Tieng Viet lovers club

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3 Vietnamese arrested for stabbing foreigners at Saigon bar

Police in Ho Chi Minh City have arrested three local men linked to the stabbing of three Singaporean tourists at a downtown bar last month.
A police source on Wednesday confirmed that the suspects were taken into custody on Monday. Two of them are 19 years old and the other is 29.
Initial investigation found a Vietnamese group started a fight with the Singaporeans at a crowded bar on Cong Quynh Street in District 1 on the night of February 27, after one of the foreigners collided with them during a dance without apologizing.
They pulled out knives, stabbed the foreigners and also threw bottles and glasses at the victims.
A security guard managed to stop the attack and send the Singaporeans to hospital, who were bleeding heavily. The trio had recovered and left for Singapore on March 2, police said.
Police tracked down the three suspects using security footage at the bar and nearby shops.
They are looking for more people involved in the attack.

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2 Vietnamese jailed in Singapore for burgling $350,000 in cash

Two Vietnamese were sentenced to four and a half years in jail each in Singapore Thursday for breaking into a wholesale center and stealing 500,000 Singapore dollars, or nearly US$350,000, last January.
Nguyen Van Nhat, 23, and Ngo Quang Phuoc, 35, were arrested at a hotel on January 5, just hours after a fruit shop owner discovered the break-in and found his safe had been cut open.
The indictment said the duo had gambled away thousands of dollars at a casino after arriving in Singapore on January 1 and did not have enough left to buy flight tickets to Hanoi, Channel News Asia reported.
They decided to steal money from Nhat’s former workplace, where he knew his boss usually kept large sums of money to pay employees in cash.
They spent around $220 on buying a grinder, crowbar, hammer drill, a cutter, screwdrivers, and an extension plug.
On the night of January 4 Nhat kept watch while Phuoc, who worked in construction, climbed into the shop through the roof by removing a ventilator, cut a hole in the safe and packed money in four bags.
The bags were so heavy that he left behind one in a box on the rooftop. The police later found it containing $20,700.
They used the money to check into a hotel and buy luxury items the next day.
Police tracked them down using DNA tests and questioning taxi drivers in the area.
Most of the money, meant to pay the company’s employees their salary and bonuses ahead of the Chinese New Year in early February, has been recovered following the arrest.
Burglary is punishable by up to 14 years' imprisonment in Singapore.

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Tourist says robbed in broad daylight in Ho Chi Minh City

Tourist says robbed in broad daylight in Ho Chi Minh City
By Trung Hieu - Bui Thu - Thanh Nien News - Saturday, March 19, 2016 12:17
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A Polish tourist was robbed of her phone on a bridge in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday afternoon, just two days after arriving in the city.
Arkadiusz Chabrowski, told Thanh Nien that a man on a motorbike snatched the phone from his girlfriend Katarzyna Regula when they were checking a map on the phone.
They were standing on a bridge between District 7 and 1, he said.
He said his girlfriend cried a lot because the phone was worth more than US$1,000 and it had many photos they have taken in Vietnam and in recent trips to India, Malaysia and Singapore.
Chabrowski said they were both tired and upset after the incident.
But he said they do not hold it against anyone but the robber.
He said many Vietnamese have sent him kind messages on Facebook after learning about their story and some Vietnamese friends have invited them to dinners.
Local police said the tourists have not reported the case, but with information from the press, they will look into it.
A Thanh Nien investigation found that five Cambodian tourists in early February were robbed of their bags containing three cell phones and $3,000 in the same area the Polish couple was standing.
Police have not found the robbers.
Vietnam has been making various efforts to promote tourism. Foreign arrivals to the country increased 16 percent in the first two months, compared to the same period last year, largely thanks to the 15-day visa waivers offered to tourists from many Asian and European countries.
But at the same time, many tourists say they feel discouraged by reports of street crimes, especially in large cities.
Street crime remains a popular topic on global travel forums about HCMC, where police last year worked on more than 130 robbery and snatch-and-run cases involving foreign tourists.
The phone robbery against the Polish couple happened just one week after two motorbike riders snatched a bag from an Egyptian woman in the city, who was also checking a map.
The city earlier this week held a press conference and publicly apologized to her, promising to improve security.

