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[snipeshot08]

Originally Posted by Hurricane88

why leh...thought you dun follow any other threads..

Yup you are rite, but I kinda liked that sentence "passing by nia nia" not originated by me of cos.....

Cheerios......SS08 ^_^

[snipeshot08]

Originally Posted by Hurricane88

Air fares set to soar with proposed hike to Vietnam's aviation fees

By VnExpress November 9, 2016 | 02:00 am GMT+7


The national aviation administration wants to lift landing and takeoff fees by 15 percent.

Siao liao airpork taxes set to rise liao

Cheerios.......SS08 ^_^

[Hurricane88]

Originally Posted by snipeshot08

He was actually the very last person on earth I would ever think will become MCBB and end up he became one of the worst

Cheerios......SS08 ^_^

Zaryl kor kor may had found happiness and retire...

[Hurricane88]

Originally Posted by snipeshot08

Yup you are rite, but I kinda liked that sentence "passing by nia nia" not originated by me of cos.....

Cheerios......SS08 ^_^

We too always just passing by nia nia...

[Hurricane88]

Originally Posted by snipeshot08

Siao liao airpork taxes set to rise liao

Cheerios.......SS08 ^_^

Only domestic airpork tax increase....international already high...

[Hurricane88]

What happened only repky 3 posts...wow still 2 person tcss...

[Hurricane88]

Over 40 percent of small companies in Vietnam pay bribes: survey

By VnExpress November 10, 2016 | 09:57 am GMT+7



Unofficial payments helped them complete tax and customs procedures, they say.
Unofficial payments unfortunately continued to be the way of doing business for many small companies in Vietnam as a new survey found a large number resorted to bribery last year.

The survey, released by the Central Institute of Economic Management on Wednesday, showed that 42.7 percent of small and medium firms had to make unofficial payment to government agencies to keep their business going, Tuoi Tre newspaper reported.

The institute conducted the survey with the Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs, the University of Copenhagen and the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research.

More than 2,600 businesses from 10 cities and provinces, including the northern port city of Hai Phong, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, took part in the survey.

The companies said they paid back-door money to win access to public services and to complete tax and customs procedures faster.

The rate of businesses slipping in extra money to solve tax issues increased from 17.6 percent in 2013 to 24.1 percent in 2015.

Among companies paying bribes, 41.2 percent said the amount of unofficial payments could increase in the coming time.

Small and medium-sized companies account for 97 percent of all businesses in Vietnam.

[Hurricane88]

Breakfast @ Tuoi Tre News - November 10


TUOI TRE NEWS
UPDATED : 11/10/2016 08:30 GMT + 7


Check out the news you should not miss today:

Politics

-- Vietnam's State President Tran Dai Quang and his spouse will pay an official visit to Cuba from November 15 to 17 at the invitation of Raul Castro, President of the Cuban Council of State and Council of Ministers. At the invitation of Peruvian President Pedro Paplo Kuczynsky, President Quang will also attend the 24th High-Level Week of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in Lima, Peru, from November 17 to 20.

-- Vietnam's Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong on Wednesday welcomed Zhang Dejiang, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China. At the event, General Secretary Trong confirmed that Vietnam has always appreciated the development of friendly relations and strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries.


Society

-- The number of methamphetamine users in the central city of Da Nang has risen 36.5 percent, local police said.

-- Many foreign enterprises have invested in Vietnam to take advantage of low environmental costs, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said at a conference on environmental protection on Wednesday.

-- The person from the southern region who won the jackpot worth over VND64 billion (US$2.86 million) last week has received his money and asked for his personal particulars to be kept secret. The winning ticket was sold in District 8, Ho Chi Minh City.

-- Young Vietnamese and Chinese on Wednesday attended the closing ceremony of the third Vietnam-China Youth Festival. The event kicked off on November 7, gathering thousands of young people from the two countries.

-- More than two tons of ivory and 70kg of rhino horns caught in illegal trade deals will be destroyed on Saturday in Hanoi.

-- Ho Chi Minh City is in need of more than 2,100 names to name its streets in a project run by the city’s research and development center.

[Hurricane88]

Hẻm Gems: D1's Bún Mọc Assembly Line

Last Updated on Friday, 28 October 2016 12:09 Published on Friday, 28 October 2016 12:08 Written by Khoi Pham.



We leave our office in search of District 1’s famed phở áp chảo only to find bún mọc in a hopeless place.

