Tieng Viet lovers club

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Trung Quan - Chua Bao Gio

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Trung Quan - Dau Mua

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Originally Posted by Hurricane88

here...you can listen to top Vietnamese songs

http://mp3.zing.vn/bang-xep-hang/bai.../IWZ9Z08I.html

Thank you for sharing

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Trung Quan - Goi Mua

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Trung Quan - Chieu nay Khong co mua bay

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New year is coming. Wishing everyone a better year!!!!

Simple 4-words greeting:

chúc mừng năm mới
năm mới vui vẻ
cung chúc tân xuân
chúc mừng tân niên
phát tài phát lộc
Cung hỉ phát tài
Tiền vô như nước
Luôn luôn thành công
Mã đáo thành công
Vạn sự như ý

Do you have other 4-words greetings to add in???

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Originally Posted by jackbl

New year is coming. Wishing everyone a better year!!!!

Simple 4-words greeting:

chúc mừng năm mới
năm mới vui vẻ
cung chúc tân xuân
chúc mừng tân niên
phát tài phát lộc
Cung hỉ phát tài
Tiền vô như nước
Luôn luôn thành công
Mã đáo thành công
Vạn sự như ý

Do you have other 4-words greetings to add in???

dồi dào sức khỏe
an khang thịnh vượng

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Originally Posted by KangTuo

This up coming trip, we will bring along a 42" TV

Did u experience any difficulty passing through the vn customs ?

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Happy New Year (vietnamese version)

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Best wishes for Lunar New Year in Vietnam


It’s the time when lucky envelopes sell faster in the shops than cheap helmets and the latest ‘must have’ votive paper product to burn for good luck is a Galaxy 8.7 smartphone. This is when my students are tired, not from doing homework, but selling mum’s vegetables all day for that extra money for new clothes and gifts for relatives. The cake gift packs crowd shop entrances so badly that you have to move sideways to squeeze inside and your local coffee shop closes for a week.
Yep – Tet, or the Lunar New Year, is coming! I marvel at the jammed parking lot tricks with which people manage to get their motorbikes in and out without a scratch while hauling so much stuff home that the roads start to resemble mobile Christmas trees on an annual migration to a warmer climate. Have you taken the bronze Buddha to the guy down the road polishing them up on the pavement next to the Mi Quang stall?
Traffic continues to be manic, people rushing everywhere for those end-of-year company parties and one of the best opportunities of the year to meet the love of their life! The main topic in my class break time for the adults is what to do with their bonuses. There’s a lot of scheming going on – figuring a plausible excuse to escape the family after the first four days of Tet for that much needed holiday somewhere with friends.
In my little street, the three young adults still studying far away at university in Hue and Ho Chi Minh City come home to help their parents with the farming and meet their local friends, long missed. Four other families will travel far, to the Mekong Delta and the north. My best friends in Hoi An, Hong and Kien, and their kids will spend a week with their families back in Hanoi. Three days with the husband’s family and then the wife’s relatives.
For the expats who are not leaving the country around this time, it’s a time to ‘hole up’, to stay home and get a break from Vietnam’s frantic pace, watch the sport from their home countries and savor the beach weather. The expats seem to fall into two groups: those that love Tet and those who loathe everything – the noise, the crowds, the music, the drinking and anything else that annoys them. It seems odd to me how we can complain about the Vietnamese celebrating their New Year when we’ve done the same just a few weeks before!
Whatever’s going on, the main point still rests with Vietnamese culture’s focus on the family. Tet marks Vietnamese family values we sometimes neglect in our Western version of New Year. As families come together again for the Lunar New Year, often after a long absence, it’s a time for all to enjoy the simpler things in life. Family meals, holidays together, catching up with relatives (and catching up on sleep!), gift-giving and reflecting on the past year become the theme.
This year, instead of watching the fireworks or spending two hours after that trying to find your motorbike parked in endless rows – take a quiet walk around your neighborhood with the dog around 7:00 pm when the air is cooler.
To see people sitting on the floor in a brightly lit living room chatting away with a huge fruit tree blocking the main door and the un-naturally large sunflowers cheerily contrasting the lantern lights and festive atmosphere is a great tonic for a bad mood or feeling of bah-hum-bug.
Grandparents murder the TV remote channel surfing while babies fumble on tiled floors for candy. Teenagers spend hours chatting outside the house gate with friends under the watchful eye of mum under the shadows of the street trees. Male neighbors set up a drinking and card table outside to take advantage of the night air. The dogs as usual simply sleep in the middle of the street copying the traffic manners of their owners. As strange as it can look to a Westerner’s eye, it does somehow resemble the bubbly, friendly neighborhoods depicted in the American movies of the 1940s and 1950s – wholesome, warm and no one is a stranger.
Tet or however you celebrate another lucky year of existence seems to me to hold that feeling of love and closeness that we all yearn for at some time. No matter where you celebrate it: in the traffic madness of Ho Chi Minh City, the serene beach views of central Vietnam or the rugged, spectacular mountains of the north or in the comfort of an expat bar, it’s still the same.
It’s the idea that we, whoever we are, have survived another year on this planet; that we share our love and warmth with others and confirm our resolve to do things and be better people next year. And no matter who and what you are, there’s always the hope of another chance to try for your dreams in the coming year.
I wish the staff of Tuoi Tre News, all our readers, my friends and the people that I choose to care about the best of love, luck, happiness and health in 2016.
CHUC MUNG NAM MOI (HAPPY NEW YEAR)!

