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Nowhere else in Vietnam serves up leftovers like Hue – the country’s ancient capital – where yesterday’s rice is the hottest item on the menu.

In Hue’s city center, where tourists abound, bun bo Hue – a beef and vermicelli soup famous in the ancient capital – may be the most popular dish at local street stalls.

But walk just a few minutes from the city’s famous and attractions and visitors will find themselves immersed in a culinary world centered around a rather peculiar ingredient: leftover rice, known in Vietnamese as com nguoi .

For day laborers, the leftover rice served with bun bo Hue is integral, giving them the extra energy they need to work from dawn till noon.

Arguably, Hue is a city which runs on yesterday’s rice.

An unknown version of bun bo Hue

Hue’s Gia Hoi Islet is a hotbed of bun bo stalls, with the area surrounding Bach Dang, Chi Lang, To Hien Thanh, Nguyen Du, and Chua Ong Streets doubling as the epicenter of the city’s traditional cooking styles.

The close observer will notice that most of the bun bo stalls there have a lunchbox sitting near the service area.

Inside the lunchbox is the stall owner’s leftover rice, an ingredient that many locals agree is necessary in order to enjoy bun bo in true Hue fashion.

Cultural researcher Tran Dinh Son said serving leftover rice with bun bo dates back to the 1950s and 1960s when vendors, after running out of fresh vermicelli, would wander around the city selling their leftover ingredients – chopped pig’s feet, cooked beef, pig blood curd, and meatballs – to those who would have them with leftover rice.

A bowl of bun bo broth and rice in Hue. Photo: Thai Loc / Tuoi Tre

Strange servings

Com va or ‘slurping rice’ is another traditional dish in Hue which has not yet made it on tourists’ radar screen.

This dish consists of large strings of vermicelli, julienned pork ham, banana flowers, herbs, and a spoonful of chicken broth.

Long ago, the people of Hue enjoyed leftover rice in a variety of ways, including by munching on it with shrimp paste and fresh chili, or topping it with fat, shrimp sauce, and hot pepper flakes.

Hue’s famous mam tom chua or sour fermented shrimp paste is made using cooked glutinous rice which adds a sweet taste and thickens the dish.

According to many mam tom chua enthusiasts, the dish must be prepared with leftover rice rather than glutinous rice in order to embody the true Hue spirit.

Worker’s food for royalty

It would not be right to talk about leftover rice without mentioning com hen or baby mussel rice.

Nguyen Thi Phuong Nga, the owner of an eatery at 17 Han Mac Tu, Hue City, says she cooks rice early in the morning and waits for it to cool down before making baby mussel rice. Photo: Thai Loc / Tuoi Tre

Hoang Tung De – a cousin of Vietnam’s last emperor Bao Dai – loved eating at street stalls outside of the citadel despite knowing it might ruin his royal status, according to cultural researcher Son.

When Bao Dai was asked about it, the emperor said he “would like to do the same thing but could not.”

There is no official record of whether com hen was served to royals, yet many former servants said the emperor often asked to have vendors cook the dish at the palace.

Leftover rice accounts for much of the food in com hen so it would have been carried along with the vendors in order to serve the royalty.

Later, when Emperor Bao Dai built his palace in Central Highlands city of Da Lat, to cook his favorite dish of com hen , servants released baby mussel breeds in several springs nearby.

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Some 221 practitioners and staffers of Hanoi’s Bach Mai Hospital, one of the largest public health facilities in Vietnam, have turned in their resignation over the past year.

Discussing this issue with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, Nguyen Quang Tuan, director of Bach Mai Hospital, confirmed the mass departure.

Some are highly qualified medical workers who switched to better paying jobs, while a majority are less skilled staffers who became dissatisfied with the hospital’s decision to go fully self-funded instead of relying on state subsidies, or displeased at their job rotation at the facility, Tuan said.

Pressure from the COVID-19 workload is also a possible reason for the mass departure, added Do Van Thanh, head of human resources at Bach Mai Hospital.

While 221 had departed, the facility has also recruited 506 new practitioners and officers, many of whom hold senior medical titles.

“Our hospital is striving for a change in service quality,” Thanh stated.

“Pressures of changes might be the reason for many staffers to leave.”

