at red lights or get stuck in a traffic jam next to a smoker, not only do we have to tolerate the noise and exhaust from tailpipes, but also from cigarettes, smoke and ash from which dashes into our nose and body. These days, with a growing number of cases of burning bikes, seeing someone with a cigarette increases the fear of a fire.

It becomes worse for drivers with children who have to suffer the “chimney” of poisonous smoke on the street every day. It has been reported that some drivers have been penalized for driving and talking on the phone. Why is there not a ban for those who smoke and drive at the same time?

 

I think drivers who smoke are the least of your concerns in Vietnamese traffic but thanks for sharing.

 

Written by Duong

Source: Tuoi Tre

Cyclo Race 2012 raises US$41,500 for charity

The Saigon Children’s Charity (SCC) raised a gross fund of US$41,500 from the 2012 Saigon Cyclo Challenge race held today at the Crescent in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 7.

 

Staff of HSBC celebrate their championship title at the Saigon Cyclo Challenge 2012 held on Mar. 10, 2012 in District 7. Photo: Minh Phat

It is a greater success as the organizer had estimated to collect around $35,300. After deducting costs of organization, over 90 percent of the remaining funds will go directly to the educational initiatives of Saigon Children's Charity to support disadvantaged children in the southern provinces of Vietnam.

 

The team from HSBC crowned the championship title today in a thrilling relay cyclo race which is found nowhere else in the world. Caravelle Hotel came in second while TNK Vietnam finished at the third place.

 

Despite of the difference in the time to finish, they share a common target -- giving help to needy people.

 

Beyond the ‘racing spirit’, the event offered a chance for corporate staff to lend their hands to underprivileged children and also for team building.

 

The event drew the participation of 10 teams including Baker&McKenzie, Crown, Giant, Hoang Long Hoan Vu, Megastar Cineplex, Schenker, HSBC, Caravelle Hotel, TNK Vietnam, and the SCC All-stars.

 

Founded in 1992 as a UK registered charity working exclusively in Vietnam, SCC builds schools and provides scholarships to children. SCC also works with the children to adapt support to their changing needs, including offering vocational training or university scholarships when these become important.

 

To donate to SCC, please visit www.saigonchildren.com, or call us on (84 8) 3930 3502.

 

Followings are some enjoyable images of the cyclo race, taken by Minh Phat on Saturday morning on March 10, 2012:

Members of the HSBC team open a wine bottle to celebrate their championship title

Caravelle Hotel team gets silver medal

And the third prize is for TNK Vietnam. The gentlemen have a special favor -- shaking hands and bowing for medals with a brilliant woman from SCC

Riding with two instead of three wheels to reduce friction, this HSBC skillful racer is heading towards the destination line...

... Amid cheerful support from fans

HSBC supporters cheer their racers during the 2012 Saigon Cyclo Challenge

And another nice supporter of HSBC team

Two racers of Caravelle Hotel are under 'health care' by their colleagues

A star of the SCC All-Star team

Racing for the benefits of children

Men and women are equal

She looks steady on the cyclo. It seems as simple as riding a bike to work

With the chain derailing, the cyclo becomes a handcart, being pushed to the destination line amid big bravo from fans

Reading under the sunlight during the break of the race

He is the most prominent and loudest man of the race. Speaker Justin Murta

He entertains fans and racers with break-dancing during the break

A professional

A supporter of TNK Vietnam team plays with his horn

Riding a cyclo is different from riding a car

It's sure that he has never been granted a cyclo driving license

 

By Minh Phat

Source: Tuoi Tre

Vietnam football: 10 years of suppression

A new chapter in the history Vietnamese football is opening up after all 28 club bosses in the top two leagues -- V-League and First Division -- unanimously stood up to slam down a decade of absolute leadership by the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF).

 

Hanoi ACB club chairman Nguyen Duc Kien (standing) strongly criticized the VFF's poor management at a meeting in Hanoi last month and called on other clubs to vote for a restructure in the VFF. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Lagging behind

 

Match attendance has steadily fallen over the last decade, while outcries against corrupt refereeing and stadium violence have consistently ratcheted up. On top of that, youth training has come virtually to a standstill with no effective breakthrough in boosting grassroots football training.

 

In the past ten years since the topflight V-League labeled as 'professionalism' in 2001, the Vietnam’s football governing body (VFF) has faced the same biggest challenge: the lack of investment fund for football, especially for women’s and youth football.

 

No effective measures yet have been introduced to solve it.

 

Corrupt refereeing has reached such a level that fans are firmly convinced that the champion teams are the one who gave away the fattest envelopes to referees while demoted teams are the most honest ones. Under the leadership of the VFF, the winning team has gained nothing but the loss of respect of their fans.

 

And yet, the VFF refused to make a change by setting up a shareholding company to run the top leagues, which is consistent with FIFA/AFC recommendation. Instead, they wanted football to remain under the total control of the VFF’s organizing board -- until all 28 club bosses stood up and demanded otherwise in a meeting last month.

 

It’s not only the victory of the force for progress and development, but also of the power of money as represented by the club bosses.

 

They have shown great patience, hoping for improvement and change in the management of football from the governing body (VFF) in the past ten years.

 

At the end of the 2011 season that terminated in August, many club owners voiced their disappointment towards the VFF, announcing they were reluctant to sink more money into their teams when match results were decided by corrupt referees, not the talent or skills of the players on the field, nor by their coaches.

 

It has long been a practice in Vietnamese football that clubs usually give referees envelops ahead of the games ‘to beg’ the officials to give them more favorable treatment on the pitch.

 

Pham Phu Hoa, manager of Dong Tam Long An which was relegated to the 2012 First Division, told local media at the end of the season two months ago that the club preferred to invest money in football and not in bribing referees.

 

The club owner Vo Quoc Thang admitted he was mulling over pulling the plug on all investment in his club. Boss Tran Dinh Long of Hoa Phat Hanoi filed a petition to Hanoi sports authorities at the end of the season to announce his termination of involvement in football and transferred his club to Nguyen Duc Kien, owner of Hanoi ACB.

 

Renowned coach Nguyen Thanh Vinh of Hoa Phat Hanoi condemned referees’ complete sway over Vietnamese football in the past seasons.

 

Those strong protests forced the VFF to make a ‘band-aid’ solution to suspend three referees for the entire 2011-12 season and warned three others for their “inaccuracy in blowing the whistle that has triggered public protests.”

 

However, clubs said their frustration and discontent did not come from referees only but from the management of the VFF, and demanded that the system be reformed.

 

Hoang Anh Gia Lai club chairman Doan Nguyen Duc blames the VFF to take responsibilities for match attendance dropping while corrupt refereeing and violence surging (Photo: Tuoi Tre)

 

Even a worm will turn

 

Recently, seven V-League clubs, or half of the members of the topflight league in Vietnam, announced their decision to leave the league and establish their own league in a move to protest the corrupt refereeing and cover-up of the VFF.

 

It was not just a threat, but a well-planned action by the bosses in the runner-up to the regular meeting held in September in Hanoi to review the last season.

 

Hoang Anh Gia Lai FC owner Doan Nguyen Duc led the clubs’ protests by declaring that, “Each Thai club spends averagely US$1 million a season but here in Vietnam, a club pays $5 million. And the result is our fans are walking out on us. The main reasons stem from the organizing board under the VFF, corrupt refereeing and loose disciplines.”

 

“A business group that produces poor output must be restructured, why not the VFF that has failed to stop match fixing and other troubles in the last 10 years?” Duc asked angrily at the meeting chaired by the VFF chairman Nguyen Trong Hy and attended by a full set of other football officials.

 

Dong Tam Long An club boss Vo Quoc Thang voiced his support for the radical plan, “This plan is the best for the developments of our football and I am sure after two seasons under the new model, Vietnamese football will turn out to be more interesting than Thai’s.”

 

Hanoi ACB club owner Nguyen Duc Kien seemed to assume the presiding right by calling upon all 27 remaining club bosses to reject the proposal by the VFF to elect members for the organizing board for the new season and instead vote for the establishment of a company to operate the top leagues.

 

The VFF witnessed unanimous agreement by all 28 owners and had no other choice but to go along with the new plan.

 

Mai Liem Truc, former chairman of the VFF, was convinced that it was time for radical change at the VFF. Comparing the VFF to a corporation, with its executive committee as the board, the chief of its competition board as the production chief, and officials in charge of sponsorship as marketing officials, he argued that good products and effective marketing are required for a nation’s football leagues to succeed.

 

There is no reason why major football nations have long applied the formula but the VFF couldn’t adopt it, Truc pressed the VFF.

 

The bottled-up anger these clubs have tried to suppress for a decade has burst forth to the surface and forced the VFF to loosen their grip and carried out procedures to set up a company to run the leagues.

 

Source: Tuoi Tre

Vietnam, Cambodia review border demarcation

Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Ho Xuan Son and Cambodian Senior Minister Var Kimhong have reviewed the implementation of an MoU on land border area adjustment signed between the two governments last April.

 

At their meeting in Phnom Penh from March 12-14, the two sides agreed to complete border demarcation and marker placement prior to the end of June this year.

 

The two sides will organize a State-level ceremony to inaugurate border marker No. 314, the final marker on the Vietnam-Cambodia land border, in June this year, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of diplomatic ties.

 

They agreed that most of the land border demarcation activities have been completed, however the two sides need to further increase bilateral cooperation and make more efforts to fulfill the task and build up a file of Vietnam-Cambodia border legal documents.

 

The documents include a protocol on border demarcation and marker placement, an agreement on border management regulations, an agreement on border gates and border gate management and a Vietnam-Cambodia border atlas.

 

On the occasion, the two officials signed an agreement saying that the Vietnamese Government will provide financial support to Cambodia for the publication of the Vietnam-Cambodia border atlas.

 

 

Source: Tuoi Tre

French filmmaker Schoendoerffer, chronicler of war, dies

Oscar-winning French filmmaker, novelist and war correspondent Pierre Schoendoerffer, a renowned chronicler of conflict, especially in Vietnam, has died aged 83.

 

Oscar-winning French filmmaker, novelist and war reporter Pierre Schoendoerffer at his home in Paris in November 2007. Photo: AFP

According to a statement from his family, the writer and film director died in the early hours of Wednesday at the Percy military hospital outside Paris.

 

A founding member of the Cesars, the French equivalent of the Oscars, Schoendoerffer launched his career with the French military film service during the country's war in Indochina, following a brief stint as a merchant sailor.

 

In both novels and films, Schoendoerffer returned again and again to the conflict in Indochina, where he was held for four months as a prisoner of war and which was the subject of his best-known works, "Le Crabe-Tambour" (The Drummer Crab) and "La 317e Section" (The 317th Platoon).

 

President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Schoendoerffer as a "legend" who helped the French "better understand our collective history".

 

"France will miss this man -- an aristocrat in his heart and soul -- whose life was inspired by heroes like Joseph Conrad and Jack London, who shaped his imagination," Sarkozy said.

 

Born in 1928 in the central French town of Chamalieres, Schoendoerffer was inspired to a life of adventure by writers such as Conrad and French adventurer and author Joseph Kessel, whose work on Afghanistan, "La Passe du Diable" (The Devil's Pass), he filmed in 1956.

 

After 18 months as a sailor in the Baltic Sea, Schoendoerffer arrived aged 19 in French Indochina, the colony comprising present-day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos where French forces were fighting the independence-seeking Viet Minh.

 

Taken on as a cameraman by the French military's film service, he filmed the war's climactic battle, the 1954 defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu, and was afterward held as a prisoner of war for four months.

 

Schoendoerffer left the military following the war but remained in Vietnam to work as a reporter for French and US publications including Paris Match, Time and Life.

 

Returning to France in 1955, he set himself up as a roaming correspondent, writer and filmmaker, returning many times to Vietnam and covering conflicts such as the Algerian War.

 

His experiences during the Indochina War would mark "Le Crabe-Tambour", which won three Cesars in 1977 and "La 317e Section", based on his own novel and winner of best screenplay at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival.

 

He went back to Vietnam for his 1967 Oscar-winning documentary, "The Anderson Platoon", which looked at the lives of a platoon of US soldiers fighting in the country.

 

He returned to the conflict again in 1991 with the film "Dien Bien Phu", about a US war correspondent covering the fateful battle.

 

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon praised Schoendoerffer as "a great witness of our times" in a statement, saying "his images always went beyond the events."

 

Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand hailed him as a writer and filmmaker "haunted by war and its consequences on our humanity."

 

"He was a man of honour who believed in loyalty to his family and to his country," Mitterrand said in a statement.

 

Historian Benedicte Cheron said Schoendoerffer had shed much-needed light on difficult periods of French military history.

 

"He was a filmmaker and not a historian... but his work helped establish in the national imagination one period that was largely unknown, in the case of Indochina, and another that was difficult and traumatic, as in the case of the Algerian War," she said.

 

"His representation of war, of wartime heroism and of the tragedy of war, touched on the universal."

 

Schoendoerffer had three children, including filmmaker Frederic Schoendoerffer.

 

Source: Tuoi Tre

HCM City in the top 10 of street food destinations

HCM City has been listed in the top 10 of world's best street food destinations.

 

The list was created by Food and Wine magazine, a monthly publication of American Express Publishing.

HCM City's most famous street foods include “pho” (rice noodles), “banh my kep pate” (sandwich with pate), and “banh xeo” (literary sizzling cake or fried pancakes made of rice flour, turmeric powder, and slivers of fatty pork, shrimp).

According to Food and Wine, street food has played an important role in the gastronomy of the world. The magazine sent readers to HCM City's Ben Thanh market where food-lovers can discover the beauty of Vietnamese cuisine and enjoy delicious dishes. It also suggested other destinations where tourists could enjoy street food, such as Bangkok (Thailand), Penang (Malaysia), Berlin (Germany), Austin (Texas, United States).

Food & Wine was founded in 1978 by Ariane and Michael Batterberry, American food writers. It features recipes, cooking tips, travel information, restaurant reviews, chefs, wine pairings and seasonal/holiday content.

Source: travelweekly.asia