Tieng Viet lovers club

[vietboy]

Originally Posted by jackbl

It's cos got Good people like u, when asked will straight away give answer.

Originally Posted by Hurricane88

so nowadays you admitted you are not good ppl...

Originally Posted by KangTuo

neu hom nay em khong di lam thi em duoc o nha xem tivi
if today you no go work then you can stay home watch tv

Seems like KT also one of the good good ppl. Give free translation n even help ppl how to write sms.

But i think it is that he is too bored at home cant go anywhere. Chan wa, buon muon chet fai kg, KT oi?

[KangTuo]

Originally Posted by decibel8808

can anyone translate to me this?? Phong Hai Tran... what does it means?

Originally Posted by jackbl

U asked open-ended question, who knows???? No head no tail

who say no head no tail???

the head = Phong
the tail = ...

[KangTuo]

Originally Posted by vietboy

Seems like KT also one of the good good ppl. Give free translation n even help ppl how to write sms.

But i think it is that he is too bored at home cant go anywhere. Chan wa, buon muon chet fai kg, KT oi?

i am always a good good guy ma...
never bored .... these days, i am too busy to feel bored

[vietboy]

Originally Posted by KangTuo

i am always a good good guy ma...
never bored .... these days, i am too busy to feel bored

Back into action liao? Thought no "dinner" for u for sometime.

[jackbl]

Scrapes
=====================
HANOI—To really get a feel for Vietnam, I highly recommend traveling by motorbike.

But sometimes the ‘feel’ you get may be the road scraping against your flesh.

In a recent column, I recounted my extraordinary feat of flipping an old Russian motorcycle with a sidecar upside down in a matter of seconds. This humiliating episode kept me in taxis for a few months.

But finally I bought an old Yamaha Nuovo from a housekeeper for a few million dong. It has been a liberating purchase, unlocking a new Hanoi. Life has changed for the better, and the kids love to ride like Vietnamese—my slim daughter in front of me, my son in back.

But a few times I still have gotten that up-close-and-personal feel for Vietnam’s asphalt. Unlike the sidecar debacle, I don’t blame myself for these accidents. In fact, I think that once I saved a dog from serious injury, and perhaps some Vietnamese teenagers from a worse fate.

I’ve learned that, after a certain speed is reached (and not necessarily that fast), an abrupt, reflexive, two-fisted braking action will bring my Nuovo crashing to the pavement. Twice this happened to avoid collisions with other motorbikes: Once with a dog that darted into my path. And then there were the three giddy teenage boys who, without helmets, were weaving through traffic at high speed on the popular lake road of Tay Ho.

This is a much too common and scary sight in Hanoi—perhaps a reflection of the universal teenage assumption of immortality. Or is it just teenage stupidity? I remember those days: At age 16, driving alone on an open freeway, I pushed the family’s Dodge Dart to 106 miles per hour, just because I could. Worse, I remember riding with an inebriated friend along a mountain road with sheer drops and certain death if we weaved off the road. And I was drunker than he was.

Crazy traffic is the rule in Hanoi, but utterly reckless driving the exception. Teenagers, however, seem to be the exception in this way. Sometimes I see them weaving in and out of traffic at high speed on busy Au Co, the dike road. And reckless motorbiking abounds in our Tay Ho neighborhood, where the scenic, curving lakeside road does double duty as a lover’s lane and a speedway. Perhaps the boys racing motorcycles and popping wheelies are just trying to impress the girls with their daring. In another year or so, they will be channeling their testosterone in a different way.

I was approaching a turn at a reasonable speed when they nearly swerved into me, and if I hadn’t braked their unprotected skulls would have gone hurtling through the air. The injuries, I think, would have been serious, possibly even fatal.

And I doubt that they learned anything from the near-crash. So I’m glad when the cops enforce the helmet law. A thin, cheap helmet may not afford much protection, but I don’t think it encourages greater risk. Rather, I think it serves as a reminder to be a bit more careful out there.

I came out of that incident with nothing worse than a couple of scraped palms and a scratched leg—and the realization that I need to slow down even more at that particular turn, lest reckless teenagers reappear.

The encounter with the canine, meanwhile, tore my jeans and gave me a nasty, bloody scrape on my left knee and the dog that caused it all barked at me like it was my fault.

Sorry, Fido, but next time I’m not stopping. You need to learn a lesson: you could become thit cho.

--30--

[KangTuo]

Originally Posted by vietboy

Back into action liao? Thought no "dinner" for u for sometime.

back in action cai dau... out of action thi co.
no breakfast, lunch, tea-break, dinner at least for next 2 weeks...

[jackbl]

Taxi Viet
==================
An American friend who ought to know better persists in addressing his Vietnamese bride, Tram, in a decidedly Western way. If her last name was Poline, she’d be Tram Poline.

Fortunately, she doesn’t seem to mind and might even be charmed by how he mangles her name. In Vietnamese, Tram sounds more like “cham” – as in “champion.”

To be a foreigner in Vietnam is to mumble, fumble and stumble linguistically. English is, after all, the world’s most useful language – and may God save the Queen for that! As a result, most of us are baffled that the combination tr might somehow sound like a ch. I still catch myself mispronouncing Hanoi’s postcard-perfect Truc Bach Lake.

The Vietnamese, in my experience, are more patient and accommodating than most cultures of the way foreigners abuse their language. But we expats learn we can save ourselves some trouble by acquiring the basics of the language sometimes called Taxi Viet. True, the typical cabbie may understand your English much better than your attempt at Vietnamese. But those who lack scruples know how to pad a fare by feigning a bit of confusion.

