A: Starting off this week’s Letter Box edition, I’d like to say Hello to Adeel Butt of Pakistan, who was in Hanoi and visited our office some weeks ago. We mentioned your visit in our Letter Box on August 15. You can read or listen to the audio version on our website at vovworld.vn. There is also a picture of you with our staff.
B: In this week’s email, Adeel wrote: “I found Vietnam a beautiful and charming country. It has beauty, charm, fashion, history, culture, food, lakes and a lot of things which I’m unable to mention. When I was about to fly from Pakistan, some friends asked me, “where are you going?”. I answered, “To Vietnam”. They were surprised and said, “Isn’t there a war”.” I replied, “No”, and I observed, “If anybody says something without seeing reality, it’s always a failure or lack of information about international affairs”. There is the same misconception about our country, too. We have problems on our north-western border, but the rest of the country is safe and secure.”

A: Adeel, we completely agree with you that seeing is believing. The war in Vietnam ended nearly 40 years ago, and we have seen tremendous changes since then. We hope there will be more international events like the Universal Congress of Esperanto to encourage to visit and learn more about other countries. Meanwhile, VOV will continue to inform you of the latest developments in our country, our history and culture. From Germany, Hans-Dieter Buschau wrote to us on July 28, saying he picked up our domestic service on 6165 khz but was unable to identify the program language.

B: Hans, we are the English section of the VOV’s World Service and we are not authorized to verify reception of a domestic program, which was broadcast from a local radio station. We are unable to check the program log of that station to match it to your report. But we’ll forward your report to a domestic service for processing and we hope to get a reply soon.

A: Anyway, thank you very much for your interest in our station. Were waiting to receive your reports for the English and German programs as usual. Hans is 54 years old, married, with two sons aged 15 and 13. He lives in Hildesheim, 30 km south of Hannover, in the northern part of Germany. It’s a city of 100,000 inhabitants. He’s a teacher of English, French, and Spanish. Besides radio listening, his hobby is playing the trumpet in a marching band. He was a judge at this year’s world championship of marching bands in Kuala Lumpur.

B: It’s always fascinating to learn about our listeners’ personal life. It makes us feel close to you and better able to match our programming to your interest. I’m looking at a reception report from Gerry Neumann of England. He reported tuning in our channel beaming to Europe on 9625 khz at 17:00 UTC. The signal continued to be variable. For example, on August 21, SINPO was 54554, but two days later it was only 33333. Gerry said this spoilt his listening to the whole program, including a Discovery Vietnam edition about tourism in the Mekong River Delta.

A: He wrote: “The program on Tuesday, August 21, was very interesting, as usual. The domestic news included an item about the meeting of the Vietnam – Hungary Friendship Association in Hanoi. Current Affairs was about the trade agreement negotiations between China, Japan and Korea despite the ongoing territorial disputes. Soicety was about volunteer campaigns that took place in mountain regions and other places in Vietnam to help the poor. And Business in Focus was about price increase for food, consumer goods, electricity, and petrol.”

B: He continued: “It’s good that VOV continues to keep me informed about what is happening in Vietnam in such a clear and concise way. Many program in the past week have also included information about the August Revolution in 1945 that led to the country’s independence – an event that will be celebrated on September 2, Independence Day. More important is the anniversary of the founding of VOV on September 7, 67 years ago this year. Congratulations for this achievement! I hope VOV will continue to be heard for many more years”.

A: Gerry, we would like to send you our warmest thanks for your interest in our station and our country. And this month, we are sending out special gifts to reward loyal listeners for listening to our station for 3, 5 and 10 years. So send us copies of your oldest VOV QSL cards to get one of our interesting gifts. Do it now!

A: Here’s an email from Christer Brunstrom of Sweden, who logged in to our channel at 17:00 UTC on 9625 khz with a SINPO of all 4s. Christer said: “I hardly ever miss a Wednesday show as I find the Letter Box program most interesting and informative. On the news, you once again mentioned the problem of corruption which seems to be a problem not only in capitalist countries but also in nations which build socialism. The only solution is a transparent administration and the collaboration of the citizens to point to acts of corruption.”

B: The Letter Box on Wednesday is the favorite segment of our listeners. This is a place for Dx’ers to share their hobby and communicate with VOV’s staff about our programs. We hope you’ll spend additional time on our channel listening to other social and cultural items.

 From Japan, Toshiya Nishimura tells us that he had the pleasure of listening to our program on August 19, on 9840 khz. He used an ICOM IC-R75 receiver with a loop antenna and noted interference for a while.

A: Nishimura thinks that radio can still play a role in the e-communication era. Yes, it’s true. Despite the advent of multi-media news sources, the old-fashioned shortwave has maintained its popularity with Dx’ers.     

B: A final interesting piece in this week’s Letter Box is a letter from John Wright of Australia, that talks about Vietnamese wraps and rolls. John tuned in to our program on July 31 on 9845 khz from 10 to 10:20 UTC. He said the signal was heard at a good level with no major problems on his ICOM 8500 receiver, using an EWE antenna. He rated the signal 45433 as there was some local noise and some fading.

A: John, your reception report was sufficient for us to send you a letter of confirmation for your listening. It’s interesting to know that your first taste of Vietnamese food was “chicken chili rolls” at a Vietnamese restaurant called in Mascot, Sydney. It’s great that you enjoyed it and got a good first impression of Vietnamese food. “Chicken chili roll” clearly suggests the main ingredient is chicken and it’s spicy hot.

B: Wraps and rolls don’t go by just one name in Vietnamese. Diners can get confused between imperial rolls, peacock and phoenix rolls, crispy rolls, square wraps, and egg rolls. Actually, they’re all really the same thing - pork, shrimp, crab, vermicelli, mushroom, carrot, and bean sprouts - rolled in a rice paper or wheat flour wrapper and deep-fried to a golden brown.

A: Whatever they’re called, they are crispy and delicious. They’re served with a special kind of sauce, a mixture of fish sauce, lemon juice, sugar, salt, garlic, and fresh vegetable to reduce the fatty feeling. If you’ve tasted spring rolls, I strongly suggest you try Vietnamese summer rolls next time, John.

B: Summer rolls, also called fresh rolls, cold rolls, or Vietnamese salad rolls are my favorite as I really love finger foods. As their name suggests, they’re served at room temperature, not fried and are very refreshing. They’re made of boiled or fried pork, prawn, beef, fish, tofu, rice vermicelli, and many kinds of vegetables, roots, and fruits wrapped in rice paper. Some people prefer to use lettuce for wrapping instead of rice paper. Let us know when you’ve tried soon.

A: That’s our short discussion of Vietnamese wraps and rolls including spring and summer rolls. Last year, this typical Vietnamese dish was number 30 on the list of the world's 50 most delicious foods compiled by CNN Go. Well, that’s it for this week’s Letter Box. We welcome your comments at:

English program,

Overseas Service,

Radio Voice of Vietnam

45 Ba Trieu street-Hanoi-Vietnam

Or you can email us at: englishsection@vov.org.vn