As we usher in 2022 – a new era of travel with mindful regard for safety – Vietnamese are welcoming the possibility of rediscovering their home country again, in line with Booking.com’s predictions for travel* which revealed that people are planning to reignite the travel spark this year. After more than a year of ever-evolving travel restrictions, the important benefits that travel has on health and wellbeing are now being acknowledged and getting away on vacation will become a key form of self-care in 2022. But it’s not just about soaking up the sunshine or booking that well-deserved yoga retreat.…
Author: Kevin Le
CNN Travel, the most prestigious website has selected the local delicacy Pho Bo (Beef Pho) among its 20 best soups worldwide. In the article CNN revealed that the broth is simmered for hours with cinnamon, star anise, and other warm spices in order to create a wonderfully aromatic base for this rice noodle soup. The website also quoted Andrea Nguyen, author of “The Pho Cookbook, as sayings that Pho is among the nation’s most recognised culinary exports, despite the soup being a relatively new food. Andrea Nguyen went on to explain that while today’s pho restaurants typically serve a wide…
Hồ Văn Ý seen at the FIFA Futsal World Cup last September in Lithuania. He is a world top 10 futsal goalkeeper of 2021. — AFP/VNA Photo HÀ NỘI — Hồ Văn Ý has been listed as one of the world top’s 10 futsal goalkeepers of 2021, while legendary striker Lê Công Vinh has been shortlisted for the Greatest AFF Cup Player of All Time. It is the second year in a row that Ý has been named on the list by FutsalPlanet, a prestigious futsal website. The first was in 2018. The 25-year-old player had a successful year with both Thái Sơn Nam Club and the…
Vietnamese startups attracted investments of over 1.3 billion USD in 2021, while fintech received nearly 70% according to Khiem Tran from Expara. However, new fintech startups have not shaken the market like Momo, VNPay or Finhay did. Momo crossed 2 billion USD in valuation after raising about 200 million USD last year As an early believer of Vietnam venture capital market, Khiem explained the reason behind is that “due to bargaining power, legal barriers, the readiness of the technology, startups’ resources, etc… startups are still unable to receive support from financial institutions. It used to take 1-2 years for a…
A third Chinese city has locked down its residents because of a COVID-19 outbreak, raising the number confined to their homes in China to about 20 million people. It wasn’t clear how long the lockdown of Anyang, home to 5.5 million people, would last. Mass testing was being enforced, standard procedure whenever outbreaks pop up around the country. Another 13 million people are locked down in the city of Xi’an and 1.1 million in Yuzhou, with restrictions imposed on the port city of Tianjin, only about an hour from Beijing, which is to host the Winter Olympics from Feb. 4.…
Pleiku Stadium is one of Việt Nam’s few purpose-built football stadiums. Photo bongda24.vn Peter Cowan There’s nothing quite like an away day. The anticipation builds throughout the early morning start, sports radio crackles on the way to the ground, the buzz you get from entering a hostile environment, and if you’re lucky enough to see your team win, the ecstasy of silencing a full stadium of home supporters. The spiritual home of the away day is of course the British Isles, where it seems every city, town, village and bus stop has a hated rival…
Foreign visitors, who arrived during the pandemic had received automatic visa extensions. Foreign nationals in Vietnam will no longer have their visas automatically extended due to Covid-related complications as international flights resumed, the country’s Immigration Department has announced. ###: Foreigners commit administrative violations in Vietnam will be expelled. Here’s the rules that you should know The visa extension had been put in place to allow tourists or visitors who had become stranded in the country to stay longer with no ramifications, since few flights were operating in and out of the country due to the pandemic. Initially, tourists who had…
A Cypriot scientist defended his assertion that a new strain of Covid-19 exists that combines characteristics of the delta and omicron variants. Other scientists have speculated that Leonidos Kostrikis’s findings are a result of laboratory contamination. But he told Bloomberg in an emailed statement Sunday that the cases he has identified “indicate an evolutionary pressure to an ancestral strain to acquire these mutations and not a result of a single recombination event.” Deltacron infection is higher among patients hospitalized for Covid-19 than among non-hospitalized patients, so that rules out the contamination hypothesis, said Kostrikis, a professor of biological sciences at…
Football Trần Quốc Tuấn (left) takes congratulation flowers from Việt Nam Football Federation’s former president Lê Khánh Hải. Tuấn serves as Acting President of the national football governing body until the end of this year. Photo courtesy of VFF HÀ NỘI — Trần Quốc Tuấn will become Việt Nam Football Federation’s Acting President after a vote at the football body’s annual congress, which closed in Hà Nội on Sunday. Tuấn is currently VFF’s Vice President for 2018-22, and will take on the top position and be voted in at the next congress for 2022-26, which is scheduled for the end of this year. President Lê Khánh Hải…
An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has asked local departments under its wings to advise cities and provinces nationwide to cancel festivals and firework displays celebrating Tết (Lunar New Year), Vietnam’s traditional New Year celebrated at the end of this month, as concerns rise over a spike in COVID-19 cases, Vietnam News Agency reported. ###: Tet holiday will be a nine-day break The cities and provinces need to strengthen COVID-19 preventive measures that allow people to safely enjoy the upcoming nine-day holiday, it said in an official dispatch, given that…