Now I’m not claiming an entirely firm grip on Taxi Viet. I’m more at the level of just knowing enough to be dangerous. So Rule No. 1, which I often break, still applies: Do not rely on your memory: The address of your destination should be written down to be shown to the driver – and it’s better still to have the route marked on a map.

But if you’re not just passing through, lessons come in handy. Knowing how to count from one to ten – mot, hai, ba, bon, nam, sau, bay, tam, chin, muoi – is useful in giving an address. A phonetic grasp of Vietnamese can help you distinguish between the boulevards named for Ly Thai To and Le Thai To.

And if you know the route, it’s nice to complement hand gestures by saying re phai (turn right), re trai (turn left), di thang (go straight) and dung lai (stop here).

These phrases raise another idiosyncrasy of Vietnam: the accents of north and south. In the south, an R sounds like a plain old R to Westerners, but in the north it is pronounced with a Z sound. Northerners, it seems, just love the sound of Z. To most foreign ears, the letters R, D and the combination of GI all come out sounding like Z from northern lips.

If I had studied Taxi Viet from the start, I might have avoided a drama that frightened my two sons, then ages 9 and 15 months. It started when we climbed into a small cab near Hoan Kiem Lake.

“Phu Tay Ho,” I instructed the driver. A dozen other cabbies managed to understand my effort to pronounce the name of this popular temple near our residence. Not this guy.

“Sheraton,” I said, figuring to make hand gestures from there.

Strangely, he still seemed confused. Later, he missed the turn from busy Au Co, and I became alarmed as the meter pushed to 130,000. I managed to get him to pull over. “Dat qua,” I said – or tried to say, meaning, “Too expensive.” A very useful phrase.

I unloaded the kids, placing the little one in the stroller. I handed the driver a 100,000 dong note and gestured to try to explain how he missed the turn and we were still far from our destination. When he complained angrily in Vietnamese, my response in English was louder and angrier. My older boy was visibly alarmed, and later told me he thought we might duke it out. But when I pushed the stroller away, the driver gave up. We hiked a good mile back before I managed to hail a cab and finish our adventure home.

In retrospect, I don’t think the cabbie was trying to rip me off. No, he was just a young man from the countryside. He still needed to learn his way around Hanoi – and maybe learn some Taxi English too.

--30--

[vietboy]

Originally Posted by KangTuo

back in action cai dau... out of action thi co.
no breakfast, lunch, tea-break, dinner at least for next 2 weeks...

2weeks later, GL/JC will have no peace.

[jackbl]

Lonely Planet tips underline traffic fears
================================================== ====
A web post this month by the world’s largest travel guide book is reminding Vietnam that its traffic problems are reaching foreigners.

The subheads in "Vietnam tips: a first-timer's guide", by Lonely Planet’s Tom Hewitson, include “Be wary of Taxi Scams,” “Know Your Night Buses,” and “Motorcycle Safety.”

The warning is not new but it once again rings the alarm bell for both the government and locals in Vietnam, where a record 11,500 people died in 15,000 road accidents nationwide in 2010, according to the National Traffic Safety Committee.

Lately, visitors have worried about the traffic chaos here because a bus with 40 passengers, 30 of them foreign, flipped over in the coastal Co Ma mountains July 13, injuring 13.

What’s more, Hanoi expat George Heydlauff decided he’d had enough on July 2 and tried to enforce traffic rules at a hectic intersection by grabbing onto offending motorcycles. Some criticized the method, while others strongly praised the attempt at order.

What you pay for

Tourists must remember that, when it comes to long-haul buses and taxis, quality depends on price. Buses, minibuses or minivans are often overflowing with passengers, as well as inexperienced and reckless drivers.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of buses don’t have working bathrooms and the further back you are, the worse the smell gets,” Hewitson writes of night buses. He also asks tourists to watch out for rampant swindlers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

“For many, motorcycle taxis are the only way to truly see the thronging streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City,” he writes. “However, although unlikely, scams can happen and your best protection is a decent knowledge of where you are going and points along the way.”

Cabbies have been known to overcharge international visitors and sometimes even steal from them.

If traffic and tourism authorities are paying attention, they should provide backpackers with low-priced and safe buses, especially for ancient sites in The Old City of Hue, Hanoi’s Old Quarter, and “Saigon in the Past”.

[KangTuo]

Originally Posted by vietboy

2weeks later, GL/JC will have no peace.

wrong... it will be peaceful after national day as lesser possibility of raid

[KangTuo]

Originally Posted by yummyymym

Thanks brother so tre vay is late?

tre = late (in this context)
vay is just an exclaimation to end a sentence

[yummyymym]

Originally Posted by KangTuo

tre = late (in this context)
vay is just an exclaimation to end a sentence

Cam on rat nhieu

[yummyymym]

Originally Posted by KangTuo

tre = late (in this context)
vay is just an exclaimation to end a sentence

Just curious I was trying to use vdict to translate tre but no matter which combi I tried I cannot get late to appear.

Am I doing something wrong?

[KangTuo]

vb sms me over the weekend...

7h ngay mai e len may bay. hom nay e co gap muc ruoi, e nho a nhieu lam hinh nhu a k thich e, a ghet e. E ve vn e co the hoi cho a k.

anyone know what is "muc ruoi"..
can't get any from vdick

[KangTuo]

Originally Posted by yummyymym

Just curious I was trying to use vdict to translate tre but no matter which combi I tried I cannot get late to appear.

Am I doing something wrong?

tre
trẻ
trể
trễ