While the pace of change in one-party Vietnam can sometimes appear dizzying, one thing remains the same, all media remain under the control of the government.
However, for decades in the capital there has been a constant source for salacious stories about Hanoi's elite that you would never read in the newspapers or see in the frosty nightly news bulletins.
Known collectively as "the pavement news agency," countless thousands of small tea stands dot the capital, and for the price of a cup of bitter green tea, the owners will often share the gossip and rumors that they have heard.
The stands have their roots in the revolution, says Professor Ngo Duc Tinh, from Vietnam's Institute for Cultural Studies.
After the founders of modern Vietnam kicked out the colonialist French in 1954, thousands of soldiers and cadres flooded into Hanoi from underground bases. The cafes left over by the French were considered too bourgeois, and the tea stands began to appear.
Talk has always come easier at a tea stand, Professor Thinh said.
"These places are good for talk because it is not like the office where people cannot express their ideas freely, nor the family environment where sometimes it is hard to talk. It is a place where people become much more open," Professor Thinh said.
All selling more or less the same thing -- tea, soda, a few confectioneries, cigarettes and water pipes of rough tobacco -- the tea stands are not designed for comfort. Customers perch on tiny plastic stools, drinking iced tea in summer, and hot tea in winter.
Nguyen Van Hong has been running a tea stand in the heart of Hanoi's government district for the last five years. He never reads a newspaper, but knows better than most what is going on behind the closed doors of Vietnam's elite.
"Places like ours, pavement news agencies, can spread news very quickly, even faster than newspapers," said 45-year-old Hong.
Recently, the talk has been about the ongoing crackdown on young people using drugs in bars, karaoke parlors and nightclubs. The offspring of connected Hanoians have managed to evade arrest, Hong alleged.
"These instances involve youngsters from wealthy families, whose parents hold high positions. It has been said that in most of the cases, people have been tipped off before the police came. Some of them have parents working at police agencies so the parents know the information in advance, and leak it to their children," Hong said.
More often than not, tea stand gossip has more than an element of truth. Journalists sometimes use the tea stand information as the basis for stories, according to Son Lam, who works for the state-run Thanh Nien newspaper.
"These places are often our first source for hot news," Lam said.
It is not just news that the pavement tea stands supply. Between 80 and 90 percent of them are agents for Le De, an illegal game based on the national lottery.
Every day just before six, the stands are crowded with people betting on the game. Tea stand owners confirm that the odds are better and the prizes bigger than the legal version.
But as Hanoi's streets grow increasingly crowded with cars and motorbikes, and people get used to higher standards of living, the tea stands could become a relic of the past, Professor Thinh, believes.
However, for now, you can still get a three cent cup of bitter green tea, bet on your lucky numbers, and hear juicy stories that would never make the front page.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS