Tieng Viet lovers club

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Vietnamese Listening Practice - Looking at a Photograph from Vietnam

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Vietnamese Listening Practice - At the Jewelry Store in Vietnam

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Vietnamese Listening Practice - Rearranging the Office in Vietnam

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Vietnamese Listening Practice - Getting Some Groceries in Vietnam

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Not sure whether I have posted this series before.... anyway more info could be better

Learn Vietnamese - Greetings

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Learn Vietnamese - Making Apologies

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Learn Vietnamese - Vietnamese Manners

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Why u must learn vietnamese if u go into Salon?

Vietnamese Hair Salon - Short Hair ?

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Vietnamese language class for travellers - Part 1

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School love: teens need sex education
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VietNamNet Bridge – Student psychology is becoming increasingly complex. This fact requires schools to change sex education methods.

Dr. Nguyen Thi Hong Minh, Director of the Center for Reproductive Health and Family Planning of the Central Obstetrics Hospital in Hanoi, says sex education classes at schools are “just for fun” rather than providing meaningful information to students.

Currently, more than 1/3 of youth in Vietnam don’t have access to safe contraception; moreover, they have little understanding of how to deal with unwanted pregnancy.

"It is weird that up to 90 percent of teenagers are well aware of the risk of pregnancy when having sex, but more than 80 percent of them do not use any contraception method. It is dangerous that they just think that if they are pregnant, they can <perform | simply get> an abortion!" she says.

According to experts, teenagers have boyfriends or girlfriends and have sex at a very young age because of the impact of the modern lifestyle. In addition, they are not taught good living skills at school.

“This is the stage of entering puberty when children start to discover themselves and learn about friends of the opposite sex. If they are not guided, they will have deviant behaviors," says Dr. Luong Ngoc Truong, Director of the Center for Reproductive Healthcare of Thanh Hoa Province.

A survey by the Faculty of Psychology at the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanities showed that for every nine people doing sex consulting work at high schools, only two are qualified.

Although the Ministry of Education and Training has added reproductive health contents to the curriculum at secondary and high school, sex education is ineffective due to the shyness of both teachers and students. Also, the lack of a specific curriculum creates difficulties for teachers.

Teacher Nguyen Thi Thu Hien from the Nguyen Huu Tho High School in Ho Chi Minh City says: "Some 12th graders still think that they can become pregnant from kissing. This demonstrates that they lack basic knowledge about sex. Yet both families and teachers shun sex education because it is a very sensitive topic."

Teacher Le Thi Muoi Mot from the Tran Quang Khai Secondary School in Tinh Bien District, An Giang Province, says that sex education in school is a formalism because of the lack of curricula. Teachers usually integrate sex education content with genetics lessons. "In every lesson, teachers only talk about sex for 5-10 minutes," she says.

Explaining the causes of high rate of abortion among teenagers, Mr. Ngo Minh Uy, a psychology expert in HCM City, says that teens see sexual behavior as a way of expressing love. The problem, he says, is that they lack knowledge of sexual and reproductive health, and hence do not know how to deal with related problems.

Sex education should be taught at all general schools

According to the Department of Education and Training in Ho Chi Minh City, the city has more than 5,000 primary and secondary schools, with a total of 51 full-time psychological and gender consulting teachers and 157 part-time teachers in charge of psychological and gender education. The 105 high schools in the city have only 53 full-time and 141 part-time teachers in charge of psychological and gender education.

Dr. Dinh Duy Phuong, Deputy Rector of the HCM City Officer Training School, confirms that students' psychology is increasingly complex and they need help from professional consultants.

Sharing this view, Dr. Nguyen Thi Bich Hong, Head of the Psychology and Applied Education Faculty at the HCM City University of Pedagogy, suggests general schools recruit more consultants or further train their teachers to provide psychological and gender education.

Mr. Cao Huy Thao, Headmaster of the Vietnam – Australia High School in HCM City, says that sex education is offered to kids at a very young age. In some schools, students are even provided with condoms.

In Vietnam, according to an official of the Institute of Sociology, many young people have told him that having sex before marriage is not a big problem, but it is more important to have safe sex.

"The more adults avoid sex issues, the more curious children are. Without guidance from adults, kids are at high risk of having adverse behavior. Therefore, schools should hold talks about sex with parents because the parents often have better rapport with their children than schools do. Many teachers admit that they can teach students about sex, but that it is very difficult to talk to their own children about this topic," Thao acknowledges.

According to Thao, the sooner children are provided with knowledge about sex, the better. However, the material should be appropriate to each age group.

Deputy Minister of Health – Mr. Nguyen Viet Tien admits that contraception education for adolescents and unmarried youths has been overlooked. Recently, the health sector has taken many measures to raise awareness and support for reproductive health care for this demographic.

"We have to accept the fact that a significant proportion of adolescents have sex. Therefore, we need to give directions and teach them contraceptive methods to minimize the risk of early pregnancy, which can affect their health and future," Tien says.

NLD

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Happy Reunification Day to all!

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Saigon’s iconic Ben Thanh Market turns 100
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Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, on Saturday held a ceremony to mark the 100th founding anniversary of its iconic Ben Thanh Market.

The market developed from a wet market next to Saigon River created by street vendors in the early 17th century. It was destroyed by a fire and rebuilt to become Saigon’s largest market, called Les Halles Centrales, by the French in 1870.

In 1912, the market was moved to a new location and renamed Ben Thanh Market which was officially inaugurated in two years later.

The current 13.056m² market, renovated in 1985, is home to 3,000 traders selling various products and daily receives 15,000 visitors on average.

The market has witnessed a number of historical events taking place in Saigon and ups and downs of many generations of Saigonese. It is also known as a place for real Vietnamese food.

In January 2012, Food and Wine magazine, a monthly publication of American Express Publishing, listed Saigon in the top 10 of the world's best street food destinations and recommended global food-lovers to visit Ben Thanh Market where they can discover the beauty of Vietnamese cuisine and enjoy delicious dishes.

“The thing I remember most is that when I was seven or eight, Chinese and Indian traders offered a variety of products at the market while Vietnamese ran food stalls in the middle area,” 84-year-old Ly Luoc Tam, a local researcher, recounted the days he went to the market with his father.

According to Tam, Ben Thanh Market used to serve as a transport hub including stations of buses, horse-drawn carriages, and trains in addition to being a market.

Nguyen Anh Kiet, another city resident, said that located at Ben Thanh Market used to be water morning glory fields in the past, the majority of which were possessed by his maternal grandfather.

“When the market was established, my grandfather’s family members were given many stalls in the place. My grandmother’s siblings ran businessese there from 1914 to 1944 when the Japanese troops dropped bombs.”

In the memory of the 60-year-old Kiet, Ben Thanh offered a wide range of luxury products to wealthy market-goers and was a major food supplier for restaurants and hotels operated by Indians and French in the old days.

“It was normal that she sold 1,000 dry coconuts to Indian restaurants per day at that time. Though my grandmother just worked six months per year during that period, she saved a big amount of gold,” Kiet said.

For tourists, Ben Thanh Market is a must-see. “I think all of those working in the tourism industry would like to bring tourists to Ben Thanh Market because it is one of Saigon’s icons,” said Pham Huu Minh, a tour guide of The He Tre [Young Generation] travel firm based in this southern city.

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Luxury goods originating from Vietnam
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VietNamNet Bridge - The names of these luxurious foods and drinks attract not only Vietnamese but international gourmets.


Marou Chocolates

Marou, the first artisanal chocolate maker in Vietnam, makes its products for serious cocoa fans. The chocolatier has displayed its wares for the past two years at the annual Salon De Chocolate trade fair in Paris.

All products are dark chocolate. Tien Giang chocolate 70 percent is a rare type of chocolate which is produced with 70 percent organic cocoa beans grown in the southern province of Tien Giang.

Meanwhile, their Dong Nai chocolate is described by the two founders of Marou, Samuel Maruta and Vincent Mouro, as a rare chocolate. It is processed in their factory near Cat Tien National Park in Dong Nai Province.

Marou also produces raw chocolate containing 65 percent cocoa. All products of Marou are packed with a special kind of paper with patterns inspired by Vietnam’s wooden patterns.


Dalat Grapes

In 2006, viticulture expert Daniel Carsol planted the first crop of four French grape varieties, including Cabernet, Caladoc, Merlot and Syrah, in Dalat.

Carsol says he had traveled everywhere, from Laos and Cambodia to Myanmar, before finding the "right soil" outside Dalat City in Lam Dong province.

Carsol has cooperated with local partners to establish Dalat Grapes joint ventures. The first vintage products were produced in 2012, with only 500 bottles of Syrah and 300 of Cabernet. The number rose to 2,500 bottles in 2013.


The Better Seafoods

More than a decade ago, discouraged over the European Union’s increasingly burdensome regulations related to food production in his country, Jean Christophe Sevin, owner of an oyster farm, moved to the suburbs of Nha Trang to live and work.

Over the past seven years, his company, Biological Vietnam Seafoods, has produced world-class quality seafood such as lobster, blue crab, mussels and abalone, but the main product of the company is organic oysters. This product is provided to high-end restaurants in Hanoi and HCM City, as well as other countries such as Cambodia and Malaysia.


Caviar de Duc

The sturgeon farm of Vietnam Sturgeon Group was established in Dalat in 2007 at an altitude of 1,500 m above sea level. This is the first company in Vietnam producing and distributing caviar from sturgeon varieties bred in Dalat.

Previously, sturgeon eggs were produced only in areas with cold climates. Today, modern technology enables the breeding of rare fish like beluga in cool climate conditions, such as found in the highlands of Vietnam.

The firm’s top-quality product line, Osetra Malossol black caviar, has become the choice for leading hotels in Vietnam such as Sofitel Metropole and Park Hyatt Saigon.

Na Son

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Vietnamese’s bad habits: The ‘Tunnel Vision’ epidemic
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Editor's Note: An Australian expat, who has been living and working in Vietnam for more than ten years and wants to be anonymous, filed this story complaining that Vietnamese are stuck in so-called “Tunnel Vision,” which only allows them to see what is directly in front of them, not anything behind or next to them. The opinions expressed here are the author’s.