In this day and age, nothing is permanent in Saigon: old buildings get torn down, new shopping malls open, people move away and the favorite lunch lady right at your door step could one day decide to up and move to Australia without prior warning (I miss your bún, co Phuong, come back!) The city’s vendors also seem to operate on the same principle: they could close one day and open on the next at their heart’s content.

This week Saigoneer set out to introduce one of our favorite renditions of phở in the city – phở áp chảo, or crispy fried pho with stir-fried beef – that tastes as good as it sounds. However, my colleague and I arrived at their door only to face a forlorn front pavement and tightly shut metallic doors. This is unfortunately not an uncommon sight, as Saigon’s eateries can sometimes be as fickle as its weather.

Disheartened but not discouraged, after rounds of brainstorming we head to the next best thing in the vicinity, because the show must go on. This leads us to Bun Moc Thanh Mai, one of the most well-known bún locations in the area. Located on the corner of Truong Dinh and Nguyen An Ninh just a stone’s throw away from Ben Thanh Market’s west entrance, at a glance Thanh Mai appears rather modest for a famous restaurant right in the city’s tourist quarter: two dining areas in a corner building with 40 or so customers. Still, the constant stream of diners coming and going assures us that whatever dish they serve will be worth our time.



Thanh Mai’s specialty is northern-style bún mọc, or bún with a variety of pork meatballs, and this is where I’ll fight you on spelling. The meatballs are known as mọc, but for reasons that completely elude me, some tend to call them mộc, including the folks here, who go by the name “Bún Mộc Thanh Mai”. According to Thanh Nien, the etymology of the term itself is a hotly debated topic: one camp insists that the morsels of protein are named after its place of origin – “Mọc” Village in Hanoi’s Thanh Xuan District – while another camp thinks that mộc is an old Vietnamese word for ground pork, the main ingredient in the meatballs. Personally, I am a firm believer in the first camp's idea. Moreover, a quick search on Google generates 467,000 results for “bún mọc”, while only 414,000 findings turn up for “bún mộc”, so make of that what you will.

We sit down at a table at the corner of the dining room’s small mezzanine. While space is tight, our view is fascinating: from above, diners have a complete view of the bustling activity below, from the servers’ impressive maneuvers to chatty groups of tourists to laid-back locals casually slurping on their bowl of simmering goodness

“See those girls at the corner there? They’re Thai,” she added, pointing to a table across the mezzanine. “They have been here many times. Thais are really cool, every time they want to order something, they point to a photo already taken on their phones. They have a photo for everything we sell here!”

While we’re just beginning to take in this sudden burst of friendliness, the loquacious lady’s tone changes. “We’re the best in town at bún mọc, unlike those at Ben Thanh,” she warns. “Our price stays the same no matter who you are. If they see that you’re not from Saigon, they will hike up the price.”

Thing starts to get awkward at that point but luckily she has meals to deliver and I have my wonderful bowl of bún to attend to. The lunch crowd is also pouring in from nearby office buildings and hotels, filling the limited amount of tables and keeping the wait staff constantly on their feet.

Our server lady arrives at our table once again with our check, looking tired but no less cheery. “Did you enjoy your meal? It’s usually crowded during this time of the day,” she says. The lady looks visibly proud once I tell her that I love the bún. “Bring some good photos back to America,” she says as we prepare to leave. With food this good, we'll gladly tell the rest of the world about it.



To sum up:

Taste: 5/5

Price: 4/5

Atmosphere: 4/5

Friendliness: 5/5

Location: 4/5

Bún Mộc Thanh Mai

52 Nguyen An Ninh, Ben Thanh Ward, D1

[Hurricane88]

Old HCMC apartments a danger to residents

November 10, 2016


In HCM City, there are 474 severely degraded apartment buildings that threaten the lives and properties of their occupants, authorities said.

“Many old apartments, which were built before 1975, when the city was liberated from the US-backed administration, are in disrepair and in urgent need of renovation or replacement,” Lê Văn Khoa, deputy chairman of the city People’s Council, said in a talk show on “Old apartments renovation” on HCM City Television on Monday.

The 474 apartment blocks were assessed for quality, with all measuring below 55 per cent, and listed as dangerous.

“Most of them could collapse any time,” Huỳnh Quang Tâm of the city’s Fire Fighting and Prevention Police Department said.

“There are no emergency exits or fire safety equipment.”

Districts 5 and 10 account for the highest number of these buildings, most of them located in populous areas.

In District 5, 206 buildings built before 1975 remain in use, some of them as old as 60 years.

Lê Quốc Tuấn, deputy chairman of the district People’s Committee, said, “93 of them have been examined and the remaining will be assessed later this year.”

