The SEA Games open in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi on Thursday after a six-month COVID delay with Southeast Asian pride at stake in everything from football to bodybuilding and eSports.More than 5,000 athletes including Olympic champions are vying for over 500 gold medals in the event, which is staged every two years, in what should be packed arenas.The 11-nation Games include traditional Olympic sports such as athletics, swimming and boxing, but also regional ones like sepak takraw, an eye-c

Vietnam's economy expanded more than five percent in the first three months of the year, the government said Tuesday thanks to a pick-up in exports as the country emerges from the worst of the global pandemic, though officials warned of headwinds.The ASEAN member state has long been a success story among Asian economies, posting growth of seven percent in 2019.But growth came in at just 2.9 percent in 2020 as the pandemic shut most of the world down, while last year saw just 2.6 percent

Thousands of mourners packed a pagoda in Vietnam's Buddhist heartland on Sunday to pay tribute to the late Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, credited with bringing mindfulness to the West.The Zen master, whose reach within Buddhism was seen as second only to the Dalai Lama, died aged 95 on Saturday at the Tu Hieu Pagoda in the city of Hue.Widely known as the father of mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh spent nearly four decades in exile after he was banished from his homeland

Vietnamese are paying hundreds of dollars for gold plated tiger models as gifts as the Lunar New Year draws near, bucking a major economic slowdown caused by the pandemic.Tet, as it is known in Vietnam, is the most important festival of the year and the occasion for people to give gifts to loved ones and business partners.With the year of the tiger starting on 1 February, many are choosing pricy models of the striped felines.Thousands of 24-carat gold plated tigers are hitting high-end souven

The United States (US) is shipping another four million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Vietnam, the White House said Tuesday, bringing the total of US doses donated globally to nearly 270 million.A senior administration official told AFP that 4,149,990 doses of the Pfizer vaccine are being sent, bringing the total delivered to Vietnam by the US to 17,589,110 doses.

Tour guide Lai Chi Phuc has been counting down the days until travellers return to the white-sand beaches and thick tropical jungle of Vietnam's Phu Quoc, a once-poor fishing island pushing to be Asia's next holiday hotspot as pandemic restrictions ease.On Saturday, around 200 South Koreans touched down on the island, which lies a few kilometres off Cambodia in the azure waters of the Gulf of Thailand, after a vaccine passport scheme kicked off this month in Vietnam.Among the arriva

A video showing a powerful Vietnamese official enjoying a bite of steak smothered in gold leaf at a luxury London restaurant has sparked online anger in the Southeast Asian country, where the average person earns a few dollars a day.To Lam, minister of public security – whose agency deals with the monitoring of dissent and surveillance of activists in the authoritarian state – was seen tucking into the hunk of meat at Nusr-Et Steakhouse in the wealthy area of Knightsbridge.Nusr-Et, named afte

Facebook was hit Monday by scathing reports from at least a dozen United States (US) news outlets based on internal documents, just hours before the company was to release its earnings report.The social media giant has faced a storm of criticism after former employee Frances Haugen leaked internal studies showing the company knew of potential harm stoked by its sites, prompting US lawmakers to renew a push for regulation.Reports Monday blamed CEO Mark Zuckerberg for the platform bending to st

Vietnam plans to reopen the resort island of Phu Quoc to vaccinated foreign visitors in late November, authorities said, as the country looks to reboot its tourism industry after almost two years of closure.Phu Quoc, which lies around 10 kilometres (six miles) off Cambodia in the Gulf of Thailand, boasts white-sand beaches and crystal-clear waters, as well as mountains and thick jungle.It attracted around 670,000 visitors and earned more than US$18 billion dollars from international arrivals

Three decades after a landmark agreement ended years of bloody violence in Cambodia, its strongman ruler has crushed all opposition and is eyeing dynastic succession, shattering hopes for a democratic future.The Paris Peace Agreements, signed on 23 October, 1991, brought an end to nearly two decades of savage slaughter that began with the Khmer Rouge's ascent to power in 1975.The genocidal regime wiped out up to two million Cambodians through murder, starvation and overwork, before a Vie