The Ministry of Health, the immediate managing body of Bach Mai Hospital, demanded a full list of resigned staffers along with an explanation from the hospital management after being informed of the situation in February.

“The hospital is responsible for the administration and usage of human resources in their facility,” a Ministry of Health official stated.

In a responding report submitted on March 22, the hospital leaders cited the reduced benefit package, which stems from the poor revenue that the institution reported during the pandemic, as the reason for the mass resignation.

Bach Mai Hospital also requested the Ministry of Health to raise the price ceiling for medical services to improve its returns, which will help uplift the income of personnel.

The report also mentioned tempting job offers from private hospitals that target highly-skilled practitioners in public facilities, which may cause a ‘brain drain’ from the public sector.

Bach Mai is a central-level hospital in Hanoi under the management of the Ministry of Health.

It receives some 6,000-7,000 visiting patients per day, with an outstanding reputation for many of its departments, including emergency, poison control, rehabilitation, cardiovascular medicine, cancer treatment, and orthopedics.

The hospital faced multiple mishaps in 2020, as it was placed on lockdown for over one month due to a coronavirus outbreak in the facility, plus two of its former executives were detained over allegations of inflating prices of medical equipment .

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* The Kremlin said on Wednesday that a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Joe Biden would be contingent on US behaviour after reportedly telling Washington to scrap a plan to impose new sanctions on Russia.

* Inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog visited Iran’s uranium enrichment site at Natanz on Wednesday, the agency said, without commenting on the extent of the damage caused by what Iran says was an act of sabotage.

* French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire reaffirmed the French economy should grow by 5% in 2021, and told BFM TV that financial aid measures should remain until the end of the pandemic.

* Vice President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday she is planning to visit Mexico and Guatemala soon and that the United States must figure out how to bring about economic development in the Northern Triangle countries to curb immigration.

* Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Wednesday he would step down from his post in the last ten days of April to clear the way for early parliamentary elections, the Interfax news agency reported.

* Haiti’s Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe announced his resignation on Wednesday amid worsening gang violence and political turmoil in the poorest country in the Americas.

* India’s new infections hit a record level on Wednesday with Mumbai set to be locked down at midnight, but hundreds of thousands of pilgrims still thronged to a religious festival in the north of the country.

* The euro zone economy is still standing on the “two crutches” of monetary and fiscal stimulus and these cannot be taken away until there is a full recovery, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Wednesday.

* The suspension of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine could delay efforts to inoculate most people in the European Union by more than two months, scientific information and analytics company Airfinity said.

* Global stock markets pushed to record highs on Wednesday as bond yields eased, after data showed US inflation was not rising too fast as the economy re-opens.

* Thailand reported 1,335 new cases, the biggest daily rise since the start of the pandemic and the third record rise this week.

* Denmark became the first country to stop using AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine altogether, following news of its possible link to very rare blood clot cases, while Finland extended the pause in use of the vaccine for people under 65.

* Spain is confident it can maintain its current vaccination targets despite a US suspension of the Johnson & Johnson shot and delays to its European rollout.

* US federal health agencies have recommended pausing use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine for at least a few days after six women under age 50 developed rare blood clots after receiving the shot.

* Brazil’s Senate on Tuesday launched an inquiry into President Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic.

* With two vaccines now under scrutiny for possible links to very rare cases of blood clots in the brain, US government scientists are focusing on whether the specific technology behind the shots may be contributing to the risk.

* Irish unemployment will remain above pre-pandemic levels until at least 2025, reflecting some scarring from the crisis that will see national debt peak among the highest levels in the developed world.

* Hungary will allow restaurant terraces to re-open once 3.5 million people, about a third of the population, are inoculated against COVID-19, a target expected to be hit sometime next Wednesday or Thursday, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said.

* The Swiss government announced further easing of its COVID-19 restrictions on Wednesday, allowing restaurants to reopen outdoor terraces from next week and sports events to take place with audiences.

* South Africa has agreed to onerous conditions like non-refundable downpayments to secure vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, its health minister said, describing the terms vaccine manufacturers had demanded as “difficult and sometimes unreasonable”.

* The first study to directly compare immune reactions between Pfizer’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccines found strong and broadly similar antibody responses in over 80-year-olds after a first dose of either shot, scientists said.

