Sales england

An owner of a hotel chain in Hanoi’s Old Quarters area said that this was the biggest loss for his business to date. Since being affected by the pandemic, his firm has had to suffer losses of around VND10 billion (USD434,782).

The room price discount of a hotel in Hanoi’s Old Quarter.

Room occupancy rates have plummeted due to Covid-19, in some cases to zero percent, compared to 70-90% previously, he added.

At present, his hotel often receives a small number of visitors at weekends, he noted.

Meanwhile, another hotel owner Le Xuan Vinh sold his entire eight-hotel chain, sacking 200 staff. He has to pay VND150 million (USD6,521) for each hotel per month in operating costs.

So far this year, he has lost VND20 billion amid the tourism slump, Vinh said, noting if the situation does not improve, he would have to look at other business areas.

One of his difficulties was getting banking loans. “We wanted to use our land use rights certificate as the collateral for the loans, but were refused as his business is in the tourism sector,” Vinh said.

A 302-square metre hotel on Hang Bong Street which has 12 floors with 90 rooms is being put up for sale for VND510 billion (USD22.17 million); while a 200-square metre hotel on Hang Dau Street is being offered for sale at VND210 billion.

Vu Van Thanh, head of the Hotel Management Department under the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) said that the room coverage of hotels in Hanoi’s Old Quarters is less than 10%, a record low.

The VNAT has proposed measures to help ease difficulties for tourism service providers.

In the first eight months of this year, Vietnam served only 3.8 million international visitors, down 66.6% on-year, the record low for many years.

By August 31, up to 950 tourism accommodation facilities in Hanoi had suspended their operations, making 16,000 people unemployed. The more luxury end of the market has been hardest hit.

dtinews

The separation

Mr. Le Dinh Keo (born in 1924, now deceased) spent time working on cargo ships in Sai Gon before he started his own family, which included daughters Le Thi Bong and Le Thi Nu.

His wife one day incurred a huge debt and took the whole family to a temporary accommodation in the market as putting their house on sale was the only way to get the debt paid off.

Mrs. Le Thi Nu

Not long after marriage, Keo’s wife left. He and his daughters lived a vagabond existence, struggling just to keep their heads above water.

In 1966, days of deliberation went by, Mr. Keo decided to put his daughters Le Thi Bong (13 years old), Le Thi Nu (5 years old) up for adoption to two families in District 4.

Mrs. Phan Thi Ngoc (nearly 90 years old, living in Canada) as a loving old woman, adopted Le Thi Nu. “I wanted to take them both, but I didn’t have the capability.”

It was imprinted on Nu’s mind the first time she got sent home for a visit to her birth father. “I gave him some money from my piggy bank but he refused to take it and instead gifted me a roast duck and some bread before I got back to my foster parents’ home, saying ‘enjoy them my daughter, there will be no next time visit’,” Mrs. Nu recalled with tears streaming down her cheeks.

Mrs . Le Thi Bong

Those lengthy 53 years

Mr. Keo departed in 1968. The sisters got a chance to mourn their father at his funeral after completely losing touch.

In the following years, Mrs. Bong worked different jobs as a banana trader at the pier and a chef at restaurants in District 4, thinking that her younger sister had settled down in America leading a full life with good education. Mrs. Bong married at 20 and still lives in the Xom Chieu market area, district 4.

As for Mrs. Nu, in 1975, she together with her adoptive parents moved from District 4 to Ba Diem commune in Hoc Mon district in Saigon. She led a rather strenuous life providing support to her parents in the fields. They in 1990 moved to Canada without Nu. She soon married a carpenter in Tinh Bien district, Tay Ninh Province and gave birth to seven children. She stayed partnerless and raised them all after her husband’s death, unfortunately.

Mrs. Le Thi Nu holding a photo of her birth father.

Nu lived with a longing to reconnect with her older sister but her search for Mrs. Bong was not feasible due to unstable living location and having no aid.

“I miss her, every night, for decades. I have never forgotten the visit when I was seven and she was 15. I took her to the market and her utterance upon seeing anything there was ‘do you want it? Take it, take it, I’ll pay’ despite me repeatedly shaking my head.”

