Art exhibits open in HCM City   Artist at work: Florian Nguyễn studies his paintings at the Institute of Cultural Exchange with France. Photos from Florian Nguyễn facebook    Local and foreign artists are displaying paintings and photos at four exhibitions that recently opened in downtown HCM City. The city’s Fine Arts Association, in cooperation with the HCM City Fine Arts Museum, is holding the exhibition titled Sắc Màu Nhân Ái (Colours of Humanity) at the museum in District 1. Eighty paintings by 17 well-known artists, including Uyên Huy, Hứa Thanh Bình, Bùi Quang Ánh and Đặng Thị Dương, are on display. Subjects include the beauty of Vietnamese landscapes and daily life as well as love among family members. All paintings are on sale to raise funds for disabled children and orphans living at Kỳ Quang 2 Pagoda in Gò Vấp District. The event will close on June 12. The Thành Phố Anh Hùng (Heroic...

The call to clean up the beach by a Russian tourist was responded to by tens of foreign tourists, local people, and the staff of a nearby resort.     After posting photos of a beach in Mui Ne (Phan Thiet) flooded with rubbish on her Facebook, a Russian tourist named Oksana Pavlova also urged people to join her to clean up the beach.   Many foreign travelers immediately responded to Oksana’s call. On June 2 afternoon, tens of people cleaned the beach.   According to Nguyen Gia Tu, a local man, volunteers were divided into two groups to collect rubbish alogn the beach. People used hoes and their hands to collect waste. Most of the foreigners were Russian, British and French living or traveling in Mui Ne. The owner of a sailing...

Visitors to Ho Chi Minh City have long complained of the difficulty in finding free Wi-Fi hotspots, a situation the Municipal People’s Committee plans to rectify in the very near future. Nguyen Hue pedestrian street Tran Vinh Tuyen, vice chairman of the Committee, announced on May 31 that he is currently working with an undisclosed company from Singapore in a push to provide visitors with easier access to the Internet. “I can’t disclose all of the details at this time,” said Mr Tuyen, but I can say that the Committee will make an announcement shortly on a new service supported in Vietnamese, English and other foreign languages. In 2012, Hoi An first installed free Wi-Fi system at 350 hotspots, said Mr Tuyen, and it has been a highly successful undertaking. Later, Ha Long, Hue and Danang also began providing tourists with free Wi-Fi with similar success. We plan on following in their footsteps, he said, and expand the limited number of free Wi-Fi hotspots...