The number of new deaths increased for the fourth consecutive week, increasing by seven percent compared to last week, with over 76,000 new deaths reported, according to the WHO.

The outbreak was especially violent in India as the country reported 873,296 new cases, an increase of 70 percent compared to last week. It also saw the number of new deaths growing by 51 percent. The United States came the second with a five percent increase of 468,395 new cases; and Brazil listed the third with a rise of 463,092 new cases.

In terms of global COVID-19 new deaths, the South-Asia, Southeast Asia and Western Pacific region saw sharp surges with the Western Pacific displaying an increase of 189 percent in number, the Philippines leading with the grim record of 1,321 new deaths, 400 percent more than last week.

Furthermore, new virus variants continue to spread to other countries, with the variant B117 first identified in the UK reported in 132 countries, the variant B 1351 originating from South Africa present in 82 countries, and the P1 first identified in Brazil now established in 52 countries.

The WHO also noted that existing vaccines have displayed reduced efficacy against variants, even if the related studies remained limited in number.

As an example, the AstraZeneca vaccine saw reduction in post-vaccine neutralization for variant B117, while it saw “substantial reduction” for the variant originating from South Africa.

Studies also reported “evidence of more substantial reduction” in post-vaccine neutralization of the variant first found in Brazil for AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

Earlier this week, the WHO stressed that measures such as wearing masks and hand hygiene were still important as “we are in a critical point of the pandemic right now.”.

Two foreign experts and 14 Vietnamese people who recently arrived in Vietnam from abroad have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, raising the total number of patients in the country to 2,733, the Ministry of Health reported on Wednesday evening.

Illustrative photo

According to the ministry’s report, an Indian man and a US man aged 38 and 58 recently landed at the Tan Son Nhat Airport in HCM City. They were both sent to local quarantine facilities upon arrival.

The two men are now being treated at the Cu Chi Field Hospital for Covid-19 patients.

14 Vietnamese patients include eight men and six women aged between 23-50 who recently returned to Quang Nam, Ba Ria – Vung Tau provinces, and Hanoi, Danang, and Ho Chi Minh cities from Russia, the US, and Japan. They have all been sent to local quarantine facilities upon arrival are now being treated at local hospitals.

With these new infection cases, the number of Covid-19 patients in Vietnam has increased to 2,733, including 910 locally-transmitted cases reported since the new outbreak started in Hai Duong on January 28.

As of 6 pm on April 14, a total of 2,445 Covid-19 patients had recovered and been discharged from hospital. There have been 35 deaths, most of them being the elderly with serious underlying diseases.

At present, nearly 39,000 people who had close contact with Covid-19 patients or returned from virus-hit areas are being monitored at hospitals, quarantine facilities, and at home.

The meeting was chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, who is also head of the committee.

The board asked that favourable conditions continue to be created for the clinical test of COVID-19 vaccines, while plans of production should be put in place in order to quickly produce vaccines once the testing proves successful.

Hailing the Health Ministry for its vaccination efforts and dealing with post-vaccination reactions, the board directed the health, public security, and national defence ministries to continue closely controlling immigration pending a policy regarding “vaccine passports”.

Many at the meeting reiterated that prevention measures continue to play an important role in the current context.

Ministries, agencies, and localities are urged to direct medical stations, schools, lodging facilities, factories, and markets to remain vigilant and seriously follow prevention and control measures.

Vietnam reported 16 imported cases of COVID-19 on the evening of the same day, raising the national count to 2,733.

The new cases include one Indian expert, one American expert and 14 Vietnamese citizens who were sent to quarantine right upon their arrival.

Meanwhile, 2,445 COVID-19 patients have been given the all-clear, and the death toll remains at 35.

Among patients still under treatment, 16 have tested negative for the novel coronavirus once, 18 twice and 18 thrice.

A total 38,743 people who had close contact with COVID-19 patients or arrived from pandemic-hit areas are being quarantined across the country.

The Health Ministry continues to urge all people to follow the 5K motto – Khau trang (wearing facemask) – Khu khuan (disinfecting) – Khoang cach (keeping distance) – Khong tu tap (no gathering) – Khai bao y te (making medical declaration), in order to live safely amid the pandemic.