Mrs. Nu’s son also started his search for his aunt whenever he heard someone with similar name or age, but was always left disappointed.

Affecting reunion

A TV show named ‘As if we were never apart’ (Nhu chua he co cuoc chia ly) after receiving two matching letters about finding relatives contacted two of the senders for a reunification on the program. There was initially some trouble in contacting Mrs. Bong due to the change in her address but it finally went smoothly.

Moment of rejoice

Ms. Bong shared that over the past few decades, she took the onerous journey to look for her lost sister, which was made even harder due to her illiteracy. She had to reach out for help to post a newsletter for the search of Mrs. Nu.

The second they saw each other again, no one could refrain from shedding tears. With hands held, embraces locked, they filled in the other with stories missed, recollecting those days, with that pure joy of being able to stay close to your flesh and blood.

Tu Anh

LONDON — In October 2020, Miami-based art collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile spent almost $67,000 on a 10-second video artwork that he could have watched for free online. Last week, he sold it for $6.6 million.

The video by digital artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, was authenticated by blockchain, which serves as a digital signature to certify who owns it and that it is the original work.

It’s a new type of digital asset – known as a non-fungible token (NFT) – that has exploded in popularity during the pandemic as enthusiasts and investors scramble to spend enormous sums of money on items that only exist online.

Blockchain technology allows the items to be publicly authenticated as one-of-a-kind, unlike traditional online objects which can be endlessly reproduced.

“You can go in the Louvre and take a picture of the Mona Lisa and you can have it there, but it doesn’t have any value because it doesn’t have the provenance or the history of the work,” said Rodriguez-Fraile, who said he first bought Beeple’s piece because of his knowledge of the U.S.-based artist’s work.

“The reality here is that this is very, very valuable because of who is behind it.”

Examples of NFTs range from digital artworks and sports cards to pieces of land in virtual environments or exclusive use of a cryptocurrency wallet name, akin to the scramble for domain names in the early days of the internet.“Non-fungible” refers to items that cannot be exchanged on a like-for-like basis, as each one is unique – in contrast to “fungible” assets like dollars, stocks or bars of gold.

The computer-generated video sold by Rodriguez-Fraile shows what appears to be a giant Donald Trump collapsed on the ground, his body covered in slogans, in an otherwise idyllic setting.

OpenSea, a marketplace for NFTs, said it has seen monthly sales volume grow to $86.3 million so far in February, as of Friday, from $8 million in January, citing blockchain data. Monthly sales were at $1.5 million a year ago.

“If you spend 10 hours a day on the computer, or eight hours a day in the digital realm, then art in the digital realm makes tonnes of sense – because it is the world,” said OpenSea’s co-founder Alex Atallah.

Investors caution, however, that while big money is flowing into NFTs, the market could represent a price bubble.

Like many new niche investment areas, there is the risk of major losses if the hype dies down, while there could be prime opportunities for fraudsters in a market where many participants operate under pseudonyms.

Nonetheless, auction house Christie’s has just launched its first-ever sale of digital art – a collage of 5,000 pictures, also by Beeple – which exists solely as an NFT.

Christie’s ’embraces terrifying’

Bids for the work have hit $3 million, with the sale due to close on March 11.

“We are in a very unknown territory. In the first 10 minutes of bidding we had more than a hundred bids from 21 bidders and we were at a million dollars,” said Noah Davis, specialist in post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s.

His division has never seen an online-only sale top $1 million before, he added.

In a decision that could help push cryptocurrencies further into the mainstream, the auction house that was founded in 1766 will accept payment in the digital coin Ether as well as traditional money.

“I think that this moment was inevitable and whenever institutions of any kind try to resist inevitability, it does not work out very well,” Davis said of accepting crypto payment. “And so the best thing you can do is embrace the terrifying.”

$280k for Lebron James slam dunk

NFTs could be benefiting from the hype around cryptocurrencies and blockchain, as well as virtual reality’s potential to create online worlds. The growing interest also coincides with a surge in online retail trading during lockdowns.

