Reader Travelogue: Visiting Vietnam

A taste of this fascinating country will leave you longing for more.

It's not often that you can visit a city that is 999 years old. But that was the case during our trip to Hanoi in March.

The city is preparing to celebrate its 1,000-year anniversary next year, and we took a trip to see old Hanoi before the inevitable changes come.

If you're going to fly to Vietnam, you'd better be prepared for some serious air time. Our itinerary took us from Memphis to Los Angeles, then to Taipei, Taiwan, and on to Hanoi. Total travel time including layovers in LAX and Taipei: 26 hours.Flying from Chicago, our daughter, Jaime, and her fiancé, Ron, were to meet us in Hanoi.

Ron had booked the hotel for us; a small one in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. The Rising Dragon hotel was a perfect fit. It is small (17 rooms), very clean and located in the Old Quarter, which is by far the most charming part of Hanoi. And, the price per night (breakfast included) was $27.

Stepping outside the hotel was to be thrust into the daily life of tens of thousands of Vietnamese. Because almost all of the shop owners live above their shops with

extended families and because air conditioning is very rare in those old buildings, most of the daily life is lived on the streets. This means cooking, eating, reading the newspapers, and especially, chatting with neighbors and family members. Throw in an unbelievable number of motorbikes, cyclos (bicycle cabs), bicycles and cars, and you have what can only be described as chaos. But it works. People shop, prepare their meals, eat, clean up, etc, all in the streets and on the sidewalks in an amiable atmosphere.

A fascinating aspect of the Old Quarter is the system of streets catering to a specific commodity to sell. For example, the Rising Dragon is located on Hang Be street. Hang means market and Be refers to what is sold, in the case, shoes. Tens of thousands of shoes in hundreds of shops. Other streets specialize in jewelry, electronic gadgets, flags and banners. There's even a street specializing in counterfeit goods, many of which are made to be burned by mourners at funerals to send the deceased off with some of the amenities they had enjoyed in their earthly life.

Another feature of the Old Quarter are the restaurants that offer only one item on the menu. The one we visited, Cha Ca La Vong, billed itself as the oldest restaurant in Vietnam. Its only offering is monkfish. The fish is cut into small chunks of meat and brought out to the table sizzling in an iron pot over red hot coals, It's placed on the table with greens and rice noodles. Mix these in the pot to your satisfaction and continue cooking until you're ready to eat. It was excellent. Other restaurants specialize in pork patties with noodles or pancakes stuffed with pork, as well as other dishes.

One breathtaking activity is crossing a busy street on foot. The traffic never stops, but the locals nonchalantly step off into the street. The key is to keep moving, albeit slowly, and constantly eyeing the traffic.

Of course, must-see sights in Hanoi are the water puppet theater, the mausoleum where Ho Chi Minh lies in state. Lines are long, but move quickly under strict supervision. And of course there's the Hanoi Hilton, where John McCain and other U.S. pilots were held after being shot down. The museum displays his flight suit and shows hundreds of pictures detailing the bombing campaigns and how the people suffered under the American bombardment (and the French occupation prior to that) and lays it on pretty thick that, in contrast, the Vietnamese treated the downed fliers well. No mention is made of the torture the pilots suffered .

Many people ask if there's any residual bitterness toward the U.S. over the war which in Vietnam is referred to as the "American War." The answer is no. The primary reason is one of demographics. To visit Vietnam is to see first-hand the demographic revolution that has swept the country in recent years. At the end of World War II the population of Vietnam was approximately 20 million people. Today it is 86 million. The median age is 27 and this is evident everywhere you go. The number of young people is staggering. You see relatively few older Vietnamese (over 50). This means there is little interest in rehashing past conflicts.

There are many side trips to take from Hanoi. The one we chose was to Ha Long Bay about four hours by bus. It sits not too far from Haiphong Harbor and is the site of some spectacular scenery with stone peaks protruding from the sea. This is also where people live in floating villages, complete with banks and stores.

We continued our trip by flying from Hanoi to Siem Reap, Cambodia, the jumping off point for Angkor Wat. It's a small town almost wholly dedicated to serving tourists. It has an area jammed with Western-style restaurants and bars called Pub Street. There is a large market next to this area dedicated to selling wares produced by local craftsmen.

