Viet Maz

The Ministry of Transport said more time is needed for the review and therefore, collection at the Cai Lay tollgate will not resume Monday, March 25 as announced earlier. The Cai Lay tollgate is located in the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang. The province and the ministry have yet to complete a list of vehicles that will be exempt from the toll. The ministry said in a statement that it is still working with local authorities to review all vehicles subject to the exemption and will put the tollgate back into service soon. It did not specify a date. Collection at the Cai Lay tollgate was suspended in December, 2017 following drivers’ protests. In January this year, the ministry had decided that toll fees will be lowered by 63 percent, from VND35,000 ($1.51) to VND15,000 for cars under 12 seats and trucks under two tons. Toll fees for other auto types would also be reduced by the same ratio, it had said. The time for fee collection, however, was lengthened from seven years to 15 … [Read more...] about Reopening of controversial tollgate in Vietnam delayed

Pham Tuan Dat, Vice Chairman of the Uong Bi Town People's Committee, has issued an official document requesting the pagoda’s abbot to stop organizing sessions to "commune (with spirits), exorcise spirits and undo bad karma." He also said that activities like lectures given by Pham Thi Yen, head of a Buddhist group affiliated to the pagoda, are not in accordance with the list of functions registered with local authorities. Yen has sparked widespread outrage with a comment in a publicized video that a young Vietnamese woman raped and killed recently suffered the fate because of evil deeds done in previous lives. She was referring to the rape and murder of 21-year-old Cao Thi My Duyen by a group of men in the northern province of Dien Bien last month. In the video, Yen had also said that people getting possessed by spirits was common these days and they could only be exorcised by "spending money [on rituals] or doing volunteer work". Pham Thi Yen makes the statement on … [Read more...] about Stop exorcisms, stick to Buddhism, pagoda told

By Vy An  &nbspMarch 24, 2019 | 08:07 pm GMT+7 Vietnam’s Tourism Ambassador Greg Norman, an all-time great, will be a senior advisor to the Vietnam Golf Tourism Association. Greg Norman spoke Friday with representatives of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism and the Tourism Association about golf tourism in Vietnam. There has never been a country that has such an opportunity to develop golf tourism and is so hospitable like Vietnam, he noted. Normal also suggested the making of a short documentary of golfing facilities in the country. He has accepted an invitation to be a senior advisor to the Vietnam Golf Tourism Association (VGTA), which will be established at the end of this month. Greg Norman, appointed Tourism Ambassador of Vietnam in October 2018, will also be a senior advisor to the Vietnam Gold Tourism Association. Photo courtesy of Australian Golf Digest. Norman will advise VGTA on introducing … [Read more...] about Australian legend to advise Vietnam on boosting golf tourism

The office in the Northern city of Kaesong was opened in September as the two Koreas knitted closer ties, but the South's vice unification minister Chun Hae-sung told reporters Pyongyang had "notified the South they are pulling out of the liaison office". The decision had been taken "in accordance with an order from an upper command", he said, adding: "They said they didn't care whether we stayed at the liaison office or not." The South's President Moon Jae-in was instrumental in brokering talks between the nuclear-armed, sanctions-hit North and Washington, Seoul's key security ally. Moon has long backed engagement with the North to bring it to the negotiating table, and has been pushing the carrot of inter-Korean development projects, among them the restarting of an industrial zone also in Kaesong and lucrative cross-border tourist visits by Southerners to the North's picturesque Mount Kumgang. But the sanctions currently in place effectively block their resumption, while a … [Read more...] about N. Korea pulls out of inter-Korean liaison office

By Nguyen Quy  &nbspMarch 24, 2019 | 06:58 pm GMT+7 Vietnamese cuisine is among world's most favorites of globetrotting foodies. Photo by Shutterstock/Dmytro Gilitukha A YouGov survey finds Vietnamese food ranked among top 15 favorite cuisines in the world. Vietnamese cuisine’s rising popularity has pushed it slightly ahead of Hong Kong and Taiwan to rank 13th among 34 most popular cuisines in the world. YouGov is an online market research company based in the U.K.  The survey, conducted between May to December last year, ranked national cuisines after collecting responses from 25,000 food lovers from 24 countries and territories. 55 percent of the respondents chose Vietnamese food as their favorite, compared to 54 percent for Hong Kong and 50 percent for Taiwanese cuisine. Italian food topped the list at 84 percent, followed by Chinese and Thai cuisines. Vietnamese cuisine has become better known in the world over the last couple of decades, … [Read more...] about Vietnamese cuisine among world’s most favorite