The start of the rush for NFTs has been linked with the launch of the U.S. National Basketball Association’s Top Shot website, which allows users to buy and trade NFTs in the form of video highlights of games.

Five months after its launch, the platform says it has over 100,000 buyers and nearly $250 million in sales. The majority of sales take place in the site’s peer-to-peer marketplace, with the NBA getting a royalty on every sale.

The volume is rapidly rising: February has seen sales totalling $198 million as of Friday, heading for a fivefold increase from January’s $44 million, Top Shot said.

Each collectible has “a unique serial number with guaranteed scarcity and protected ownership guaranteed by blockchain”, the site says. “When you own #23/49 of a legendary LeBron James dunk, you’re the only person in the world who does.”

The biggest transaction to date was on Feb. 22, when a user paid $208,000 for a video of a LeBron James slam dunk.

One major NFT enthusiast, who goes by the pseudonym “Pranksy” told Reuters he had invested $600 in an early NFT project in 2017 and has now built that up to a portfolio “worth seven figures” in NFTs and cryptocurrencies. He asked to be anonymous to protect his family’s privacy.

Pranksy said he has now spent more than $1 million on Top Shot and made about $4.7 million by reselling purchases. Reuters was unable to independently verify the figures, although NBA Top Shot confirmed he is among the site’s biggest buyers.

“I see them as investments really, much like any other collectibles and NFTs that currently exist,” he said in an interview conducted via Twitter. “I’d never watched a game of basketball before Top Shot launched.”

‘Emergence of the metaverse’

Nate Hart, a Nashville-based NFT investor who, like Pranksy, has been involved in the market since it first developed in 2017, has seen some popular digital art NFTs such as Autoglyphs and CryptoPunk surge in value.

Hart said he bought a LeBron James Cosmic NFT on NBA Top Shot for $40,000 in January, then sold it for $125,000 in February.

“We’re in awe, it just doesn’t feel real. We were in the right place, right time, got lucky, but we also took that risk,” he said.

“The space has been growing a lot. I do think that this is a little bit of a bubble. It is a bubble,” he said. “It’s hard to predict what the top will be.”

Andrew Steinwold, who launched a $6 million dollar NFT investment fund in January, warned that the majority of NFTs could become worthless in future.

But, like many backers, he is confident that some items will retain their value and that NFTs represent the future of digital ownership, paving the way for a world in which people live, socialise and make money in virtual environments.

“We’re spending a lot of our time digitally, always online, always plugged in. It makes sense to now add property rights to the mix and suddenly we have the emergence of the metaverse,” he said.

“I think it’s going to reach into the trillions of dollars one day.”

Djưng with a herd of deer in Kon Ka Kinh National Park, Gia Lai Province. — Photo tienphong.vn

GIA LAI — Looking at the herd of deer being protected in Kon Ka Kinh National Park, Gia Lai Province, Djưng feels very happy.

Djưng from the Ba Na ethnic group in Đê Kjiêng Village, Ayun Commune, Mang Yang District, is now a ranger in the forest that he used to hunt in for a living for many years.

He was one of the best hunters in the village, which is located nearly 100km from Pleiku City.

Djưng said, in the past, it was not easy to travel from the village to the centre of the district, so local kids like him only went to the forest to catch birds and pick mushrooms.

As a kid who grew up hunting, he hunted with his brothers and uncles to catch gaurs, deer and wild boars.

That is why he knows every stream and every corner of the forest.

“I know the animal’s behaviour. I know when they go to stream to drink water, go for food and where they like to sleep. So it is not difficult to set traps to catch them,” Djưng told Tiền Phong (Vanguard) newspaper.

“If I caught a small animal like a rabbit, I brought it home to cook for my family. The big ones could be sold to buy rice.”

Now he has turned over a new leaf as he uses his hunting skills to protect animals and forest.

A few years ago, an animal expert came to Kon Ka Kinh National Park looking for gray-shanked douc langurs for an endangered species protection project.

At that time, Djưng became a tour guide to help him during his research in the forest.

Djưng said he knows how long the animal had been in the forest and where they sleep from the smell of the animal’s urine and faeces.

He helped the expert conduct valuable researche on gray-shanked douc langurs in Kon Ka Kinh National Park.