Many tourists plan to visit Angkor Wat at sunrise. The departure time was 5 a.m., which allowed for the trip to the ruins (approximately 4 kilometers) and then getting processed for a visitor's pass. The price of the permit depends on how long you stay. Our choice was the one day permit, which was $20.

The ruins are huge, covering 38 square miles. They are truly awe-inspiring. One of the more popular sites is one in which the forest has reclaimed much of the ruins. Giant trees have grown on top and down into parts of these sites.

Everywhere, you're accosted by hordes of ragged kids selling knickknacks, postcards, T-shirts, etc. The poverty of this area is staggering. One third of the entire population of Cambodia lives on less than $1 per day. But along the route from the airport there are scores of first-class hotels catering to tourists. The contrast is striking.

From Siem Reap we flew back into Vietnam, heading for Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon. Saigon is where the money and most of the economic activity appears to be. The streets and buildings look more prosperous. The number of motorbikes and the traffic has to be seen to be believed.

In Saigon, there are relatively few historical sights, other than the Rex Hotel (the home of journalists during the war) and the War Museum, as well as the former presidential palace.

We decided to travel to the Mekong Delta and after a 4-hour journey south of Saigon, we arrived where we immediately boarded a small boat to travel to an island in the Delta. From there, we visited the obligatory coconut candy factory, the snake wine facility, etc. We also took a sampan trip down the canals that divide the islands. It was both interesting and enjoyable.

We're aware that traveling to Vietnam and visiting Hanoi and Saigon and saying you've seen Vietnam is a bit like hitting New York City and Los Angeles and maintaining you've covered the U.S. The diversity in the country is amazing. It's more than 1,000 miles in length from North to South.

We did not visit Hue or the Central Highlands or any of the hundreds of fascinating sites between these two major cities. But getting a taste of this marvelous country is enough to whet the appetite for more.

Philip Newsom is an international sales manager for FedEx. He has traveled extensively throughout the world. He and his wife Susan live in Memphis.

The Commercial Appeal

New Vietnam port heralds US service

HANOI (AFP) — The first deepwater container shipping terminal serving Vietnam's southern commercial hub has opened, allowing direct service to the United States to begin next week, a shipping firm said.

The APL Alexandrite on Friday became the first container vessel to call at the new Saigon Port-PSA facility on the Cai Mep River in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, the global container shipping firm APL said in a statement.

The port is southeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

APL said the vessel "was undertaking a trial voyage ahead of the beginning on June 4 of the industry's first direct container shipping service linking Vietnam and the west coast of North America".

Another APL ship, the Denver, is to depart from the new port on Thursday for Seattle, the statement said.

"With this port, the first direct shipping service from Vietnam to North America is possible," Vietnam's deputy transport minister Tran Doan Tho was quoted as saying in the Vietnam News on Saturday.

The US and Vietnam fought a war in the 1960s and early 1970s but economic ties have been restored and grown since the US lifted a trade embargo in 1994 and diplomatic relations were normalised a year later.

The Washington-based US-ASEAN Business Council, which represents more than 100 US companies, said on a visit to Vietnam recently that the US is on track to become the leading foreign direct investor in Vietnam within three years.

APL is unit of Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines, while the new port is a joint venture between Saigon Port, Vietnam National Shipping Lines and PSA Vietnam, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore's port operator PSA International.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Vietnam makes for a quirky family holiday

Vietnam is fun for kids, as they unearth Vietcong hideaways, roadside roast dog and a very nasty fish, says Janice Turner.

In the War Remnants museum in Ho Chi Minh City, along with a real guillotine and photos of the My Lai massacre, is a mock-up of the infamous “tiger cage” cells in which untold Vietcong prisoners died. As we peered gingerly inside, reading the grim notes about torture and privations, our guide remarked that Con Son island, home of the cages, now has a sensational five-star spa hotel.

And so it has. An Evason Hideaway in fact, sister of the gorgeous eco-complex in Ninh Van Bay, where we had just stayed, enjoying our own hilltop infinity pool and a pillow menu. That indolent visitors might ponder whether to rest their heads on buckwheat, lavender or goose feathers while staying on a notorious penal colony sums up much about tourism in Vietnam.

