Việt Nam News

Vietnamese Teachers’ Day is coming this Sunday November 20, and thousands of parents in the country are thinking about and preparing some gifts for their children’s teachers to express their gratitude.

Hà Nôi authorities recently deployed three mobile food testing labs, the first such facility in the country, to detect unsafe food at city markets and restaurants. Joint food inspection teams from the departments of agriculture and rural development, trade and industry, and health went into battle along with the mobile lab.

It is a fact that young adults are thinking differently about life values and what constitutes happiness.

The irony was striking, literally.

When an artist or other public figure passes away, even people who did not know him or her personally will join the mourners. However, the sombre atmosphere has been rudely disrupted in recent times when famous people, particularly those with a fan following, are around.

As more people access the Internet, the number of reported cybercrimes has risen.

Old people living at care centres is quite familiar to those in developed countries. However, it’s still controversal in Vietnamese society.

People have started talking more about conflict handling skills for both children and adults after the suicide of a 15-year-old boy last month. The student, from northern Yên Bái Province, was forced to kneel in public and say “Sorry” to one of his schoolmates after a conflict between them in school.

Hà Nội has undergone a hot summer with disastrous rush hours, which could drive anyone insane because of the crowded streets full of smoke. Quite a few people miss the traffic of the 1980s and early 1990s when bicycles were in their golden period in the city.

In the past, people would dress simply, especially at school, following the difficult war and the post-war period. Those from earlier generations were embarrassed to wear a new shirt when their mates had none. Girls kept their hair long or twisted it in braids, while boys stuck to simple short hair styles. Very seldom was a student seen sporting a distinctive style.

The recent death of Trần Minh Hoàng, a nine-year-old boy whose neck was slashed by a long, sharp roofing steel plate loaded onto a makeshift behicle has sparked sorrow and anger - not only from the victims’ relatives but also from many residents of the capital.

With Vietnam integrating more deeply into the world, English has become increasingly important, perhaps even a decisive factor in one’s successful future.

Disasters like fires and drownings emphasise the need to educate with survival skills.

Foreigners can easily hire motorbikes to travel in Việt Nam but many of them did not know clearly the country’s traffic laws, whereas traffic police find it difficult to punish them because of uncommon languages.

Everything is different. Life in Hà Nội is wonderful, frustrating, chaotic, noisy, challenging, intriguing, welcoming, friendly, crowded.

Overparenting is nothing new around the world, but it is increasingly popular in a modernising Việt Nam. With smaller family sizes and different standards of living, some Vietnamese parents regard their one or two children as 'treasures' that demand extreme care.

Commonly revered as the Roof of Indochina, the 3,143m Fansipan is located in the northern Vietnamese province of Lào Cai. Since the opening of the Fansipan Legend cable car system in February 2016, the peak is now within anyone's reach. But not everyone is happy.

For thousands of years, Viet Nam’s culture and history was recorded in the Han-Nom scripts, which combine Chinese and Chinese-based Vietnamese characters.