“The days in the forest with the expert were also the days I understood the value of the forest and animals thanks to his explanation,” said Djưng.

“After that, he invited me to Đà Nẵng to help him build a research and protective area for this species. The forest awakened my heart. But at that time I couldn’t give up hunting because I couldn’t find another job.”

In 2019, Djưng and Chưn, Djưng’s friend and another famous hunter in the village, were hired by the Centre for Environmental Education and Forest Environmental Services of Kon Ka Kinh National Park.

They were both assigned to serve ecotourism activities and find beautiful landscapes to help centre open new tours. They also share survival skills in the forest with tourists.

Wild animal traps that have been removed from Kon Ka Kinh National Park. — Photo tienphong.vn

Talking about his friend, Djưng said Chưn was a hunter but also a logger at that time.

To make a living, Chưn hunted animals and illegally cut down trees for sale.

“Once I saw young birds dead in a nest because their mother was shot or a pregnant deer thta had been killed. I loved them but I had to kill them and cut down trees for my family’s livelihood,” Chưn said.

According to A Mưm, another local hunter, for many generations, the lives of the local people have depended on the forest.

He inherited hunting skills when he was a child, so he used those skills to earn a living.

Trần Văn Thụ, director of the Centre for Rescue – Biological Conservation and Development in Kon Ka Kinh National Park, said in previous years, the centre’s officers had to work hard to find traps set by local hunters in the forest.

“Following hunters’ footprints, we can found dead animals and chopped down trees,” Thụ said.

But now, the local hunters’ awareness about the forest has changed.

A Mưn works for the Centre for Rescue – Biological Conservation and Development and uses his hunting skills to remove thousands of traps in Kon Ka Kinh forest to protect animals.

“Rescuing the trapped animals awakened me, helping me have a meaningful life,” A Mưn said.

Djưng and Chưn also help remove animal traps in the forest with A Mưn.

“Nobody wants to catch and kill animals. All of this is for a living. Now we are trying to explain and tell other people to stop hunting to protect the forest,” Djưng said. — VNS

On pre-Tet days, Thao A Ho in Mo Cong hamlet was still busy working in his field taking care of passion fruit trees. The work took him only half a day, while he spent the other half going to market to do shopping for Tet.

According to Ho, Mo Cong’s people were happy as they have collected big money from yellow passion fruit sale. Ho has earned VND100 million, while households which have larger growing areas could earn up to VND500 million.

In the past, Ho grew cassava on an area of two hectares, which bring little money. Later, he shifted to grow purple passion fruit, but the price of this fruit has always been low in the last years. He last year sold purple passion fruit at VND2,000-3,000 per kilogram only.

He tried to grow 400 yellow passion fruit trees on an area of 0.5 hectares. Though he harvested 10 tons of this fruit, he still could earn big money thanks to the high price. So, he and his family members had a comfortable Tet holiday.

The passion fruit is farmed in accordance with VietGAP standards. An enterprise provides standard seeds, fertilizer, bioproducts and technical officers to farmers and commits to collect all passion fruit output if farmers strictly observe their instructions.

Farmers don’t have to make high investments to grow passion fruit.

“The passion fruit tree can bring higher profit than maize, and it is not a strenuous work,” he said.

Also according to Ho, there are tens of households in the hamlet cooperating with the enterprise to grow yellow passion fruit.

Sung A Dinh, 28, has become a DONG? millionaire in the mountainous village. Dinh and his wife had two hectares of sweet passion fruit area which gave output of 50 tons. With the selling price of VND15,000-26,000 per kilogram, he collected VND800 million and made a profit of VND500 million.

Nguyen Thach Tung Linh, director of the passion fruit company in Moc Chau, Son La, said he began cooperating with local farmers to grow passion fruit in late 2019 and began harvesting in 2020. The total growing area has reached 100 hectares.

Linh found sweet passion fruit in 2017 when he implemented a project with a Taiwanese partner. At first, he developed five hectares of passion fruit for export to China. However, the products could only be exported across border gates, not through official channels. Therefore, he decided to focus on the domestic market.

Tam An