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2 arrested in HCMC after robbing bag from Russian tourist

The Ho Chi Minh City police arrested two men early Monday morning soon after they snatched a bag from a Russian tourist walking on the street.
The crime department officers chased after and kicked the motorbike of the robbers after they snatched the bag on Pham Ngu Lao Street in the backpacker area.
The police said they had been following the duo, both 20, after finding them driving around suspiciously at 4 a.m.
They returned the bag that contained some cash to the foreign tourist.
Vietnam has been making efforts to promote tourism, and foreign arrivals increased 16 percent in the first two months of this year from the same period last year, thanks largely to the 15-day visa waiver offered to tourists from many Asian and European countries including Russia.
But many tourists say they feel discouraged by reports of street crime, especially in large cities.
Street crime remains a popular topic on global travel forums about HCMC, where police last year worked on more than 130 robbery and snatch-and-run cases involving foreign tourists.
Robbers snatched a cell phone from a Polish woman last Thursday and a bag from an Egyptian woman a week earlier, both in broad daylight when they were busy checking maps. The robbers have not been arrested in either case.
The city is planning to set up a special police unit to protect tourists after getting regular complaints from foreign nations’ consulates about the safety of their citizens.

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3 arrested for stealing bag from Chinese tourist in Da Nang

Police in Da Nang on Monday arrested three local men for stealing a bag from a Chinese tourist with his passport and money inside.
Li Jing Ming, 62, found out he lost his bag during a group tour in the central city on Sunday afternoon.
Three men, 39, 46, and 48 years old, were arrested Monday night and they have all admitted to stealing the bag.
Li reportedly left his bag in front of a hotel on Nguyen Van Linh Street before checking in. When he came out, the bag was gone.
They have returned the bag that contains a passport, a credit card, a tablet and cash worth US$300 to the tourist.
Earlier this month, a 27-year-old man in Hanoi was caught by locals and brought to the police after he tried to snatch a bag from a Belgium tourist.
The 57-year-old tourist was walking on a downtown street while the robber approached him from a motorbike and snatched the bag from his hand.
As the tourist tried to seize it back, passers-by stopped the robber, news website Zing reported.
Vietnam has been making various efforts to promote tourism. Foreign arrivals to the country increased 16 percent in the first two months, compared to the same period last year, largely thanks to the 15-day visa waivers offered to tourists from many Asian and European countries.
But at the same time, many tourists say they feel discouraged by reports of street crimes, especially in large cities.

