B: Thank you all for your greetings. Vietnam made great achievements at the region’s biggest sporting event. On Tuesday, Vietnam won its first-ever SEA Games gold medal after defeating Indonesia 3-0 in the final match. This is the greatest victory of the Vietnamese football in 60 years after losing five SEA Games football finals - 1995, 1999, 2003, 2005, and 2009.
A: Vietnam finished 2nd in SEA Games 30 with 288 medals including 98 golds, surpassing the target of 65 gold medals set for the Games. Host Philippines stood at the top spot with 149 gold medals.
B: H.M. Tarek of Bangladesh wrote: “Through your programs, I learned about a Vietnamese swimmer winning gold at the SEA Games. I feel very proud of this.”
A: Thank you for tuning in to our broadcast and sharing with us the joy of Vietnamese athletes’ achievements at the biggest sporting event in Southeast Asia which is held biennially.
B: The swimmer we’re talking about is Nguyen Thi Anh Vien, the pride of Vietnamese sports and swimming in particular.
A: 23-year old Anh Vien is one of Vietnam’s most talented athletes. Vien’s house fronts a tributary of the Can Tho river, so her parents were very worried that their children would fall in the river. Vien fell in once when she was 3 years old. She was taught to swim by her grandfather and quickly outclassed her peers.
B: Vien’s passion for swimming grew as she grew up. She participated in many competitions at school and at the district level and eventually was recruited by the National Defense Sports and Physical Education Center of Military Zone 9.
A: In her first SEA Games in 2011, at the age of 15, Viên took silvers in the women’s 100m backstroke and 400m medley. Two years later, she took home three golds and two silvers. At the Games 2015 and 2017, Viên seized eight gold medals each entering Sea Games history. She was one of the names most mentioned by the media of Singapore and other countries in the region in 2015. She made the headlines in many newspapers with her impressive performances. She was named one of Asia's five best female swimmers by US-based Swimswam magazine in December, 2015.
A: Singapore’s Straight Times put Vien on its list of the 10 athletes with the most impressive moments at Sea Games 28. Southeast Asian media called her “Iron girl” and “Vietnam’s new queen of the pool”. Across five SEA Games, Vien has bagged 25 gold, nine silver and two bronze medals and broken 11 regional records.
 Vietnamese swimmer Nguyen Thi Anh Vien |
A: She will be honored at the closing ceremony of the 2019 SEA Games in New Clark City, the Philippines on Wednesday as the most successful athlete in the 30th SEA Games, who won the most gold medals in individual competitions.
B: In his first letter to VOV, Bangladeshi listener Besakha Akter wrote: “I’m your new friend, I have been listening to VOV since 2018 but it’s my first letter because I’m always busy. I listen to VOV everyday from 16:00 to 16:30 UTC on the frequency of 7220 khz. The signal is good.”
A: Another new Bangladeshi listener to VOV, Lamia Khandaker, emailed us: “I’m your new friend. I listened to VOV from 16:00 to 16:30 UTC on the frequency of 7220 khz. The signal is good. I like to listen to VOV because it provides what I need. My favorite programs are Letter Box, Personality of the week, Colorful Vietnam-Vietnam’s 54 Ethnic groups, and the Sunday Show.”
B: Thank you all for tuning in to VOV. We hope to receive regular feedback from you as well as other Bangladeshi listeners who all express interest in our stories about culture, traditions, and festivals of Vietnam. It may be of interest to you to check out one of Vietnam’s festivals held at this time of the year, the 11th lunar month in Vietnam.
A: This is the time when the Ha Nhi ethnic minority people celebrate their traditional New Year, known as Khu Su Cha. People relax, entertain, reunite and send each other their best wishes for the new year. The holiday lasts for five days, after which the group starts planting the new crop.
A: The group makes traditional food like sticky rice cakes, pork and chicken to offer to the ancestors in praying for favourable weather and bumper crops. There are just 22,000 people in the group scattered across 32 provinces and cities throughout the country. They reside mostly in the northern provinces of Lai Chau, Lao Cai and Dien Bien.
A: The first night of the holiday is considered their New Year’s Eve. The next morning, people get up early to fetch water from the stream to make food as an offering to the ancestors. They believe fetching water will bring them luck. If they have plenty of water to use on the first day of the year, then they will have sufficient water for the whole year for daily use and farming.
B: During the holiday, people of all ages wear their best clothes. They take part in various folk games, as well as singing and traditional dances.
A: This week, we continued to receive New Year greetings from listeners around the world. Jayanta Chakrabarty of India wrote: “Dear friends at VOV. As we approach the end of the year, as a regular listener, I would like to thank VOV for its yeoman service. The past months have been a period in which your radio station has been especially useful to my family and myself in keeping us abreast of events and happenings in Vietnam and around the world. We all hope that VOV will continue to inform and entertain us in the coming new year as well. Let me take this opportunity to wish all the deserving team members at Voice of Vietnam and their loving families a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2020”.
B: Actually, Chakrabarty wrote the greetings in perfect Vietnamese. “Giáng sinh vui vẻ và một năm mới hạnh phúc và thịnh vượng 2020".
A: Rasheed Naz of Pakistan sent feedback to our program on November 27 on our website together with greetings for Christmas and Happy New Year.
B: Thank you very much, Chakrabarty and Naz, for your greetings and feedback on our program. We also wish you and all other listeners a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We hope to receive more comments and feedback from you.
A: We’d like to acknowledge emails and letters from Siddhartha Bhattacharjee of India and Richard Nowak of the US. We’ll send you QSL cards to confirm. We welcome your feedback at: English Service, VOVworld, the Voice of Vietnam, 45 Ba Trieu street, Hanoi, Vietnam. Or you can email us at englishsection@vov.org.vn. You’re invited to visit us online at vovworld.vn, where you can hear both live and recorded programs.
A: Check out our VOV Media App, available on both the IOS and Android platform to hear our live broadcasts. We look forward to your feedback on the mobile version of vovworld.vn. Once again, thank you all for listening. Goodbye until next time.