Here history doesn’t whisper in temples or ruins. It prods you in the ribs on a backwater of the Mekong Delta, where suddenly you are a terrified American GI, fearing a sniper in every clump of reeds. It accosts you drinking a cocktail in the Saigon-Saigon rooftop bar, where the American military held its press briefings. Or when you are eating sticky rice-flavoured ice cream by a boating lake in Hanoi and learn that it was where John McCain splash-landed after his bomber was shot down.

History here is raw and so very recent. And yet, without rancour, Vietnam is doggedly focused on the future, the monoliths to Motorola and Honda already muscling into the skyline. Indeed, Vietnam attracted us for a family holiday because it retains the quirkiness that you fear won’t last long when it properly joins the homogenised modern world. Vietnam has a great multi-zeroed comedy currency, the dong: my sons, aged 13 and 11, were delighted to learn that their £40 of holiday money made them dong millionaires. And it is one of only a handful of Communist states left in the world. Hammer-and-sickle banners proclaim “The Socialist Republic of Vietnam will live forever” while pictures of a smiling Uncle Ho himself garland every street.

But since the government loosened control of the economy and allowed foreign investment a decade ago, quality of life has soared. Vietnam is vibrantly entrepreneurial: we acquired so many silk pyjamas and lacquered bowls that we needed an extra suitcase. Even the state carrier, Vietnam Airlines, is unexpectedly efficient and well-run.

Since the country is a narrow ribbon, which runs down a 2,000-mile coastline, we headed north to south, starting in cool, drizzly Hanoi. As the communist capital before reunification it is quainter, less bustling than Ho Chi Minh. But you still need a lesson in crossing the road.

Our guide explained that, since the streets are a TT rally of motorbikes and no one stops at the lights, the pedestrian must progress slowly and deliberately into oncoming traffic so that riders swerve around you. Stop and you are dead; run and you’re dead too. It is, as my younger son remarked, like being a human video game.

In Hanoi we filed past the embalmed Ho Chi Minh in his chill-cabinet mausoleum and learnt a little about Vietnam’s extraordinary tenacity. This is a country which, within living memory, has repelled occupation by France, Japan, China and the US — superpowers with modern military hardware trounced by peasant farmers.

Yet the Vietnamese today are unguarded and charming to foreigners: my sons were mobbed by a class of red neck-tied Young Communists keen to take their picture. The boys reckoned that on the international smile scale, if the beaming Indians of Tamil Nadu are a 10 and the surly Czechs a 2, the Vietnamese score a creditable 8.

From here we travelled to Ha Long Bay, where we took a junk on a night’s cruise around the astonishing limestone rock formations, saw a floating village where fishermen live and die without ever stepping on land and took a t’ai chi class on the beach. And then it was an hour’s internal flight to Hue, a tranquil and cultured city just south of the DMZ.

I regret that we had only a day here, staying in La Résidence, the former French colonial governor’s mansion, an elegant Art Deco palace on the Perfume River. I would have loved to cycle around the countryside and linger in Hue’s famous citadel. Its courtyards and formal gardens, once home to Vietnam’s emperors, are still flecked by bullet-fire from more recent events.

It was here the Vietcong launched the Tet offensive, surprising the Americans and holding Hue for 21 days of vicious fighting. Our guide, a child at the time, recalls his uncle carrying away a US bomb that had landed but not exploded outside his house.

Hue is also famous for its cuisine — but then Vietnamese food was our trip’s most glorious surprise. How did the Thais get to be the Far East kings of the high street? Vietnamese food is subtler, healthier and, since they serve chillies on the side to add according to taste, never too hot.

We loved pho, a restoring noodle soup available on every street corner. And I ate fresh hand rolls – a rice pancake of shredded salad and prawns to be dipped in piquant sauce – every single day. On my birthday, while in the pretty resort of Hoi An, we all learnt how to make them at the Red Bridge Cookery school. “You very messy lady – start again!” was the chef’s verdict on my sticky gloop.

Besides, it helps if a country’s former colonial master was France, leaving behind a talent for patisserie and fine bread. Vendors sell baguettes along the highway. And Vietnam is the world’s second-biggest exporter of coffee. Who knew that? It is excellent quality, too, served in individual drip-filters on to ice and a glug of condensed milk. The best stuff, with a deep, almost chocolatey flavour, is made from beans that have passed through the digestive tract of a weasel. My sons, of course, were gagging to try that.