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For expats: Travel safe at Tet in Vietnam, sort of...

A long time ago my mum sagely advised me to expect traveling to be full of mix-ups, foul-ups and stuff-ups. While we all love Tet – it’s also a crazy, fabulous and hazardous time in Vietnam.
If you’re experienced, understanding that trouble sometimes accompanies a trip is part and parcel of the map that Google doesn’t document. For those still in love with the pictures in the brochure and TripAdvisor’s marketing hype, the shock that the world according to you isn’t going to be the plan you scribbled at the coffee shop while surfing the net is educational.
Most of us not from the mid-west of America and planning to vote for Trump have enough acumen to be wary of a few things during this time: Taxi Nazi’s, cafés that should be condemned for destruction, hotel receptionists with culturally challenged manners, begging shopkeepers who follow you down the street, promotional girls who shove pamphlets in your face as you’re avoiding motorbikes and, of course, that tiny travel agency still using Windows XP while screaming at the kids in the back of the shop.
That still leaves plenty of room for danger, rip-offs, bad judgment and a host of life lessons that need a bit of thought to avoid.
Buses also worry me. The whole nation is on the move over this week and you need to avoid the kamikaze drivers. These are often identified by the kid hanging out of the open door grabbing parcels from passing motorbikes on multi-lane highways – just take a photo discretely for your memoirs. Sit right up the back and demand to be re-seated if the woman next to you is wearing a motorbike helmet.
You can also spot the ‘final destination’ buses by the huge argument between the staff, passengers and last minute delivery guy while packing cartons in the storage bay as bemused tour guides stare intently at tour schedules praying no one asks him to get involved. Advice: turn on your heel and tell the travel agent that your mum rang from France and there’s a last minute change of plan.
As you wearily step off the bus and the true horror of the hotel confronts you, ask the nearest couple waiting on a motorbike for a 15 dollar a night hostel. If you’re in a part of town that isn’t a tourist district, tell the taxi driver you need to get to a hospital quickly and might throw up if he doesn’t hurry. This achieves two goals – he’ll be afraid to rip you off and along the way you have a second chance to look for something decent.
Late night gigs – you’ve done the day’s touring and want to tell someone. A bar, of course, is the perfect place. Two things to check – how far is it from your hotel and is it sleazy? Being drunk at midnight, unaware of your surroundings and blowing money is a dopey way to become a target.
Even when you are in a group, try to remember that booze (and other stuff) can make even ISIS seem like friendly people. Xe om (motorbike taxi) guys wearing sunglasses at 1:00 am do not have taxi meters and definitely don’t have the correct change.
Rule: if you wouldn’t do it back home – don’t do it here. Good habits help. Check out places in the early evening or afternoon within walking distance of your hotel. Expat bars are recommended, we need the money.
Traffic: I could write a book about crossing the road here if I had the time, however riding around on a motorbike is almost unavoidable. If you have the dough, take a taxi, even if it’s a rip-off it’s still safer than old Mr. Vien’s Honda cub. Renting a motorbike? Demand a decent helmet – wearing a pink Hello Kitty eggshell says more about you than the motorbike shop. Make sure you wear covered shoes too; even if it’s 40 in the shade, it’s more comfortable than having a prosthesis.
If you’re reading this article now with trembling fingers, don’t worry. Tet is a glorious festival of life with one of the best atmospheres I’ve ever encountered in Asia. If you can get past the hustle and bustle, the noise and short-sighted commercialism, you’ll discover the people – funny, tough, living life full on and willing to learn about us.
So be smart, be safe and have a Happy New Year. Chuc Mung Nam Moi (Happy New Year)!

