More than 100 Tet (Lunar New Year) issues published by newspapers and magazines during the 1930s and 40s are on display at an exhibition in HCM City. The publications on show at Nha Nam Thu Quan Coffee Shop include prestigious dailies and weekly magazines like Dan Ba (Women), Sai Gon, and Phong Hoa (Customs and Mores). Among the most impressive for their layout and variety in contents are issues of Phong Hoa and Sai Gon [...]

The Hue Relics Preservation Centre and its partners have completed a project to produce 3D images that feature historic architecture of the former imperial city. The images use real-time rendering technology to depict Vo Thanh Temple, one of the city’s most popular ancient relics, built in 1835 under the Minh Mang reign. Designed by architect Nguyen Phuoc Thien and his staff at the HCM City University of Architecture, in-co-operation with the centre’s cultural researchers, all [...]

Vietnam Export-Import Commercial Joint Stock Bank, the country’s fifth-largest publicly traded lender, is leading shareholders of Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank who are calling for a new management board. The lender known as Eximbank, which owns 9.7 percent of Sacombank after buying a stake from Australia and New Zealand Banking Corp. last month, criticized recent transactions including a 100 million-share buyback in a Feb. 17 letter to the chairman and supervisory board head [...]

Vietnam’s agriculture minister called an urgent meeting Sunday demanding local authorities adopt better measures for bird flu prevention, given that the virus has mutated and become more lethal. Cao Duc Phat, minister of Agriculture and Rural Development and head of the National Steering Committee of Bird Flu Prevention, said at the meeting that the condition is spreading widely and preventative policies are more important than ever. The disease has recurred this year in the northern [...]

Significant swaths of in Ho Chi Minh City real estate has been designated to host underground parking lots but red tape has prevented most of them from being built. The delay has not only been a burden to drivers, but also to the investors forced to wait, amid of accelerating prices, for paperwork to clear so that work can begin. A major underground parking lot approved by the city government made no progress after its [...]

The first chartered helicopter tour of the year will transport a group of 22 tourists from the US, Australia and France from Da Nang to Hoi An’s Cham Islands this weekend. A 24-seat Russian-made MI-17 chopper will take off from Da Nang International Airport on Feb. 18 and land on the Cham Islands 30 minutes later. Visitors will have the opportunity to enjoy a flyover of central Da Nang city and explore the Cham Islands [...]

Sung Sot cave (or Surprising cave), one of the largest caves in Ha Long Bay, has been voted as one of 10 most beautiful caves of the world by the Association of Tourism Offices and Brokers of the Czech Republic. Discovered in 1901 by the French, Sung Sot cave is divided into two chambers and covers a total area of over 10,000 sq.m. It is also described as an “opera house” with the beauty of [...]

It has become common practice for doctors at a Ho Chi Minh City public hospital to make extra money using surgery rooms during working hours to operate on patients who pay more for better and faster services. HCMC health authorities would investigate the problem at all of the city’s public hospitals following a Vietweek exposé, a senior official has said. Doctors and patients are familiar with the term “schedule surgeries” – referring to surgeries arranged [...]

Japanese professor seeks to preserve the unique amalgamation of Catholism and Buddhism found in French colonial churches Japanese architecture professor Yamada Yukimasa feels many old Catholic churches in northern Vietnam have a unique East-West combination. “Inside, you have the feeling of standing in a pagoda, but outside is the structure of a Catholic church.” Yukimasa has spent years traveling back and forth between Japan and Vietnam on a research project that aims to make locals [...]

Vietnamese stocks, the second-best performers in Asia this year, are cheap and may rally in the next two quarters as slowing inflation prompts the central bank to cut interest rates, Dragon Capital Group Ltd. said. The market’s “fair-value multiple” is between 10 times to 12 times estimated profit, Dominic Scriven, chief executive of the Ho Chi Minh City-based fund manager, which oversees about $1 billion in assets, said by phone on Feb. 17. His Vietnam [...]