Strange that our nose-wrinkling British suspicion of Vietnam stems from the single fact that they eat dog. The omnivorous boys were anxious to sample roast puppy, but our guide told us that it sits heavy in the stomach, like Christmas lunch, and when we came across it in the street market, a small roasted corgi-sized leg, the meat had an unappetising denseness, like compressed ham. Neither did we try snake nor the very popular duck’s eggs containing almost-hatched chicks, eaten crunchy beak, feathers and all. But we did eat sparrow and so much seafood that it will be a long time before I want to look at another prawn.

From Hue we drove for three hours, high over the Cloudy Pass, along excellent American-built roads to Hoi An. Here you turn up at a tailor’s shop at noon with your favourite dress or suit, choose fabric, return at 4pm for a fitting, suggest improvements, then, as you head out for cocktails by the river at dusk, you collect your new duds, usually better than the original. My 11-year-old had a bespoke winter coat made, with his choice of groovy silk lining, which sounds very Little Lord Fauntleroy, but was a bargain at US $40 (£25).

An hour farther south by plane, Nha Trang is the Vietnamese Blackpool, a long neon strip of restaurants and funfairs where flirting teenagers zip about on mopeds. But mostly we just lounged about, gazing at the glistening bay on the private beach of the Ana Mandara, one of those super-luxe hotels where after two torpid days you can barely scratch your own nose.

Then we were whisked by motor launch to Ninh Van Bay, where Prince Andrew once stayed in the presidential suite and ordered chicken sandwich for lunch every day. Here my sons had a go at paddling a coracle, snorkeled off the private coral reef and, fishing off the quay, caught an odd creature that turned out to be a thrillingly lethal stonefish.

We were glad to be back in the bustle of Ho Chi Minh City, with its elegant inner district of French buildings. But I am glad that we ended our trip in probably the most boy-pleasing tourist site I’ve visited anywhere, the Cu Chi tunnels, about an hour out of the city. Everything you need to know about the resourcefulness and indomitable spirit of Vietnam is contained in this 250km-long warren.

Here the Vietcong hid, lived and plotted against the American invasion up to ten metres beneath the surface. Creating lethal Temple of Doom-style traps from abandoned US weapons and bamboo, conducting blood transfusions in a subterranean hospital using a bicycle pump, venting smoke from their secret kitchens deep into the forest, they would scurry to a lower level of tunnel if the GIs broke in.

Visitors are allowed to walk in part of the tunnels specially enlarged for wide Western shoulders but after a few minutes bent double in humid blackness we begged to get out. Then my sons were allowed to climb a US tank and watch their father fire off live rounds on an AK47. They’d looked forward to this, but they recoiled from the ear-shattering gunfire. If nothing else in their tour of ’nam they learnt to avoid war: it’s too damn noisy.

Getting there You can’t fly direct to Vietnam; you’ll need to change in Bangkok, Singapore or Hong Kong, so the journey can end up 24 hours each way.

Janice Turner travelled to Vietnam with Cox & Kings (020-7873 5000 / www.coxandkings.co.uk), which offers a private ten-night tour that takes in Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An, Saigon and the Mekong Delta from £2,695 per person. Four-night extensions at the Evason Ana Mandara resort in Nha Trang cost from £660. Children’s prices are available on request.

More information Take some US dollars, the favoured currency in many shops, which can get you a better deal than paying by dong. Buy coffee to take home — it is good value for fine quality. The King brand is particularly good.

Times

Wondrous Seasons of Vietnam

HANOI — There is an old Vietnamese proverb: “Anywhere you find two women and a duck, you have a market.”

From Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City and Hoi An to Dalat, my husband and I swept through the country’s colorful markets, snacking on freshly and exquisitely fried spring rolls stuffed with minced pork, sweet turnips and young papaya, then dipped in the omnipresent sauce of lime, garlic, chiles, fish sauce, rice vinegar and sugar.

We stopped for a feast of the popular and populist pho, a bowl of spicy, beefy broth designed as a make-it-yourself meal — we added to taste and whim fresh bean sprouts, minced hot red peppers, rice noodles, tiny fried onions, bits of salty preserved cabbage, and the essential, colorful and crisp tangle of herbs.

In snacks, as in meals, bite after bite, one can only smile in amazement at how the Vietnamese eke complex flavor combinations out of deceptively simple techniques with utterly basic cooking equipment. From modest market stall to upscale dining rooms, flavors were vibrant, refreshing, wholesome.