Consider that you are on the street, you are driving your motorbike, and the person next to you or slightly in front of you just decides to turn or just pulls out blindly from a side alley and almost hits you. Or while exiting a building, the person in front of you opens the door just enough to allow themselves through but neglects to hold the door open for the person behind them. Let’s even consider a decision made in haste, with the only factors taken into consideration are those directly in front of the decision maker, without considering the past, or what other people think.

Have you ever experienced any of these things – here in Vietnam?

To probably explain this let’s go back to my first example about the motorbike, since it’s a perfect metaphor for what’s going on here in Vietnam. Many bikes in Vietnam have no mirrors to see what’s going on around them, or if they do, they are often not used - or if they are - then they are used by the rider to see how good they look when they ride (or perfect for squeezing pimples, shaving, or finding gray hairs). The same could be said about Vietnamese mentality in public areas.

What seems evident is that Vietnamese people often don’t care enough about the people around them – especially the ones they don’t know. Now, I’m not talking about the obvious people who need help in their daily lives (eg. disabled people, old people, and the sick) because I think Vietnamese people are very charitable and helpful to those in need. No, I’m talking generally about interactions of the Vietnamese public.

Many Vietnamese often complain that the reason that people do things like cutting off people while riding their bikes, or cutting in line, or pushing and shoving to arrive first is because they have no shame. Some say it’s because of their lack of education, but maybe it’s more to do with a lack of awareness or care about how it makes other people feel. Others say that there are just not enough boundaries and effective punishments in society. To go back to the motorbike metaphor, if the bike can go there, then we should go there since if we don’t, someone else will, and thus get ahead of us in the “rat race.”

One Vietnamese person told me that she is often disgusted by those who break these social rules, but when the time suits her, she will also break the very same rules because she’s in a hurry. And sometimes, I find myself doing the same thing.

I don’t think it’s because people just don’t care. But maybe it’s because they have “Tunnel Vision” – which only allows them to see what’s directly in front of them (and nothing beside or behind). Maybe this is a product of the past – the war, the food lines, and the painstaking rebuilding of a nation – or maybe it’s something more personal: the feeling of being left behind in an increasingly fast-paced world.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s much better in the West; everyone can be selfish at times. But at least on the roads we have something called “GIVE WAY” to the left or right and have some order on the roads instead of “GIVE WAY-to-those-with-more-determination-to-pass” or “GIVE WAY-to-everything-bigger-and-faster-than-you”! And in public, foreigners are generally polite and courteous to those around us – especially if people show it first.

So maybe the public just needs to consider their actions more, and also denounce the anti-social behaviors that have led to this situation. In Western countries, we have amusing TV campaigns, contemporary pop and rock songs, and creative slogans to help build the idea that positive social behavior is “cool,” rather than simply banners or posters.

Or could the many cinemas with their lists of do’s and don’ts, or shopping centers and fast food joints with their orderly queues and set prices, be responsible for training people to behave socially as they spend and eat and enjoy?

Or is it just a matter of time, waiting for the next generation to mature and lead their children by example?

Some Vietnamese people say they don’t know, as they push into the queue, as they are generally not polite to others, and as they continue to drive on the footpath to avoid a traffic jam or red light. You might even see me up there sometimes…

Maybe people here just need to find a cure for their “Tunnel Vision.”

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Vietnamese’s bad habits: Littering, belching, refusing to queue
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Editor’s Note: Thanh Vu Bui, who identifies himself as an Australian expat, emailed this piece to us on Wednesday in response to the article “Vietnamese’s bad habits: The ‘Tunnel Vision’ epidemic” published on our website the same day. Bui said in the email that “I’ve heard of the many reasons for the Vietnamese bad social habits,” citing Tunnel Vision, lack of education, and corruption as examples. Tuoitrenews does not vouch for the opinions expressed here which are the writer's own.

Vietnamese seems to be really concerned with “saving face,” but have no shame for their [mis]conduct and [mis]behavior.

I have consistently witnessed the following bad social etiquettes in public:

- Urinating

- Picking their nose[s], especially by restaurant workers

- Belching

- Not queuing

- Rushing out of airplane[s] first during debarking

- Disobeying traffic laws, and not giv[ing] other drivers the right way when they are already in front

- Walking into elevators before people exit

- Not holding doors open for other people behind them, or sneaking in when someone [has] just opened the door for themselves

- Littering

- Rushing everywhere in general, but slowest golfers in the world

- Talking in cinema[s], better now with all the public announcements by Megastar and BHD. Galaxy Cinema is the worst!

- Still trying to rip people off in restaurants with fraudulent bills, or having a higher price menu for foreigners

I’ve seen Vietnamese visiting other countries and able to display good social etiquettes, so they are all not ignorant. It’s time Vietnam start[ed] behaving in public respectfully like a mature society. In other societies, these bad social etiquettes are faux pas, something people would be embarrassed about, in Vietnam, they are the norm, but foreigners are embarrassed about seeing it to the point that they take pictures and talk about it socially, viralling the bad image all over the world.