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The Wind and Water Bar in southern Vietnam has been listed among the world’s 25 most extraordinary bars by the U.S.-based media site Distractify. The Vietnamese bar, located in Binh Duong Province, is ranked among other places around the world on the “25 Most Extraordinary Bars To Experience In Your Lifetime” list, including the Laundromat Café and Northern Lights Bar in Iceland, the Clinic Bar in Singapore, the Blue Frog Lounge in India, the Club 33 in California, the Sky Bar in Thailand, the Joben Bistro in Romania, Bab-al-shams in Dubai, and the Sunland Pub in South Africa. “The Water and Wind Bar is set on a flooded area of land, creating an incredible reflection in the water,” the site describes the place on its list announced two weeks ago. “Stepping stones lead across the reflection and into the massive thatched hut. Lamps adorn the walls, creating an incredibly cozy hideout for a few drinks.” The Wind and Water Bar is a well-known pu...

While they are both traditional martial arts , Vietnamese kickboxing, known as Vovinam, seems to be introduced to the world in a less appealing way than its Thai counterpart – Muay Thai.   Photo credit: Internet The Vietnam Vovinam Federation (VVF) has extended efforts over the last few years to bring the country’s martial art closer to the world by launching drives to have the sport included in many region- and word-level tournaments. The VVF will support India to host the South Asia Vovinam Tournament in November, and is soliciting support for a Vovinam competition to be organized at the upcoming 2015 SEA Games in Singapore. But besides trying to have Vovinam included in such tourneys, Vietnam does not seem to have any other channel to increase its practitioners and fans across the globe compared to what Thai people are doing with their traditional kickboxing sport. Muay Thai live show The State, a theater located a...

Tuoi Tre News Updated : 08/24/2014 10:05 GMT + 7  The Saigon Tax Trade Center has a 134-year history of foundation and development but it will bite the dust soon to give way to a skyscraper and part of a metro line station. All shop owners have been told to move out of the trade center by the end of September to make way for the construction of a 40-story building, to be constructed in the first quarter of next year. At the request of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, 500 square meters out of 15,000 square meters of the center’s gross floor area will be set aside for the construction of a part of a metro line station. The committee has required the area to be handed over to the Ho Chi Minh City Urban Railway Management Board for building the ventilation structures of the metro station, one of 14 stations of the Ben Thanh-Suoi Tien metro line, by October. The planned subway, 19.7km long, is the first-ever to be constructed...

For a couple of years, philanthropists in Ho Chi Minh City, Quang Ngai province, Mekong delta, Dalat city, Danang city, Vung Tau have run a series of charitable restaurants that offer almost-free lunches to poor students, poor workers and patients.  The video shows a common day at one such outlet - "Nụ Cười 3 restaurant" "Nụ Cười" means "Smile" 1/ Nụ Cười 1 Address: 6 Cong Quynh street, Nguyen Cu Trinh ward, District 01, Ho Chi Minh city 2/ Nụ Cười 2 Address: 46/22 Nguyen Ngoc Nhut street, Tan Quy ward, Tan Phu district, Ho Chi Minh city   3/ Nụ Cười 3  Address: 1276 Huynh Tan Phat street, district 7, Ho Chi Minh city 4/ Nụ Cười 4 Address: 132 Ben Van Don street, district 4, Ho Chi Minh city 5/ Nụ Cười Sông Trà (Nụ Cười 5) Address: 63 Chu Van An street, Quang Ngai city, Quang Ngai province 6/ Nụ Cười 6 Address: Number 43, Street 48, Hiep Binh Chanh ward, Thu Duc district, Ho Chi Minh city ...

Eighty percent of the semiconductor chips used in computers around the world at this time next year will be made by the Intel plant in Vietnam, the CEO of Intel Products Vietnam asserted Tuesday. The abilities of the Vietnamese employees to adapt Intel technologies are great and meet the expectations of the chipmaker, Sherry Boger, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on the sidelines of a ceremony to introduce the new made-in-Vietnam Haswell CPU processor in Ho Chi Minh City. This could be proven by the chip production of the Intel Products Vietnam plant, located at the Saigon Hi-Tech Park (SHTP) in District 9, over the years, she added. The error rate of the made-in-Vietnam chips is low and no customer has ever asked to return the products because they were defective, according to the CEO. This enables the company to be confident that 80 percent of the chips sold worldwide at this time next year will be labeled as “made in Vietnam,” Boger...

Booths at the Saigon Tax Trade Center are already offering discounts of up to 50 percent on a wide range of items as they are scheduled to close by late September to make way for the construction of a new skyscraper.         Tran Thuy Lien, the center’s director, told news website Thoi Bao Kinh Te Saigon that the five-storey trade center in downtown Ho Chi Minh City will be replaced by a 40-storey building on the same site.   She said the new building will not only have shops and a supermarket like the old one, but also feature a convention center, a hotel, and offices for lease.   Work on the new building is expected to start at the end of this year, Lien said.   She said that the new trade center’s four-storey basement will connect to the Ben Thanh –Suoi Tien metro line’s underground station. The line will span nearly 20 kilometers between District 1 and District 9 and is expected to come into operatio...

Tuoi Tre News Updated : 08/10/2014 21:21 GMT + 7    The currently poetic Da Lat, which is famous not only in Vietnam but around the world as a European town in the Far East, is actually the result of the failure of city planning.   Xuan Huong lake in 1930 with two streets which are now Tran Quoc Toan and Ho Tung Mau This is ironic but true. The city planning by French architect Ernest Hébrard in 1923 was severely strict, forcing all private and public villas to obey to his architectural design . He planned Da Lat to bear a homogeneous face in construction and the result was ‘ bankruptcy ’. Thanks to the failure of the plan, a boom of villa constructions of diversified designs appeared in Da Lat – now the capital city of Lam Dong Province in the Central Highlands. Even though it was a total loss, that did not mean it was useless. A boom of villas in Da Lat The global economic recession in the 1920s badly affe...

Tuoi Tre News Updated : 08/10/2014 10:55 GMT + 7  From a vastly uninhabited area in the early 20th century, the French planned it into a city which is now called Da Lat located on the Lang Biang Plateau to serve the French expeditionary army.  A row of wooden houses for Vietnamese in Dalat in 1925 - 1930   A poctcard in 1930 features the scene of a road in Dalat. Ordinary people were then carried by the porters on the street.  A corner of Dalat in 1925 - 1930 seen from the street which is now Ho Tung Mau To become the city that it is now, Da Lat went through three major planning stages by three French architects Ernest Hébrard in 1923, Louis-Georges Pineau in 1932, and Jacques Lagisquet in 1942. Construction from zero The whole construction cost to build an uninhabited plateau into a French city, called the Lang Biang Project, came from loans of the French government. During the initial period, it was comm...