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OP-ED: The Ugly Vietnamese

By Huynh Van Son - The writer is deputy chairman of Vietnam Association of Social Psychology. The opinions expressed are his own.
The number of Vietnamese travelers to foreign countries has grown rapidly over the past several years. Unfortunately, this increase has coincided with a growing stereotype of "The Ugly Vietnamese".
Last summer, I went to Thailand and was surprised to see a notice at a buffet written in Vietnamese.
"Please take what you can eat. Those who don’t finish their food will be fined from 200-500 Baht. Thank you!"
In Singapore, I encountered a similar sign, also in Vietnamese.
“Just take what you can eat,” it read.
Any customer of the restaurant understood the need for such a notice.
The restaurant's many customers had queued up for food, when suddenly, a Vietnamese couple cut in front, causing the rest of the line to snicker and sigh while the pair grabbed six oysters from a waiter clearly hoping to give out one per customer.
At another restaurant, a Vietnamese man was seen carrying several heaping plates of food to a table strewn with half-eaten plates, as though fearful the buffet would suddenly close.
‘Please flush the toilet’
In a toilet in Thailand, I encountered another sign written exclusively in my native tongue.
“Remember to flush the toilet,” it read.
Later, I heard a story about a Vietnamese person who got locked in a "smart toilet" in Europe because the automated door only opened after the toilet was flushed.
In Taiwan, I spent two hours watching a group of young Vietnamese people lay out newspapers, sit on the floor and play cards while shouting loudly.
After their game ended, they got up and left their newspapers for someone else to pick up.
Coincidentally, I was in town giving a speech about the relationship between culture and behavior.
‘Are you from Vietnam?’
I rarely talk about these things.
And it's difficult to admit that I'm always both happy and nervous about encountering my compatriots abroad. Between 1999 and 2000 I traveled to Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia and Denmark to attend a series of workshops.
In Singapore, I bumped into a young Vietnamese student who was on his way to receive some sort of tech award. I accepted his invitation to attend the award ceremony three kilometers away.
Soon after climbing into a taxi we were told to get out because the student refused to wear his seatbelt.
I asked the student if he didn’t get what the cabbie had asked him.
"I did hear," he said. "But we don’t have to wear a seatbelt in our country. It's just a short distance and it’s too bothersome. We can just take another taxi."
On another occasion, I wandered through Disneyland in Hong Kong from dawn till dusk to research how the park was managed.
At one point, I encountered a park employee trying to eject a customer for cutting several lines.
“Are you from Vietnam?” she asked in unclear Vietnamese.
Bad apples
I'm still ashamed of the handful of Vietnamese who seem to have no respect for others or themselves.
Of course not all Vietnamese people have such habits, but I've seemed to run into them all over the world. Not surprisingly, the image of "The Ugly Vietnamese" had followed them wherever they go.
In a society with strong laws, good ethical norms and proper law enforcement, you tend not to see these bad habits among members of the general public.
To get rid of our problems abroad, we need to start at home. Parents should be good examples for their children; schools need to teach students good habits in addition to providing them with general knowledge.

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Sex worker - On the edge of the ethic war

I’m writing this amid a current scandal in Vietnam which involves a celebrity being publicly exposed by some media to be a prostitute. Her pictures have gone viral, with as much personal information included as possible. “Whore”, “hooker” and many other degrading words have been used to hurdle shame and guilt upon the woman.
In Vietnam, although the law only imposes moderate punishment (a fine of from US$5-25) on prostitutes, sex workers are subjected to harsh social criticism. Even the terminology “sex worker” is virtually non-existent since very few would consider trading sex for money as work.
In this article of two parts, let's consider some arguments that have consistently been used to ban prostitution, commonly seen as a profession which is as old as the humanity itself.
The questions we want to answer is: “Is prostitution inherently immoral and harmful? Should it be criminalized and punished?”.