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Monkeying around this Lunar New Year in Vietnam

Tet 2016 marks the beginning of ‘Binh Than’ or Year of the Monkey. Got your fireworks and votive paper organized? Have you made the Kitchen Gods happy and repainted the house? Yep, it’s going to be quite a year.
According to my quick research on Facebook and other reliable sources, ‘Monkey people’ are brilliant, artistic, inventive and naughty. Unsurprisingly, this is predicted to be an unstable year. I’m not sure if this will be the fault of people born under the monkey sign or the over-reactions of other people’s jealousy that you managed to be born in that year.
I’m a ‘Dog’ in the lunar horoscope – I’m totally incompatible with ‘Monkey people.’ I knew that when I was a boy living in Malaysia and a monkey slapped me. Even since then, I’ve avoided people with talent who are building something in their front garden.
Still it promises to be a fantastic year, full of unforeseen events and excitement. Maybe Vietnam will win the football this year or gold will be discovered in Ha Long Bay. Personally I just want to get out of teaching and write something more successful than ‘Harry Potter.’
How about you? What’s the plan this year? Get a 7.5 in IELTS? Surrender to your families nagging and marry that hottie from Da Nang before you’re 27? Quit your job to become a tour guide? Or will you be sensible, stop at the red light and not drink coffee after 10:00 am?
As we head into a new year we all hope our luck changes. However you will have to accept that this coming year will bring lots of astonishing U-turns and flabbergasting moments. If you prayed hard in 2015 at the pagoda this should happen. If you remembered to give lucky envelopes to the boss’s kids then it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll get that promotion.
Don’t forget to focus on your goals this coming year. New Year’s Eve will blow you away, however your mum will still want you to clean up after your 400 relatives have visited and you give the left-over fruit to your neighbors. So keep your mum happy and maybe she’ll let you visit Da Lat with your friends this year, finally.
For myself I’ll celebrate quietly at home and leave the country for another visa. Usually I switch off the phone about fifteen minutes after midnight on New Year’s Eve to avoid all the Happy New Year graphics people send me. Fortunately I won’t be stuck in the traffic or try to find my motorbike for two hours after the fireworks. I’m smart, I’ll light a candle and bow to the moon because I’m a moon child and whisper lots of good luck for myself. Try it, it works!
All kidding aside, it’s a great time to be alive and celebrate reaching another year in life. The Vietnamese zest for a party is an energy to behold...safely... from a distance. The distant roar of beer toasts and jumbo jet music will float gently to my garden as my three dogs stretch their ears and go back to sleep. I’ll draw a monkey on my tiger beer can just to decorate the house and toast my luck at having found Vietnam.
So, as we raise our heads to the purple night sky, as the colors of the firework rainbows explode and kids scream in delight, we also secretly hold tight to our wishes for a great year. That our children will have a better life and that we find the satisfaction in life we crave. That our friends and loved ones will still be with us a year from now – older perhaps but certainly more treasured. More importantly, that we ourselves will grow wiser and luckier in whatever direction we think of including love, jobs, travel or simply doing something breathtaking.
Each year is measured by our memories of it, the good and bad, the highs and lows and how it turned out against our expectations. If we passed the test by only a little bit we can be pleased with that. Disappointments are a waste of our hearts. So I hope and offer my desire that 2016 will be all those things you missed out on or enjoyed over the last year and that you and those that you care about have a great year.
May the Monkey make your world warm and wonderful in 2016.
For this coming year, I’d like say ‘Van Su Nhu Y’ (All Wishes Come True) to all our readers and just about everyone! Yayyy!

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Tet: New Year

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