Vietnam offers an omnivore’s cuisine of varied soups, the freshest of fish and shellfish, an avalanche of fresh vegetables, and a bit of fried fare to soothe our cravings for crunch and fat.

There were welcome discoveries and new flavors. Having grown pumpkins in my garden for years, little did I know that one could blanch the tender young green pumpkin tendrils and sizzle them over high heat with a healthy dose of fish sauce and crushed garlic.

The Vietnamese grow delicious avocados, but consider them a dessert: In Dalat we snacked on surprisingly creamy and sweet avocado ice cream churned with condensed milk. And after sampling the mild, tangy and crunchy water-spinach sprouts, I wanted my own rice paddy just to enjoy the omnipresent green — often called morning glory sprouts — that grows joyously in the paddies.

Our palates were rewarded each day with a perfect-pitch balance of salty, sweet, spicy, crunchy and soft, whether with an expertly seasoned fish paste wrapped around a stick of lemon grass; a cool, refreshing drink of green onions, basil, ginger, mint, lemon, salt, fish sauce and fresh coriander; or a restorative mousse of avocado and artichoke.

Over a period of 10 days, markets and meals filled the hours, and three in particular stand out.

La Vertical Our last meal in the country was with Didier Corlou, a Frenchman who runs the amazing restaurant La Verticale, housed in a tall, narrow 1930s villa in Hanoi. A colorfully decorated space, the restaurant features five colors — green, yellow, black, white and orange — symbols of the five seasons, spring, summer, autumn, winter and “the transition season,” a 21-day period between each of the other four.

It is a happy, vibrant, personal space, where Mr. Corlou offers a superb cuisine that fuses the best of French and Vietnamese culinary culture with utmost respect for the seasons, quality and locality of ingredients. His food is straightforward, totally spontaneous and unselfconscious.

While so many of his combinations are brand new — a cold tomato soup served with a scoop of black peppercorn sorbet; lamb chops coated with a golden crunch of bee pollen; a vibrant escabèche of sea bass and sea greens; crab and mushroom wrapped in rice paper and deep fried — everything on the plate or bowl is identifiable.

So much of the pleasure of food is in memory, and though we may not have memories of Mr. Corlou’s creative combinations, we know a mushroom from a tomato and can relish the pleasure of each ingredient.

Mr. Corlou, a longtime chef at the Hotel Metropole in Hanoi, is now on his own as chef and chief alchemist with a ground-floor spice shop that is unique. He searches out the best cinnamon, turmeric, red chiles, ginger, and black and white sesame from all over Vietnam and creates his own curries, salt mixes and myriad other blends for his boutique.

Cha Ca La Vong Whether one is a dedicated gastronome or a first-time visitor to Hanoi, chances are one has had the Cha Ca La Vong experience. Unique in the world, and a delight that can equal the high of that first croissant in Paris, a perfect risotto in Milan, pork barbecue in the Carolinas or amaThe restaurant on Cha Ca street in Hanoi’s old quarter has been at the same location since 1871, and serves only one dish, a fragrant, herbal mélange of turmeric-coated fish cooked in oil over an open flame in the center of the table. At your table, you add all the wondrous fresh ingredients of Vietnam.This is a place you visit with a crowd, making for a festive table boisterous with laughter, sips of local Halida lager beer, and great hits of herb and spice. Guests tumble up a rickety staircase to enter a series of thoroughly unadorned dining rooms. It’s the single dish that makes the theater here.

Once you are seated, waiters deliver a parade of accompaniments — an empty bowl, chopsticks, communal bowls of vermicelli rice noodles, platters of scallions, grilled peanuts, Vietnamese coriander, bowls of sauce garnished with fresh chopped chili peppers and the platter of fresh dill. Next, a waiter arrives with a charcoal-fired brazier, tops it with a battered aluminum frying pan filled with sizzling oil and tiny, golden morsels of turmeric-dusted white fish. He showers all with slivers of scallions and handfuls of dill, and the dish sizzles on.

Then you season your own bowl to taste with all the trimmings. (It was here I realized, after a week in Vietnam, that I had become totally addicted to the crunch, salt and fat of the lowly peanut, an addiction that continued for weeks upon my return to Paris.)