'Sex workers are exploited and coerced to work by criminals, that is why it is harmful'
One of the main reasons why prostitution is considered harmful stems from the fact that in many cases, sex workers are coerced into becoming a prostitute. They are considered victims of the last choice, human trafficking, economic hardship, domestic abuse, or criminal organizations.
According to a statistics from the UN, 80 percent of border-crossing human trafficking are women and girls, most of them are consequently subjected to sexual abuse and forced to work in the sex industry. It has become common knowledge that many women who end up in the Red Light District of Amsterdam, were promised a career in dance and entertainment.
Some prostitutes are unaware victims of lover boys who target vulnerable teenagers, make them fall in love, then isolate them from families. The girl are slowly trapped in the vicious circle of manipulated relationship with a terrifying mixture of emotional terrorism, dependent love affair, and confusing perceptions of sex, love and money.
Needless to say, those who coerce others into prostitution also include their loved ones: parents who are desperate for money, partners who see their “better half” as “better” in term of financial support.
In India, several villages such as Ingonia are known to survive and thrive on the profession. “Born into brothels” is an award-winning documentary in which children of Sonagachi were given a camera to capture their daily life in this red light district. Most female sex workers in this documentary were portrayed as indirect victims of poverty or domestic coercion.
Ironically, if we accept that sex workers are genuinely victims of coercion and crimes, and that is why sex work should be banned, then criminalizing sex work is nothing more than an unethical act to punish the victims one more time.
Blaming the victims is obviously easier than finding the culprits, especially when the culprits are hidden behind the thin veneer of families, love, sacrifice, or a corrupted system. We cannot punish a malfunctioning economy that creates such a terrible poverty that consequently puts people in to a situation of having to choose trading sex for survival, can we?
However, if the causal link between coercion and victimhood is the reason why prostitution is harmful and should be banned, then frankly, this can be argued to be the case with most of professions on earth.
To a certain extent, all of us are coerced into doing what we are doing, since none of us is 100 percent free to do what we individually want. Freedom is never absolute, and as members of a society, we all have to sacrifice, compromise, or adjust ourselves to suit the situation, hence, allowing ourselves to be coerced into doing something we genuinely would not want to do. From this point of view, we are all victims of societal pressure, at varying degrees.
At this point, “degree” should be the focal point of this argument. To what degree is coercion acceptable? This is not a question of a bi-polar spectrum where one extreme is right and the other is wrong. This is a question of one single scale with one single attribute of “suffering”, one end more acceptable and the other end less so.
Our hypothesis then can be stated as: “If we can somehow make the degree of coercion in prostitution at least similar to other lawful professions, then sex work should be considered a lawful profession”.
This leads the discussion away from the unfair treatment of punishing the victims and focuses the solution on regulations and law enforcement, which is the basis of a civil society. By decriminalizing prostitution and imposing strict rules, victims will be able to avoid double punishment, leading to an escape that is safer and more sustainable than what they have had to endure.
Many studies have proved that criminalizing prostitution creates double incrimination. A study in Florida shows that 82 percent of the sex workers have been assaulted, and 68 percent have been raped. They fear to report to police since this can be used as evidence to make them committed another felony charge of working as sex workers.
A 2002 Chicago based study found that 30 percent of exotic dancers and 24 percent of street-based sex workers who had been raped identified a police officer as the rapist. Up to 17 percent of sex workers interviewed reported sexual harassment and abuse, including rape, by police. They had been forced to strip or engage in other sexual conduct while in police detention. Again, a victim is victimized one more time, ironically with a punishment exactly the same as their accused felony.
Further, while acknowledging that this argument of victimhood is valid, we also need to accept the fact that not all sex workers are coerced into prostitution. Many of them choose this profession voluntarily because it fits their life style and personality, or because it is economically efficient, without any pressure.
In the last few months, I have been part of a volunteer group helping to deliver tea and coffee to sex workers in the Red Light District of Amsterdam. I started the job with the idea that all these people are victims, and I could not be more wrong.
While some of them are surely coerced into prostitution, there are many who choose to work here freely. Sex work is exactly that, work. And what well-intended people should do is to protect those who are forced to enter the industry, and support those who are the boss of their life, regardless of who they choose to be, as long as it is honest labor.
At this point, we have the second hypothesis regarding the argument of victimhood: “If we can be sure that sex workers choose their profession freely, then sex work should be considered a lawful profession”.
Feminism has been torn between these two viewpoints since the end of the 20th century. Half of the feminists believe that sex workers are victims, even to the point that they themselves are not aware of their victim status. Liberal Nordic countries such as Sweden and Norway fall into this categories, punishing the buyers and not the sex workers themselves.
The other half of the feminists believe that sex workers are also people who choose this profession on their voluntarily basis. The Netherlands and Germany legalize prostitution with strong regulations, making a genuine effort to ensure that sex workers are protected against abuse and coercion (to a certain acceptable degree on par with other lawful professions, of course).

Continue below ....