District 10 has 40 apartments in serious disrepair, including ones built in the early 1970s like Ngô Gia Tự, Ấn Quang and Nguyễn Kim.

District 1 has 86, including Cô Giang with four blocks and 750 units, which was built in 1964 and is now in imminent danger of collapse.

“The city People’s Committee has agreed to renovate four old apartment buildings, so in District 1 we still have 82 apartments with 24,167 people”, Đoàn Ngọc Hải, deputy chairman of the district People’s Committee, said.

Authorities have studied and decided which apartments need to be rebuilt first and are looking for investors.

Tuấn said there are plans to offer occupants apartments elsewhere and replace the razed buildings with modern apartment towers.

Trần Trọng Tuấn, director of the city Department of Construction, said the city targets to rebuild 50 per cent of the 474 decrepit apartments by 2020.

“This year the city will finish assessing old apartments and subsequently local authorities will draw up plans to upgrade and rebuild.”

To resolve the issue, the city has come up with many policies like giving district authorities greater rights to grant construction licences, publicly announce transparent ground clearance and compensation processes and offer alternate housing to resettle residents.

“If occupants do not have enough money to buy a new apartment, they will be offered social housing,” Khoa said.

He said the programme needs to be carried out carefully with detailed plans and public support.

So far the city has razed 32 old buildings with 208,000sq.m of housing space and built 39 apartment buildings elsewhere with 470,000sq.m to resettle their occupants.

“But they met only a small part of what was needed,” Khoa said.

Challenges

“The compensation policies have shortcomings that need to be addressed,” Trương Trung Kiên, head of the People’s Council’s urban department, said.

“It is not easy to uproot people from their old homes and relocate them elsewhere to start life from scratch.”

Most people living in old apartment buildings are poor and earn a living in nearby areas, and consigning them to the suburbs would cause them inconvenience, he said.

Kiên said the regulations for evacuating crumbling apartment buildings are not comprehensive and need to be revised to protect the rights of their occupants.

Lê Hoàng Châu, chairman of the HCM City Real Estate Association, said the city must show how investors – who rebuild apartment buildings — can benefit.

The city never takes up this task itself.

“Now most residents have extended their units and added more rooms, a factor that has also driven investors away,” Châu said.

To speed up replacement of old buildings, he said there should be specific measures to attract investors.

These could be incentives which would make the projects feasible in their eyes, he said.

For years resettlement has remained a tricky issue with residents refusing to evacuate and investors not showing interest in rebuilding old buildings due to the slow nature of the task and low profits.

Negotiations for compensation are usually the main problem for investors.

Policies to encourage residents to move out are not effective and it usually takes many years to evacuate crumbling apartment buildings. Authorities face severe resistance while attempting to move out residents who are generally dissatisfied with the compensation.

[Hurricane88]

Chư Păm Bridge collapses due to flooding

Update: November, 10/2016 - 12:00

Read more at http://vietnamnews.vn/society/345960...LcUBy5TThKM.99

Viet Nam News

ĐẮK LẮK – Chư Păm Bridge in in the Central Highlands province of Đắk Lắk collapsed due to the recent flooding, blocking traffic between Krông Bông District and National Highway 26.

The pillar under the middle of the bridge, collapsed some 1.5m, deforming the surface of the bridge.

The bridge, located on the key route of the district, connects Krông Bông District and National Highway 26. This is also the only road for residents in Cư Kty, Hòa Tân, Hòa Sơn and Hòa Thành communes travelling to Krông Bông General Hospital.

Nguyễn Kiếm Anh, deputy head of the Krông Bông District’s Road Management Unit, said the unit was forced to ban all vehicles and people from crossing the bridge for safety reasons.

He said authorised agencies have chalked out a plan to repair the bridge surface.

According to the schedule, the job will be completed in the next 10 days. – VNS

[1970Dava]

How dow you tell A Vietnamese brothel?

[snipeshot08]

Originally Posted by Hurricane88

Zaryl kor kor may had found happiness and retire...

The funny thing about life is that you can actually still find somebody and yet still do not need to totally abandon your friends but this takes sincere efforts and sad to say most are not able to achieve this......

Cheerios.......SS08 ^_^

[snipeshot08]

Originally Posted by Hurricane88

We too always just passing by nia nia...

The big difference is that we pass by many many times

Cheerios.......SS08 ^_^

[Hurricane88]

Originally Posted by 1970Dava

How dow you tell A Vietnamese brothel?

No legal brothel in Vietnam...