Guests are offered seconds and thirds, and it is doubtful that anyone leaves Cha Ca La Vong anything other than sated and satisfied.

Quan an Ngon While our last meal in Vietnam, La Vertical, offered the best tastes of the trip, a close second was one of our first meals of the tour, a glorious lunch at the indoor-outdoor, theater-like restaurant Quan an Ngon in Ho Chi Minh City.

The sprawling, family restaurant attempts to recreate the open-air markets of Vietnam, with individual cooking stalls set up along the perimeter. Diners can stroll from stand to stand, watching as one woman deftly wraps rice paper around spring rolls filled with fresh shrimp and generous amounts of greens and scallions; examining the talent it takes to make a perfect portion of grilled tender squid to be seasoned with a combination of spicy salt and lime salt; or wonder in the ability to cook perfect, lacey rice crepes from a thin batter, filling them with expertly seasoned minced shrimp and pork.

The menu, like the voluminous, always packed restaurant, is large, but you are assured of up-to-the-minute freshness, because everything is cooked to order in front of you. The best tastes of the meal included fiery grilled shrimp; raw rice paper filled by diners with herbs, slices of tangy star fruit, spicy fish paste and bean sprouts, and dipped in a chili-laced sauce; and ultra-crispy fried spring rolls served with a mountain of bright-flavored herbs.

At the end of our stay, as we boarded a flight from Hanoi back to Paris, our suitcases carefully packed with a bubble-wrapped bottle of the top-quality Phu Quoc nuoc mam (fish sauce), we heard our name over the airport’s loudspeaker. Officials had examined our checked luggage, removing the bottle with a simple judgment: “Fish sauce no fly.”zing tapas in Spain, the turmeric-laced white fish meal in a bowl is an event.

The New York Times

Vietnam says ready to ratify UN corruption charter

HANOI, May 29 (Reuters) - Vietnam will soon ratify the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, one of the country's top graft fighters said on Friday, a milestone in tackling an endemic problem that threatens investment and aid.

"It is on the desk of the Prime Minister already," state Inspector General Tran Van Truyen told reporters, adding that it would soon go to President Nguyen Minh Triet for approval.

The document, which Vietnam signed in December 2003, is binding and according to Ran Liao, senior programme coordinator for East and Southeast Asia with Transparency International, would make it criminal for Vietnamese officials to accept bribes from foreign companies or pay bribes overseas.

"It is a very big deal," Liao said on the sidelines of a half-day anti-corruption dialogue in Hanoi between the government and the international donor community.

But several participants in the dialogue on Friday said legislation was not the problem for Vietnam, which already has a robust anti-corruption law.

"The real challenge, or maybe one should say the real problem, is implementation," Swedish Ambassador Rolf Bergman said.

Corruption is rife in Vietnam, from contractors skimming funds off large-scale infrastructure projects to traffic cops extracting money from motorists. The country ranked 121 out of 160 included in Transparency International's corruption perception index for 2008.

In the first quarter of this year, the number of new legal cases, prosecutions and trials for corruption all fell compared with the same period last year, a report by the Office of the Central Steering Committee on Anti-Corruption said.

It was unclear whether the decline was because there was less corruption or the problem was being monitored less effectively, Bergman said.

Last year, Vietnam's biggest single official development assistance (ODA) donor, Japan, suspended aid over a corruption scandal at a Japanese-funded project. It has since agreed to resume new aid commitments and also established measures with Vietnam to avoid future problems.

The problem, however, still runs deep.

"The issue of corruption is a serious concern for the Asian Development Bank as well as for the government, because if there are problems we will have difficulty to continue assisting Vietnam's development process," Ayumi Konishi, the ADB's Vietnam representative, said.

"For us, it's really the issue of our raison d'etre, so to speak."

Movie Review: Owl and the Sparrow

A Plucky Orphan Playing Cupid

If “Owl and the Sparrow” were any slighter, it wouldn’t exist. Stephane Gauger’s debut feature is a charming little movie, nothing more, but he brings a tonic freshness to his simple, even simple-minded tale of a plucky orphan, Thuy (Pham Thi Han), playing cupid in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon.

Mr. Gauger was fortunate to discover his unassuming lead; young Ms. Pham brings a humble, winning charisma to the role of a provincial girl who ditches her hardships to eke out a living selling postcards and flowers in the big city. But it’s the filmmaker’s infectious love for the metropolis — bustling and bright, whimsical and idealized — that gives “Owl and the Sparrow” its mellow vibrancy.