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'Prostitution is degrading, that is why it is harmful'
Prostitution suffers from a strong social stigma as a degrading profession. Being moral or immoral is not the point here, but the way societies look at it. One should not choose to be a sex worker simply because it is a degrading job to do. We try to avoid this profession not because it is wrong, but because societies attach very limited amount of respect to it.
More often than not, those who adhere to this argument are often hypocritical without even knowing it. When the Vietnamese celebrity was exposed on the media, some shook their head in a combination of disgust and empathy: “Sex work is also work, nothing wrong with it. But I still find her disgusting and I curse her for wanting to do that job. Why? Because she knows people dislike it, and yet, she still does it”.
This double standard is deafening, yet so well disguised under the cover page of social conformity. In a nut shell, the job itself is honest labor, but one still should succumb to social stigma and avoid it. Even people who accept that prostitution is pure honest work also cannot escape the need to surrender and bow to the negative social perception and betray their own genuine point of view.
Not only is this argument subject to hypocrisy, social perception towards prostitution as a degrading job cannot rule out the fact that many other professions in our societies are also degrading and not socially desired.
Not so many of us can loudly claim to be Jesus-like and give convincing evidence that we love everyone without a tiny bit of bias based on what job they do for a living. Some of us use degrading words to address housemaids, shoe-shine boys, scrap scavengers, or street porters…despite the fact that they are earning money honestly with their labor. If we do not criminalize these professions on the basis of socially undesirableness, why should we do that to prostitution?
Clearly, the discussion should be focused on how to change the stigmatized social perception of sex work, and not the moral nature of sex work itself. If we criminalize a profession simply because it is an unwanted profession by the society at large, then again, we are punishing and victimizing the victims who are already marginalized by the society. Worse, this punishment is purely based on our fear of being seen as sympathizers for the oppressed. If that is not hypocrisy, then I don’t know what is.
Again, the hypothesis that should be stated here is: “To an extent that we can promote social acceptance and empathy towards sex workers, then sex work should be able to be considered as lawful work”.
(To be continued in Part 2: Is prostitution harmful to marriage, spreading STD, and selling inappropriate commodities?)

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Originally Posted by jackbl

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles

Continuing comedy for this series:

Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 11

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 12

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 13

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 14

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 15

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Sex worker - On the edge of the ethic war (part 2)

Part 2: Social menace or social need?

Amid a current scandal in Vietnam in which a celebrity is exposed by media to be a prostitute, discussions emerged in this fairly conservative country, dividing public opinions between the need to keep prostitution a felony and the need to decriminalize the profession.
In part one of this article, I argued that while some sex workers choose their job voluntarily, others can be victims, and hence, need not to be victimized one more time with punishment from the legal system.
Obviously, other arguments used to support the ban on sex work do not always come from the sympathy with the victim status of sex workers. Quite a contrary, these arguments target them as the source of social menace, the cause of ethics decadence and the reason why humanity is morally ruined.
In another words, sex workers are no where near the status of being victim, they are squarely and simply the culprit.



Is prostitution being harmful to marriage?

Of all the arguments, this is the weakest one, since it is often used by those who inherently lack of confidence in their sexual prowess, a lack of trust in their partner's fidelity, or ability to maintain a stable marriage, or : “I oppose sex workers because my partner can cheat on me, and our marriage will be destroyed”.
Obviously, this argument is faulty since the burden of guilt should be borne by the unfaithful partners, not the sex workers.
The society is full of temptation: sex, power, money, beautiful jewelries, expensive cars, delicious food, and so on and so forth. Ethical people know exactly what they can obtain and what not. If fast food is generally needed but can be unhealthy if eaten too much, should we criminalize fast-food and shut them down, or should we control ourselves not eating too much?
Blaming fast food, or blaming sex worker is just another way to profess our weakness in self-control and regulation.
In another counter-argument, it has been proved that prostitution, if regulated well, can help to protect marriage. Single, inexperienced, or sexually frustrated people can safely find an escape without engaging in rapes or illicit affair with other people’s partners and hence, ruining an otherwise happy marriage.
In 2010, the Family Protection Society in Australia was forced to publicly apologize to Tasmanian sex workers for saying the industry is harmful to women and breaking up marriages. The message is clear, if you eat the forbidden fruit, you are the culprit, not the fruit. Evidence? We still eat apple until this day.


Is prostitution spreading STD to wider population?

