Every day there are curious news stories in the Vietnamese newspapers. Some are absurd, some make no sense, some are examples of officials ignoring the blindingly obvious, and others are just crazy.
Yesterday provided a very strange one:
60 women fainted in a factory in Danang after hearing a ghost story
I want to know what the story was. It reminds me of Monty Python’s funniest joke in the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gpjk_MaCGM
Another curious one appeared recently:
Nghe An province’s police have detained 2 people for storing over 2400 kilograms of dynamite in their homes
As you do.
Recent reports focussed on the issue of goods being smuggled into Vietnam.
Market authorities in HCMC uncovered thousands of smuggled toys being displayed at a supermarket on Thursday
The Ministry of Information and Communication will tighten home shopping channels on television after HCMC-based Happy Shopping Co was fined for selling fake and smuggled goods.
Market monitors in HCMC found a large volume of smuggled sugar and fake monosodiumglutamate at traditional markets.
Everyone here is in disbelief. Are there really smuggled goods being sold in the markets in Vietnam? Surely not. And how do you work out that MSG is fake?
Dung Quat oil refinery has long been a topic for news reports.
Dung Quat oil refinery will suspend its operations for 2 months for overall maintenance. Over 2000 engineers and experts from Vietnam, Singapore and South Korea will carry out the job.
Dung Quat is Vietnam’s first oil refinery. Vietnam has significant oil reserves, but it did not have a refinery, so the oil had to be exported as crude oil and imported after it had been refined. The oil reserves are offshore in the far south of the country near Vung Tau. The project to build an oil refinery was originally planned to be at Vung Tau when the project began 20 years ago. The site was moved to the centre of the country, to a place that is a thousand kilometres from each of the 2 major oil-using centres of HCMC and Hanoi, and a thousand kilometres from the oil wells. It was a decision that no-one can explain.
Dung Quat was finally opened in 2009. A few months later it was closed due to a technical problem. The refinery was not handed over to PetroVietnam until May 2010. The cost of development had risen from US$1.3bn to US$3bn. And now it is closed for 2 months for maintenance. According to the website API Energy, major shutdowns of refineries for testing or maintenance occur every 4 years and usually last from 1 to 4 weeks.
Every day there are reports about traffic accidents.
There were 6600 traffic accidents reported on the HCMC-Trung Luong expressway 15 months after the road was put into operation.
That’s about 15 accidents every single day on a road that is only 60 kilometres long and from which motorbikes are banned. And they are only the crashes that are reported. ou might think that there could be a problem here. But apparently not. In January this year a representative of the Vietnam Expressway Investment and Development Board Corp was reported in the VietNam Business News as having told the People’s Committee of HCMC that “after nearly one year of temporary operation, the HCM – Trung Luong expressway has helped solve the traffic jam and reduce the number of accidents on National Highway 1A”. It reduced the number of accidents?
Sometimes old history finds its way into the news.
Bui Mong Diep, one of the concubines of Bao Dai, the last king of Vietnam passed away at Saint Antoine Hospital in France after unsuccessful heart surgery.
Possible it was reduntant to say that the heart surery was unsuccessful. It’s curious that this story should be recorded in today’s Vietnam, and it was widely reported. Indeed a requiem service was held for her in Hue. Bao Dai was the last of the Nguyen emperors. He held office at the behest of the French, and lived in exile in France after 1955. It is curious that in today’s Vietnam, where the history of the Nguyen lords and the French colonial rule are seldom recognised, such a story should be reported.
In fact she was one of Bao Dai’s wives. He married her in 1955 when he already had 3 other wives. Mong Diep had been one of his concubines at Dalat for 5 or 6 years before that. He appears to have had quite a few concubines, but Mong Diep was the only one he married.
The environment is always in the news in Vietnam, although not always for the right reasons. A recent article started very positively:
Can Tho University (Can Tho is the largest city in the Mekong Delta) aquaculture breeding centre has successfully performed artificial reproduction of freshwater dolphins”.
This sounded very good – all dolphins are in great danger in this part of the world. But the story went on:
The seafood is sold at VND 500,000 per kilo.
On No. Poor Flipper.
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- Mong Diep at Dalat
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- Bui Mong Diep
VietGeoff 