The story finds Thuy befriending a kindly flight attendant (Cat Ly) and a melancholy zookeeper (Le The Lu) — did I mention whimsy? — and trying to set them up. This cutesy premise is staged on the fly, guerrilla-indie style, with lots of background street energy jostling into the drama.

Mr. Gauger, who also served as cinematographer, keeps his camera close to the actors, a strategy that minimizes pedestrian gawking at the camera while also enabling an intimacy of look and gesture well handled by his cast.

“Owl and the Sparrow” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested) for the mildest of adult themes.

OWL AND THE SPARROW

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Stephane Gauger; director of photography, Mr. Gauger; edited by Ricardo Javier and Ham Tran; music by Pete Nguyen; produced by Mr. Gauger, Nguyen Van Quan and Doan Nhat Nam; released by Wave Releasing. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. In Vietnamese, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes.

WITH: Cat Ly (Lan), Le The Lu (Hai), Pham Thi Han (Thuy), Nguyen Hau (Uncle Minh), Trong Hai (the Captain) and Nguyen Kim Phuong (Phuong).

The New York Times

US doubles funds for Agent Orange cleanup

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The United States government has doubled its funding for dealing with the environmental and health consequences of its wartime use in Vietnam of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange, the embassy said Friday.

President Barack Obama recently signed a bill increasing the funding from $3 million to $6 million, embassy officials said. Most of the money is being used in Danang, where U.S. troops used to mix and store Agent Orange at an Air Force base before loading it onto planes.

During the Vietnam war, which ended in 1975, the U.S. sprayed more than 20 million gallons (75 million liters) of Agent Orange and other herbicides across the country to strip Vietnamese guerrillas of ground cover and kill their crops.

Agent Orange contains dioxin, a highly toxic substance that remains in soil and sediment for years and poses a serious health threat to anyone who touches it.

Vietnam believes as many as 4 million people have suffered serious health problems from the herbicide, such as cancer, spina bifida and other birth defects. The U.S. says the actual number is probably far lower and that further scientific study is needed to understand the health impact. The U.S. and Vietnam only began working together in 2007 to address the consequences of Agent Orange after years of disagreement.

The embassy said in a statement that one third of the $6 million is being used for health programs to serve people in the Danang area. The rest will be used to remove dioxin from the soil and sediment near Danang airport.

The first $3 million in U.S. funds was allocated during the administration of George W. Bush. Some of that money was used to contain dioxin at the Danang site to prevent it getting into the water supply.

Friday's People's Army newspaper quoted Lai Minh Hien, a Vietnamese environmental official in charge of Agent Orange issues, as saying that Vietnam needs additional 1 trillion dong ($57 million) to clean up dioxin in Danang as well as at former U.S. air bases in Bien Hoa and Phu Cat.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Vietnam honours Russian embalmers of Ho Chi Minh

HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam has presented awards to Russian scientists who have helped preserve the body of founding president Ho Chi Minh for the past 40 years, the foreign ministry said.

Valery Bykov and Yuri Denisov-Nikolsky each received Vietnam's Independence Order, third class, at a ceremony in Moscow on Wednesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

It said they were honoured for "great services for the past 40 years to the embalmment and preservation of the body of President Ho Chi Minh as well as the construction of mausoleum for him."

The Independence Order is the country's third-highest national honour.

Colonel Nguyen Van Cuong, commander of the Mausoleum Protection Command, said the former Soviet Union, and now Russia, had helped train a team of Vietnamese scientists and bio-medical experts working on the preservation of Ho's body, the foreign ministry said.

White-jacketed guards protect the grey stone mausoleum, surrounded by parkland in central Hanoi's embassy district, where tourists line up to see the body of Vietnam's revolutionary leader who died in September 1969.

In 2007 on the 90th anniversary of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution, Nguyen Thi Minh Hien, deputy secretary of the Vietnam-Russia Friendship Association, said that each year Russian experts "come to Hanoi to maintain (his) embalmed corpse."