Of all the arguments, this is the one that has been proven wrong at the strongest level. Study after study has shown that once sex work is regulated and decriminalized, sex workers have a much lower percentage of sexually transmitted disease (STD) infection, compared to the wider population.
Since the institution of mandatory condoms in Nevada's brothels in 1988, not a single sex worker has contracted HIV. In one Australian study carried out in 1998, the prevalence of sexually transmitted bacterial infections was 80 times greater in 63 illegal street prostitutes than in 753 of their legal brothel counterparts.
In the early '90s the Thai government began working with brothel owners to enforce 100 percent condom use. Free condoms were given to brothels, and sex workers were told to insist on condoms. Establishments that allowed unprotected sex were shut down.
As a result, condom use increased from 14 percent in 1989 to over 90 percent by 1994. Over the same period, the number of new STD cases among men treated at government clinics plummeted by over 90 percent. HIV infection rates among military recruits fell from 4 percent in 1993 to below 1.5 percent in 1997.
Understandably, criminalizing prostitution fuels the possibility of STD, as it is uncontrolled, workers unprotected, and in many cases, they are willing to succumb to customer’s requests of unprotected sex in order to reduce the time spent on the street, and hence escape the police’s attention.
Since condoms can be used as evidence and a form of harassment during street arrests, fear of felony charges can discourage safe sex, and contribute to the vicious circle of victim, being victimized, and then making others victims of STD.


Is sex an inappropriate commodity?

Very often, sex is regarded as a product that should not be put on par with other commodities since it is too intimate, too divine, or too vulgar. Let’s take this down one by one.
Sex is intimate. No doubt. But is sex more intimate than personal thought, than dirty, seedy, deep dark secrets and scandals that have been commercialized, manipulated, written and crazily advertised to fame-boost and make money for celebrities worldwide?
Have a look at some of the world’s famous biographies and you will know what I mean. From incest, rapes, sexual violence, cheating to sex tactics; from family hatred, friendship betrayal, unmasking of loved ones, to deepest personal fear and obsession…you name it. Are these less intimate than an ordinary intercourse?
Sex is divine. Well, maybe. To be precise, sex deserves that status only when it is combined with other wonderful emotion and relationship such as love. It is almost ridiculous to consider sex always a product of love and genuine feeling between two parties.
In its pure nature, sex is reproduction, and its foremost function is to help reproduce. This applies to everything on earth, from plants, animals, to humans. Of course sex as a result of love is the ideal, but this world is not populated by idealists, it thrives by realists who know all too well that we as human beings cannot rely on love to survive. If this planet was dependent on love to exist, none of us would be here today.
Sex is vulgar. For some, that is probably true, especially those who believe that humanity has been dammed for the original sin. In the end, sex contributes to the aftermaths of Adam and Eva being thrown off the Eden, and sex is religiously described as having only the function of reproducing. Having a pleasure from sex is taboo, since sex is not meant to be enjoying, but purely a process to make children.
But hey, hello! Criminalizing some product because it is religiously considered only for one specific God-given purpose does not seem to fit the idea of secularism, and still, it does not justify the verdict of sex work being harmful in nature.
Looking further beyond the tiny society we live in, many civilizations have honored sex as the source of life, and continue to do so. Sacred prostitution on the rivers of Tigris and Euphrates was practiced in the house of heaven where all women were ordered to give themselves to strange men once in their life time, taking their sacred money and refusing no one.
In ancient Greece, Hetaera often enjoyed their high status more than other women. Phallus worshiping, religious sex, sacred marriage, and many other sexual rituals are still the cores of many belief in civilizations from East to West. Vietnam, Japan, Bhutan and many other conservative countries still have festivals that focus on the glory of sex, of yin-yang harmony and revered origin of life.
Finally, the argument of seeing the body as a temple of God, and hence not appropriate to sell, meaning to let the consumer have the absolute right over it, is faulty. The more precise term for prostitution is that sex workers rent a part of their body in a fixed period of time with well-defined restrictions. Nobody owns their body, and hence, it is not selling in its conventional meaning.
In short, prostitution should be seen from a realistic angle of life. The profession has been here since time immemorial, and it is here to stay. Denial or defense simply is not sustainable, and frankly, a big fat lie to ourselves.
More than 70 countries have legalized it to varying degrees, including very conservative Muslim countries such as Bangladesh, Tunisia or strongly Catholic Mexico and many other in Latin America.
There should be no absolute urge to criminalize or venerate such a basic need as sex. To quote a comedian: "There is not much difference between going to a date and meeting a prostitute. In the former, you HOPE to get sex. In the latter, you are SURE to get sex".

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Comedy - vietnamese and chinese subtitles episode 16