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

All five species of marine turtles occurring in Vietnam nearing extinction

Paper protection not enough for Vietnam's marine turtles

May 2009. Marine turtles are vanishing from Viet Nam's waters and illegal trade is largely to blame says a new study by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

Large marine turtles are now virtually absent from Viet Nam's waters
An assessment of the marine turtle trade in Viet Nam, launched to mark World Turtle Day found that large marine turtles are now virtually absent from Viet Nam's waters except for Green Turtles around the Con Dao Islands National Park.

Government owned souvenir shop selling turtle products
A government-owned souvenir shop found selling illegal turtle products was a potent symbol of how a national ban on turtle products enacted in 2002 has been undermined by a lack of enforcement. Traders in all Viet Nam's coastal localities reported that catches of local marine turtles, especially Hawksbill Turtles, were becoming rare, and even the few caught were smaller than in previous years.

"Without effective enforcement of the laws, the future for marine turtles in Vietnamese waters looks very bleak." says Tom Osborn, Acting Director of TRAFFIC's Greater Mekong Programme.

Large scale exports
A 2002 TRAFFIC study found that trade in marine turtles had extended into a large-scale wholesale export market and a Ministry of Fisheries report estimated the combined take across the entire Vietnamese coastline at 4,000 marine turtles annually.

Exploitation of marine turtles banned - But continuing
Shortly after these surveys, the Viet Nam Government prohibited the exploitation of marine turtles but the current TRAFFIC survey finds the trade has continued, though at a reduced rate. Government enforcement of illegal marine turtle catching, processing and trade has been uneven at best-evidenced by a great decrease in the number of outlets and marine turtle products on display in some areas and an increase in others, particularly in some newly developing tourist areas.

In Ha Tien and Ho Chi Minh City, traders cited Indonesia and Malaysia as their main sources of turtles and raw scutes (the large scales on the turtle's carapace or shell). All international trade in marine turtles is banned under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora).

Totally unsustainable
Already threatened by habitat degradation, accidental or opportunistic capture by fishermen and the direct take of nesting females and their eggs, whole turtles are also stuffed and, in the case of Hawksbill Turtles, their shells turned into jewellery, fans and handbags, known as bekko.

According to the report, a lack of product more than law enforcement explains the steady downturn in the number of outlets selling marine turtle products.

Green Turtle meat was rarer than in 2002, and its price had increased significantly compared with those recorded during a 2002 TRAFFIC survey. In a Ha Tien market, after allowing for inflation, its price had more than doubled by 2008, pushing it into the luxury meat category. However, in some towns, the study found bekko workshops and stores, including a government-owned souvenir shop, selling hundreds of marine turtle products operating in plain view of authorities.

The study found that businessmen in some areas were aware that it was illegal to capture, process and sell marine turtle products but there had been no action taken to confiscate or destroy the illegal items on sale. The study said that most indicators pointed towards a falling demand, but vendors continued to report good sales for most marine turtle products indicating that the trade still posed a serious threat.

The study recommends that authorities look into finding alternative sources of income for communities dependent on the sale of marine turtle products, expand existing awareness programmes and confiscate and destroy all marine turtle products that remain on sale.

Wildlife Extra

South African Manqoba Ngwenya Off To Vietnam

Former Mamelodi Sundowns midfielder Manqoba Ngwenya is the latest player to move to Asia after he departed on a loan agreement to Vietnam club Hai Phong FC.

The attacking midfielder-cum-striker was loaned to the northern coastal side for three months with a view to regaining match fitness, according to Sundowns club official Sudesh Singh.

Ngwenya missed much of the last PSL (Premier Soccer League) campaign due to injury and only recently returned to training.

The move is also aimed at expanding Sundowns international relations, said Singh, who previously worked for several Vietnamese clubs.

“By the time 'Shakes' comes back to us in mid-August the season here would have started, and he would be match-fit," Singh explained to Kickoff.com. "It’s a good opportunity for him to get some competitive game time now in the three months that are left in the V League.

“We are also looking at building partnerships across the globe. Our juniors will go to Spain soon, and this is all part of our international relations. Possibly in the future we could send more players and vice versa.

“The experience the players gain of different styles and performing under different conditions also helps their personal growth, and when Shakes comes back he’ll hopefully be an even better player.”

Should he struggle to adapt, Ngwenya will be able to lean on ex-Orlando Pirates midfielder Philani Kubheka for advice. Kubheka is into his fifth consecutive season with Binh Duong FC.


Goal.com